Gimlé

Here in some stranger’s room
Late in the afternoon
What am I doing here at all?
Ain’t no doubt about it
I’m losing you
John Lennon—“I’m Losing You.”

I hate this place.

The few people who were reading my ’blog over Christmas must have noticed how my posts were increasingly cynical, bitter and harsh.

Sort of the internet equivalent of watching milk turn into some sort of rancid gelatinous bile.

It’s this place that is annoying me.

Not my Dad’s home or any place my family lives in at all. Not their homes. I love my family. I’d visit them in the wastelands of the Kalahari desert if they lived there.

It’s this country. Iceland. I’ve got plenty of issues with the place. Bad vibes.

But Iceland is in vogue, popular, in the new Bond film, populated partly by UK popstars, has got decent musicians of its own.

Somehow the wires have crossed
Communication’s lost
Can’t even get you on the telephone
Just got to shout about it
I’m losing you
John Lennon—“I’m Losing You.”

Iceland’s cool. Literally as well as, in the minds of those who think they matter, figuratively.

It has a very active party and club culture (you can find people to party and booze with any time of day, any day of the week, all year round).

We make around 2-3 films each year (note the word, films not DV based semi-coherent crap).

We have a novel-writing culture dating back to around the year thousand. Quite a lot of it is really good stuff.

And we export most of this stuff.

But there is one thing we just cannot ignore:

It’s a sparsely populated, barely habitable shithole.

This little piece of nowhere foreigners love to visit and leave only has around 280 000 inhabitants. A small town pretending to be a country. You can’t do anything without everybody knowing about it. Privacy is a piece of science-fiction.

It’s corrupt, nepotism is rife. Take the worst example of nepotism you can think of and magnify it by a thousand and you’ve base level of honesty in employment here in Iceland.

You can’t get decent English beer here and the nation fanatically believes in the idea that any place where you can buy yourself an alcoholic drink should have ear-piercingly loud music.

My hearing is a couple of notches worse than your average person’s which means that I’m effectively out of the loop in any bar, club or pub that plays loud music. The result is that I pretty much go only to quiet pubs where you can have a conversation without shouting. A rare breed here.

And those that do exist have crap beer.

You say you’re not getting enough
But I remind you of all that bad stuff
So what the hell am I supposed to do?
Just put a bandaid on it?
And stop the bleeding now
Stop the bleeding now.
John Lennon—“I’m Losing You.”

Tiny-town vibes.

The worst part has to do with how I felt when I lived here. I lived here, in this country, during the worst periods of my personal and emotional life. Some of my problems were exaggerated by the small-town nature of the country.

This place will always remind me of the darkest emotional pits I have experienced.

And it’s a shithole, which doesn’t help.

If you are a lager-drinking party-animal then you’ll love this country. It’s populated by like-minded people.

If you are a fan of geology and landscapes then you’ll love this country. It’s populated by like-minded people.

If you are both, then this place will be heaven.

Anybody else shouldn’t really come here unless they have a really good reason to come. Most of the good stuff that you’ll like is exported, these days.

Me, I’ll continue to come here once or twice a year to meet my family.

I will write more later about the Icelandic New Year’s Eve.

Baldur Bjarnason.
Garðabær, Iceland.