It's sunday...

Care to join me for a walk around the block?

[soundtrack : deLillos — ‘Suser Avgårde Alle Mann’]

The end of March; only patches of snow left and the sky is blue. It’s a bright day and the green shoots are just about to burst out. Let me take you for a stroll in the neighbourhood. The main thoroughfare here is Bygdø Allé, an avenue with chestnut trees that was built in the 1890s.

It has some good buildings with some interesting details:

These kind of ‘gates’ (? what would one call them in English — street doors ?) have been good work for the town’s workshops, but you need four men to hang them!

At the downtown end of the avenue there grows a Copper Beech tree. Its leaves are the colour of wine and its trunk is elephantine. It’s one of my favourite trees and was probably planted by Mogens Thorsen who liked to bring home foreign trees and plant them on what was then his property. It stands outside the National Library of Norway (formerly the old University Library), and has had a poem written about it, by Jan Erik Vold. You can just about catch a glimpse of it in this old film at 0:10 as the tram turns the corner and the old library is left behind on the left hand side. Various details indicate that the film was most likely made around WWI.

We don’t call it ‘copper beech’, but ‘blood beech’

My Grandfather lived here then, and my father grew up here. We all went to the same secondary / grammar school (Frogner Gymnas) just up the street from where I live now. Although it has changed names over the years, the buildings are the same; the classrooms, corridors and stairwells, the view from the loft windows down Niels Juels gate (‘gate’ = street) to the glittering fjord.

My father once told me a story about a feared teacher they called ‘the Butcher’; When returning homework he would stride through the desks, flinging the writing books at the pupils while asking “And what does the farmer do on Østre Aker? (‘eastern fields’) fling ! fling ! HE SPREADS DUNG ! ”

If we wander across Solli Plass we’ll find a sculpture by Auguste Rodin.

It’s from a larger assembly called The Burghers of Calais. His downcast mien is appropriate: His view across the street is to where the spoilt brats gather during the summer to carouse, order another two bottles of Champagne and tell the waitress to pour one of them in the sink (“… you can just sink the other one”) and generally make a display of their aptitude for obnoxious conspicuous consumption. The small ‘square’ (what’s left of it) was always called ‘Lapsetorvet’ — loosely: ‘daddy’s boy market-square’ — by the locals. Let’s move along.

This is what they do to the trees on my street. I don’t know why they stunt them like this. I don’t like it — it’s a form of mutilation. But there are some nice gates here too:

And another sculpture. Modern this time. I call it ‘the onion’. I think it’s kitsch.

Looks like the sun’s well over the yardarm. Time for a nice glass of Côtes du Rhône I think.