The Norwegian author recalls a summer spent kicking a ball against a wall – and dreaming of scoring at Wembley
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I have a clear image of the summer from the time when I was growing up. Not of diving into the waters of a Norwegian fjord, or barbecuing with my parents at a camp site or savouring the view from the top of a mountain I’ve just climbed. But of myself alone in the city, when everyone has gone off on holiday. I’m in a school playground, and now everyone has gone it feels like a strangely alien place. There are no kids on the gravel pitch where we’ve played football all year round, even through the winter on the snow and ice; no echoing shouts of delight when a fight breaks out between two boys, or someone has stuffed a frog down a girl’s tights. The only echoes come from the ball as it hits the wall below the teachers’ room, over and over again. Suddenly everyone had vanished. I’d heard a lot of talk about car trips to Sweden, cabins in the south, grandparents in the country; but still, it felt like a betrayal, this synchronised evacuation.
