Depression or just low pressure?

Crap weather, I put on summer tyres and it started snowing on the way to Kongsberg. By the look of it, it will be wet by the time I wend my weary way back to Drammen this afternoon.
Teaching has been mediocre today as well. The inspired AMG is a bit tired and worn around the edges. Choir practice was OK last night, and it was good to see E back safe from the Eternal City where she had walked 60 000 steps in the three or four days she had been there, according to an sms she sent in response to my asking how she was.
I must admit that women are a continual riddle to me. Either they are clingingly interested, or they suddenly turn it on hot and cold like a bracing shower. I don't like that sort of shower. It would be nice to just accept the status quo and show all the potential interest the proverbial finger, and that is the sensible way forward. M1 is probably worth that. The list isn't much longer so who am I to make a big deal out of anything?
This cynicism is based on a compilation of reasons. The news is depressing, Zimbabwe looks like remaining a repressed banana republic being run by a Marxist megalomaniac being only one such story. Norway continues to produce news stories which hit top marks on the Richter's Scale of inanity, and I am generally losing my energetic keenness. I think I may have Friday's dinner for Arnulv on my mind, not an occasion I am looking forward to even though I will be speaking and will be expected to be humorous.
It's in moods like this that it is a good thing to look at what is positive in my daily round. I must admit that being with my class is time well spent and the little buggars always manage to raise my spirits. S has made me laugh by telling of her insisting that she be allowed to read and analyse a pornographic book in Norwegian. The wonderful thing is that her teacher let her do it after fifteen minutes nagging. S agreed with me that she would never have got away with it had it been me! I read a couple of lines out loud, it was cringingly, embarrassingly graphic in its description of a sex act a la chien, as the frogs would doubtless have expressed it. A little seventeen year old girl who can read that and nod in a familiar sort of way scares the s**t out of me, and I am not naive... I don't think!
Looking out of the window and over the river, I see the snow-mixed sleet slating across the scenery. That has definitely put the mockers on being cheery and upbeat!
And I am forced to smile when I am told that these ramblings are read by the powers that be and that I may not necessarily be taste of the month for voicing my viewpoint in this way. Flattery indeed! But I accept the point. I do not want to hurt anybody. Of course not. But I presume a professional attitude exists amongst the people I work and perhaps play with. It must be possible to voice disagreement or frustration without being dealt with personally for it. I will be more careful in future, particularly in not being careless with identification. Promise. I have started already!
There is a definite difference between being Norwegian and being foreign. This was underlined yesterday evening on the way home from Oslo when Steffen, a German, told me a story of how he is threatened with union action by people he supervises who don't get his sense of humour. And I think I have problems! This is something that is reflected elsewhere in this blog, obviously, and is not meant to be an excuse for what a reader may feel is wrongly put. But it is not easy to fit in with the locals when it comes to communication of tone and humour in a place where irony and sarcasm are regarded as being negatively charged words, and jokes must be explained so that they lose their meaning entirely. People may compliment me on my knowledge of Norwegian, and thank you for that, but knowing a language and a culture is never complete, as Steffen and other "foreign" friends would agree. Is it something to aim for? I don't think so. I feel this is a situation we must live with, being misunderstood, or more exactly put, being misinterpreted, sometimes on purpose, by the people around us. Goodness knows I have had bombs blow up in my face without even understanding the reason for it happening. Thank goodness everyone isn't like that or it would definitely be impossible to co-exist with the natives.