Beside the Seaside

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In Which I Cry Out: 'Rosebud!'

September 11, 2006 by Mike

Kragerø

Route: Risør - Stabbestad - Kragerø

Well, it had to happen eventually. My worst nightmare... other than Ipswich winning the FA Cup and, y'know, georgebushalqaedaglobalwarmingbeigegenocidehiv. Or someone announcing they've just completed a book/ DVD of their bike trip round the coast of Europe.

Writer's block.

Although, following the literary diarrhoea of the last 47 days or so, you'd be forgiven for holding a street party on yr side of the blo-- I mean web-based diary.

I've sat at this laptop several times, head in hands, reading fascinating online reports on dental hygiene techniques, or watching YouTubers glue their hands to the sides of letterboxes. Or rearranging my socks. Or struggling with a sudoku. Or actually getting outdoors and having a life beyond this blo-- diary.

Writers' block. The inability to write up my return to Kragerø, the little white house beside the seaside and a million memories of childhood. Thanks, Mr Freud, no need to point out the bleedin' obvious.

[The 'published' date of this article is backdated to keep entries in order. I'm writing this at, let's see, 01:24am on Sunday 17 September. I've been at my brother's place for five days.]

Let me get through this, oh keyboard fairies, and I'll get on with my pseudo stream of consciousness perfectly happily. I already know *exactly* how I'll be writing the next entry. (It's mercifully brief.)

Writers' block. Yes, for some reason I can't lick the following into anything I'd be happy to attach my name to:

Rode in terrific conditions across back roads to Stabbestad, a small community across the fjord from Kragerø but also a mile down the coast from the little white house beside the seaside.

Although it has a hinterland of houses, roads and people that Child-Mike never registered, Stabbestad was still unquestionably Stabbestad. Even though the post office at the back of the shop, with row upon row of personal postboxes (including my grandfathers'), was shut down. Even though the gravel in front of the dock was grey now, rather than pink. Even the ferry is the wrong colour. Despite all this, Stabbestad is the same as ever. It smells right, and memories of smells are exacting.

On the ferry, I could look across to the little white house beside the seaside. It's tiny but I find it at once, a pale spot at the waterline, shrouded by trees, deep in shadow. At this distance, it looks the same. (It isn't -- but the changes are no worse than I'd expected.)

Arriving in Kragerø, things look a bit smaller, sure enough, but then I'm bigger. It's a bit fancypants these days -- but I knew it had become the "in" place. Besides, the "in" people have left until next summer. The people left behind look like the people who were there before Kragerø was 'discovered'... as you'd expect.

The bridge has the same sign to boats telling them "Slow speed".. which I managed to capture in The Perfectly-Framed Self-Portrait Snapshot Taken While Steering A Small Boat:

It still makes me laugh like a kid

I spend too much on a room in the middle of town, hired a smelly 15-foot boat with 9.9HP outboard and puttputted over the water to see the house close up. House? Didn't I mention the little collection of outhouses? - bedrooms with ceramic sinks and old cotton sheets in the main, but one of the outhouses really is an outhouse. The little white house is twice as big as it was, its original symmetry destroyed. But not in a crass way - you'd have to know what you were looking at to see the problem.

So it's changed. So have I.

But it was still perfect - that hasn't changed. The rock you step down to get to the tiny 'beach' is the same as ever. The direction the water flows past the terrace is the same. The view out over the islands is the same. The wooden footbridge with the rope handrail out to the thin rocks with the diving board and the seaweed hasn't changed -- not even the rope in the rope handrail -- though the diving board has. And the grass was the right colour.

It was good to see it. I was glad I was alone. Didn't cry. Just as the night I saw Brian Wilson perform the world premiere of SMiLE.. an unfeasibly poignant night for me.. the tears that were waiting just behind my breathless smile didn't come. I'd enjoyed the anticipation of crying with joy/ what if/ nostalgia but in the end it just didn't happen.

Which is alright. I loved seeing Brian and if the music and the event didn't quite live up to the impossible hype, it was good to be there.

And seeing Kragerø and the little white house beside the seaside was the same.

Oh, and on the way back I lost my fifth pair of sunglasses on this trip. (I buy very cheap sunglasses.) They tumbled into the briney and floated down to the bottom before I could jump, fully clothed if necessary, into the water to retrieve them. Thereby joining my Kip cap that blew off my little head and sank to the bottom of the fjord in about 1972... my very own Rosebud.. a moment which I found exquisitely apt. And bloody annoying - they were great sunglasses (in a cheap kind of way.)

I appear to have worked through my writers' block, don't I?

Comments

By Martin and Sarah | September 17, 2006 10:49 AM

Hello Mike,

Yes, seemed to ocercome your writer's block soon enough.

Score update: Norwich 0 - 1 Crystal Palace (Kuqi, 90)!

Won't be able to follow your trip for the next 2 weeks as Sarah and I off ourselves. Hope it continues to go well though.

See you,

Martin.

Beside the Seaside

In Which I Cry Out: 'Rosebud!'

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