Travels with my Guff : Unexpected Joy

Today was a day filled with unexpected joy.

It started off a beautiful bright day and I got up early - which is quite unusual, and went for a walk in the opposite direction than normal.

I mused on light and colour and found a lot of evidence of both.

I went to the supermarket and bought liquorice ice-cream and dried salt-fish.

Later Gretchen Pankhurst went out, firstly to the Supermarket to speak to Loa about the Elf stories her father knew about, she has invited Gretchen round to her house tomorrow to hear about them before Loa goes to work.

Then Gretchen took a walk to the home for the maturer residents of Olafsfjordur as she had been advised to do by Ingi Thor. She was surprised to find that the ground floor housed the hospital and the first floor the home.

Everyone who goes in this building must take off their shoes. The first person Gretchen met upstairs was called Coco - and she was wearing black ! It wasn’t a dress but nearly !

She spoke to some older residents and showed them her research that she has done so far about Elves, Huldufolk and Icelandic sea monsters - not a great deal really as she was hoping to get most of her information from the Icelandic people themselves.

Suddenly 3 very animated people arrive and have a photo shoot, they tell Gretchen to hurry up and come with them for a drive around the lake. Guesta is driving and he is a resident in the home, although quite a young one. Hanna and John ( that is not all of his name but i can’t say it or read how he wrote it down for her ) were visiting Guesta. They went for an amazing drive round the lake, after Hanna went to the supermarket, fell out of the car, went to the bank, talked very much , then went to visit a friend instead.

They drove out quite far as the lake is pretty huge and then some more and the light was absolutely fabulous, and they ate astarpungar - or love testicles, round doughnuts with raisins in.

They took pictures and Gretchen got some lovely ones of Guesta and John…. but Guesta laughed and said ‘ don’t put those on the internet’ he was probably joking but Gretchen won’t let me.

Liz had been planning to go again to Zumba but what with one thing and another she couldn’t make it, she’s been keeping a bit of a low profile recently which isn’t really like Liz.

While I was in the middle of eating my tea - judy-b one of the Artists I am living with shouted 'quick the lights are here' and we all ran down with our slippers and not properly dressed for outdoors, and Devon an Artist who lives opposite was standing there with a plate of hot courgette fritters he had just that moment made which were very tasty thanks and we looked up and saw all this - which was most unexpected, particularly right outside your door in the middle of town.