Wednesday, October 24, 2018
12:00 Our elder daughter Alison, together with Ed and
their 3 children, arrive from Haslemere, Surrey. It's so nice to see them
again. I love all of our 3 grandchildren, Josie (12), Rosalind (10) and Isaac
(8), and I really think they love Lois and me.
I also feel that I have a special bond with Josie, the
eldest, because I feel she's the most socially awkward of the 3 children. It
was the day that Lois and I retired in 2006 that Alison called us and told us
she was a few months pregnant with Josie, one of the truly unforgettable
moments in our lives.
14:00 Lois, Alison, Ed and the kids go to town to see the
new Brewery shopping mall and the new John Lewis department store, which
neither Lois nor I have seen yet. In the meantime I go to bed and take a huge
afternoon nap.
18:00 We are 7 for dinner. Lois and me are just 2 old
crows living alone in a large and (relatively) unpopulated house, so it's a bit
of a shock to me suddenly to hear so much chatter in the house, and in
particular Rosalind, who is such a chatterbox, and who loves to sit next to me and
talk about everything and nothing. She is so charming!
Ed is currently unemployed. He is a qualified lawyer, and
over the past 10 years or so he has worked in legal departments of various companies.
For the first time Ed is a little more candid with us
about his job prospects. He worked for almost 6 years in Copenhagen, but his
company released him at the end of March 2018, and the family moved back to
England in the summer.
However, it did not seem that he was in a hurry to
suddenly throw himself into a new job and Lois and I assumed that his previous
company must have given him a very generous amount of compensation when he was
made redundant, maybe even a year's salary, or the like.
He has a career counsellor from his previous company and he often speaks with various head-hunters, and spends a lot of time on
"networking" as he calls it. And he has never given the impression
that he was about to start panicking. The family does not seem to be in short
of a few bob, and Alison recently bought her own car, in addition to the
family's existing car.
But now it seems that after 7 months his unemployed
status has begun to weigh on him a little and he is very keen now to get a new
job before Christmas.
Recently, he failed to get a job in Manchester, but he
was among the final 3 candidates. There are currently 2 possible opportunities
in prospect, one in Kent and another again in Manchester. He has arranged 2
phone calls for Friday, and he travels to London on Monday for a
"conversation" about the job in Kent.
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz !!!!
Thursday, October 25, 2018
Lois and I have invited Sharon, Lois' 49-year-old niece
from Oxford, for lunch, along with her 2 youngest children, Lily-Rose (12) and
"Little" Lois (8).
Lois and Alison work out a new table
arrangement,
so all 9 of us can sit together for lunch
After lunch, everyone except me goes to Pittville Park.
Meanwhile I go to bed and take another giant afternoon nap. They come home at
4pm and we relax with a cup of tea and a piece of cake.
(left to right), Lily-Rose
(half-hidden), "Little" Lois, "Big" Lois,
Rosalind, Josie, Isaac and Alison
"Big" Lois, and Rosalind
It has been a long time since I have heard so much
laughter in this house, to put it mildly (which is nice)!
Sharon and her 2 children go off at 5pm, and, after Alison
and Ed's children have gone to bed, we spend the last hour of the day watching
television, the latest (2nd) episode of the new Big Bang Theory season - a fun
episode , where Sheldon and Amy return to the apartment after their honeymoon
in New York.
Sheldon and Amy have bought
identical souvenir gifts for their friends:
"I love New York" t-shirts,
ordered from Amazon Prime whilst on their plane ride home
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz !!!!!
Friday, October 26, 2018
06:00 I get up early and watch television. Early morning is my main
chance to watch television in peace and quiet. An interesting documentary film
is on, 3rd part of 5, all about the "Human Universe." The host of the
program is the charming physicist, Brian Cox.
This third episode addresses the question. "Are we
alone?". Brian points out that water is necessary for life to exist and
there are signs that there was once water on the planets Mars and Venus.
Mercury is too cold so only ice can exist there and the other planets are too
hot, so water would evaporate there.
It turns out, however, that there are millions of planets in the
universe on which water could exist. And it is also true that life appeared on Earth not that long after the Earth began to exist as a planet (from a
cosmological point of view), i.e. it wasn't that difficult - which implies the existence of many planets with
possible life forms, even though Brian reminds us that intelligent
civilisations are maybe all short-lived.
It is perhaps surprising, but Brian himself leans to the view
that we are actually alone as regards intelligent life-forms. A sufficiently advanced
civilisation could in theory, sooner or later, have constructed machines that
could colonise the entire universe and extract from each planet the resources
they needed to reproduce themselves there, as suggested by mathematician John
von Neumann in the 1940s. But we do not see any such machines for some reason.
Perhaps the chance event on the Earth, whereby a
bacterium penetrated an archaean, thus making more complex organisms possible,
in fact, was a very very very rare event. Every human being and every animal
living on earth today comes from that first penetration - it never happened a
second time, as far as we know. How fascinating.
why are there no von Neumann-style
machines to be seen?
10:00 This morning all 7 of us go in 2 cars to the Gallagher
shopping mall. Isaac (8) and I (72) make a bee-line for the Patisserie-Valerie
café in the Next clothing store, while the others go shopping in both Next
itself and in Sainsbury's supermarket. There are a lot of winter clothes on
offer at the moment, and Lois also wants to buy clothes for Lily and Jessie,
our 5 year old twin grandchildren in Perth, Australia.
As always, Josie (12) has the hardest time finding
suitable clothes. She does not want to look like a boy, but at the same time
she hates clothes that are too girly-girly. Finally she finds a black
hoodie that has no fur lining, which she likes a lot.
Apparently, Sainsbury's no longer has separate boys'
departments and girls' departments because they regard it as sexist - good
grief, what a crazy world we live in !!!!
After an hour, all 5 of them return to the
Patisserie-Valerie café and meet up with Isaac and me.
(left to right) Josie (in her new
hoodie), Rosalind and Isaac.
Alison and Lois are in the background at the
counter
We all have a snack in the cafe and afterwards we drive
over to the Wyevale Garden Centre to have lunch.
It is much more quiet and peaceful in the garden centre than usual because the winter season's first racing festival starts today and
most local residents are staying away from the Wyevale Centre because it is so
close to the racecourse (less than half a mile).
Alison and Ed, however, are feeling brave today and seem
to be keen to defy the traffic jams - and I'm not entirely sure why. My god,
what madness!
We have lunch in a (comparatively)
people-free
Wyevale garden centre. But outside there are
unfortunately massive
traffic jams, due to the winter season's
first racing festival.
Good grief - what madness !!!!
16:00 Alison, Ed and the three children have to leave for
home. We are going to miss them tonight when we are alone again, that's for
sure.
They are currently not entirely sure where they will
spend Christmas. Ed's father, Stephen, has to undergo a major operation in
January. Ed has not told us what kind of surgery it is, but it is obviously something
serious. The result is that it is Ed's parents who need to take priority rather
than us. Poor Stephen. Ed says that Stephen has already become very stressed,
which is understandable.
We have a little listen to the radio, an interesting
program called "The Last Word". Lois and I have got in the habit of
hearing this program every week because we want to find out if anyone over the
past 1-2 weeks has died or not (I have noticed that most weeks exactly 5 deaths
occur ).
The translator Anthea Bell, one of my heroes, has
unfortunately died at the age of 82. She specialised in French and German, but
she once learned Danish over Christmas and New Year, just so she could translate
some of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy-tales - what a woman!
Anthea in her younger years
Although she translated many serious works, such as some
of Franz Kafka's novels, she is most famous for translating stories from the humorous French comic strip, Asterix the Gaul, and his epic struggles against the Roman
army, etc.
one of Anthea's translations of Asterix
Asterix's original French text contained a lot of typical
French verbal humor that would not mean anything to English-speaking readers,
but Andrea had knack of finding similar Anglo-Saxon cultural references, and many
believed that her versions were actually more amusing than the original, which
is a bit of a triumph, I must say.
A sword fight between Asterix and a Roman soldier was in
the French original packed with references to Cyrano de Bergerac, who used to
compose medieval French poems aloud while he was fighting a duel.
English-speaking readers would not recognise these references, so Anthea
decided to base the duel on Hamlet's duel with Laertes and she included a lot
of quotations from Shakespeare.
There was a dog in the French original, called Idée-fix,
which Anthea renamed "Dogmatix". And the village's oldest inhabitant,
who in French was called Agecanonix, became "Geriatrix" in the English version. The village's only druid, Panoramix, became "Get-a-fix".
"We all live in a yellow quinquereme" - that
was another of her brilliant ideas.
a typical Roman quinquereme
She also had to ensure that her English translations
fitted the size of the original French speech bubbles - she often had to count
the number of letters she needed. Poor Anthea !!
18:00 We have dinner and spend the rest of the evening
watching television. An old episode of Top of the Pops is on, from July 1986,
the week of Prince Andrew's wedding to Sarah Ferguson.
What happy days when we never imagined that royal
marriages could end badly!
20:00 We continue to watch some television. An
interesting documentary film is on, (3rd part of 3), all about the history of
dance in Britain: "Dancing cheek to cheek: an intimate story of
dance". The program's hosts are the charming Lucy Worsley and Len Goodman.
Unfortunately, I doze through most of the program - damn!
But occasionally I wake up for a few minutes and pick up a few small insights.
It seems that we Brits got all our dances (except our
home grown folk dances) from the European continent until the end of the 19th
century (the waltz, the polka, etc.). But starting from the 20th century, most
of our new dances came from the new world, mostly the US, but also Latin
America. There was only one home grown dance: the Lambeth Walk from 1938 -
yikes, that's a bit sad!
In 1914, the pope banned the tango in Vatican City for
some reason.
Good grief, what a crazy world we live in !!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz !!!!!
Danish
translation
Onsdag den 24.
oktober 2018
12:00 Vores
ældste datter Alison, sammen med Ed og deres 3 børn, ankommer fra Haslemere,
Surrey. Det er så rart at kunne se dem igen. Jeg elsker alle vores 3 børnebørn,
Josie (12), Rosalind (10) og Isaac (8), og jeg tror egenligt, at de elsker Lois
og mig.
Jeg føler
også, at jeg har et særligt bånd med Josie, den ældste, fordi jeg føler, hun er
den mest socialt akavet af de 3 børn. Det var dagen, Lois og jeg i 2006 gik på
pension, at Alison ringede til os og fortalte os hun var et par måneder gravid
med Josie: et af de rigtigt uforglemmelige øjeblikke i vores liv.
14:00 Lois, Alison,
Ed og børnene tager i byen for at se det nye Brewery indkøbscenter og det nye
John Lewis stormagasinet, som hverken Lois eller jeg har set endnu. I mellemtiden
går jeg i seng og tager en gigantisk eftermiddagslur.
18:00 Vi spiser alle 7 aftensmad. Lois og mig er bare 2 gamle krager, der bor alene i
et stort og (forholdsvis) mennesketomt hus, så er det lidt af et chok for mit
vedkommende, pludselig at høre så meget snik-snak i huset, og i sær Rosalind, der
er sådan et sludrechatol, og elsker at sidde ved siden af mig og tale om alt og
ingenting. Hun er så charmerende!
Ed er for
tiden arbejdsløs. Han er en kvalificeret advokat, og i de seneste ca 10 år har
arbejdet i forskellige firmaers juridiske afdelinger.
For første
gang er Ed lidt mere åbenhjertig om sine jobudsigter. Han arbejdede i næsten 6
år i København, men hans firma fritstillede ham ved slutningen af marts 2018,
og familien flyttede tilbage til England om sommeren.
Det syntes
imidlertid ikke, at han havde lyst pludselig til at kaste sig ud i et nyt job,
og Lois og jeg formodede, at sit forrige firma må have givet ham en meget
generøs erstatningsbeløb, da han blev afskediget, måske endda et års løn, eller lignende.
Han har en karriererådgiver
fra sit forrige firma, og taler ofte med forskellige hovedjægere, og bruger en
masse tid på at ”netværke”, som han kalder det. Og han har aldrig givet det
indtryk af, at han overhovedet var ved
at gå i panik. Familien synes ikke at være i bekneb for skillinger, og Alison
købte for nylig sin egen bil, udover familiens eksisterende bil.
Men nu lader det til, at
hans arbejdsløse tilstand efter 7 måneder er begyndt at tynge ham lidt ned, og
han er meget frisk på at få et nyt job før juletiden.
For nylig mislykkedes det
ham at få et job i Manchester, men han var blandt de sidste 3 kandidater. Der
er for tiden 2 mulige lejligheder i vente, den ene i grevskabet Kent og den
anden igen i Manchester. Han har arrangeret 2 telefonopkald til fredag, og han rejser
til London på mandag til en ”samtale” om jobbet i Kent.
22:00 Vi går i seng –
zzzzzzz!!!!
Torsdag den 25. oktober
2018
Lois og jeg har inviteret
Sharon, Lois’ 49-årige niece fra Oxford, til frokost, sammen med hendes 2
yngste børn, Lily-Rose (12) og ”lille” Lois (8).
Lois og Alison
finder på et nyt bordarrangement,
så vi alle 9 kan
sidde sammen til frokost
Efter frokost
tager alle bortset fra mig til Pittville-parken. I mellemtiden går jeg i seng
og tager mig endnu en gigantisk eftermiddagslur. De kommer hjem kl 16 og vi slapper
af med en kop te og et stykke kage.
(venstre til højre), Lily-Rose (halvt gemt), ”lille” Lois, ”store” Lois,
Rosalind,
Josie, Isaac og Alison
”store”
Lois, og Rosalind
Det er gået
lang tid, siden der har været så meget latter i dette hus, for at sige mildt
(hvilket er rart) !
Sharon og
hendes 2 børn tog kl 17 af sked, og efter Alison og Eds børn går i seng, bruger
vi dagens seneste time på at se lidt fjernsyn, det seneste (2.) afsnit af den
nye Big Bang Theory sæson – et morsomt afsnit, hvor Sheldon og Amy kommer
tilbage til lejligheden efter deres hvedebrødsdage i New York.
Sheldon og Amy har købt identiske souveniggaver til deres venner:
”Jeg elsker New York” t-shirts, bestilt fra
Amazon Prime
22:00 Vi går i
seng – zzzzzzz!!!!!
Fredag den 26.
oktober 2018
06:00 Jeg står
tidligt op og ser lidt fjernsyn. Det er min hovedsagelige chance for at se
fjernsyn i fred og ro. De viser en interessant dokumentarfilm, 3.del af 5, der
handler om det ”Menneskelige univers”. Programmets vært er den charmerende
fysiker, Brian Cox.
Dette 3.
afsnit takler spørgsmålet. ”Er vi alene?”. Brian påpeger, at vand er nødvendigt
for livet kan eksistere, og at der er tegn på, at der engang var vand på
planeterne Mars og Venus. Mercury er for kold, så kun is kan eksistere, og de
andre planeter er for varme, så vand ville fordampe.
Det viser sig,
at der er miliarder af planeter i universet, hvor vand kunne eksistere. Og der
er også sandt, at livet dukkede op på jorden ikke ret længe (fra det
kosmologiske synspunkt) efter at jorden begyndte at eksistere som en planet,
hvilket medfører eksistensen af mange planeter med mulige livsformer, selvom
Brian minder os om, at intelligente civilisationer måske er kortvarige.
Det er
overraskende, men Brian selv hælder til meningen, at vi faktisk er alene, hvad
angår intelligente livsformer. En
tilstrækkeligt avanceret civilisation kunne i teorien før eller senere have
konstrueret maskiner, der kunne kolonisere hele universet, og udvinde på hver
planet ressourcerne, de havde brug for til at kunne reproducere sig selv, som
matematikeren John von Neumann foreslog i 1940'erne. Men sådanne maskiner ser vi ikke af en eller anden grund.
Måske var den
event på jorden, hvorved en bakterie trængte ind i en arkebakterie og gjorde
mere komplekser organismer mulige,
faktisk var en meget meget meget sjælden event. Hvert menneske og hvert dyr i
live på jorden i dag stammer fra den der første penetration – det skete aldrig
en 2. gang, så vidt vi ved. Hvor fascinerende.
hvorfor er der ikke nogle von Neumann-stil maskiner?
10:00 I
formiddag tager vi alle 7 med 2 biler til Gallagher-indkøbscentret. Isaac (8)
og jeg (72) styrer lige imod Patisserie-Valerie caféen i Next-tøjstormagasinet,
mens de andre går tøjindkøb både i selve Next og i Sainsburys-supermarkedet.
Der er en masse vintertøj på tilbud for tiden, og Lois vil også købe tøj til
Lily og Jessie, vores 5-årige tvillingebørnebørn i Perth, Australien.
Som altid har
Josie (12) mest svært ved at finde
egnede tøj. Hun har ikke lyst til at se ud som en dreng, men samtidig hader hun
tøj, som er alt for girly-girly. Til sidste finder hun en sort hoodie, der ikke
har noget pelsbeklædt hætte.
Tilsyneladende
har Sainsburys ikke længere adskilte drengeafdelinger og pigeafdelinger, fordi
de betragter det som sexist – du godeste, sikke en skør verden vi lever i !!!!
Efter en time
kommer de alle 5 tilbage ind i Patisserie-Valerie-caféen og mødes med Isaac og
mig.
(venstre til højre) Josie i sin ny hoodie, Rosalind og Isaac.
Alison
og Lois står i baggrunden på disken
Vi spiser alle
et snack i kaféen og bagefter kører vi over til Wyevale havecentret for at
spise frokost.
Der er meget
mere stille og rolig i havecentrets café, end normalt, fordi vintersæsonens
første væddeløbsfestival starter i dag, og de fleste lokale indbyggere holder
sig væk fra Wyevale-centret, fordi det er så tæt på væddeløbsbanen (mindre end
en halv mile).
Alison og Ed
føler sig imidlertid modige i dag og synes at være friske på at trodse
trafikpropperne – og jeg er ikke helt sikker på hvorfor. Du godeste, sikke et
vanvid!
vi spiser frokost i et (forholdsvis) mennesketomt
Wyevale
havecenter. Men udenfor er der desværre massive
trafikpropper,
på grund af vintersæsonens 1. væddeløbsfestival.
Du
godeste – sikke et vanvid!!!!
16:00 Alison,
Ed og de tre børn skal til af sted. Vi kommer til at savne dem i aften, når vi
er alene igen, ingen tvivl om det.
De er for
øjeblikket ikke helt sikre på, hvor de skal tilbringe juletid. Eds far,
Stephen, skal gennemgå en større operation
i januar. Ed har ikke fortalt os hvad slags operation, men det er åbenbart
noget alvorligt. Resultatet er derfor, at det er Eds forældre, der skal tage
prioriteten, snarere end os. Stakkels Stephen. Ed siger, at Stephen allerede er
blevet meget stresset, hvilket er forståeligt.
Vi lytter lidt
til radio, et interessant program med titlen ”Det 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).
Oversætteren Anthea
Bell, en af mine helte, er desværre død på 82 år. Hun specialiserede sig i
fransk og tysk, men hun lærte engang dansk julen og nytåret over, så hun kunne
oversætte nogle af HK Andersens fortællinger – sikke en kvinde!
Selvom hun
oversatte mange alvorlige værker, som for eksempel nogle af Franz Kafkas
romaner, er hun mest kendt for at oversatte fortællinger af den franske
tegneserie, Asterix og de gæve gallere, og hans kampe mod den romerske hær osv.
en
af Antheas oversættelser af Asterix
Asterix’ oprindlige
franske tekst indeholdt en masse typiske fransk verbal humor, der ikke ville
betyde noget for engelsktalende læsere, men Andrea havde en vis evne til at
finde tilsvarende angel-sasiske referencer, og mange mente, at hendes versioner
faktisk var morsommere, end den oprindelige, hvilket er lidt af en triumf, det
må jeg nok sige.
En sværdkamp
mellem Asterix og en romersk soldat var i den franske oprindlige propfyldt med referencer
til Cyrano de Bergerac, der komponerede et midalderligt fransk digt mens han
var i gang med at kæmpe en duel. Engelsktalende læsere ville ikke genkende disse
referencer, så derfor besluttede Anthea at basere duellen på Hamlets duel med
Laertes og hun inkluderede en masse citationer fra Shakespeare.
Der var en
hund i den franske oprindlige, der hed Idée-fix, som Anthea gennavnte ”Dogmatix”.
Og landsbyens ældste indbygger, der på fransk hed Agecanonix, blev ”Geriatrix”
på engelsk. Landsbyens eneste druide, Panoramix, blev til ”Get-a-fix”.
”We all live
in a yellow quinquereme” – det var endnu et af hendes brilliante idéer.
et
typisk romersk femradåret skib
Hun måtte også
sikre, at hendes engelske oversættelser passede til størrelsenaf de oprindelige
franske talebobler – det var ofte nødt til at tælle antallet af bogstaver i
dem. Stakkels Anthea!!
18:00 Vi
spiser aftensmad og bruger resten af aftenen på at se lidt fjernsyn. De viser
et gamle afsnit af Top of the Pops fra jui 1986, måneden af Prins Andrews
bryllup med Sarah Ferguson.
Andrew og Fergie aflægger et uofficielt besøg til BBC-studiet
Lykkelige
dage, da vi ikke mistænkte, at royale ægteskaber kunne ende galt!
20:00 Vi
fortsætter med at se lidt fjernsyn. De viser en interessant dokumentarfilm (3.
del af 3), der handler om historien af dans i Storbritannien: ”At danse kind
mod kind: en intim historie af dans”. Programmets værter er de charmerende Lucy
Worsley og Len Goodman.
Desværre døser
jeg igennem det meste af programmet – pokkers! Men af og til vågner jeg i nogle
minutter og henter jeg et par små indsigter.
Det lader til,
at vi briter fik alle vores danse (bortset fra vores hjemmdyrkede folkdanse)
fra det europæiske kontinent op til slutningen af det 19. århundrede (valsen, polkaen osv). Men startende fra det
20. århundrede kom hovedparten af vores nye danse fra det nye verden, for det
meste USA, men også latinamerika. Der var kun en hjemmedyrket dans : Lambeth
Walk fra 1938 – yikes!
I 1914 forbød paven
tangoen i Vatikanstaten af en eller anden grund. Du godeste, sikke en skør
verden vi lever i !!!
22:00 Vi går i
seng – zzzzzzzz!!!!!
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