Chapter 1

If you are driving your car or riding by train you shall hardly notice the small town, as you get closer. Only a few passengers get off the train, and a negligible number of cars turn off the motorway, while all the others continue their journey to somewhere else. And you certainly shall not notice the small street, which is hidden behind the few 3-story 'high-rises', which this little town can boast.

Coming in from the seaside, through the long and narrow 'fjord', the small street is one of the first things you shall notice, though, as this street is right on the waterfront, and only one side of it occupied by houses. It is pretty but not flashy, it is colourful without displaying the full circle of the rainbow, and the houses are comfortably roomy, as they were all the homes of two or three fishing families in poorer times. Today they are restored and modernised, and they are all inhabited by only one family. And the families? Well, people from other parts of town would say that they are all very ordinary. Nothing special about them. Civil servants, teachers, a few shopkeepers, and only one fisherman, who owns the only remaining fishing boat in town.

But, you see, I lived in that street for nearly 15 years, and I got to know my neighbours well. Probably better than any of them would have guessed or wished for. When my wife died I sold the house and moved back to Copenhagen, and in the years to come I would hear, now and then, the 'highbrows and straight nosed' make fun of 'little boxes', 'boring suburbia', 'plastic people in plastic houses', etc. I always chose to keep my mouth shut, but I couldn't help wondering: Our little street was far from ordinary, it was far from boring, and nothing about the houses and their inhabitants was plastic. So, what about all those other streets in all those other towns, which are called boring, suburban, bourgeois and plastic? Well, I'll never know, I guess, but I've decided to tell the stories of some of the houses in Smallstreet, and maybe you can tell me, if your home-street is that much different?

How come I know so much, you may ask. Mainly for two reasons. I am a small time writer/journalist, and as such I consider myself pretty observant. And I do suffer from insomnia, often sending me out for long walks through the nights.

But let us get started. If you stand in the town hall square, which sounds pretty ambitious for our small administration building, and you walk a couple of hundred yards slightly downhill, towards the harbour, the last street on your left is our Smallstreet. And the first house is number one.