2007

So the mayhem is underway. The heart-stopping explosions out of nowhere started yesterday … incredibly startling at first, but quick to become commonplace. I’m talking firecrackers and fireworks being exploded beneath people’s windows and in other inappropriate places. If any of you foreigners visiting our fair isle and reading this are wondering why there are […] Read more

Old Quentin Tarantino’s back. Spending New Year’s here again. No doubt he’ll have another go at getting a supermodel home before she passes out or vomits all over him. Although after his stellar turn on Conan O’Brien the last time, I’m hoping Icelandic women have enough self-respect to give the guy a wide berth – […] Read more

I feel vaguely guilty. I’d planned to send out a very ceremonious MERRY CHRIMBOS! type of post to all my lovely readers, but instead I’ve hardly gone near the computer for the past four or five days and it’s felt really good. So – a belated happy Christmas, and I hope your Yule was everything […] Read more

Poor AAH: just when the pressure is on, all her Christmas prezzies still to be bought, and she’s scheduled to work back-to-back shifts, she comes down with a case of food poisoning. She believes a certain Ceasar salad is to blame, eaten at a certain cafe where she works. The day yesterday was alternately spent […] Read more

Today I spent a full ten minutes in my local fish shop and when I got home I was forced to put every item of clothing I was wearing in the washing machine. Reason? Putrid skate day is coming up, and they had a handsome selection of raw pieces already in stock. Dear readers, this […] Read more

Just a quick postie to say that US Homeland Security has issued a statement expressing their regret at the treatment Erla Ósk Arnarsdóttir had to endure last week. They also claim they’re going to review their working procedures for people who arrive in the US and who face deportation, with the purpose of making improvements. […] Read more

I’ve just watched an unbelievably absorbing and powerful documentary entitled Afghanistan Unveiled, which reveals how life has changed for women in the five years since their so-called ‘liberation’ from Taliban rule. Surely there are few places on earth where the circumstances of women are as dire as in Afghanistan today. There are so many war […] Read more

Christmas in Iceland is all about tradition, and for EPI and YT there quite simply is no freaking Christmas unless we get our Yule Platter at The Virgin. In fact, this conviction has passed repeatedly through my panicked mind over the past two weeks, having been told that The Virgin was all booked up every […] Read more

So, the latest on the ordeal described in the previous post is that the Icelandic Minister for Foreign Affairs, who in my humble view is one of the most down-to-earth and unpretentious people in this country, and probably one of the least prone to intimidation by an unnamed superpower, summoned the US Ambassador to the […] Read more