After many years living in London I shifted my base to Oslo a while back, and ended up living in the middle of Oslo's suburbia, at Manglerud – a nice family friendly place close to a bird reservoir and a forest. Now, with only ten minutes on the tube to get downtown, it's still fairly central, and even in London I always stayed in leafy neighbourhoods like Muswell Hill and Hadley Wood (which isn't strictly London). However: even while living in Hadley Wood (which is Hertfordshire, some 500 meters outside London's borders) everything was just around the corner and everything was available, at least 'til 11pm.

Here in Oslo's suburbia everything close early, much too early if you work the kinda days I occasionally do, and worse still: on bank holidays shops are either not open at all, or close before I even get out of bed. This weekend being Whit, I looked around for signs of reduced opening hours when I passed by the shopping mall midday yesterday but couldn't find any. So I concluded that it was safe to go ahead with my very Norwegian exercise; a long walk to Skullerudhytta (almost through the forest) before I did my shopping.

When I reached my destination, which also serves as a cafeteria, it was closed (summertime), and when I then got back to the shopping mall that was closed as well - despite my inability to find any notice about reduced opening hours. So, seeing that I've got a big work assignment to crack from home this weekend, it's going to be a very inexpensive weekend indeed. Better just rummage through my freezer and cupboards and see what I can cook up: hmm... tomato beans, pasta, tuna, peanut butter, frozen spinach, crisp bread... I'm sure going to have some interesting dinners this weekend...