I’m a Brit who moved to Norway in 2006, along with my husband, two kids and 11 animals. I’ve worked as a psychologist, company director of a software company, and in the fast stream of the civil service. I have a PhD in cognitive science (I’m still waiting for that to make me some money). I now work as the review editor and columnist for the literary website LitReactor.com. I also have a podcast and blog called Domestic Hell with my friend Eve Harvey, where we take the mickey out of everything from vaginal steaming to men who pretend to be goats.
Norway is actually the perfect home for a Guardian reader. It’s a bit like Britain in the 1950s, only with more elk. Shops close on Sundays, the weather means we all wear proper underwear and binge drinking requires you to have a bigger income than Donald Trump. We all prefer skiing over the pub at the weekend partly because there’s lots of snow and partly because there are no pubs here.
I read the paper version of the Guardian almost every day until we moved to Norway, then bought the weekly version for a while. Now I read it every day online, using the phone app, which allows me to pick which sections I want to see. I have culture, life and style and books on my list, but I browse the site widely, especially when I have a looming deadline to meet. Today I read about the mummified corpse of a German sailor found on board his yacht, Jessica Valenti’s piece about abortion, George Kennedy’s obit and Stuart Heritage’s very funny conspiracy theories about Jenny Beavan (I’m going with number three). What I like about the Guardian is that I can sense its sincerity. It meets the world open-hearted and with curiosity, and so do I.
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