A boy is standing in a street, his back pressed to the wall of a shop: a sharp, cold breeze is running chill fingers through his sandy hair. It is Eddy Piron, and the Imp of the Perverse has just played him a nasty trick. After pinching, prodding, scratching, tickling, nipping his heels and whispering urgently in his six year old ear, the old devil has twitched off the shackles of restraint causing him to run, licketty-spit, down Laugavegur, Reykjavik High Street. Running from the Do's and Dont's, running from the Being Good, running from the Be Nice to Your Sisters: Sisters, those icebergs that appeared in the calm ocean of exclusivity that was, but never again will be, all his.
But the Imp, being perverse, has deserted him, run off to goad some other soul into misdemeanour. So here is Eddy, adrift, anchors slipped, moorings sundered, in a strange country. Soon the panic, at the moment a small restless beast, tickling somewhere at the back of his neck, will rise and grow, roaring, to tighten his chest and squeeze his eyes 'til the tears flow.
But wait, what's this?
The Captain hoves or perhaps heaves, into sight, his face set, frozen into a semblance of disapproval. He fields the mite errant and they shop. Eventually Eddy will ask about the glower and the tight lips and will be told about, "Running Away". After a lengthy review, during which he subdues Truculence, Rebellion and Bravado, (three trolls that turn all the moving parts of the male brain to stone), he will apologise. Now all he has to do is weather the consequences; the parental wrath, the naughty step and the awed, but nevertheless present, sororial gloat.
It all began on the second of January at Exeter Station, where I was to begin an abortive attempt to meet up with Paul and Margie, my 'phone went off causing the usual panic and hiatus, akin to discovering that that tickle on the leg is actually an ascending tarantula, it was Two Paths, "We're going to Iceland for half term do you want to come?"
So what did I think? "Jolly nice of you old chap, love to." or "Hello? Third adult required." Either way I acquiesed.
And so, after an interesting take off ("Need the potty Mummy!"* as the plane is on stand, and revving up the engines), I found myself getting off the plane at Keflavik having spent the flight flanked by Eddy and Ella, the woman in front turned and said, "You were marvellous!" Ahh if only different circumstances - at this point I had put "and a younger woman" but at my age, beggars and choosers and all that.
Pecuniarily speaking, the bus journey from the airport probably set the tone of Iceland, Salzburg airport into town £1, Dublin airport into town £4.50, Keflavik into town £19, children free (Thank God). The transfer bus did not go to our guest house, the Adam, so the children and mum were placed in a taxi. Cavilling at the idea of another taxi Two Paths and I set off for what turned out to be the five minute walk to the hotel. It's amazing what chaos can take place in five minutes. We found our host, Ragnar, glassy-eyed, staring at the seemingly endless scrum of children burning off the potential energy accumulated over several hours at 30,000 feet, by the simple process of dispelling it as noise, speed and door opening. I found my room and left... to unpack.
The evening was spent mastering the intricacies of the microwave and quick cook pasta, plus mastering the correct amount of tonic to put into export strength gin, not too much as tonic is really quite expensive in Iceland. I checked out my balcony, double-taked the gin and then went to see Two Paths,
"Um Jer, need your opinion."
"?"
"Just step out onto the old balcony what! Now whaddya think, over there!"
"Cor, I reckon you're right."
Through the sodium haze the Northern Lights shimmered just like cloud underlit by the motorway, though cloud doesn't drizzle at the bottom. Impressed, we retired.
* A diversion. My neice Imogen is about the same age as Maddy and has the typical sloppy pronounciation of the two year old, consequently things like stawberries ("Poofats") are "yed" in colour and bananas are "nan nan". Maddy however, unlike Imo, has two siblings and consequently sounds like she's been trained at RADA, Larry Olivier himself has never uttered, "I'm sorry Mummy!" with such clarity, though he may have said it with more of a tone of honesty.
Dawn failed to break till gone 8.30 something to do with being "Up North" and when it did break it revealed gusting wind and snow flurries, regardless we set off into town, and after 30 minutes or so the children went back to the guesthouse, while Two Paths and I discussed the relative merits of standing on the shoreline while a Mid-Atlantic gale is flinging handfuls of ice and bucketfuls of spume at you, we decided there were no relative merits, and so went back to join the rest, at least we had discovered the Supermarket.
Reykjavik is built on a grid pattern so any passage through the streets is either against or with the wind, or in calm, punctuated by blasts of ear-shredding cold, it was the ear-shredding cold that had decided Ella that she no longer wished to partake of the perambulation and announced so with a wail.
After lunch we went to the swimming baths, well I did, the others got lost and turned up later, the most interesting experience was sitting in the "Hot Pots" outside (my resemblence to a slice of potato is not up for discussion here) with a howling gale rattling the windbreak, and one's hair freezing in the sub-zero of the day, one of my fellow bathers said "Ragnarok!" so I told him I was English but that I agreed with him. About an hour later we emerged, chlorine-eyed, back on the streets, and headed back to heat up more pasta.
The next day was Bus Trip Day, we got up, we got on the bus, we tripped and got off the bus at an extinct volcano crater, it was full of ice, we got back on the bus and set off for Gulfoss - the Golden Fall. About halfway there, the dread shout of, "Is there a Doctor on the bus?" bounced among the seats causing everyone but the driver and the guide to examine their boots (the Captain found several bits of tufa in his). The guide merely extracted his mobile and the driver turned the bus round, both scarily professional acts, prompting the question of just how many ancient people come to Iceland? There was a Doctor, it was Gail (another scarily professional act) but it did occur to the Captain that this could be an "above the waist" (not Gail's speciality)problem so he lumbered in to offer his two pennorth, with the sort of excited tones usually reserved for small boys after too many sweets. The victim was a young man with the sort of alcoholic breath that said, "That must have cost a lot!" but that apart, he wasn't having a fun time. As he seemed to be having some sort of left arm problem the Captain was dispatched to find aspirin. Now, I don't want to over inflate the poor man's ego here but what better choice could there have been, applying his huge lexicographical expertise he managed to reject several offers of Tylenol (and such was the urgency resisted the temptation to explain why, and the difference between a headache and a heart attack) before returning with a "seen better days" aspirin tablet. He then went off to console the wife of the victim (who had, by this time, admitted to having had panic attacks before). They were duly discharged at a cottage (more of a chalet) hospital and the bus returned to the trip.
So they arrived at Gulfoss, the Golden Fall, a cross between Victoria and Niagara Falls (Viagra?) only on a smaller scale, the path to the fall was ice, the sides of the rift were ice, all the grass was ice, at this point the Captain must have lost his usual photographic aplomb ( a reluctance to take photo's on the grounds that film and developing costs money) as he started snapping away with the alacrity of a famished pirhana. Several frames and a skating trip back to the bus later, and they were off to Geysir - the place they're all named after. The Great Geysir itself goes off about three times every twenty four hours, but abjectly failed to do so (in fact it abjectly failed to do so for several years being choked with rubbish and [probably] soap, suffering from the geological equivalent of benign prostatic hyperplasia until a large earthquake managed to clear its, umm, "throat") however, its neighbour Skokkir, goes off every fourteen minutes or so. So, three young children, bloody great holes in the ground spitting out superheated steam, thin crusts on the edges of deep pools of near-boiling water - paradise! Eddie's time was taken with breaking off pieces of ice and hurling them into the nearest hot pond, at Skokkir the Captain and Two Paths were rewarded with a fifteen foot high burst of steam and boiling water.
"Cor! Eddie did you see that?"
"Yeah"
Notice "Yeah" lacks an exclamation mark, this is because it was said with the world-weary tones that only a six year old can manage when being addressed by those dullest of creatures, an adult, and probably an adult who has found something a lot less interesting to show you than some melting ice.
"He didn't." muttered Two Paths.
Skokkir blew again, this time causing Eddie to fall over backwards with a "Whoa!", there was much satisfaction in the Captain/Two Paths camp.
Home again for more pasta and some gin.
Blue Lagoon Day. Another stroll to the bus depot, and then a trip to Iceland's most unnatural tourist attraction. The Blue Lagoon is the effluent from one of the country's geothermal power stations, it contains a lot of suspended silica and is therefore a milky, semi-opaque, duck-egg blue, it's also very warm with the odd hotspot and a, very welcome, cold spot if you swarm over the ridge at the back. In March, a permanent fog rises off the water, perfect for a bit of clandestine skinny dipping out of sight of shore, though you would have to be doing a very efficient backstroke to upset someone such is the opacity of the water. It also has various spa bits scattered around including a shoulder-pummelling waterfall, steam room and sauna, plus free white clay to smear grittily over one's person (if you need it). And, it does a great magic trick; stand in the water and feel your toes sink into the ooze, hold your breath and reach through the white soup to grab a bit of the bottom (of the pool), what colour is it? Black naturally. The evening was as before, though with better skin, the second bottle of gin was opened.
Car Hire Day. The people-carrier expected turned out to be a saloon but, nothing ventured- we set off illegally for the National Park of Pingvellir, site of the first Parliament in the World. In those Norse days it only had one major feature, the Lawgiver's Rock, where the keeper of the law, a bloke with a good memory, would expound on cases ( though how you would tell if he wasn't making it up is anyone's guess), after Christianity there was the Hanging Rock, the Drowning Pool and other such delights, Gosh the wonders of civilisation.
Pingvellir is also where the Mid-Atlantic Ridge breaks surface so that it is possible to bestride a crack (like a mighty/short, fat colossus) where one foot is heading off to America and the other to Europe, a sort of geological version of failing to get out of the boat fast enough (ask me nicely and I'll tell you a tale about my Uncle Jim and my Auntie Reny). This caused Eddie great excitement, there was a lot of jumping between continents, though which was which became a little confused.
We went for a stroll, down the crack, back round to the lake and up a stair into the crack again, it rained - miserably. Eddie and I discovered the local wishing pond with large amounts of cash in it, so my recommendation is that if you want a serious night out in Iceland, pay a visit to Pingvellir with a wetsuit. Having said all that, it is a stunningly beautiful place.
We returned the car, and Jerry and I watched from the office, as the man from the hire firm, disappeared in a roar of exhaust smoke with Gail and the children, one phone call later and we were re-united, squashily.
It was eating out night, so eschewing the delights of rotted shark, stewed puffin, or scientific-evaluation minke whale, as well as any recommendation of the Captain, who had spent the last three nights trawling through the town peering at menus and memorising happy-hour prices (this should of course read, "relatively-happy-hour prices") we opted for the traditional Scandinavian dish of pizza. How shall I put this, the beer was the same price as the ice cream £6/$11.
Then back to packing and an early night, as the next day we bid a fond farwell (as they say in the travelogues) to that bleak land of fire and snow, Iceland.
