I am back in England. No snow. No mountains. No fjords. No houses by lakes. No more Elisabeth or Joe. In the car on the way back to Stoke, I kept a smile glued on by biting down hard on my bottom lip, and blasting my brains with very loud, upbeat music, skipping the tracks which will from now on remind me forever of sitting in that attic room with two amazing people.

Elisabeth said, as we sat in the Chinese restaurant over-looking the harbour, all hung-over apart from Joe, who was laughing smugly and tutting, "People have this stereotypical view of Norway. They expect to see rain and snow and trolls. Women in the national dresses YODELING lalalala songs for the cows." Bar the singing to the cows, I have seen it all. Rain. In Bergen, there is a shop dedicated to repairing umbrellas. Not selling, repairing. Snow. Yesterday morning, dragging our cases towards the garage, Joe and I danced in the snow. Jumping into the size nine footprints he'd made seconds earlier. Trolls also, little figurines for sale in the souveneir shop we visited after the monorail had carried us up a mountain we'd been too tired to walk.

I will never read the blog posts of Elisabeth or Joe in the same way. I will always picture them sitting there with The Lapdancers balanced on their knees...


And now I am going away for a while. I took a break from the computer to see a friend, and now The Boyfriend and I are no longer together. After two years, it hurts.