Aslaug's Axe Shed

Hey all. After the problems with my page over the weekend, I lost my ability to log on and write on my blog. Sucky situation to put it mildly, but at least I’m back on track now. And just in time too.

TODAY IS MY FIFTH BIRTHDAY!! GO ME! *raises arms above head* Look, I’m THIS big now…

Hah! I rock, I do! In fact, I rock so much I want to share a little story from real life with you all, rather than ranting on about the lack of democratical basics in the EU (Ireland voted no to the Lisbon Treaty, and the bigwigs are defiantly and publicly claiming they can simply ignore it. ‘Nuff said).

Today, going home from work, I had a most spectacularly pleasant surprise coming my way in the shape of a very old friend. Someone I hadn’t seen for years, in fact. Her name is Maria, and she used to be my neighbour when I grew up in a small town called ??ster Hornum. Her parents and my parents were close friends, and formed two fourths of the socalled ‘??ster Hornum Kolaug’.

To you English-speakers, that’d be the ??ster Hornum Cow-guild…

The basis of this fantastic invention was, that four families got together and bought a cow and a calf every spring and let them roam free on a piece of wetlands right behind where we lived, which we rented between us. Then come fall, they’d have put on loads of weight in muscle mass and we’d have a butcher take a bolt-gun to them both. In time, this arrangement came to include some pigs and fowl as well, but the basis always remained the cow and the calf. Then every three months, we’d meet for a wonderful evening of eating and singing old, Danish songs. The only rules were that these evenigns had to include home produce (meaning meat from the cow we had kept the previous season) and that we -had- to sing songs from ‘H?¸jskolesangbogen’…a songbook of particular importance to a great many danes.

The adults would get slightly tipsy as the evening progressed. We kids would hang out and have a great time as well. I loved those evenings. I looked forward to them like small Christmases. They represent some of the fondest memories I have from an otherwise very troubled youth, and I treasure them for that.

So, today…I turned around as the train rolled in. I had been reading the newspaper on one of the benches, and rather than standing there, waiting for the train to actually roll up and open the doors, I waited until it was there and then got up. If I hadn’t done so, I wouldn’t have entered the second train car, but the front one, where I normally sit. If I had done so, I wouldn’t have seen Maria, and we could have driven to Aalborg from Randers on the same train without knowing about it. Instead, I got to spend forty-five minutes with an old friend, and I can’t tell you just how great it felt.

She looked great! Like she was really thriving on life. As it turns out, she too works in Randers and there’s a good chance we’ll bump into each other on the train in the future once my work schedule gets changed a bit next month.

Maria and her family are, in my opinion, the epitome of the ‘Good Christian’. I’ve rarely known people who were as nice and decent to others as them, and I am not simply saying that because I just met her again. They are very special people. Maria’s brother, for instance…his name is Martin, by the way…came to my rescue three years ago. I was a right mess over Christmas 2004, and he drove through a snowstorm, from Aalborg to Nibe, to pick me up and take me to the psychiatric emergency room because people feared I was getting suicidal. My parents contacted him as he was the closest person they knew with a car…

I hadn’t seen Martin for about six years at that time, and he just leapt into a car, drove to Nibe to get me, and sat up with me in his home all night long afterwards…giving me an old cell-phone and telling me that he’d even pay a small monthly fare for it, so I could get in contact with people if I ever got that down again.

It was right after Christmas, and he took the time to do this for me. I’ll never be able to repay that kind of kindness.

Maria’s dad owned the building where my first apartment was. It wasn’t big, and it didn’t have its own bathroom (I shared that with two other apartments) and the kitchen was a very improvised thing…but it was my first home away from home, and Verner, as this gentleman’s name is, made sure I lived there at a rent even a very young student on the most basic of student loans could afford. Put it this way…he could’ve probably rented that place out for twice as much to another student, since Aalborg is chronically short of student-flats. Still, he made sure I had a home…

Those are just a couple of examples. These are very, very special, decent, kind and warm people, and I wish them the best in this world. Nothing less will do.

So you know…it’s been a great “birthday” today

*hugs everyone*

Thanks for still reading.