Danskcolin: Friday, March 15 2019

08:00 Lois and I have a bath, and after breakfast I start to lug a lot of children's books down the ladder from the attic. We want to collect all our remaining children's books together into one place as a crucial phase of our downsizing project.

Some of the many children's books I find up in the attic this morning

I add to this pile all the other children's books we have found in our grown-up daughters Alison and Sarah's rooms. The plan is to throw away the very worn books, donate most of the others to some charity shop, and store approx. 20 books or so for nostalgic reasons, or for entertaining young children who might come and visit us. Simples!

10:00 We relax with a coffee on the couch. I take a little look at my smartphone and I get a bit of a shock to put it mildly!

According to a report in the journal "Science," linguist Balthasar Bickel of Zurich University (crazy name, crazy guy) and his colleagues suspect that our earliest hunter-gatherer ancestors could not say the letters 'f' and 'v': their teeth were in the wrong places. My god, what madness !!!

Chewing hard, gritty food would have strengthened the hunter-gatherers’ lower jaws and made the bone larger so that the upper and lower teeth would have been arranged in an "edge to edge" bite. Such a bite would have made it difficult to push the upper jaw forward enough to be able to make the sounds "f" and "v".

Bickel suspects "f" and "v" sounds were first made by the richer people, who preferred to eat soft foods. The researchers also studied the languages of today's remaining hunter-gatherers, and found out that even hunter-gatherers today use only approx. a quarter of the labio-dental consonants (such as "f" and "v") that agriculture-based societies do.

Bickel's colleague Steven Moran pointed out that the ability to make the new sounds ‘f’ and ‘v’ came with its own set of new problems, however. "Our lower jaws are shorter," he said, "and we have wisdom teeth that suffer from impaction, more overcrowded mouths, and more cavities."

Good grief, what madness! I would be quite happy to miss out on being able to say the letters 'f' and 'v' if that meant I would be visiting the dentist less often – that’s for sure. Of course, we would also be forced to give up the f-word, but we could surely come up with an acceptable substitute, I have no doubts about that.

My goodness, what a crazy world we live in !!!!!

11:00 I spend the rest of the day reading through the next 12 pages of "The Further You Fall", Anna Grue’s crime novel, which is our U3A Danish group's current project. On each page I am appending a comprehensive vocabulary list, which is why the whole thing takes up so much time - yikes, after finishing the work I feel completely exhausted. But the vocabulary lists make it much easier for group members to read Anna Grue's book quickly, which is the most important thing - I'm so warm-hearted ha ha ha!

“The Further You Fall”, the crime novel

which is our U3A Danish group's current project

We are currently reading the second chapter of the novel, where we get acquainted with Dan Sommerdahl, the novel's hero, who according to the blurb on the back is the man who finally solves the murder and identifies the killer. He works as a creative director in an advertising agency, but at the start of the story he is on sick leave due to a recent mental breakdown - he is very depressed and spends many of his days at home under the duvet, which doesn't sound particularly promising to put it mildly.

Dan is married to Marianne, a local doctor, and the couple have 2 grown up children who do not live at home anymore (just like Lois and me – how spooky!!!!!).

In the past, Dan went in for "systematic unfaithfulness" to Marianne, in his office, “both under and on top of, his desk”, with all of the “cool young women” who breezed in and out of his department. Now, however, it seems that his previous crazy sex life has settled down, or at least I hope it has.

Anna Grue, author of the novel

I have read somewhere that Anna Grue, the novel's author, is, or was at one time, a Danish journalist who worked in London for a while.

I wonder if her then workplace consisted of open-plan offices, like my old workplace before I retired (in 2006). Like me, she seems to hate those open-plan kinds of office lay-outs, to put it mildly.

I quote from the novel: "Top managers always think that open-plan offices are an excellent invention for their employees, while they themselves want four walls around them and a door they can shut. If you want to be employed in a modern company, you have to learn to close your ears when you want to concentrate. ”

Well said, Anna! You go girl!

Of course, the hero in Anna’s crime novel, Dan, would not have been through so many female colleagues quite so quickly in an open-plan office, so I assume he was senior enough to have his own little room. But that’s something I’m not completely sure about. The jury’s still out on that one.

12:30 We have lunch and afterwards I go to bed and take a gigantic afternoon nap.

15:30 I get up, and sit down with the computer. I continue making the vocabulary lists I have to attach to the pages of "The Further You Fall", our U3A Danish group's current crime novel.

I look at social media. I notice that Steve, my old grammar school classmate, now a US university professor (graduates never retire) has sent me a message. Steve and I tend to exchange messages only rarely (every 6 months or so). He is in Rome, putting flowers on Julius Caesar's statue - today is the Ides of March, the day Caesar was murdered.

Steve asks me for my advice on how to say "I am in Rome" in Latin. I suppose he has become a bit delirious and is trying to talk to the great man. “It’s worse than that, Caesar’s dead, Steve” – copyright Dr McCoy (Star Trek).

I advise Steve to use the locative case "Romae", , and the simple verb "sum" (I am) rather than the compound "adsum", but Steve does not answer. He has probably gone on to some more impressive attraction perhaps, and has forgotten all about his original question. Typical Steve!

18:00 Lois and I have dinner and spend the rest of the evening watching a bit of television. An interesting documentary is on, all about a journey in Western Australia, including the city of Perth, where our younger daughter Sarah lives with Francis and their 5-year-old twins, Lily and Jessie. The programme’s presenter is the charming Julia Bradbury.

We are shocked to see how much of the beauty of Perth's harbour area has been destroyed by new tall buildings and skyscrapers just over the last 3 years, since our first visit in 2016. The famous "Bell Tower", with its historic 16th century bells from London, is now complete overshadowed by these hideous monsters – good grief, what madness !!!!

Julia lets us hear the tower’s bells ring out, but we can hardly hear them for the sound of the pneumatic drills.

What a crazy world we live in !!!!!!

flashback to May 2016: Perth's Bell Tower in happier times,

when Lois and I saw it for the first time.

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

Danish translation

08:00 Lois og jeg går i bad, og efter morgenmad går jeg i gang med at slæbe vores en masse børnebøger ned ad trappen fra loftet. Vi ønsker at samle alle vores resterende børnebøger sammen, som en afgørende fase af vores downsize-projekt.

De børnebøger, jeg i morges finder oppe i loftet

Jeg tilføjer de andre børnebøger, vi har fundet i vores voksne døtre Alison og Sarahs værelser. Planen er at smide til genbrug de meget slidte bøger, donere de fleste til en eller anden velgørenhedsbutik, og opbevarer ca. 20 bøger eller deromkring af nostalgiske grunde, eller for at underholde besøgende små børn. Simples!

10:00 Vi slapper af med en op kaffe i sofaen. Jeg kigger lidt på min smartphone, og jeg får lidt af en chok, for at sige mildt!

Ifølge en rapport i tidsskriftet ”Science”, mistænker lingvisten Balthasar Bickel fra Zürich Universitet (skørt navn, skør fyr) og hans kolleger, at vores tidligste jæger-samler-forfædre ikke kunne sige bogstaverne ’f’ og ’v’: deres tænder var i de forkerte steder. Du godeste, sikke et vanvid!!!

Dét, at tygge hård, jordet mad ville have styrket jægersamlernes underkæber og gøre knoglen større, så de øverste og nederste tænder blev justeret i en "kant til kant" bid. En sådan bid ville have gjort det svært at skubbe overkæben fremad for at gøre lydene "f" og "v".

Bickel mistænkte "f" og "v" lyde blev først lavet ved rige folk, der spiste bløde fødevarer. Forskerne undersøgte også sprogene af nutidens resterende jæger-samlere, og fandt ud af, at jægersamlere bruger ca. en fjerdedel af de labiodentaler (såsom ’f’ og ’v’), som landbrugsøkonomiske samfund gør.

Bickels kollega Steven Moran påpegede, at samtidigt med evnen til at lave nye lyde kom nye problemer. "Vores underkæber er kortere," sagde han, "vi har visdomstænder, der lider af impaktion, flere overfyldte munde, og flere huller."

Du godeste, sikke et vanvid! Jeg ville meget gerne gå glip af at sige bogstaverne ’f’ og ’v’, hvis det betød, jeg ville besøge tandlægen mindre ofte – det ved jeg med sikkerhed!!! Vi ville selvfølgelig også blive tvunget til at gå glip af f-ordet, men vi kunne helt sikkert komme med en acceptabel substitut, det har jeg ikke nogen tvivl om.

Du godeste, sikke en skør verden vi lever i !!!!!

11:00 Jeg bruger resten af dagen på at læse igennem de næste 12 sider af ”Dybt at falde”, Anna Grues krimiroman, som er vores U3A danske gruppes nuværende projekt. På hver side vedlægger jeg en omfattende ordforrådsliste, hvilket er grunden til, at det hele tager så meget tid – yikes, efter endt arbejdet føler jeg helt udmattet. Men de ordforådlister gør det meget meget lettere for gruppemedlemmer at læse Anna Grues bog hurtigt, hvilket er det vigtigste – jeg er så varmhjertet ha ha ha!

Dybt at falde, den krimiroman,

der er vores U3A danske gruppes nuværende projekt

Vi læser for tiden romanens 2. kapitel, hvor vi stifter bekendtskab med Dan Sommerdahl, romanens helt, der efter bagsiden er den, der til sidst løse mordet og identificerer morderen. Han arbejder som kreativdirektør i et reklamebureau, men han er sygemeldt på grund af et nyligt sammenbrud – han er meget deprimeret og tilbringe mange af sine dage hjemme under dynen, hvilket ikke lyder særligt lovende for at sige mildt!

Dan er giftet med Marianne, en lokal læge, og parret har 2 voksne barn, der ikke bor hjemme mere. I fortiden dyrkede Dan ”systematisk utroskab”, under og ovenpå sit skrivebord, med nogle af bureauets cool unge kvinder, der ”i en lind strøm flød gennem branchen”. Nu imidlertid virker det som om hans forrige vilde sexliv er faldet til ro, eller det håber jeg i hvert fald!!

Anna Grue, romanens forfatter

Jeg har læst ét eller andet sted, at Anna Grue, romanens forfatter, er/var en dansk journalist, der for et stykke tid arbejdede i London.

Jeg spekulerer på, om hendes daværende arbejdsplads bestod af åbne kontorlandskaber, ligesom min gamle arbejdsplads, før jeg gik på pension (i 2006). Ligesom mig, virker hun at hade de slags arrangementer, for at sige mildt.

Jeg citerer: ”Topchefer har det med at synes, at kontorlandskaber er en fremragende opfindelse til medarbejderne, mens de selv gerne vil have fire vægge omkring sig og en dør, der kan lukkes. Vil man være ansat i en moderne virksomhed, må man værsgo lære at lukke ørerne og koncentrere sig.”

Godt sagt, Anna! Kom så, Anna!

12:30 Vi spiser frokost og bagefter går jeg i seng for at tage en gigantisk eftermiddagslur.

15:30 Jeg står op og sætte mig med computeren. Jeg fortsætter med at udfærdige de ordforrådlister jeg skal vedlægge til siderne af ”Dybt at falde”, vores U3A danske gruppes nuværende krimiroman.

Jeg bemærker, at Steve, min gamle klassekammerat fra højskole, nu en professor i et amerikansk universitet (akademikere går aldrig på pension), har sendt mig en besked på de sociale medier. Vi har tendens til at udveksle beskeder kun sjældent (hver 6. mdr, eller deromkring). Han er i Rome, i gang med at lægge blomster på Julius Cæsars statue – i dag er Idus Martiae. Han beder mig om mit råd til, hvordan man siger ”Jeg er i Rome” på latinsk. Jeg formoder, han er blevet lidt delirisk og prøver at tale med den store mand, men det er jeg ikke helt sikker på – juryen er stadig ude om det.

Jeg tilråder ham til at bruge den lokative kasus ”Romae”, men han svarer ikke. Han er sikkert gået videre til et eller andet mere imponerende attraktion måske og har glemt alt om sit oprindelige spørgsmål.

18:00 Vi spiser aftensmad og bruger resten af aftenen på at se lidt fjernsyn. De viser en interessant dokumentarfilm, der handler om en rejse i delstaten Western Australia, inklusive byen Perth, hvor vores yngste datter Sarah bor sammen med Francis og deres 5-årige tvillinger, Lily og Jessie. Programmets vært er den charmerende Julia Bradbury.

Lois og jeg bliver chokeret at se, hvor meget skønheden af Perths havneområde er blevet ødelagt af nye høje bygninger og skyskrabere siden vores første besøg i 2016. Den berømte ”Bell Tower”, med dets gamle 1500-tals klokker fra London, er nu fuldstændigt overskygget af disse hæslige monstrer - du godeste, sikke et vanvid!!!!

Julia lader os høre tårnets klokker lyde, men vi kan næsten ikke høre dem, på grund af de pneumatiske drilbør.