Cue AC/DC's hit: "Highway to Hell" or Chris Rea's "Road to Hell"

Few people can honestly correctly say they’ve literally been to Hell and back for a cause they believe in. I am one of those very people. And Hell is a goldmine (figuratively) for doing things literally. Hell is a fairly small village on the outskirts of Stjørdal a third of the way up Norway with a population of just under four hundred people. It is thirty kilometres to the East of Trondheim (Norway’s third largest city), and therefore an obvious place for Trondheim-Værnes airport. Or Barcelona-Værnes as it is known to customers of one Irish airline, and a mere 3200km coach-ride to Barcelona city centre.

I wandered out of the centre of Hell, a little westwards, along the railway line, and towards the fjord, treading over a light sprinkling of frozen snow. The waters of the fjord were dark, and disappointingly ice-free. A few hundred yards further on, back in some residential areas, I found exactly what I was looking for. A couple of small ponds, frozen solid: Hell was literally frozen over.

Music snobs will be pleased that piped through the shopping centre of Hell, was the music of Keane. And predictably Hell was full of little kids rolling around on “heelies”, crashing into my shins. There is little to sell Hell’s shopping centre. After I’d drunk more black coffee than anyone could ever want, I judder around, accidentally grossly miscalculated the exchange rate and buy 4 moose salami and 4 reindeer salami for almost a hundred pounds. Note to self – learn the 13-times-table better. I chatted to a few people, meeting the mother-in-law from Hell, and the Neighbours from Hell.

I wrote a postcard to my office. It included the line: “It will be a cold Day in Hell before I come back to work.” It was not very well received, at one stage almost invoking a disciplinary procedure against me because of it. Still, that’s probably the last time I will work for a small Christian charity.

Postcard from Hell

Tags: @Literallytsar, Going to Hell, Hell, Hell and back, Literally, Norway, Parryphernalia, paul parry, Taking things literally

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 at 12:07 pm and is filed under Doing things Literally, Literally, Literally Show, Literally Tsar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.