We have a six hundred metre roll of cling film in one of our kitchen drawers. We’ve had it for three years and I reckon it still has some life left in it. It’s been around so long that I’ve grown rather fond of it and I expect I’ll feel a tinge of sadness when that last length slides off the naked cardboard roll. Strange, to feel attached to a roll of thin, adhesive plastic wrap. But Greenland brings out the strange in life.
Just before moving to Greenland we went a little crazy in our preparations. Despite both having spent numerous summers working in Greenland, and having passed through Nuuk many times, we were both nervous about actually living here. We suddenly realised that we knew little about the daily practicalities of living in a remote Arctic town. So instead of minimising all the ‘stuff’ we’d collected over the years – filling the corners and cupboards of our home – we went the other way. We bought new whitegoods, a piano, kayaks. We visited a wholesale supermarket to stock up on all manner of non-perishable items – tins of fruit, beans, spices, grains, caterers’ sized buckets of curry paste, and six hundred metres of cling film. Some items we’d never previously bought in our lives. A half kilo bag of lime powder remains unopened. I guess we were preparing for all eventualities, including becoming insatiable consumers of southeast Asian curries.
As it turns out, this wasn’t really necessary. Nuuk supermarkets are not so very far removed from supermarkets elsewhere. Granted, there is often only one or two brands of each product, less common items might be rarely available, and the produce section is more limited. On the few times per year when the weekly ship from Denmark arrives late, the fruit and vegetables do tend to get paired back to a minimum – apples, potatoes, onions, some ratty looking mushrooms and tomatoes that nobody wants. But when faced with these times of shortage, one realises that the impact is limited. Nobody starves. Our cupboards are still largely full, even without the tins of beans and bags of lime powder. Necessity is the mother of invention, they say. And indeed, these tend to be times when I happily fling open the kitchen cupboards, anticipating the creativity in making a family meal from whatever happens to be available.
Apparently we don’t need access to every possible item one might want, or to be able to make every recipe one could possibly conceive of. In fact, access to only a more moderate selection of items has next to no impact on either our family’s nutrition or happiness.
So as fond as I’ve grown of my six hundred metres of cling film, it’s absence will not be felt.
