Danskcolin: Sunday, December 2 2018

09:00 Lois and I get up and after breakfast, we talk for a while on whatsapp with Sarah, our daughter in Perth, Australia, and her 5-year-old twins, Lily and Jessie. Francis, Sarah's husband got his long-awaited hernia operation on Friday - he is in pain from time to time but the doctors have given him powerful painkillers. But he is currently not allowed to lift anything heavy.

The twins have begun to get excited about the coming Christmas season. We watch them playing with the advent calendar app, which Lois sent them the other day online - how cute they are!!!

10:45 Sarah has to give the twins their dinner - local time in Perth is 6:45 pm, so we finish the call.

Lois and I chat a little with each other about the advent calendar app we sent the twins, which seems to be a massive hit. And modern advent calendar apps are much healthier than traditional ones – that’s for sure. Lois and I recall that we recently read an interesting article about a local man who found the traditional calendars a temptation he could not resist (source: Onion News).

After hiding the rest of his advent calendars out of sight where he could not be tempted, local man Ben Hart confirmed to reporters that he had finally managed to stop, after eating his way through three of them.

"I said I would only eat one, but these things are so addictive that I just started popping them in my mouth without thinking", Hart said, adding that while he felt a little sick after he swallowed all the Lindt chocolates from two of "Santa's workshop" advent calendars, he could not stop himself going straight on to a calendar shaped like a Christmas tree.

"There is something special about little chocolates behind little windows - it just turns me into an animal. If I don’t stop myself, I could easily eat a couple of dozen of these things." At press time, a crazed Hart had devoured the whole contents of a nativity-themed calendar inside less than two minutes.

What madness! But the Onion is the best source for local news, we know that for sure, and its website certainly has its finger on the local pulse. We speculate again about exactly where it has its offices: we suspect that it could be based in the local post office and newsagent's, where the village’s latest rumours are often overheard being discussed quite loudly at the counter by both customers and post office staff.

Recently, we heard a rumour about the newsagent’s itself. People say the business’s elderly owner wants to sell up - and it's not clear if she will find a buyer. If the news-agency side of the business closes, the future of its post office franchise will be in doubt. There are rumours that the local convenience store, the former Bakery Stores, could take it on. But that’s something we are not completely sure about - the jury is still out on that one.

11:00 We have to go out. Lois wants to attend her sect’s two religious services taking place today in the town of Tewkesbury. She has periodic back pains at the moment and she has asked me to drive her over there and pick her up again at 3 o’clock. She is taking with her some of the photos we took at the sect’s Christmas party yesterday: she wants to show them off to some of the congregation.

The classic ones are, as always, pictures of somebody looking pie-eyed, or "in the zone", or asleep at the table - those never get old.

On the way home, I swing by the local Morrison's supermarket to buy a few things: fruit, a half-cucumber, eggs, bread, 4 rolls of Christmas wrapping paper, and two bottles of tonic water for my daily gin and tonic.

I come home and put our 2 patio tables to bed for the winter. I stack the chairs away in the shed at the bottom of the garden and cover the two tables with the new covers I bought online.

Maybe Lois could do the same with me? That is, cover me with an old tarpaulin and/or stack me in the shed for the winter. She once told me that French peasants, in the 19th century and earlier, used to almost go into hibernation during the winter months from November to March - there was no work to be done on the farm or on the fields in the winter, the days were short and there was no point in doing very much, other than spend most of the day sleeping – good grief, what a crazy world we live in !!!

our patio, now so peaceful and quiet, with the patio chairs stacked in the shed

and our two patio tables finally put to bed for the winter

12:30 I have lunch and afterwards I go to bed and take a huge afternoon nap. I get up at 2:30 pm and drive over to Tewkesbury to pick Lois up after her second worship service. We head home and relax on the couch with a cup of tea and a piece of bread with homemade apricot jam - yum yum.

17:00 We begin preparing our protest letter to the council’s planning officer. We want to declare our objection to the plans our local doctors have for demolishing their current clinic, which is only 100 yards away from our house, and then selling the land with potential planning permission for 6 new houses.

Our neighbours, Stephen and Frances, whose property is directly adjacent to one of the planned new houses, have already submitted their protest letters, and we think they have done a very thorough job on finding comprehensive arguments against the doctors' plans. We do not have much to add, but it is still important that we support them and state our agreement with them, and that we confirm that we are as much opposed to the suggested building plans as they are. We do not want the council planning officer to be able to say that Stephen and Frances are just a vociferous, unrepresentative and isolated minority ha ha!

Later in the evening we produce a true blockbuster of a protest letter, to put it mildly, even though we say so ourselves. We hope the letter will go down in history as a turning point in the village's development and possibly even lead to the abolition of Brexit - who knows?

our protest letter's opening lines ...

....and its final salvo

But back to reality! I put my quill pen away - it will not be wanted these 50 years – that’s for sure.

17:30 Lynda calls me. Her U3A Middle English group has its next monthly meeting on Friday afternoon at the bar of the town's Everyman Theatre, and she calls me to check that I can attend. She promises to send members an email in the next 2 days telling us which lines of the poem "Brus" the group will be concentrating on at Friday's group meeting.

The poem "Brus" was written in approx. 1375 by the poet John Barbour in Scots English, and is all about the famous Scottish hero, "Robert the Bruce", ie Robert I of Scotland, and about the role he played in the Scottish war of independence.

Of course, I'm polite to Lynda during the call, even though I am seething inside. Why does Lynda always leave it to the last minute to give us the information we need? That means we group members will only have 3-4 days to prepare for the group meeting and we have plenty of other tasks on our plate, to put it mildly! What madness !!!!!

At the last meeting in October, I asked her to give us next time the part of Robert the Bruce story where Robert is sitting in a cave: he is fleeing from King Edward and the English, and is watching a spider trying repeatedly to climb the wall of the cave: every time the spider falls to the ground it gets up again and makes another attempt. The spider’s determination encourages and inspires Robert to resume the fight against the English invaders.

Robert the Bruce and the spider: cave couch by Acme Furniture Warehouse

We group members are all old crows in our 60's and 70's, and we were all brought up on the story of Robert the Bruce and the spider.

But unfortunately, Lynda tells me today that the spider incident isn’t even mentioned in the poem. It was a later addition to the myth, it appears. Damn !!!!

The poem's most famous quotation: a point of view,

which is hard to contradict, I have to say!!!!

18:00 Lois and I have dinner and spend the rest of the evening watching television. An interesting documentary is on, all about the history of animation in the UK film industry over the past approx. 120 years.

It is very nostalgic to see again Bob Godfrey's fun British suburban version of the Indian classic Kama Sutra, transplanted to England in the 1960s.

Godfrey's version plays out in a typical British suburb, and features typically cliché'd English dialogue between the man and his wife Ethel, who pride themselves on the fact that, although the majority of today's married couples lead dull, routine lives, this is not the case with them.

Two examples of the couple's inventive sex positions:

(1) the town-centre bicycle position

(2) the so-called scaffold-and-trapdoor position

My god, what madness !!!! [that's enough madness madness – Ed.]

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

Danish translation

09:00 Lois og jeg står op og efter morgenmad taler vi lidt på whatsapp med Sarah, vores datter i Perth, Australien, og me hendes 5-årige tvillinger, Lily og Jessie. Francis, Sarahs mand fik sin længe-forventede brokoperation i fredags – han føler smerter fra tid til anden men lægerne har givet ham kraftige smertestillende piller, og han er for tiden ikke tilladt til at løfte noget tungt, staklen.

Tvillingerne er begyndt at blive begejstret over den kommende juletid. Vi ser dem lege med en adventskalender-app, som Lois sendte dem forleden på nettet – hvor er de dog søde!!!

10:45 Sarah skal nu servere aftensmad for tvillinger – lokal tid i Perth er 18:45, så vi afslutter opkaldet.

Lois og jeg taler lidt med hinanden om den adventskalender-app, vi sendte tvillinger, som synes at være en massiv hit. Og moderne advent-kalender-apper er meget meget sundere, end de traditionelle – det har vi ikke nogen tvivl om. Lois og jeg mindes, at vi for nylig læste en interessant artikel om en lokal mand, der fandt kalenderne en fristelse, han ikke kunne modstå (kilde: Onion News).

Efter den lokale mand Ben Hart skjulte resten af sine adventskalendere ud af syn, hvor han ikke ville blive fristet, bekræftede han til lokale reportere, at han endelig havde formået at stoppe efter at have spist tre kalendere.

"Jeg sagde, at jeg kun ville spise en, men disse ting er så vanedannende, at jeg lige begyndte at putte dem i munden uden at tænke", sagde Hart og tilføjede, at mens han følte sig lidt syg efter at han nedsvælgede Lindt-chokoladerne fra to ”julemands værksted” adventskalendere, han kunne ikke hjælpe, men straks gå videre til en kalender formet som et juletræ.

"Der er noget specielt om små chokolader bag små vinduer – det gør mig bare til en slags dyr. Hvis jeg ikke stopper mig selv, kunne jeg nemt spise et par dusin af disse ting. "På pressetid havde en afsindig Hart fortæret hele indholdet af en Kristi fødsel-temaet kalender indenfor under to minutter.

Onion News er den bedste kilde på lokale nyheder, det ved vi med sikkerhed, og dens hjemmeside har fingeren på den lokale puls. Vi spekulerer nogle gang om, hvor nyhedskilden har til huse: vi mistænker, at den kunne være baseret i den lokale postkontor- og bladhandlerforretning , hvor landsbyens senester rygter ofte bliver diskuteret meget højlydt ved disken af både kunder og postkontorets personale.

For nylig har vi hørt et rygte om selve bladhandlerforretning. Folk siger, at forretnings ældre ejer har lyst til at sælge – og det er ikke helt klart om hun vil finde en køber. Hvis bladhandlerforretningen lukker ned, vil fremtiden af forretningens postkontor-franchise være i tvivl. Der er rygter om, at den lokale nærbutik, den tidligere Bakery Stores, kunne overtage den. Men det er vi ikke helt sikre på – juryen er stadig ude om det.

11:00 Vi skal ud. Lois ønsker at deltage i sin sekts to gudstjenester, der finder sted i dag i byen Tewkesbury. Hun har periodiske rygsmerter for tiden, og hun har bedt mig om at køre hende derover og hente hende igen kl 15. Lois tager med nogle af de fotoerne, vi i går tog på sektens julefrokost: hun vil gerne vise dem til nogle af menigheden.

På vej hjem smutter jeg ind i det lokale Morrisons-supermarked for at købe nogle ting: frugt, agurk, æg, brød, 4 ruller julepapir, og to flasker tonicvand til min daglig gin og tonic. Jeg kommer hjem og går i gang med at putte vores 2 terrasseborde i seng til vinteren. Jeg gemmer stolene væk i skuret i bunden af haven, og dække de to borde med de nye presenninger, jeg købte online.

Måske kunne Lois gøre det samme med mig? Dvs dække mig i en gammel presenning eller gemme mig i skuret til vinteren. Hun fortalte mig en gang, at franske bønder, i 1800-tallet og tidligere, plejede næsten at ligge i vinterdvale fra november til marts – der var ikke nogen arbejde på gården eller på markerne om vinteren, dagene var korte, og der var ikke nogen point med at gør andet, end at bruge dagen på at sove – du godeste, sikke en skør verden vi lever i !!!

vores terrasse, nu så stille og rolig, med vores to terrasseborde

endelig puttet i seng til vinteren

13:00 Jeg spiser frokost og bagefter går jeg i seng og tager en gigantisk eftermiddagslur. Jeg står op kl 14:30 og kører over til Tewkesbury for at hente Lois efter hendes sekts 2. gudstjeneste. Vi kører hjem og slapper af i sofaen med en kop te og et stykke brød med hjemmelavet abricosmarmelade yum yum.

17:00 Vi begynder at forberede vores protestbrev til kommunens planlægningsembedsmand. Vi erklarer, at vi indvender, at vores lokale læger har til hensigt at nedrive deres nuværende klinik, der ligger kun 100m væk fra vores hus, og sælge jorden med potentiel planlægningstilladelse til 6 nye huse.

Vores naboer, Stephen og Frances, hvis ejendom støder op til et af de planlagde nye huse, har allerede indsendt deres protestbrev, og vi synes, de have gjort et meget grundigt arbejde for at finde omfattende argumenter mod lægernes planer. Vi har ikke ret meget at tilføje, men det er stadig vigtigt at vi støtter dem og er enige med dem, og at vi bekræfter, at vi modsætter os den forslåede bygningsplan lige så meget som de gør. Vi vil ikke have, at kommunens planlægningsembedsmand kunne sige, at Stephen og Frances bare er et højlydt, urepræsentativt og isoleret mindretal ha ha!

Senere på aftenen producerer vi en sand blockbuster af et protestbrev, for at sige mildt, selvom vi siger det selv! Vi håber brevet vil gå over i historien som et vendepunkt i landsbyens udvikling og muligvis fører til afskaffelsen af Brexit, hvem ved?

vores protesbreves åbnende linjer...

...og dets sidste salve

Men tilbage til virkeligheden! Jeg lægger min fjerpen væk – der vil ikke være brug for den i de næste 50 år – det ved jeg med sikkerhed!

17:30 Lynda ringer til mig. Hendes U3A middelengelske gruppe har sit næste månedlige møde på fredag eftermiddag på baren af byens Everyman-teater, og hun ringer mig for at tjekke, at jeg kan deltage. Hun lover at sende medlemmer en email i de næste 2 dage om hvilke linjer af digtet ”Brus” gruppen skal koncentere sig om på fredag.

Digtet blev skrevet i ca. 1375 af digteren John Barbour på skotsk-engelsk, og handler om den kendte skotske held, ”Robert the Bruce”, dvs Robert 1. af Skotland, og om rollen han spillede i den skotske uafhængighedskrig.

Jeg er selvfølgelig høflig over for Lynda under opkaldet, selvom jeg inderst inde får et føl på tværs. Hvorfor overlader Lynda det altid til sidste øjeblik for at give os de oplysninger vi har brug for? Det betyder, at vi medlemmer kun har 3-4 dage til at forberede os til gruppemødet, og vi har andre opgaver for, for at sige mildt! Sikke et vanvid!!!!!

På det seneste møde, i oktober, bad jeg hende om at give os næste gang den del af Roberts historie, hvor Robert sidder i en hule, han er på flugt fra Edward og englænderne, og han kigger på en edderkop, der prøver gentagende gange at klatre op ad hulens mur: hver gang han falder på jorden, rejser han sig op igen og gør et andet forsøg. Edderkoppens determination opmuntrer og inspirerer Robert at genoptage kampen mod de engelske invaderende.

Vi er alle gamle krager i 60’erne og 70’erne, og vi blev alle opdraget med historien af Robert og edderkoppen.

Men desværre fortæller Lynda mig i dag, at edderkop-hændelsen ikke findes i digtet. Det var en senere tilføjelse til myten, lader det til. Pokkers!!!!

Digtets mest kendte citation: et synspunkt,

som er svært at sige mod, det må jeg nok sige!!!!

18:00 Lois og jeg spiser aftensmad og bruger resten af aftenen på at se lidt fjernsyn. De viser en interessant dokumentarfilm, der handler om historien af animering i den britiske filmbranche over de seneste ca. 120 år.

Det er meget nostalgisk at se igen Bob Godfreys morsomme britiske forstadsversion af den indiske klassiker Kama Sutra, omdannet til England i 1960’erne.

Godfreys version spiller sig ud i en typisk britisk forstad og fremviser typisk engelske dialoger mellem manden og hans kone Ethel, der er stolte af, at selvom størstedelen af nutidens ægtepar leder kedelige, rutinemæssige liv, er dette ikke tilfældet hos dem.

To eksempler på parrets opfindsomme sexstillinger: