Getting to Iceland

We'd booked an overnight stay in a suburb of Manchester near the airport so we could catch our plane to Iceland in the morning.  Our place had a hotplate so we went to a little supermarket nearby to get something to cook.  Grant particularly likes to inspect supermarkets for what they reveal about the people they cater to and began to lurk amongst the shelves noting Fray Bentos meat pies in tins and diabetic ice-cream.  To the owner, however, anthropological research was looking a bit like potential shoplifting, and he asked us pointedly what we were looking for.  I decided to quiet his suspicions with a bit of chat.  "We just want something for dinner.  We are going to Iceland tomorrow". Inane but disarming, I thought.  His answer took a bit of untangling in my mind because of the strong Mancunian accent  he had despite his Indian appearance.  "Iceland", he said, "They say they have good vegetables there".  "Oh," I said realising he was referring to a chain of frozen goods stores " I thought puffins was their thing". He ran his fingers through his hair and made comprehension noises. We laughed and sorted it out and bought some bacon and eggs and I went back to the flat pondering on life's ambiguities and the work it took us all to understand each other.

G and I had had a bit of a standoff at the airport because my superhuman patience at his slowness to accomplish what was needful was mistaken for slack indifference to the apparent urgency of the situation.  We went off and had separate beers only to reunite at the gate and call a truce. Iceland was in the offing after all.

Getting out of the plane was a shock.  A wind was blowing and all around was an endless, aggressively barren flat land.  Spikes of lava, long cold still pointed to the sky but in between were patches of mosses and lichen, olive and fluorescent green.  Oddest of all were big patches of blue lupins, an English country garden flower.  They gave a delicate mauve hue to the landscape wherever they had taken root.  We later discovered lupins were introduced to prevent erosion but like the cane toad in Australia, had outworn their welcome and become a ferocious weed.

Our accommodation that night was a guest house called "The  Reykjavik Peace Centre" in Mjodd, a suburb of Reykjavik.  In fact it is the headquarters of a non profit organisation which does lots of good stuff and rents rooms when there is nothing happening. It was a lovely place with a kitchen so G and I set off through a park full of sculptures to a little supermarket and there startled Icelanders with questions about what was butter and if the bread was plain or sweet. Ordinary things in particular had Icelandic packaging which kept its secrets from us.   Everyone spoke some English and gave us recommendations and we came back well pleased with the makings of spaghetti bolognese.  Before we left we thought we were the only residents but there were more peaceniks sitting about on our return.  They looked serious and careworn.  This changed, however with the arrival of a merry bunch of German farriers, come to sort out Iceland's horses and we began to feel at home and made friends with a couple of Swedish sisters.  I put a foot wrong with them when I suggested a Norwegian was the first Icelander when according to them it was a Swede.

Tonight I am walking like a puffin, having spent all day exploring downtown Reykjavik which is both stylish and pretty - a difficult combination especially when catering to lots of tourists who seem to need souvenir shops and reindeer skins and so on.  But every shop had a small facade which opened on to bricked walking streets.  Lots more to say but we must go and get our van now.  Tomorrow I will blog a thing of great beauty and another of delightful ugliness.  Bye for now.