The Norwegian Wind Ensemble, conducted by Maria Schneider, played Porgy & Bess, followed by Sketches of Spain, to a capacity audience.

Solo trumpeter Nicholas Payton used Porgy & Bess to present a laid-back opening set with a smooth and beautiful tone, if somewhat lacking in fire and commitment.

The Opera House, Oslo

But after the interval the band were fronted by the young Norwegian trumpeter Arve Hendriksen, who more than made up for the soporific effects of the early evening, bringing the audience to their feet with his muted and haunting probing of the ghost of Miles Davis.

And, great as this performance was, I was most impressed by the band and the setting and the rapt attention of a knowledgeable and expectant audience.

Geordie wasn’t like that. He couldn’t remember that initial sighting of the world between womb and cradle but he suspected there had been no cradle waiting for him. Confidence in himself and his place in the scheme of things had always been a problem and never more so than now when he found himself alone in a foreign country and the guy he was supposed to meet wasn’t there. He looked around again, hoping to see Sam striding towards him out of the crowd. But there was no one there. He went back over their telephone conversation of the previous evening. Sam had said, Oslo, hadn’t he? Norway? He wasn’t supposed to be in some other place altogether, Poland or Austria or Sweden? Was there an Oslo in Sweden? Quite possibly, he thought, maybe there was more than one. Foreign countries like this, they didn’t have the same rules as us.

What to do? He could panic and wander off into the city, hope he bumped into someone he knew, threaten to have a nervous breakdown unless the world started acting right. He could find a policeman, ask him if he knew where Holly lived. But you didn’t know what the police were going to be like abroad. They might have guns. He suspected the first rule in a situation like this was to stay put and think rational. The most obvious reason for Sam not being there was that he was delayed. He wouldn’t have a car here, he’d be dependant on public transport. He’d probably missed his bus, or he’d got off at the wrong stop.

Could be that he’d gone on a bender, though if he was drinking he’d never have managed the phone call last night. What Geordie had read on the plane it wasn’t straight-forward buying alcohol in Norway, seemed like the State had a monopoly on it.

I managed to read a few things, including Colm Toibin’s The Heather Blazing, and Umberto Eco’s On Literature. Both of these are worth a visit if you’re looking for something special.

It’s good that most people are appreciating the Five Questions series, as, apart from sporadic posts like this one, that’s all I have to offer at the moment. I’m collecting a few thoughts and ideas for later, though, when the road is finally behind me and I can become a more regular and personal writer and blogger again.

*

And yet, he thought to himself when he finally escaped to the Gents and settled himself down, would they be so keen and so effusive if they knew that he hadn’t had one good dump in the last fifteen years.

*

I was still hearing the axe going into my shoulder and thinking about that time we were splitting elm logs for Celia. I was thinking about the pain and trying to stay conscious and wondering if the fucker had killed me and how Janet and Echo’d like it if they’re widowed and fatherless. I was thinking I didn’t wanna die there in that crummy street in Oslo where nobody knows who I am.

*

I was also interested in magic, the idea of enchantment – what does it mean? And I’d been reading around the subject, coming closer to the themes of illusion and sorcery. There have been governments – too many in recent years – which have become expert at making people disappear. And it seemed to me that the western democracies were also becoming far too skilled in the art of illusion.

But writing itself is one of the magic arts. The writer is a master of illusion and if he does not manage to enchant us we don’t finish reading his book.

From the very beginnings of the novel it was clear that one of the main characters would be a magician.

This theme was augmented by the concept of memory and how it seems to be under attack in our time. The exercises which were associated with memory, that made it subtle and retentive in the education of children before the introduction of curricula based teaching, the imaginative play of the old schools – are all gone. Memory is being abolished. We are dependant instead on the state and the database and those who control access to information.

The third ingredient of the cocktail was the concept of the flood. There have always been floods, and in recent years some quite devastating ones. I read Noah.

I was aware that many contemporary novelists had written novels about floods and about water and I didn’t want to duplicate what they had done. So, although the rivers are flooding in the novel, they also have their echoes in the characters of the novel. The rivers are flooding their banks but at the same time the characters in the novel are being swamped by the turn of events around them.

It was a good experience, writing the book. It took quite a lot longer to write than previous novels in the series, and I allowed myself time to develop the themes and the characters and the plot. There’s something dark in there, and here and there there’s something lighter. Shades are important. There’s magic and some new characters that I honestly didn’t want to leave behind.

Writing The Meanest Flood left me with a host of new ideas and a thirst to get on with writing something else. And that’s what I’m going to do next.

Their need and desire for the world is such that in spite of their fears and disadvantages they begin to approach it in novel and often bizarre and comical ways, eventually, each of them triumphing in spectacular fashion.

Beg, borrow or steal it. But don’t kid yourself that it’s necessary to go for much longer without treating yourself to this very human and life-affirming film.