Inge and I should have been bubbling over with inspiration and be filled with tons of ideas for new artworks featuring traits of the Norwegian coast-scapes blended delicately with our culinary experiences and the light of the long days they already have up there.

Now, y’all know that a strike came as a stick in the wheel. What you may not know is that we tried to arrange for a trip to Auvergne instead, and had finally overcome the problems that late bookings including weekends entail – when the weather set the following menu for the days we had envisaged to travel in: rain, thunder storms, thunder storms and rain, respectively.

You may think that the two events described above are the reasons why I did not publish anything during the weekend. You may think that I’m mentally grounded. Of course I’m not. There’s a silver lining to every cloud. There is just the little detail that I do not know when that silver lining comes in sight.

But, there is another wording saying that “When you believe it, you’ll see it”. Just now, I think I will apply that saying to the coming walk with Roland on the Pennine Way and recall the words that came to mind upon return from our walk last year on the West Highland Way, in particular decoupling – reflection – distance.

I will look forward to that walk with Roland knowing that it will reset my mind and fill me with inspiration, step by step. We will be walking around 30 km every day for 4 days and the last day more than 40 km, so I have all good reasons to believe that my inspirational batteries will be fully charged when I land in Paris and synchronize with Inge, who also lands after inspiration replenishment in Denmark.

We will both be bubbling over with inspiration then. Rest assured.

I shouldn’t be here – at my desk in Chantilly. Instead I should be enjoying the south-western coastline of Norway heading for Bergen. I should be pointing at interesting spots in the coastal scapes and discussing them with Inge. So why am I not in seat 2C and Inge in seat 2D scheduled for touch down at 16:40 and looking forward to discovering territory new to me, to enjoying a scenery featured by mountains and fjords and at the end of the day encounter a different menu card and dine with a view over waters I do not know? Why am I not doing any of that, when knowing that it would bring me tons of inspiration for future artistic activities?

The reason is very simple indeed. Friday morning the ground personnel at the airport of Bergen fancied going on strike! It gave me a painful déjà-vu from… yes, when was it? It was when we were going to Houston in the fall, when the flight crews of Air France fancied going on strike and cancelled 7 out of 8 flights in 4 days.

So yesterday tickets were cancelled, so was the taxi driver, the hire car and the hotel – a lovely hotel, by the way, on the coast – and instead of enjoying a freshly landed salmon from the North Atlantic tonight’s menu will feature Steen’s homemade pizza.

Well, nothing’s wrong with my homemade pizza. In itself my pizza is a fine piece of artwork made entirely of bio-produce, including a French fromage from Comté and brown mushrooms. How I spice the underlying tomato sauce is a secret. This makes me wonder if Cezanne, Picasso, Gaugin or Manet had secret implementation tricks they never shared with anyone?

Well, we will never know, but one day I may reveal how I make my underlying tomato sauce!

I wrote this on the 7^th of May:

Sitting in a train that just left the station.

Have never seen such a melt-down there before.

No trains leaving – no trains arriving.

People everywhere.

Reason communicated over the loudspeakers: Fire on or near the rails at at the next station)

Consider myself lucky being on the train, being seated and having only had to wait for 1.5 hours.

Recall seeing “la folie” at the station from the upper passenger bridge. People everywhere, so many and so densely packed, that they were represented merely by their heads. The scenario had similarities with patchworks made in pixel-fashion for the purpose of eventually representing an image when viewed at a distance.

The image conveyed did not only tell about too many people involuntarily gathered at the same spot they never had intended to experience more profoundly than what a quick transit passage would yield.

The image also conveyed a mood, and this is rare. But the kind of silent resentment, that of thinking “once again”, that of speculating at how to catch the connecting train or flight, how to honour schedules at the other end, being it London, Amiens, Brussels, Cologne, New York, Pekin, Tokyo, Rome… or Chantilly for that sake.

Right now the train stopped. They need to clear the rails for blocked incoming and outgoing trains. And I’m sitting here wondering why it is that this image of all the stranded travellers conveyed mood. Was it because I became somewhat irritated as well? It may be so, but I tend to believe that it was something else. Could it have been caused by this massive repetition of human expression?

The train moves on.

Why is it that I tell this story? Well, it is this integration of thousands of confused, discontent, irritated and/or resigning faces into an overall collective expression of mood that I cannot forget. Did the sheer number of faces convey at a distance what otherwise would require close-up photographs of a handful of them? Did the late afternoon light play a role? How much did my own mood play a role?

Today I cannot explain for sure how this expression was established, but I can convey my guesswork into a reflection on how to convey mood from a piece of artwork.

I’m normally not very good at gentlemen’s outfitters, so I tend to procrastinate when it comes to buying new clothes. Last spring I managed nevertheless to mount the drive necessary to get the lighter part of my wardrobe renewed in view of the approaching summer. I bought 3 suits of cotton, linen and a combination of the two.

Since the manufacturers sew the trousers with 2.20 metres tall beanstalks as their target clients, and since I’m not such a beanstalk I had to have the length of the legs shortened. They needed retouche, as they say here. So I jumped into the pants, stepped up on a small podium and had the shop assistant crawling around my feet with needles between her lips meticulously adjusting the length of the trousers. After this scenario had repeated itself 3 times, I paid and arranged for the shop to ship them when ready – we’re no longer living in the vicinity.

Now, I cannot be sure where something went wrong, but when I later left home on the first bright summer day dressed in one of the new suits I noticed something. That something was the feeling of walking in another man’s trousers, and that that man was a head taller than me. It was no different when I later tried the other two suits.

I know that a few years ago it had become kind of fashion in this corner of Europe to outfit men with trousers somewhat longer than they used to be. If this should be a sign of affluence and signal wealth, I do not know. So, my theory is that the person who made the retouche either repeatedly misinterpreted the shop assistant’s needle-settings or thought that he/she was doing me a favour of adding 5-10 centimetres so that I could appear more fashionable.

The three suits have spent the rest of their lives on the hangers in the wardrobe. Until yesterday, that is. Inge had spotted a tailor shop here in town and suggested that I gave it a try there to see if they did such mundane things as correcting the lengths of 3 pairs of trousers. Low and behold, they would gladly do, and I can pick them up next Saturday!

It appeared to be a gentlemen’s outfitter, with the option of having suits tailor made. I noticed books with samples of fabrics and heard the word Dormeuil being mentioned. That flashed me back to my younger years when I had a Chinese tailor making me a suit in Toronto and I recalled in particular his facial expression when recommending me a woollen fabric of the brand Dormeuil. As mine, his English was not 100%, but I was left in no doubt that this brand was something. He was right. I remember that suit as being very comfortable and correctly adjusted to a business life on the shores of Lake Ontario.

What brought my mind back to the present was the sight of 3 funny-looking caps in shintz-like bright blue, yellow and pink. When inspecting them more closely I recognized that it was my ignorance that made them look funny. They were cap-like helmet covers and underneath each was a shirt in the same brightly coloured fabrics. They were tailor made jockey outfits. Of course, Chantilly is a race horse town. I should not have been surprised.

And then it was as if the entire collection of gentlemen’s wear in the shop came together as a whole. Over the years the tailors and keepers of this shop have of course adjusted their collection to their clients. Colours, patterns, fabrics and cuts therefore implicitly mirrored features of the town and its surroundings. They told a story – patched together of clothing needs and tastes of race horse people and mid to senior aged gentlemen in this place in the countryside north of Paris – and their wives, since they statistically often play a strong advisory role when it comes to making the final choice.

So, the incident with last year’s retouche let to me to discover this little gem of a gentlemen’s outfitter and tailor shop, briefed me about the tastes of some of the townspeople and gave me insight in fashionable jockey wear. There is a silver lining to every cloud!