Harald chainsaw massacre

Mirinda has lined Harald up to do some work in the house while we’re away. It mostly involves painting and decorating but also a bit of floor laying. To this end, we dropped keys, instructions and colour samples around to his house tonight. We were on our way to Nicoline’s, and he’s not that far away.

Harald had told Mirinda he wasn’t well. This followed on from him not being very well as the weather started getting cold a few months back. He admitted he doesn’t like the cold.

So, Mirinda knocks at his door and Harald appears, his usual happy and jolly self with a foot encased in plaster and a brace that appeared to be holding his lower leg together. When Mirinda questioned his ‘sickness’ he said, no, he wasn’t sick. He was more wounded. When asked what had happened, he smiled and said he had an accident with a chainsaw.

I guess he could have just dropped it on his foot, but I had blood soaked visions of his foot hanging by a thread after the chainsaw almost severed the leg and doctors working feverishly to stitch it all back on. Having an accident with a chainsaw does create these sorts of nightmare scenarios.

Anyway, he’s fine and said he’ll make a start on our stuff in February.

We then headed for the bonfire at Nicoline’s place.

Erich had the blaze going strong as a small group of local people sat and stood around chatting and drinking fizz, while kids ran back and forth, pushing wheelbarrows full of snow and generally have great fun.

And the great fun continued after we adjourned to the house for our intimate New Year’s Eve dinner and chat.

Every year, Nicoline invites her friends Lena and Mårten over to see in the new year in a quiet, reserved fashion. Nicoline, herself, tends to go to bed around 9pm. I think she invited us over to keep Lena and Mårten company for when the inevitable happened.

Dinner was three courses which each of us prepared. Bear on toast from Nicoline, beef casserole from me and a lovely almond cake and cloudberry dessert from Mårten. Interestingly, Mårten is very much like me in that he does the cooking and really enjoys it. He’s also like me in his drinking.

Having eaten, we retired to the lounge and played a game of ten questions, which we made up then asked each other over the course of the next hour or so. We also found out a lot of each other’s histories. It was a marvellous night.

Then the fireworks started. Shortly afterwards, we all left Nicoline asleep as we drifted out into the new year.