Saturday, August 4, 2018

05:00 I get up early. I did not sleep very well last night - I had a lot of wind in my stomach again and it took me a long time to fall asleep. I feel a little jaded now, to put it mildly.

07:45 I hop back into bed with Lois and we drink our morning tea. We get up and after breakfast we head over to the local Sainsbury's supermarket to do the shopping. We come home and relax with a cup of coffee on the couch.

11:00 Lois gets going arranging and classifying our stack of medicines and pills. Our "medicine cabinet" has become one big mess, and when you get ill, it's become quite impossible to find what you're looking for, especially if you happen to be feeling very stressed. A bleeding person would bleed to death a long time before finding the Band-aid box for example - my god, it's become one big nightmare!

With her characteristic attention to detail, she identifies the medicines and pills that are out of date, and sorts the rest into about 5-6 categories. Each category is assigned to its own box, with the category function clearly marked on a sticky label on the side of the box - what a woman!

Our out of date medicines and pills

Our shiny new medicine cabinet

For myself, however, I am still feel a little jaded after my bad night. I sit down in my favorite armchair and listen to the radio, an interesting program called "The last word" is on. Lois and I have got in the habit of hearing this program every week because we want to find out if anyone has died or not over the past 1-2 weeks (I have noticed that most weeks exactly 5 deaths occur ).

The Japanese film director and screenwriter, Shinobu Hashimoto, has unfortunately died recently, at the age of 100. He wrote the screenplay of the groundbreaking classic Japanese films, Rashomon (1950) and "The Seven Samurai".

I recall, as a student, sitting at a table with my teacher and my fellow students listening to the dialogue from the film Rashomon and trying to work out what the dialogue was word by word and then translating it into English.

Rashomon was a groundbreaking movie because it portrayed the same event several times: each participant in the event gives his own version of what happened. The film's action was based around a fight between a samurai and a bandit. By the end of the story, the samurai has been killed and the Samurai's wife has either been raped or seduced (depending on who is telling the story). Yikes!

Rashomon, the groundbreaking Japanese movie which 

Shinobu Hashimoto did the screenwriting for (1950)

From my point of view, the strange thing about Hashimoto's life story is that he grew up far out in the countryside and had no connection or contact with the film world. He joined the Japanese army, got wounded and spent most of the war in a hospital, where he accidentally came across a magazine about screenwriting. He became fascinated by the content of the magazine, and the rest is history. 

Rashomon was his first movie ever, and it became a classic. Talent is talent, and some people have it in spades, and then some. But if Hashimoto had not been injured and had not come across that magazine, he would probably have been a farmer for the rest of his life.

A couple of weeks ago, we heard in this "Last Word" program about a Danish woman who grew up far out in the country in Jutland, right out in the boonies. By an accident of fate she fell in love with one of the British soldiers who had arrived to liberate the country in 1945. She married him, moved to London and became the prestigious Victoria & Albert Museum's main refurbisher of historic tapestries. She ended up gaining an international reputation.

Even though she grew up in the boonies, her talent as a repairer of fabrics had made its appearance at an early age apparently.  But if not for her English husband, she would probably have stayed  a farmer's wife in Jutland for the rest of her days.

12:00 Lois is still occupied with sorting out and cleaning up in our medicine cabinet so I make a start on seeing the 4th episode of the new season of "Dicte", which was first broadcast last night on the More4 channel. 

After the third episode, Lois decided to stop watching this series: it was too full of personal problems and crises hitting the main characters' private lives, on top of the usual bunch of "normal" murders and other dastardly crimes. "Dicte is too dark nowadays," she said.

The series is about a crime reporter in Aarhus called Dicte Svendsen (played by Iben Hjejle). She is close friends with one of the female detectives in the city's police station and uses her contacts to investigate various crimes at the same time as the official police investigations: and she has a habit of finding the murderers before the police do (copyright Arthur Conan Doyle ha ha).

I'm able to see the section's first 20 minutes before Lois calls me in to have lunch. Dicte is in a bad mood again - Bo, her husband, whom she married a couple of weeks ago, has been screwing his ex-wife again.

The episode showcases another dramatic scene that unfolds in the public toilets: something that the series has become famous for. And this toilet scene tonight is every bit as good as all the previous ones in this long tradition.

Dicte has a tendence to always be on the spot when a crime is in progress. On a family visit to an amusement park (Tivoli?), she suddenly decides to pop to the toilets.

The first stall she enters has some problem or other - a disgusting mess, an unpleasant stench or a disgusting incident is in progress, maybe all three, but it's not completely clear.

In the first stall there is some problem or other (unspecified)

When Dicte opens the door to the 2nd stall, she finds out that a man in a balaclava is sitting on the john - only his eyes are visible. She says sorry and beats a hasty retreat.

In the second stall a man in a balaclava is sitting on the john

- my god, what madness !!!!

Later she finds out that the man in the balaclava has just robbed and shot a security guard and stolen hundreds of thousands of kroner. It is quite a stroke of luck that she manages to come across him in the women's toilets, no doubt about that.

Seen from my point of view, I sympathize with the man sitting on one of the women's toilets in a balaclava. In Denmark, pictograms for men's and women's toilets are not as easy to understand and distinguish as they are in England, in my opinion, and I myself mistakenly entered the ladies' toilets in Lousiana, the famous Danish art gallery. I did not have a balaclava on, just my usual baseball cap. Like Dicte, I beat a hasty retreat.

Flashback to February 2013: Our first visit to Denmark and first

visit to the Louisiana Art Gallery: by mistake I popped into the ladies' toilets,

but beat a hasty retreat

18:00 We have dinner and afterwards Lois sits down in front of the computer to continue her genealogical research. She focuses today on her maternal grandmother's family, ie the Brogden family, who seems to have been involved in a string of petty crimes in the 19th century, so the Brogden name appears many times in the county's local newspapers: this helps Lois's research, no doubt about it, but I'm starting to wonder, exactly who is this woman I've married ??? Yikes!

20:00 Lois is still busy with her research in the dining room, which doubles as our office, so I settle down in the living room and carry on seeing the latest (4th) episode of "Dicte", the Danish crime series .

Even more bombshells in the plot: Nina, Dicte's friend at the Aarhus police station, who was dismissed because of her alcoholism a few years ago and who has now been given a second chance, is being bullied by her new boss who has been trying to seduce her: and she has started to hit the bottle again.

Dicte herself, the local crime journalist, tries to help Nina solve her current case (robbery, attempted murder by shooting, and attempted blackmail), by infiltrating the local big-money gambling world. The problem is, she has never played poker before in her life, so Dicte's boss invites her round to his place one evening to learn to play.

In the boss's flat Dicte shows a surprising talent for the game - beginner's luck maybe? The poker game with the boss turns into strip poker and the boss is almost naked when his wife turns up. Instead of being angry with her husband, the wife seems eager to join in the game, and later invites Dicte to join them in a threesome - my god, what madness !!!

Lois comes back in the living room in the middle of the action, and I suspect she is becoming hooked on the series again despite its crazy plot - good grief! But there is now only one episode left (the 5th), thank god. The final episode will be aired on Friday - well, we'll have to see.

21:00 We continue to watch some television. They show an interesting documentary about Angela Carter, the feminist writer.

We start watching this program a bit by chance - neither Lois nor I have read any of Carter's novels, but there's nothing else we want to see before we jump into bed again. But we are very glad about seeing the program. Carter was a very interesting woman who died at only 51 years of age, and whose novels were all highly original and different from each other. The program makes us want to read some of her books, no doubt about that.

She was trapped in a loveless marriage with a Mr. Carter - they lived in Bristol. She decided to take a 2 week vacation in Japan but stayed for 2-3 years in the country where she became a sort of modern geisha girl and moved in with one of her clients, a man who turned out to be a bit of a skirt-chaser, to put it mildly.

She moved back to Bristol but got a divorce from Mr. Carter. After a short stay in Sheffield, she returned to Bristol and later moved in with a nice young long-haired repair man, whom she had called in to get some device or other fixed in her house, I forget the details. The couple had a child and stayed together until her early death at the age of 51.

It's a little creepy that in her movements she followed me (or I followed her): in the 1960s she lived in Bristol, like me, my parents and my siblings. She moved to Tokyo at the end of the 1960s and she was living in Tokyo at the same time as me - I was a student over there. Later she lived in Sheffield, where I was a student again. A peculiar coincidence, but I'm going to let that one slide - it's probably not important in the grand scheme of things.

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz !!!!

Danish translation

05:00 Jeg står tidligt op. Jeg sov ikke ret godt i nat – jeg havde meget luft i maven, og det tog mig lang tid til at falde i søvn. Jeg føler mig lidt udkørt, for at sige mildt.

07:45 Jeg hopper tilbage i sengen til Lois og vi drikker vores morgenté. Vi står op og efter morgenmad kører vi over til det lokale Sainsburys-supermarked for at købe ind. Vi kommer hjem og slapper af med en kop kaffe i sofaen.

11:00 Lois går i gang med at ordne og klassificere vores stak mediciner og piller. Vores ”medicinskabe” er blevet et stort rod, og når man bliver syg, er det blevet helt umuligt at finde, hvad man søger, især hvis man er meget stresset. Et blødende menneske ville bløde ihjel, længe før han/hun fandt æsken med hæfteplastre - du godeste, det er blevet til et stort mareridt!

Med sin karakteristiske opmærksomhed til detaljer, identificerer hun mediciner og piller der er uddaterede, og sorterer resten i ca 5-6 kategorier. Hver kategori er tildelt sin egen kasse, med kategoriens funktion tydeligt mærket på en klæbrig etiket på siden af kassen – sikke en kvinde!

Vores uddaterede mediciner og piller

Vores spritnye medicinskabe

Jeg føler mig imidlertid stadig lidt udkørt efter min dårlige nat. Jeg sætter mig til rette i min yndlingslænestol og lytter lidt til radio, et interessant program, ”Den sidste ord”. Lois og jeg er kommet i vane med at høre dette program hver uge, fordi vi ønsker at finde ud af, om nogen i de seneste 1-2 uger døde eller ej (jeg har bemærket, at der i de fleste uger sker nøjagtig 5 dødsfald).

Den japanske filminstruktør og manuskriptforfatter, Shinobu Hashimoto, døde desværre for nylig, på 100 år. Han skrev manuskriptet til de banebrydende klassiske japanske film, Rashomon (1950) og ”De syv samuraier”. 

Jeg mindes om, at jeg, som studerende, sad om et bord sammen med min lærer og mine medstuderende, mens vi hørte et uddrag af dialogen fra filmen Rashomon og forsøgte at finde frem til, hvad dialogen var ord for ord, og bagefter oversætte den til engelsk.

Rashomon var en banebrydende film, fordi den skildrede den samme hændelse flere gange: hver deltager i hændelsen giver sin egen version af, hvad der skete. Filmens handlingen kredsede om et slågsmål mellem en samurai og en bandit. Ved slutningen af historien er samuraien blevet dræbt og samuraiens kone er blevet enten voldtaget eller forført (afhængigt af hvem fortæller historien). Yikes!

Rashomon, den banebrydende japanske film, som Shinobu Hashimoto

skrev manuskriptet til (1950)

Set ud fra mit synspunkt er det mærkelige ved Hashimotos livshistorie  det, at han voksede op langt ude på landet, og havde ikke forbindelse eller kontakt med filmverden. Han trådte ind i den japanske hær, blev såret og tilbragte det meste af krigen i et hospital, hvor han tilfældigvis faldt over en magasin om filmmanuskripter. Han blev fascineret af magasinens indhold, og resten er historien. Rashomon var hans alleførste film nogensinde, og det blev til en klassiker. Talent er talent, og nogle mennesker har det og mere til. Men hvis Hashimoto ikke var blevet såret og ikke var faldet over den der magasin, ville han sandsynligvis har været en bondemand til sine dages ende.

For et par uger siden hørte vi i dette ”Sidste ord” program, om en danske kvinde, der voksede op langt ude på landet i Jylland. Tilfældigvis forelskede hun sig i 1945 i en af de britiske soldater, der var ankommet for at befrie landet. Hun giftede sig med ham, flyttede til London og blev det prestigiøse Victoria & Albert Museums hovedsagelige istandsættearbejder af historiske gobeliner. Hun endte med at opnå et internationalt ry.

Selvom hun voksede op i bøhlandet, blev hendes talent som reparatør af vævninger udvist fra en tidlig alder tilsyneladende. Men uden sin engelske ægtemand, ville hun sandsynligvis være blevet til en bondemands kone i Jylland til sine dages ende.

12:00 Lois er stadig beskæftet med at sortere og rydde op i vores medicinskabe, så jeg begynder at se det 4. afsnit af ”Dicte”s nye sæson, der først blev sendt i går aftes på More4-kanalen. Lois besluttede efter det 3. afsnit at holde op med at se denne serie: det var for fuld af personlige problemer og kriser, der ramte hovedfigurernes privatliv, udenfor de ”normale” mord og andre feje forbrydelser. ”For mørkt nu til dags”, sagde hun.

Serien handler om en aarhusianske kriminelreporter, der hedder Dicte Svendsen (spillet af Iben Hjejle). Hun er tætte venner med en af de kvindelige detektiver i byens politistation og bruger sine kontakter for at undersøge forskellige forbrydelser, samtidig med de officielle politiefterforskninger: og hun har for vane at finde gerningsmanden før politiet gør det (copyright Arthur Conan Doyle ha ha).

Det lykkes mig at se afsnittets første 20 minutter, før Lois kalder mig til frokost. Dicte er i dårligt humør igen – Bo, hendes ægtemand, som hun giftede sig med for et par uger siden, har været i gang med at knalde  sin eks-kone.

Programmet fremviser en anden dramatisk scene i toiletterne: noget, som serien er blevet berømt for. Og denne scene i aften er absolut så god som alle de forrige i denne tradition.

Dicte har tendens til at være tilfældigvis på stedet, når en forbrydelse er i gang. På en familiebesøg til en forlystelsespark (Tivoli?), beslutter hun pludselig at smutte på toilettet.

Den første bås, hun træder ind i, har et eller andet problem – en modbydelig rod, en ubehagelig stank eller en modbydelig hændelse er i gang, måske alle tre, men det er ikke helt klart.

i den første bås er der noget problem

Når Dicte åbner døren til den 2. bås, finder hun ud er, at en mand i en balaclavahue sidder derpå toilettet – kun hans øjne er synlige. Hun siger undskyld og foretager et hastigt tilbagetog.

i den anden bås sidder en mand i en balaclavahue

- du godeste, sikke et vanvid!!!!

Senere finder hun ud af, at manden i balaclavahuen netop har røvet og skudt en sikkerhedsvagt og stjålet hundredtusindvis af kroner. Det er heldigt, at hun falder over ham i dametoiletterne, ingen tvivl om det.

Set ud fra mit synspunkt sympatiserer jeg med manden, der sidder på et af dametoiletterne iført i en balaclavahue.  I Danmark er piktogrammer for herre- og dametoiletter er ikke så nemme at forstå og skelne, som i England efter min mening, og jeg selv tog fejl og trådte ind i dametoiletterne i Lousiana, det berømte danske kunstgalleri. Jeg havde ikke nogen balaclavahue på, bare min sædvanlige baseballkasked. Ligesom Dicte foretog jeg et hastigt tilbagetog.

Tilbageblik til februar 2013: vores første besøg til Danmark og første

besøg til Louisiana-kunstgalleriet: ved en fejltagelse smuttede jeg på dametoiletterne,

men foretog et hastigt tilbagetog

18:00 Vi spiser aftensmad og bagefter sætter Lois sig foran computeren for at fortsætte sine genealogiske forskning. Hun fokuserer i dag på sin mormors familie, dvs Brogden-familien, der synes at have været involveret i en stribe små forbrydelser i 19. århundrede, så Brogden-navnet dukker mange gange op i grevskabets lokale aviser: dette hjælper Lois’ forskning, ingen tvivl om det, men jeg begynder at undre mig, præcis hvem er denne kvinde, jeg har giftet mig med??? Yikes!

20:00 Lois er stadig beskæftiget med sin forskning i spisestuen, der fordobles som vores kontor, så sætter jeg mig til rette igen i stuen og fortsætter med at se det seneste (4.) afsnit af ”Dicte”, den danske krimi-serien.

Endnu flere tordenslag i plottet: Nina, Dictes veninde på den aarhusianske politistation, der for nogle år siden blev afskediget på grund af sin alkoholisme og nu har fået en 2. chance, bliver mobbet af sin nye chef, der har prøvet at forføre hende: og hun er begyndt at slå på flasken igen.

Selve Dicte, den lokale journalist, prøver at hjælpe Nina med at løse hendes nuværende sag (røveri, skydemordforsøg og afpresningsforsøg) ved at infiltrere den lokale storpenge-hasardspil verden. Problemet er, hun aldrig har spillet poker, så Dictes chef inviterer hende en aften hos sig for at lære at spille.

I chefens lejlighed udviser Dicte en overraskende talent for spillet – begynderheld måske? Pokerspillet med chefen bliver til strip-poker, og chefen er næsten nøgen, da hans kone dukker op. I stedet for at være vred på sin ægtemand, er konen ivrig efter at blive med, og senere inviterer Dicte til at deltage i en trekant – du godeste, sikke et vanvid!!!

Lois træder ind i stuen i midten af handlingen, og jeg mistænker, hun er blevet forfalden til serien igen på trods af dens vanvittige plot – du godeste!  Men der er nu kun et afsnit tilbage (det 5.), gudskelov. Afsnittet sendes på fredag – nå, vi får se.

21:00 Vi fortsætter med at se lidt fjernsyn. De viser en interessant dokumentarfilm, der handler om Angela Carter, den feministiske forfatter.

Vi begynder at se dette program tilfældigt – hverken Lois eller jeg har læst nogle af Carters romaner, men der er ikke noget andet, vi vil se før vi hopper op i sengen igen. Men vi er meget glade for, at vi ser programmet. En meget interessant kvinde, der døde på kun 51 år, og hvis romaner alle var oprindelige og anderledes fra hinanden. Programmet giver os lyst til at læse nogle af sine værker, ingen tvivl om det.

Hun blev fanget i et kærlighedsløs ægteskab med hr Carter – de boede i byen Bristol. Hun besluttede at tage en 2 ugers ferie i Japan, men forblev boende i landet i 2-3 år, hvor hun blev til en moderne geisha-pige og flyttede ind med en af hendes kunder, der viste sig at være lidt af en skørtejager, for at sige mildt.

Hun flyttede tilbage til Bristol men fik en skilsmisse fra hr Carter. Efter en kort ophold i byen Sheffield, kom hun tilbage til Bristol og senere flyttede sammen med en sød langhåret håndværker, som hun har tilkaldt for at få repareret et eller anden apparat i sit hus, jeg glemmer detaljerne. Parret fik et barn og blev sammen indtil hendes tidlige død på 51 år.

Det er lidt uhyggeligt, at hun i sine bevægelser fulgte mine: i 1960’erne boede hun i Bristol, ligesom mig, mine forældre og mine søskende. Hun flyttede til Tokyo ved slutningen af 1960’erne og boede i Tokyo samtidig med mig – jeg var en studerende derovre. Senere boede hun i Sheffield, hvor jeg var igen studerende. Et mærkelig tilfælde, men det springer jeg over.

22:00 Vi går i seng – zzzzzzzzz!!!!