July 6 - The Fool On The Hill

When I grew up, my father's brothers both lived in Ski, a smaller city about an hour outside of Oslo - and about 8 hours away from Trondheim, where they grew up and I lived with my family. My uncle Olav had sons who were quite a bit older than me, but my uncle Arne, my dad's youngest older brother, and my aunt Anicken, were the parents of two sons. This was not unusual in the Skogseth family. My grandma was the only girl among a boatload of boys (I never remember how many, but I think she had five brothers), and then she ended up with three sons herself, and as her sons started having kids, Olav had two sons, Arne had two sons, then there was me - and finally, breaking the "curse," was my sister, Elin, my grandmother's final grandchild - and only granddaughter.

Anyway, Arne and Anicken had two sons, Geir and Stein, and Stein just happened to be my age, born two months later than me. I got along great with Stein, and we started spending time with one another during the summers as we were teenagers. Sometimes we were at my grandparents' summer house at Frosta, which was great, especially when we started realizing that there were teenage girls in the neighbor's house (that was a little bit later). But I also got to spend time at their house in the summer. I remember discovering books there (one summer, the book Falketårnet by Erik Fosnes Hansen was read on the radio at Ungdommens Radioavis), listening to Kiss, as Stein had the album Dynasty, although it was thoroughly scratched by a cat if I remember right, getting exposed to science (I remember Geir being completely into Carl Sagan's Cosmos), and getting a more complete exposure to The Beatles.

My aunt Anicken had purchased a box set of all the records they released, and she even let me borrow them to listen to them. I was overwhelmed. I had been exposed to most of their early output already, and that is what I connected to. I am not sure if Magical Mystery Tour was in it - I remember it as if it were, and as if I discovered The Fool on the Hill, but I don't trust my memory with that kind of detail. However, I can tell you with an absolute certainty that when I got my The Beatles CD box a few years back, my thoughts went to my aunt Anicken again for letting me explore The Beatles fully.

I also mentioned books - and while Falketårnet was a favorite of mine, nothing surpassed the fact that I left their house one summer with The Lord of the Rings in my luggage. On the trainride from Oslo to Trondheim I devoured The Fellowship of the Ring, and within a week, I had read the entire tome. And they also came to my sister's wedding. Like I said yesterday, it was a great day. I brought my oldest daughter, Emma, to be the flower girl in the wedding, and the Skogseth side of my family kidnapped her and sat with her the entire evening. Arne and Anicken had bought one of the first Lego Friends sets for her, and they kept her entertained - or was it the other way around?

So - since this was one of the first later-era Beatles songs I connected with, and my memory insists it happened thanks to Anicken's lp box, here is The Beatles with The Fool on the Hill.