With such a headline I read an article in Agderposten for 19 December. Of course I became interested: “and how is it in Norwegian schools?” The theme is not alien to me, since I myself worked 8.5 years in a school (for me that was enough). The article is about Arendal kommune. This kommune is large, it includes 15 settlements and accordingly 15 schools (in the newspaper a diagram is placed). I will not write many figures from the article, but the fact is that the number of pupils is shrinking every year. ...

Once you write or say “tomorrow” — consider it lost! A nasty word. Equal to unfulfilled promises and collapsed hopes. Today it is as much as 13 December, in Norway a religious holiday, Saint Lucy’s Day. I am watching Norwegian TV now, a morning programme, similar to Russian TV. Only a tiny bit similar. What television has in common is only the screen! On Saint Lucy’s Day children in kindergartens from early morning are dressed in white robes, they are belted, on their heads little wreaths with gold leaves, in their hands candles, and they arrange a procession through dark streets with the song Santa Lucia. Now snow in Norway is only in the northern part, and mainly it is rain, and they showed a report “live,” and in Ukrainian there is a colourful word “NAZHYVO” 😂. And so this nazhyvo, little children in long white clothes with candles walk in the rain, through puddles and sing songs. A very touching spectacle. ...

I have noticed that November is a hard month. And however optimistic the mood, at times it is difficult. Now darkness, now rain. A cultivated habit of always doing something gives no rest. So a gloomy November morning I begin with a cup of coffee and reading in Norwegian a nearly local newspaper. There is such a town Arendal, 30 km from my house. The town is densely populated, they have their own kommune, hospital and so on. And every morning we receive a newspaper called Agderposten, which is published in this town. I read and try to understand. It is hard for me to work out Norwegian, but I try — I develop. And then I am under the impression of what I have read. Probably I will be able to “impress” and outrage you who are reading too. ...

When I was preparing to come to Norway on a guest tourist visa for 3 months, I imagined how I would live in this family, would help Ivan “about the household.” And it turned out that he was used to doing everything himself, not drawing the daughters into housework. He prepared breakfast himself, always made sandwiches for the daughters for school. This is called in Norwegian “matpakke.” They did not always eat these matpakker. Quite often I saw that uneaten sandwiches ended up in the rubbish bin, and also even uneaten fruit. Accustomed to treating food with respect, I felt a sense of guilt before the thrown-away food. ...

At last I have decided what to tell about. A theme everyone understands. I think that women of my generation, born in the Soviet Union, know how to cook and possibly take pride in their skill. I am sincerely glad when the food I have prepared is liked by those around me. From about 14 I started cooking. My first successes were home baking. And then I mastered all our Slavic dishes, and cooking was never a burden to me. In life food was the main item of expenditure both in the Soviet Union and after. ...

Still I want to continue the “saga” of this large family. It was already 1971, at last a miracle of miracles came to pass and we moved into a three-room apartment in the autumn. There was almost no furniture, and there was no money to buy any, and nowhere to buy it. Anyway, from habit, we loved to sit all together in one room. I was 17, but I had not yet learned at that moment to seclude myself from my parents. And my younger sister had only gone into second grade. And already in this apartment we began to forget the difficulties of life in the “khrushchevka” and the people who lived there. We had no telephone, and there was no communication with former neighbours either. Papa continued to work at the factory from which we had received the new apartment. ...

I had long been meaning to continue the description of my childhood and youth in the “khrushchevka.” Twist it how you will, but at the present moment this is my brightest recollection! I have already written that we lived in a one-room apartment. For a family of three they then gave one-room apartments. The apartments were state, people stood in a queue at their place of work, and when they were distributed, everyone knew about one another, who was entitled to get what. ...

So autumn has come and the Norwegian husband decided today to take the boat over to point B, and there they will store it and “cherish” it the whole winter. I take a modest part in this undertaking. My task is to drive the car to this very point B and wait for my husband on the shore. Since I am not a born sailor, I always feel anxiety letting him go to sea alone. And of course, at my request he takes as companions his younger daughter, and the daughter took with her a dog of that strange hard-to-pronounce breed Chihuahua and a new boyfriend. And I am calmer that way. ...

Today I read a post on Facebook in Norwegian, without indication of authorship. I decided to make a translation, because there are people who cannot work out what elections in Norway are, but many newcomers have the right to vote. Including me, I have an invitation to take part in the elections. I offer my translation of a Norwegian article of humorous content. But as people say, “In every joke there is a share of joke.” ...

I will say at once, I am not a tourist and not a traveller, and far-away distances did not attract me, nor hot exotic countries either. I am a homebody. And for me there must be a weighty reason to set out on the road. And this Chernobyl catastrophe, which happened on 26 April 1986, forced many, including me, to set out with two small children in evacuation to the nearest relatives in Moscow and the Moscow region. To this day I remember this hard time with a shudder. ...