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To be honest, I did not know the meaning of this word; it seemed to me it was a delicacy. It turns out that every year before Christmas, tin cans are sold in Norway, prettily and festively packaged. And so, sometime in the pre-Christmas days, my Norwegian husband said almost solemnly that for breakfast we would eat anchovies. And I at once became solemnly curious. He opens this little tin, and what do I see: cleaned sprat, spicy-cured, without the head. With the sprat my husband boiled soft-boiled eggs and made little sandwiches. ...

When we lived in a house, every year before Christmas my husband would buy a real beauty of a Christmas tree. We would drive into town as a family, choose “the prettiest” little tree, and… the holiday would begin. In the last two years, having moved into a new little apartment, we decided to buy an artificial tree at IKEA and thereby simplified our troubles. I might not have developed this theme now, but I was struck by a report, again on the Norwegian news. And I think it happened in our region. Something about the place seemed very familiar to me. ...

I hasten to tell everyone who is reading that the vicious fox that attacked the child has been caught and shot. Ten hunters took part in the operation! On the news they showed the result — ten hunters standing around a tiny little ginger fox that had been shot. The next shot was of the injured baby, who was cheerfully crawling on the wooden floor of the house. Two scratches were visible on his face. ...

I have already written that I have a habit of watching Norwegian news on NRK (the Norwegian TV channel). So yesterday they showed an outrageous case that I have to write about. A child lying in a pram was bitten by a fox. The child’s father managed to grab the fox by the muzzle, and the bite was apparently not deep (they showed the child on TV). Specialists suppose the animal was sick. But as I understood it, they did not catch this fox. ...

Today is 19 December 2018, St Nicholas’s Day. And on this day in 1995 my grandmother Anna Vasilyevna died, mama’s mama. She was 89 years old. More than 50 years she lived in marriage with my grandfather Sergei Sergeyevich “not in peace and not in accord”! But the 50-year anniversary, the so-called Golden Wedding, they celebrated in a restaurant in Bolshevo, and of course the initiative came only from grandmother. Grandfather did not want to go to the restaurant at all, he had to be persuaded. ...

There is such an old saying. I understand it thus: when they send a person somewhere far, i.e. they punish. Three weeks ago, in a rainy dark autumn, I experienced such a trip myself. And it was like this: it was Saturday, my stepdaughter called and asked to take her boyfriend to prison in the evening. He had come on a visit to her for one day, on Saturday morning, and in the evening he had to be delivered back. I have already written that my husband always comes to the help of his children and not only, especially when it concerns travel by car. He asked me whether I would go with him. Of course! I am always interested in new routes in Norway! We looked at the map, somewhere “inland,” 170 km one way. ...

I already thought I had finished my memories of China with the ill-fated Chinese trainers, with which I got it on the fingers. It turned out that events of a week ago awoke in me memories of almost 50 years ago, the so-called Soviet–Chinese armed conflict over a tiiiny Far-Eastern island, Damansky, belonging to the Soviet Union. I was 15 years old in 1969, when the conflict happened. I only remember that we at School No. 90 of the city of Kyiv solemnly met a hero from Damansky Island and listened to his story, of which I remembered nothing. I only remember that diplomatic relations were “almost” broken and we were on the brink of war. And the island itself supposedly no longer exists — it is “wiped off the face of the earth,” as they said then, but “at what cost?!” ...

There was no great desire to watch the news today. So I decided to do something household-useful — take out the rubbish in the evening. And at the same time breathe some sea air. I came back quickly, and the news is still broadcasting. I think, all right, I’ll “wave” a little more with my favourite household weapon, brought from the distant homeland, a broom, “lightly.” In general I stretched… and here my gaze and hearing sharpened by the TV… ...

I answer: “Uh-huh.” — “And what is it like?” — “Like Danish. Only they do not understand each other.” I have been asked such a question more than once, so I decided to write a little about the language I have been studying for already 7 years, living in Norway. I do not regret that I went to language courses. For me it was an “entrée into Society,” new acquaintances, friends, events. ...

Several years ago I regularly looked through local newspapers, read advertisements, advertising. And in that way improved my knowledge of Norwegian. And once I came upon such an advertisement: “Velkommen til fengsel!” Well, I think, we have lived to see it, they invite you to prison. At first I thought it was for work. Then I look, and a little below are placed photos of wooden furniture: chairs, benches, little tables, a cradle, a wooden toy dump truck. Clearly there was a workshop in the prison and they needed to sell the products. That is how they advertised it. ...