BIG MAMA TIME!

It's half-term school holiday and we're staying in Oslo. Half-term winter holidays usually imply going skiing in the mountains, but I had no such wish this year - not for myself at least, and I wouldn't sacrifice my own wishes to please other family members (which I've done often enough in the past and probably will do again. The plight of Big Mamas. Sigh).

Farmhand Jelena

Farmhand Mira

So instead Technical Big Mama took the little girls along to The Museum of Science and Technology, which is FUN! I enjoy it too! While the girls were eager to go to the science room, where they could test out various games and experiments, THIS is what I enjoyed looking at:

Some of this stuff is still in my possession - I was particularly attached to my yellow Walkman! And I've always wanted a Jukebox!! I refuse to leave this earth without having owned one! Imagine feeding all my singles into it and then choosing and selecting.... Oh - dream on, Big Mama..... Where would I place it in my new flat? On the terrace?

Big Mama flying - YEESS!

Watching how your own pulse squirts "blood" out of the heart

Cars are fun too! Always! Oh, how nostalgic I get about cars! My mother drove a mint green Ford Cortina in Tanzania, and there was a Cortina at the museum. An old Mercedes reminded me of our old red one!

And some cars are even older:

When I took the girls upstairs to the permanent telecommunications exhibition - which by the way my sister was employed in setting up initially thirty years ago - I was reminded of the time I took my youngest daughter Sophie (born 1991) and some of her friends to the Museum when they were kids. When they saw the old dial phones they had no idea how to use them! That's when I realised they were born into another age - the age of the keyboard! My granddaughters reacted the same way of course - when I told them these used to be our telephones AND that we waited one and a half years for a subscription, they just stared at me with wide eyes. 

My oldest daughter Johanne (born 1983) remembers the phones, Commodore computers, the first Nintendo, the phone booths and having only three TV-channels. She claims to have been born in a different era! I think she's right.