Norway

In a letter in The Daily Telegraph yesterday someone was writing from Norway about being nostalgic about church bells; he had been living in Norway for many years and, apart from the lack of church bells ringing, he seemed to love the country. Well I was nostalgic for Britain after only a week or so in Norway.
For one thing I could not find a pub there; and the only place I could buy a bottle of wine there was a sort of supermarket where wine was sold from behind bars - the prison kind! One had to point to a picture of the wine one wanted and the server (behind the bars) would fetch it and pass it to you through a slot.
It seemed to me that you weren't encouraged to drink there; on the contrary, drinking was something that was frowned on - so the cost of a pint was extremely high.
I saw a stand with bottles of red wine on it one day when I went to down to dinner; they were about £20 each. I asked how much the house wine was and was told "that is the house wine".
But it wasn't just the cost of booze that made me averse to Norway's attractions. There was the fact that the weather was so dreadful all the time we were there. In Bergen one day we had sun, rain, snow, sleet, a high wind, and hailstones all in a few hours.
The fiords I expected to see blue (like on the telly) were grey. The waterfalls I expected to see like Niagara were small, like you see in North Wales (they're better in North Wales).
In a large hotel we stayed at, the evening entertainment was the hotel's regular dining room pianist dressed up as Greig playing - Greig!
I was glad to get home, away from the greyness and the lack of cheap drink and the beetroot (cooked with practically every meal as a vegetable). Back to the church bells.