tirsdag 22. april 2014

The Next Mrs Rightsen for you the Newly ExSen

Of course most marriages fail these days in Lutheran western countries which is no surprise given that these lands have evolved the most freedom and economic mobility for women in the world, and that they allow divorce and it is normalised and not usually stigmatised. The rate is apparently worst for cohabitants, but then that includes a large proportion of rather casual moving-ins or outright parasitic "Bidey in "ness. ( "a live in ", in Scots Dialect, translated to Samboer)

What of you , ex-pat, who suddenly finds that you are just an Ex' ? Well I started to read up on immigrant-norsk marriage and divorce rates and it is no doubt higher, it takes too much time and effort for such an opinionated, biased and casually informed rant as this to be based on statistics ...or damned statistics.... Point in hand being that it can come right out of the blue of the usual domestic haze of anger and child centred logistics here. Or maybe you just can't take any more of what ever that bad "any" quality is.

I have seen it several times in the last three years at close hand, English speaking, western husbands. So now you are flung on the great rocks of singledom, aged 30 to forty something, maybe older and really adrift as I have also seen. There but for a tiny shove from God go I too soon maybe.

For the still fairly young, just a bit middle aged and yet very well aged man of new found freedom and great emotiono-sexual voidness, what is out there?

Well if you can hook a bird again, which is no huge issue given the supply side is rather good in both quantity and quality, what are you likely to fish up and what should you cast back? I would say throw a wide net and chuck most of them back in the sea before you get beyond internet chat, and focus on L-J-Be-F as a starter. What types are out there then to avoid or cherish or softly-softly-catch-a-norgee ?

1) The Lovely Waif With Multiple Kids

Yes you are over 34 and no you are not going to land a sweet fresh 25 year old. You are by in large in single mum land or divorced mums, as a pal said to me when I reached the meagre innings of twenty nine as a spouseless Scot about town.

Why would you want a young one any way ? Chat about Justin Beaver and how cool their sociology dissertation on multi culturalism is?  How drunk on alco-pops they got at the Hove Festival ? If ecstasy is better than synthetic THC ? What their sporting and globe trotting ambitions are ? ( ie how little in the picture you and your 2.4 50%ers are going to be on a parallel track)

No.

So,  if you want a good time and to be able to give yourself enough excuses and good level headed reasoning to keep it just as a fling to start with, then the Waif wi' bairns is a great bet.

The Waif wi Waines (Scots for small children) is a bit peculiar to Scandinavia maybe : often very, very attractive and thin with those nice subtle curves and calf kneed legs, and most often natural blondes or sandy blondes who dye their hair well. Or charming big toothed brunettes with ringlets of curls and an oh so sweet derierre...

The trouble is that they most often have two to three brats, with ...you got it..... two to three different fathers and at least one still on the scene, and being a bit of a nuisance (potentially life threatening or just a minor laughable irritation, do your homework before you plunge in).

Truth is ever since potential hubby no 1 did a runner or was an unkown sperm donor at a RUS party, the Waif has been tied up with on the one hand kids, and on the other a desperate need for a new man. Throw in alcohol and they drop their small top drawer's finest at the blink of a charming ex-pats eye.

And thus the cycle begins again with No.2. The third guy is a real marriage potential, but she blows it by trapping him with a bun in the oven too soon, or he faces the economic reality of being tied to trash and bails at a given alimony level before his next pay rise.

Back Paddle Ex-Pat Exssen, BACK PADDLE!!! In truth most of them are economic catastrophe areas. Some have mild substance of choice issues, others have an entourage of either protective public sector pals or trashy mates.  They are all feminine and sexy to lure you in to either trap your monthly salary in a downwardly available spiral, or they may want to exact some revenge for womankind, or just get the upper hand for once.

If you still fall in love with Norgee girlies at the flutter of an eyelid and the twirk of a buttock, then these waifs are resolutely in the barge poll zone of tenacity. If however, you are adept at disappearing behind the smoke of a false identity, or have a knack at being a bit conspicuously disinterested at the smoking on pillow moments then give them a go for a week or two.

2) The Chubbly Dubbely.

Well the chubby mid thirty spinster or the early forties divorcee who is a bit overly upholstered is no rarity as far as my radar detects. Cheery types, cuddly buns,  cosey ladies in waiting.

Back Up!!! Gentlemen, this is not Hartlepool, Kirkcaldy, Swansea or Ipswich. If you wanted a wee chubber to keep you warm at night then you would not have left Blighty. You followed your first spouse/samboer over the N. Sea because she was a hell and a camp stove hotter than anything you got near to in Bligthy!!!

Heed this warning when you feel the need for a wee warmer in your lonely cold new place of now: Chubbly Dubbelies evolve into something much more gruesome. They end up with over sunned skin, vague chin lines,  short cropped practical hair cuts, piggy eyed little oval glasses and a major super feminist, we can run the world attitude. In other words pretty much like middle aged lesbians from  Hartlepool, Kirkcaldy, Swansea or Ipswich.

You need not lift the long wooden implement from the unpowered vessel, steer a wider coarse than that.

....on the other hand, the lets just be friends hand, they could be a mother-hen? A nicey nice mummy to introduce you like a chaperone to lots of Norsk lovelies? No! Birds of a feather really do flock together here. Pick a pretty colleague to introduce you to her single mates. The chubby on the shelf type go round in veritable clone-tribes. Waves of slothful, over-eating, would-be Amazons swarming through the towns, villages, clubs & societies and hospital staff canteens  of Terra Norvegicas.

3) The Failed To Spawn An Aire to the Throne

This is outright not a subject for any humour. Often these barren women or those who just had a bit too much immunity against their ten year bidey in's sperm are a very difficult place to go for a bachelor, but a wonderful diamond to find while digging the seam of coal for an ex with alimony-access-agreed. You provide new romance and an instant granulated cup of family and they provide you with what you need, and are often cracking to look at too.

The ones to avoid are the child abstainers who held off on family to have that last adventure, or to get a decent promotion. Also of course,  avoid those who are as above, economic catastrophe areas.

4) The Forgot to Say I am Not Quite Divorced Yet....erm...

Yes the one who is dipping her toe in the water while actually still under the influence of old lovey dovey hubby-ness. Often with a much older husband, or with a man who is a career lunatic, everything materially is shiny and gilded but love is a damp squib.

A bit like attractive lawyers and investment analysts I used to perchance once in a while be a bit of rough to chat up to, I find that a lot of quite beautiful women here in this range flirt like hell at work and only tell you at the last minute that they are married. Some even take their rings off before work! Well no harm done in window shopping.

Alternatively in this type- those you think you have landed only to find whose spouse, struck by a bout of jealousy, suddenly declares never ending love , offers a new blue ocean of romance and begs forgiveness for following Manchester U for all those years.  

Well you will have your fun but be a bit suspicious of the ones who never ask you back to their place.

5) The Wealthy But Look Twice Gal

Quite a few well to do women in their thirties get single as their rich boy friends get younger and sexier models. Or they are self made and never had much time for the men in their life, who wandered off or never really materialised as serious prospects.

This type has enough cash to splash on great hair, personal trainers, frequent mountain ski trips and most of all good make up. So they make the best of themselves but for some the vaneer is lipstick on the porcine or for others it reveals a shallowness of west-oslo materialisme, keeping up with the Jones-sens, being seen in the right places with the right people in the right model of BMW or that god's chariot of WestKunt, the Porsche Cayenne.

Either way you are quite likely going to feel disappointed and lose interest or vice versa for her. I guess you could however, go a very long time in the flow of champagne before waking up to realise she isn't for you for the above reasons.

6) The Fussy Single Mum, One Kid Nearly Flown the Nest...

Now my friends.....now we have come to the real area you should be operating in. Getting this type through your turnstyles as you speed coffee-date your way round Gruneløkka' , Bryggen or Kvadra'tn.

Not only not too much baggage, be that one totally un-careful previous teenage owner, a child who is now a young adult and maybe a bit fun too, but also that you have someone who has come full circle and is ready for a new lover.

This is the real seam of gold. They have been on the shelf for a couple of reasons: firstly, they got preggers age 15-23 and the guy really couldn't cope. So they became single mums but managed to keep the wet patch in their pink frilly panties and get on with education and a career, as opposed to type 1, who exit stage left at this point.

What had to give for the early single mum, was all the dating and front-bottom reciprocal entertainment which their pals and colleagues were having back in the eighties and early nineties. They had instead,  a new love in their life, a wee gurgeling bairn to their bosom. A little bit of themselves to be kept to themselves and cherish.

Economically they are usually sound, but not affluent or money centric enough to start posing awkward questions about Ex Patsens own fluidity. Usually they are a bit of a safe bet because they are used to a bit of austerity and set a big weight on simple pleasures and just being  with people, not in a west-kant conspicous consumerist way. They come from all social classes really, some become quite career minded yet have a bigger place for people and emotions because of their life to date has been filled with so much of those quantities.

For a good few I dare say, they actually were not very attractive in their twenties. As their offspring became older, the still frightfull youthful breeder could get back in shape, and her adult chin bones start to show through from the softness of a callow youth.

Pretty, sexy, sophisticated or as homely as you like, they are the definiative, superlative target market for the newly-un-wed. Gentlemen, Place Your Bets!!!




mandag 7. april 2014

XC ski Season 2014. My Big Bad Take OPut for You All !


My main two learning points then for this season have been to practice in good conditions and drive further to get them. The next being more fundamental actually- get used to freeing up one leg and placing 100% weight on one leg.

The latter has really transformed my skiing this year, with more combined progress in eight weeks of skiing than in the last 8 years.

My final pointer is in terms of fitness and programming your brain to new things is that ideally you want to do sessions of two to three hours, beggining with light intensity tours with short breaks every half hour. Focusing on technique and a sustainable rythmn. This kind of goes hand in hand of course, however you need to gas off a bit and get into a kind of meditative feel, which is AKA zoning.

For classic technique bench-marking was difficult this year because there was a
a confusing variability in conditions and generally soft poling sides leading to the odd face plant when poling hard but luckily no splinters of carbon this year! However, obver time I could feel my technique getting better in terms of>

1) Glide - got better showing a more efficient thrust and weight transfer and correct waxing / clister or using waxless on poorer days.
2) Rythmn / this was a bit of an after thought because the conditions varied from day to day and underway on the same trail!  However I did see that I had too fast a rythmn often and was not using the glide enough, or rushing the kick off or not using the vertical bobbing or not throwing the hip in enough . Watching a few old foxes on skis I realised I was not skiing efficiently because I was rushing the rythmn and being broken on my own wheel.
3) Thrust. I prefer to say thrust or stride than kick now that I have learned more about it and the feel of it. I still have not mastered this, it is one part of the whole rythmnic thing, like a more complex version of cycling with double linked cranks, or trying to swim butterfly.
4) most of all getting weight over onto one leg and freeing the other one up while still having a high degree of control over it. This applies to down hill more than touring, in fact you can tour all your life with some weight on your trailing ski if you always go with a pack of more than 6kg.

This last point is the very reason that kids and adults alike should be taught both styles - classic and skating - from the start and possibly use short waxless skis to achieve this in the first good number of hours. I see the opportunity for new combi skis using skintec or other things like titanium tensioning such that new beginners can learn in this way without needing two sets of skis, while the compromise in equipment is outwieghed by the advantage in learning curve.

Finally End of The The End Of the Cross Country Ski Season for Me

Finally there is no contiguous snow within a couple of hours drive from the house, and with a resounding negative reply about going up to the high mountains, like Blefjell or Raulandsgrend.

It is a bit irritating that the general use of the Norsk word 'Fjell' does not allow for a distinction between a great thrusting , snow capped, cliff sided two thousand meterer and a little moss covered stoney bump out in the back of the garden. Indeed even the ground under the house in a relatively flat area, if at an angle and composed largely of rock is refered to by the same word. Vis So you dug down and found mountain side ?
'Hoyfjell' doesnt fill the gap very well, usually referred though in XC ski circles in the winter/easter as being anything over about 700, or especially a thousand. It covers though a multitude of terrain- peaks, bealachs, arrets, raised valleys, escarpments, various angles and forms of mountain side and of the greatest misnomer where it is a plateau in fact, although they do have names for that especially Vidde. We would say of course, in the Highlands or up in the mountains not on the high mountain. I find 'fjell' both a beloved pet name and also this annoying cover all term, used for those green bumps in the Derby/Yorskshire as Fells. Anyway, until summer the high fells will not be a-visited by yours truly and enterage.

A strange ski season which was actually not all that strange. The core of it was as
nearly always from the first week in january to the second week in march. Usually snow before this time is a bit fickle and prone to melt/freeze cycles as the last of the mild atlantic fronts get through in December. The one strange thing about this season was the lack of frozen ground ('tele' taelae if I spell it right) which usually aids retention of snow. This year it just chucked it down for several weeks on end and the ground was insulated of course by all this white froth like a blanket.  However it persisted about at least 300m on shady forrest roads by virtue of its sheer amount and the freexing cycles at night. No ground frost meant that the snow also was refreshing itself, as it just had a crust on top and did not become the usual hard iice layer which I see now is caused by compression of traffic and any thaw backs, whgic is most usual for low to mid level south Norway.

Ice is a learning thing again for me. Basically I have learned that icey conditions are not worth the snow they are printed on as far as my ski skills go. I am taken from being a competent skier, down to being a laughable immigrant new beginner, like a dog on a frozen lake. Truth told I am heavy and clumsy, and I just dont get along with hard and icey conditions any more than I do with snobs, racists and people who put 'university of life' on their FB profiles.

My poor diplomatic relations with water in its contiguous solid phase condition, were shown by sharp contrast on my last ski tour a week and a half ago. There I found my new favourite down hill, icey in the shadowy parts previous trip,  but now soft easter snow all the way but with a firm base making for rapid enough progress and lots of feel. I skied in a series of tucks, turboed with some poling,  and polishged off with neat step turns round all the bends and some skating on the small uphill bits. Ice no thank you!

My main two learning points then for this season have been to practice in good conditions and drive further to get them. The next being more fundamental actually- get used to freeing up one leg and placing 100% weight on one leg.

The latter has really transformed my skiing this year, with more combined progress in eight weeks of skiing than in the last 8 years.

My final pointer is in terms of fitness and programming your brain to new things is that ideally you want to do sessions of two to three hours, beggining with light intensity tours with short breaks every half hour. Focusing on technique and a sustainable rythmn. This kind of goes hand in hand of course, however you need to gas off a bit and get into a kind of meditative feel, which is AKA zoning.

For classic technique bench-marking was difficult this year because there was a
a confusing variability in conditions and generally soft poling sides leading to the odd face plant when poling hard but luckily no splinters of carbon this year! However, obver time I could feel my technique getting better in terms of>

1) Glide - got better showing a more efficient thrust and weight transfer and correct waxing / clister or using waxless on poorer days.
2) Rythmn / this was a bit of an after thought because the conditions varied from day to day and underway on the same trail!  However I did see that I had too fast a rythmn often and was not using the glide enough, or rushing the kick off or not using the vertical bobbing or not throwing the hip in enough . Watching a few old foxes on skis I realised I was not skiing efficiently because I was rushing the rythmn and being broken on my own wheel.
3) Thrust. I prefer to say thrust or stride than kick now that I have learned more about it and the feel of it. I still have not mastered this, it is one part of the whole rythmnic thing, like a more complex version of cycling with double linked cranks, or trying to swim butterfly.
4) most of all getting weight over onto one leg and freeing the other one up while still having a high degree of control over it. This applies to down hill more than touring, in fact you can tour all your life with some weight on your trailing ski if you always go with a pack of more than 6kg.

This last point is the very reason that kids and adults alike should be taught both styles - classic and skating - from the start and possibly use short waxless skis to achieve this in the first good number of hours. I see the opportunity for new combi skis using skintec or other things like titanium tensioning such that new beginners can learn in this way without needing two sets of skis, while the compromise in equipment is outwieghed by the advantage in learning curve.