Breakfast with Ursula

This morning I had breakfast with Ursula, which sounds like it should be the name of a book, or a film. Or possibly a book that was later adapted into a film that everybody tuts at because the director got the main character all wrong.

Ursula is a Swiss woman who has lived in Iceland on and off for about ten years. She speaks seven languages, which, if you're British like me, you'll be startled at because you didn't even realise that seven languages exist. Ursula is so brilliant at Icelandic that even the natives can't tell straight off that she's a foreigner. She once told me very proudly that one Icelander found her pronunciation and grammar to be so good that his first impression was that she was just a little bit retarded.

It's skills like these that make Ursula such a fantastic mountain guide — along with an ability to drink whiskey all night, get one hour's sleep on a pile of lava, and then happily lead thirty French tourists over the hostile Icelandic highlands. Other equally useful skills include train driving and playing the cello. Or is it the viola, not the cello? Pfft, if a director was to turn Ursula's character into a film then everyone would tut for getting it all wrong.

I met Ursula around three years ago when I didn't have any friends, which was great timing, because Ursula had hundreds and thousands so I just borrowed some of hers. Being friends with Ursula is like being friends with a Swiss Army knife. She can cook you a meal with her left arm, fix your jeep with her right arm, and open up your bottle of beer in her ass.

I think everybody needs a friend like that in their life.