The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #22965   Message #251880
Posted By: Áine
04-Jul-00 - 09:01 PM
Thread Name: Song Challenge! Part 32
Subject: SONG CHALLENGE! Part 32
Well, this should be a "cleansing" experience after the last two Challenge!s. Ready, set, DIVE IN CHALLENGE!RS!!

The Topless Mermaid: 'Most people just look and cheer' -- OSLO, Norway - A bare-breasted blonde mermaid perched atop a rock is making tourists gape in disbelief along a Norwegian fjord.

"One man once jumped off a boat and swam over to me," Line Oexnevad, 37 and mother of two children, said on Tuesday of her unorthodox job as a professional siren. "Most people just look and cheer."

Oexnevad, naked except for a long blonde wig and a costume fish-tail, said she has sat five times on a rock along the Lyse fjord in West Norway in the past three summers, hired as a surprise attraction for tourist boat trips and parties.

"The last time it was a bit cold," she said. "The mermaid in Copenhagen and me are the only mermaids I know of," she said. The "Little Mermaid" in Copenhagen is a statue inspired by a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale.

Oexnevad, who also works at a hospital in nearby Stavanger, said she was no good at singing -- in legend, sirens sang to lure sailors. "Maybe next time I'll take along a cassette player," she said.