There are still things to do/Enn er margt ógert

(Unfinished piece/work in progress)

by Freyr Arnarson
Length: 17:00
Original language: Icelandic

This piece was produced as part of the radiofeature/documentary project

RANA.
RANA is funded through EU´s Lifelong learning program. More information
about the RANA project can be found on http://www.this.is/rana

A door slams

Jónas: Let me see, such a mess around here.

Pushes buttons, walks around, opens and closes doors.

I´ll turn this off. It is the theft alarm, hehe. I forbid you to program it ...now to
the basement to start up the aircompressor...

Turns the lights on and walks down to the basement-

Be carefull not to fall down, I have forgotten to make something to hold on to

while walking the steps, I don´t need it at all myself. There you see the
material. It´s 28 tons –laughs-

Freyr: How did you manage to get down to the basement?

Jónas: What ... well I just walked it down the stair.

Opens for the air into the system.

This is the aircompressor. I am putting air on the system. Let me see, that´s all
fine. Wait, my dear man, This is what I am producing now. Now I have to ... I
had to take this off ... turn this on ... I have to ...

Closes a door

Wait, now I have to turn on the lights. Let me see. Yes you can make it through
there...
(laughing). This is a big company but still it´s small.

Walks up the steps

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Now I have to turn on one more machine.

Airpumps

There are so many things I have to finish, even though I’m almost 80, I am
going to get them on market. I just never had the time to do it. I´m maybe
halfways there. I´m going to finish this when I get old.

Laughs. Machine sounds.

Sometimes I wake up between 5 and 6 in the morning. That´s wery good. I

works every
Saturday, from 9 in the morning to six or halfpast six, then I take a bath, that´s
enough. Once a week. I never go more often than that. That´s very healthy, at
least that is what a doctor told me. Once I had dry skin on my leg, so I went to
see a skin docktor It´s very seldom I have to see a doctor, knock on wood. And
he said: Listen, your skin is a little dry. I give you this creme for it. He asked
how often I took a bath. “Once a week, not more often nor more seldom” That
´s very good the doctor said. The specialist. People are saying you should
always wash your body. But that ain´t right, the soap is a poision and you just
shouldn´t do this. I always go once a week, sometimes I completely forget
about it or I don´t have the time to do it (laughs) but then I just do it later, I
always go on a Saturday evening (laughs).

Sea sounds.

As kids we just used to play on the beach, that was a very good kindergarten
(laughs). The kids, we went ... one would get small pieces of wood and I
remember that i started to make cars and selling them. Cars for small kids, and
I painted them (laughs). And I sold few pieces and also boats that we used on
the beach and we picked up dead fish in it. It happened often that dead fish
came upon the shore. Then I sometimes made boats that I sold for 1 or 2
krones (laughs). That was the price. It was my best time when I could start
inventing something and building it. Yes.

Hammering fades to machine sounds

I was young when I left home, 16 ... or 17-18. I went to Reykjavík and have
been here almost ever since.

A lid falls to the ground

Just see this, it´s not properly made abroad, imported. They just don´t know
how to make things, it all falls apart. Tsk ... well. I was always working, often I
worked untill the break of dawn, when I was trying to figure something new out
and the maybe the machines broke... and I never gave up. I was lucky because
my brother, Haukur lived for a while in Siglufjörður (a town in north-Iceland).
There was a bookstore that sold danish books about technic and building but
they couldn´t sell any of them so they figured maybe they should send the
books to me. I could read danish since I was in school. So I just bought the lot

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of them. This was the best school I ever went to. Now things started to work
out for me. I managed to make good tools for me. Everything from these
danish books, I
could read them as well as Icelandic, I couldn´t read the adventures of
Grimms brothers, but the technical stuff I could read.

Water runs into a sink

Freyr: This photograph there upon the wall?

Jónas: Yes it´s my grandfather, I´m named after him; Jónas Einarsson from
Garðhúsum á Eyrarbakka. He was a good fisherman

Sound from machines fades into sound of the sea

Sometimes there was so heavy blizzard that strong men had to crawl on their
knees to get from one house to another. And the tides, I have never seen
anything like it. It was just like they were going to eat you. Just down there.

Sound of the sea

Often it was very windy and loud and ships and boats and trollers were lost
there.
You could sometimes hear when they were blowing their horns, but noone
could do anything to help. And then the bodies would drift up on the shore,
broken and harmed. Sometimes the head was missing or arms and legs. The
sea was so uncalm there that it demolished everything that landed in it, in the
tides...Even the fish was killed there, crushed by the sea on the cliffs like
everything else. I always remember hearing one blowing his horn for a long
time but suddenly everything went quiet. I was just a small kid but we all heard
this in the town.

Sound of the sea

I think I´ve said enough about this except that the people had to survive on
their own, no matter what. Many people lost their lives, seamen on small
boats. The bodies didn´t come to land, only one leg from one man. On the leg
was a rubber boot and he was the only one who had boots like this, my
grandfather.

S burial psalm played by a computer

And it was buried in a small coffin, the leg was buried, it was the only thing
that was found.

The psalm continues

Jónas: : Let me see ... 522 51266.

The psalm mixes to a dial tone

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Voice on the phone: Road Administration

Jónas: Hello my dear Guðmundur. This is Jónas calling.

Voice on the phone: Hello

Jónas: Listen, I have 100 short ones in two boxes and one of the long ones
ready. Do you want them today or next monday? It´s completly up to you.

Voice on the phone: I think I´ll ask Svenni to go to you and take it now.

Jónas: Yes fine, then I just have to close the boxes and finish the extrabox and
then
you´ll just get some more on monday. And happy summer.

Voice on the phone: Yes thank you, same for you.

Jónas: And thank you for the winter and all your nice and good words.

Voice on the phone: Yes (laughs).

Jónas: Ok then it´s all fine.

Voice on the phone: All right. Goodbye, thank you.

Hangs up

Jónas: That´s how it is. That´s business. There are so nice men there at this
firm, it´s just unbeliveable. It´s like they own every bone in your body. He is so
polite and sweet this man. They both are, Birgir too. They are getting supplies
for 20 work groups that are working all over the country, they need this today
and something different tomorrow and they have to have everything ready. So
you see what I am doing... (laughs).

Freyr: There you have another picture!

Jónas: It´s a good friend of mine,. And he died much too soon. Just forty. I cut
this picture out from a paper and put it in a frame. He is always here with me
and looks after the firm (laughs). Then there is another one there up on the
wall. This is our son Garðar.

Sounds of a drilling machine

He was almost four years old. There was great sickness in town. The boy is
very sick when he wakes up in the middle of the night. I manage to get the
doctor on the phone and he comes around 3´clock, he had been to us before
and had been good for us. I saw that he was very sleepy and looked tired. I
didn´t have a good feeling about this. He said the boy just had a bad throat
and then he wrote a receipt for medicine. I took my jacket and was going out

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to fetch the drugs. But he said that there was no hurry. Just pick it up
tomorrow, just see if he will be better tomorrow morning. Give him one or half
a tablet of Aspirin. Panodil (paracetamol) didn´t exist by then. We do that and
the boy falls a sleep after that but he wakes up at 5 o´clock, very sick. But
there is no doctor on the duty anymore, so early in the morning. But still I
managed to reach the doctor that took care of us, our family. A very talented
surgeon; Bjarni Bjarnason. And he came to us this morning. and the boy is
deadsick. The doctor, Bjarni called an ambulance right away, but it wasn´t
available. Not right away. Then we got a call that the ambulance was on it´s
way, I think we had telephone by then. It´s too late Bjarni said. The boy has
died in out hands.
It would have been possible to save the boy if the doctor had thought of giving
him penecilin right away. What I thougt was worst was that this doctor was a
specialist in what killed the boy, immune system and antibiotics specialist. The
penicillin was available and had saved many people but he just didn´t use it.
He was like a sleepy sheep. I can always remember him, standing there, saying
yesyesyes, just give him half a tablet of Aspirin and then you go and get the
other drugs in the morning if he isn´t better. This recept wouldn´t have saved
him, it was just some pills for bad throat that wouldn´t have done anything
Someone has to be sacrifised so the others can live, you just have to accept
that.

Sound from the sea mixes with sounds from machines

That´s how this story goes. This was a big conflict to hit troubles like this but at
least we had two children left.This was our second child, number two, second
oldest, and then we had three kids in a row (laughs), it was well done. She
wanted to fill in for that boy. That was diligent. And it was alright to have many
children, It is much more difficult to loose one child than to have many, that is
completely different thing, but now it is about 50 years since it happened and
more than that.

Sounds from machines

These machines, the pressures are looked at as the most dangerous machines
at work. People are loosing hands and fingers in theses. One has to be cautious
of course.
We have been lucky. If I cut my fingers it heals instantly. If I cut myself it is
healed the next day. The woman makes so good food, with massive ingrediens,
so every wound heals straight away. Once, I was working on this machine and
fell back to the floor and lost conciesness for few seconds, I just stood up right
away. I now am moving at little slower pace than I used to do. I jump up the
stairs, take 2-3 steps at time in a one jump and it´s like nothing for me. As a
result I don´t get fat, I´m thin and light. I can work from day to dawn. No
problem. I just hope that I ´ll die when I can´t work anymore
(laughs) straight away. I am just waiting for that the business decreases and I
have less work so I can find time to finish what I want to do (laughs). I can see
no reason to quit, I have my whole life ahead of me.

The End

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©2008 RANA/Freyr Arnarson