I Can't Sleep

It's half past three in the morning...and I can't sleep. Having turned over and over in bed for the last two hours I decided to give up trying and just get up. It is actually very strange sitting in my own house where there is no noise at all other than the ticking of the kitchen clock and the slight buzz of the refrigerator. When you live in a large family you get used to constant background noise, and in our house it often consists of banging, crashing and screaming when either Niko or Luca decides to steal the other one's favourite car. (Which obviously changes daily according to which one the other is playing with). Now though, there is none of that. Everyone is asleep except me.

There is some nice cake on the table which I would be tempted to eat, but I am going to the health centre for blood tests in just over four hours, so I can't even do that. Bad timing. As far as I am concerned, if you can't sleep at four in the morning then at the very least you should be able to comfort yourself with cake. So, in case anyone else out there is suffering from insomnia too, below is a passage I thought that those of you in Scandinavia at least would find funny. I found it just now on another blog written by my good friend Jane Griffiths. Jane is originally a Brit but is now living in Strasbourg. We met in 2008 and shared an office when we both worked at the European Court of Human Rights.  I have to say that she was the best office friend you could ever hope to have. I still laugh now when I think of some of the moments we used to have, and I really miss those times when I am sitting in my grey Helsinki office and noone is laughing about anything much.  Anyway, amongst other things, Jane keeps a blog called "Jane Is The One", and she posted the following passage this evening. I thought I would share it with you as it's both funny and true. It's about languages in Scandanavia. See what you think!

A man from Oslo is married to a Dane. She speaks Danish to him and he replies in Norwegian and vice versa. The language spoken in the Oslo area is a sort of Danish and the language spoken elsewhere in the country is an invented form of Old Norwegian BUT each language has equal status.  So if you go for, say a job in government, you have to show that you are fluent in whichever language is not your native one. TV is subtitled in either language. Icelanders can only understand Norwegian ( a tiny bit). No-one (from the rest of the Nordic group) understands Icelandic.  Norwegians understand Danish and Swedish. Danes understand Norwegian but not Swedish. Swedes understand Norwegian but not Danish.  Finns understand Swedish and some Norwegian but not Danish.  No-one understands Finnish.  So when looking for work within Scandinavia, the Icelanders go to Norway or Finland (where they speak English). The Finns only go to Sweden. The Danes only go to Norway. The Swedes only go to Norway if they must but mostly stay at home.
Not far from the truth is it?  At least as far as the Finns are concerned. We pretty much stick to going to Sweden, only understand a bit of Norwegian and definitely not a word of Danish which sounds like they are suffering from a bad throat condition.  Thanks Jane.  You made me laugh once again, even though it is the middle of the night and you didn't even know it. That's what I call real friendship.

OK. I just yawned, and in the circumstances I take that as a positive sign.  Back to bed to see if I can sleep for just a while at least. Hope you are all sleeping soundly. Until tomorrow...Jody.