A Thought for Frejyasdaeg

We had thunder and lightning last night, and now, this morning, the kitchen looks as though one of Thor's bolts from his mighty hammer Mjollnir has hit it square on.  The two events are obviously somehow connected.  Well, yesterday was Thursday.  So, out of respect to a venerable and mighty pagan god, I have withdrawn to my computer to ponder the error of my ways.  Leaving the chaos intact, as punishment for a lesson yet to be learned.

Evidently my Viking heritage is catching up with me and Valhalla won't welcome me at my death for what I've been up to lately.  Perhaps it was because yesterday A Friend and I went to a huge retail complex and I didn't do any pillaging, no slashing and burning whatever. We were there four hours and I bought precisely nothing.  I did try on a delightful apple green leather glove in M&S and was fleetingly beguiled by the £15 price tag for the pair (I am insufficiently Viking, after eleven hundred years plus of successive generations settled existence in these isles, to snatch it up and wave a sword at the cashier on the way through) but I talked myself out of it.  I have serviceable black leather ones with a cute button detail on the wrist, and some darling red leather ones I've nursed through several winters and managed to keep together as a pair all this time.  I even have some moss green suede ones.  It's enough.  I have enough.  I am content with the contents of my glove drawer.

So have I not made enough burnt offerings?  Well, I can't be accused of that this week.  Two days running I've done long slow low-simmering dinners on the stove top and they were showing great promise for one, possible even two, and three-quarter hours.  Then just as the point of perfection was approached the sauce at the bottom of the pan caught and started to singe. The Husband is so forgiving when this happens.  "It'll be fine!" he assures me as we scoop all the good stuff into another cooking pot.  While I finsh reducing the liquid with an eagle eye on it this time he washes and scours the unfortunately encrusted bottom of the burnt pan. As I say "It's ready now!" he holds up his efforts for me to admire its renewed gleam.

I guess I've been a pretty piss-poor warrior lately, too.  I haven't asked The Husband to hammer me out a new breast plate since the last one became too snug a fit, and it's been an absolute age since I hauled the long boat out of the shed and polished the shields adorning its flanks.  I haven't listened to Wagner's Ring Cycle at eleven on the amp, like, ever.  Though I studied opera at music college as a girl, I recoiled from the idea of learning all those hours of discouragingly not-quite-melodic German and stuck to mellifluous Mozart. And I haven't lit enormous bonfires, caroused through the night drinking beer from wooden vessels or entertained the neighbours with sagas in the small hours. Not for many a long year.

But just think of it, an ASBO at my age...

I have been of late a feeble failure as a Norsewoman, that was my near-fatal error. I have become soft, effete and dangerously happy with my lot.  And my just penance is putting right that kitchen.  Now. Just as soon as I have plaited my hair in two braids over my shoulders and found my pointy helmet.