Margot looks up, but doesn’t break her treadling stride. ‘Oh this? It’s just something I picked up on my Duke of Edinburgh Award. Gold,’ she adds, casually. ‘I did alpaca-handling for my silver and I was going to do ballet appreciation or aerodynamics for the gold but then I switched to weaving and spinning instead.’
She spins too? Who spins?
‘Did you say, the Duke of Edinburgh? As in the Queen’s mister?’ Melissa’s monarchist interest has been piqued, ‘Do you, like, know him?’ she asks, wide-eyed.
‘No,’ I start. ‘She doesn’t know him. The Duke of Edinburgh awards are just a thing posh schools do—’ but then I notice Margot looking bashful. ‘That’s right, isn’t it?’
‘Well …’ Margot wavers.
Are you shitting me?
‘It’s just that my father paints landscape with Phil, sometimes,’ Margot shrugs with a flick of her glossy caramel mane, as if to say, ‘But no biggie …’
This is too much.
‘Wow …’ is all Melissa can manage, in wonderment.
‘Well, aren’t you well connected!’ Tricia looks similarly impressed. ‘I was on his subs bench for It’s a Royal Knockout but I needed Toyah Wilcox or Barry McGuigan to fracture something before I’d get a look in. No such luck. Never got so much as a gloved handshake with any of them,’ she adds, wistfully. ‘Though Duncan Goodhew did save me a vol-au-vent from the green room.’
‘Duncan Good-who?’ Margot wrinkles her brow.
‘Exactly.’ Tricia sighs. ‘Big in the eighties. Before you were born. How depressing … And how swiftly our stars fade …’ She tails off and starts tapping at the underside of her chin in an attempt to turn back time. ‘But then, a lot of the names who were huge around then turned out to be paedos … So, you know, swings and roundabouts.’
I try to move the conversation on from this disturbing image and Margot’s fancy social circle. ‘So what else can we do craft-wise?’ I ask.
‘Well, there’s sewing,’ he says.
Melissa looks as though someone has just offered her a bucket of cold sick, but Magnus perseveres. ‘A woman who wanted to indicate romantic interest in a man in Viking times would make him a shirt.’
‘Not for me, darling,’ says Tricia. ‘I didn’t host a televised makeover for the protestors at Greenham Commonfn1 to sew a man a shirt.’
Ha! I think. Good for her! Then I remember the four buttons I sewed on for Greg last month. Oh …
‘There’s always leatherwork,’ Magnus goes on. ‘You could make coin pouches – or a belt to keep my trousers up!’ He gestures to his harem pants, now slung so low that his ‘Brad Pitt circa Thelma and Louise pelvic bones’ are on show. I catch Tricia moistening her lips.
FFS … what about Greenham Common?!
‘Or there’s jewellery making. Vikings wore a lot of bronze, and brooches were very popular,’ he explains. ‘You make a shape out of wax, put clay around it, fire it in the oven, wait until the wax melts, fill your mould with bronze, then put it in a sock and swing it around your head while it’s still molten.’
‘Really?’ Melissa asks doubtfully.
‘I never joke when it comes to molten metal,’ says Magnus, offering what I’m certain is a pretty good motto for life.
Our socks haven’t been used for much other than sleeping in since Magnus took our shoes away, so procuring some requires a trip back to base camp. Margot volunteers and sets off at a jog.
‘Bagsy not Melissa’s,’ I call after her, remembering the ‘lucky sock’ fiasco with stomach-curdling clarity.
‘Rude!’ Melissa observes, then yells, ‘Ignore her!’
But Margot is already out of earshot. And so we begin.
It’s surprisingly physical work and within minutes of pummelling wax to make a mould, I’m peeling off layers – unprecedented on the trip so far, with my circulation and the Scandinavian climate.
‘Good grief, how much are you wearing?’ Tricia asks.
‘Me? Oh, I feel the cold—’
‘That’s because she doesn’t eat enough,’ Melissa chips in.
‘Thanks,’ I reply.
‘It’s true. You look like an extra from Les Mis.’
‘Err … there’s hardly been a Toby Carvery on offer.’ I don’t know where this comes from. I haven’t been to a Toby Carvery since 1998. When Mum died. Melissa knows this.
‘Less talking! More crafting!’ Magnus interjects and we shut up.
I squish clay around my waxwork … err … beetle …
Is it a beetle?
It’s a beetle, I decide. Then I pack it, tightly with clay, slide it into the oven, and burn myself – completely missing the helpful tongs hung to the side of the stove for just this purpose. Magnus tells me to plunge my wrist into a bucket of not-hugely sanitary-looking water he keeps on hand for just such an emergency, while I do a lot of swearing.
By the time Margot returns, her own, high-quality hockey socks in hand, Melissa has made an impressively elaborate dog mould, Tricia appears to have made what I take at first to be a flower, until she tells me it’s a ‘self-portrait’ of her genitalia, while my beetle mould is … well … more of a general oval shape.
‘Ready?’ Magnus asks, socks in hand.
‘Ready.’ Melissa nods, demanding first dibs on the ‘sock slinger’.
‘Do you think perhaps we should do that outside?’ Tricia asks.
‘That … might be a good idea,’ agrees Magnus, with a fleeting glance to the rafters where several blobs of bronze cleave to the undersides of the beams, suggesting previous Viking delegates haven’t had quite Tricia’s foresight. Or Margot’s sturdy socks.
We get outside and Melissa starts to swing, building up quite a momentum.
‘That’s great, Strong Legs, good job!’ Magnus applauds. ‘I think you’ve probably done it now,’ he adds. But Melissa isn’t slowing down.
‘Woo hooooo! I’m like Clint Eastwood! I’m Yosemite Sam! I’m Billy Crystal in City Slickers! I’m … give me a girl one?’ she hollers as a sock full of molten metal swings dangerously close to my head.
‘Jesus—’ I duck, just in time.
‘Um, Calamity Jane?’ Tricia suggests.
‘Or Jessie from Toy Story 2?’ Margot offers, looking a little afraid of my sister.
‘Yes! I’m them! Jane and the other onefn2! Yee-hah!’ Melissa continues to swing.
‘OK, let’s all just back off a little here.’ Magnus begins ushering us backwards like spectators at a firework display as my whirling dervish of a sister starts simultaneously running and sock-lassoing. ‘I’ve seen this happen before,’ he confides. ‘The slinging goes to their heads. That and the molten metal fumes. We just need to let her spin it out.’
From a safe distance, the four of us watch Melissa execute a sort of gyrating, hula-hooping motion, then give the sock one final revolution before staggering backwards, dizzy and drunk on endorphins.
She fishes around in the toe of Margot’s sock, like a child looking for a satsuma in her Christmas stocking, until her hand emerges, triumphant, holding a clay ball that we all hope contains some sort of dog. She holds it above her head, dashes it on the ground to break the mould, then seizes the still-warm bronze creation and clasps it to her bosom. ‘Look!’ she shows us as we all try to make appreciative noises.
‘Mmm …’
‘Has your dog back home only got three legs?’ Margot asks, innocently.
Melissa turns the figurine over in her hands and counts. I know this because her mouth still moves when she does this (and when she reads). There is a moment of hesitation before my usually straight-as-a-die sister for some reason decides to style this one out.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘It has. This is exactly what I was going for.’
‘Great.’ Tricia claps her hands together. ‘Me next!’
I’m sorry to report that her ‘self-portrait’ has a rough ride in the slinger, but Tricia assures us that with some touch-ups it will be ‘tight as rain’. My beetle i
s similarly abstract, with a hint of the joke shop poo about it as Melissa informs me. But still, it’s mine. And I have made something from scratch.
Next, we get wood. Literally. Magnus shows us examples of whittled figurines or carvings inspired by Viking designs, all interlocking ropes, ornate circles and patterns that looks distinctly phallic.
‘Just draw them on with a Sharpie, then tap them out with a chisel,’ he explains.
‘Were Vikings big on Sharpies?’ Melissa asks, doubtfully.
‘They would have been. Had they had access to them,’ Magnus says firmly. ‘Besides, they smell really good.’ He takes a long hard sniff. ‘Probably would have used them in a shamanistic ritual or something …’
‘I knew it!’ Tricia hisses triumphantly as I start to worry. Can berserking really entail nudity, free dance, forests and Sharpies? Shit …
‘Want a go?’ Tricia is asking now as she wafts the Sharpie under my nose. I recoil on reflex. ‘What?’ She notes my expression. ‘I haven’t had a drink in days. I’ll take a Sharpie hit.’
‘Oh, go on then.’ The words slip out of my mouth.
Once we’re all suitably high on permanent marker fumes, Margot chips away at a block of pine in the manner of a crazed Rodin while the rest of us craft in silence – or rather, what would pass as silence were it not for the frog chorus of stomach gurglings that start up round about now. We breakfasted like Queens on porridge and eggs this morning, but something about the fresh air and physical activity combined with the effort of learning something new means that we’ve all developed alarmingly healthy appetites of late. (Even me!) I can hear Melissa’s internal organs protesting from here, and she finally cracks. ‘I think we’ve got the fundamentals now.’ She downs tools. ‘So what about food?’
‘Well, there’s the forest,’ Magnus starts, as hearts – and stomachs – sink.
‘Or you could just …’ Tricia tries a new approach. ‘I mean you really seem to have a knack for catching herring.’ A sentence I bet she never thought she’d utter. ‘I wondered whether you could catch a few more – and show us how you made them so tasty, yesterday …’
Magnus, it becomes clear, is a man easily won around by praise. After a half-hearted demurral (‘Oh, it was just a few fish … !’; ‘I mean, that isn’t really how it’s supposed to work … but if you lay-dees are sure … ?’) he is persuaded and sets off, whistling.
Tricia waves him goodbye, victorious, then turns to address us, carved creation, which looks a lot like a Viking dildo, in hand. ‘We came, we saw, we whittled!’ She whoops as I wonder whether she’s had an extra sniff of Sharpie. ‘Sisters are whittling for themselves …’ Tricia starts singing to the tune of the Annie Lennox and Aretha Franklin duet and I can’t help smiling. She’s definitely had another sniff of Sharpie … ‘Standing on our own two feet … whittling wo-od …’ she goes on.
‘That’s terrible!’ I mutter, laughing.
‘Don’t tell Lennox that.’ Tricia breaks off. ‘She’ll sing at you. Loud. We used to hang out in the 1990s, for about eight minutes. Then I did something to offend her in some way – I forget – and we weren’t friends any more. Anyway, I once had tinnitus that lasted a week after a night round hers.’
‘You’ve worked with them all!’ says Melissa, without irony.
We go on crafting to distract from the hunger pangs and I find I get lost in the experience, enjoying the smoky-smelling curls and cuts of my carving. This is an interesting experience for someone who kept away from anything creative throughout school and adult life, for fear that I’d be bad at it.
And I am bad at it. But what I discover is that, actually, it doesn’t matter. There’s a satisfaction in using my hands in a totally non-dental way and making something – just because – with no end purpose in sight. While I’m doing it, I’m not indulging in my normal worry rotation and it’s as though the experience presses pause on the familiar brain whirring.
I’ve never understood the point of hobbies before. Even at school, when Melissa persuaded our parents to sign us up for after-school clubs or macramé, I always felt as though there were other things I could be doing. Like homework, or overtime, or online banking. Back at home, I barely have five minutes to myself to go to the loo. Especially for a proper sit-down one. Once, I went a week without a ‘motion’. I was literally too busy to shit. My ‘hobbies’ these days seem to be confined to tidying up the living room and doing laundry.
For as long as I can remember, the hamster wheel of life has sapped all my time and energy. I don’t have any free blocks in the calendar or spare colours in my coding system to use up on non-essential activities. I don’t do anything for the heck of it. Because to surrender to a hobby would be to do just that: surrender. So when people ask me about my pastimes, I tend to stare at them blankly.
‘Any hobbies? Or are you more of a “going around to your mate’s house for a mid-week bitch and a carbonara” in your spare time kind of girl?’ one overly chatty woman asked at the surgery last week as we were trying to administer anaesthetic.
‘I haven’t got any spare time!’ I wanted to fire back. Instead, I jammed the needle in to shut her up, sharpish. But I began to realise then that I haven’t got many friends, either, as Melissa so thoughtfully pointed out to me when she first mooted the idea of a mini-break. I can’t remember the last time I hung out with a group of women, like this.
Friends don’t always wait for you, when you’re busy working too much or in the quagmire of early childrearing. I’m out of sync with the ones who had kids earlier than me, as well as the ones who had them later – or not at all. Old friends moved away as house prices, jobs, families or the general grind of city life pushed or pulled them elsewhere. My social circle has shrunk in recent years. If I were braver, and smarter, I would have seen this coming and started to recruit new friends. But this would have necessitated actual socialising – book clubs, nights out, dinner parties, even hobbies. Socialising made heavy calls on my already limited supply of conversation. And I’m officially terrible at human interactions, I think, miserably, remembering the ‘hiding from living, breathing people’ behind black drapes backstage at the dentistry conference to avoid awkward encounters.
But if that’s true, I think, then what’s this weirdly warm and pleasant sensation I’m experiencing, right now? Almost as though I’m … content … in the company of these women, doing something, just for ‘fun’?
‘Relaxing, isn’t it?’ says Margot, chipping away at her wood without looking at what she’s doing.
Now she’s ‘blind-whittling’?!
‘It’s the dopamine,’ she explains. ‘A natural antidepressant released when you do something creative and really concentrate. That’s why I love joinery.’ She holds up her finished product: a staggeringly intricate phoenix, rising from flame-like sawdust curls.
‘Bloody hell!’ The words escape from my lips before I can stop them. ‘Is there anything you’re not good at?’
Margot thinks about this for longer than is strictly tactful. She pouts as though forming a word, before changing her mind and settling on: ‘Badminton.’
Magnus doesn’t just come back with herring – he has mackerel and offers to cook it, too. All we have to do is gather leaves and berries as accompaniments.
Being old hands at foraging now, our contribution to the meal takes us no time at all. I volunteer to take on berries, and together we round up all the foodstuffs the forest feels like bestowing on us, before returning to base to Fill Our Faces. It’s still cold. It’s still damp. But under a sky the colour of a forgotten sock, we sit around a campfire and eat food that was in the wild just moments ago. And it’s … nice.
Once we’re bloated beyond description, we lounge about the fire comparing handcrafted goods and happily full bellies.
‘So, a good day, eh, ladies?’
Margot nods. ‘Most fun ever!’
I’m not sure I’d go that far, I think, but then struggle to recall a time I’ve felt as fr
ee as this. I am perilously close to enthusiasm, I observe.
After dusk falls, Magnus returns home – wherever that may be – leaving us to brave another night in the great outdoors. But this time I’m not scared. Instead, the four of us lie on our backs, feet toasting in the warmth of the fire, and look up at the starry sky.
‘Isn’t it amazing, to think that there are whole other worlds out there?’ Margot is still prodigiously perky. ‘Or that people have gone up there, into space!’
‘Pfft. Space.’ Melissa pulls a face as I take a sharp intake of breath.
Here we go …
‘Sorry?’
‘Oh, it’s just that I’m not really a believer,’ is all she says.
‘In space?’ Margot props herself up on her elbows and looks incredulous.
‘Melissa thinks the moon landing was a fake,’ I say as discreetly as I can. The fact that my sister doesn’t believe in space, thanks to a less-than-stellar attendance record at school, isn’t something I want to dwell on.
That’s the last thing I need, I think, being shown up in front of Margot …
‘Really? Tell me more!’ Tricia has no such reservations about delving a little deeper into this particular treasure trove and rolls onto her side to face Melissa.
‘Yeah, I just don’t buy all the funny suits and how come we can’t all live on Mars if it’s all so easy to get to, like, fifty years ago!’ my sister scoffs.
‘Right … well … I suppose we all have our things …’ Tricia says darkly.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, I’m the other way. I think space is too close.’
I arch an eyebrow at this, to which she responds, ‘Have you seen Armageddon? I worry that Bruce Willis is getting a little long in the tooth to save us from an asteroid attack now. Plus Affleck’s busy with other things.’ She waves a hand to summarise Mr Affleck’s preoccupations before concluding, ‘I just don’t think they’ll have time to fix it, next time – so I always keep a few extra tins in …’
Margot’s eyebrows are now somewhere around her hairline.
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