Monday 12 August 2019

10:00 I write out a cheque for £255 as the balance for the holiday cottage we are renting next month in North Devon - in what has become our regular holiday complex.  It's become a bit of a rare event nowadays to have to write out a cheque - and my handwriting has gone completely to the dogs, no doubt about that. Good grief!

11:00 Lois and I go out into the backyard. Lois does some clearing  up and cuts off branches here and there in the bushes, pulling up old raspberry canes. 

In the meantime, I do a bit of weeding in the vegetable garden - we've asked our neighbours, Stephen and Francis, to water our vegetables during our absence from home, and we'd like to make it easier for them to distinguish the vegetables from the weeds - yikes! Our vegetable garden has become one big jungle, no doubt about that!

Lois and I tidy up and do a bit of weeding in the vegetable garden

so our neighbours can easily distinguish the vegetables from the weeds

– my god, what madness !!!

When the job is done, I find that my joints hurt - damn it! But it has been a few weeks since I last knelt down in the vegetable garden for a round of serious weeding, I have to say. Damn (again) !!!

13:30 We have lunch and afterwards I go to bed and take a short afternoon nap. I get up at 3:30 pm and we relax with a cup of tea and a biscuit on the sofa. Afterwards we take a short walk around the local football field and I post my cheque for the holiday cottage in the nearby mailbox.

17:00 I take a look at my smartphone. I find one of Morten Ingemann's latest Danish cartoon strips and I get a bit of a shock, to put it mildly.

Morten Ingemann, my favourite cartoonist

Ingemann is my favourite cartoonist - no doubt about that! He is particularly interested in ugly, overweight, middle-aged or elderly people, the kind of people that most cartoonists rarely pay attention to.

He can often be quite philosophical in his comic strips, which is nice, and he likes to delve into the reasons why we do what we do, reasons which are not always 100% at the conscious level: these reasons can sometimes be very complex, but Ingemann always has his finger on the pulse, I've found. And he constantly challenges us to examine our motivations, which is a very healthy approach, that’s something I'm sure about.

In this particular strip, we see a very old man in bed with a young Asian woman. The man's wife has just burst into the room, and she's begun to bawl her husband out.

She says this is the second time she's caught him at it, and to top it all this time it’s with their au pair girl. And she asks him if he has a good explanation.

It may be that the husband answers her a little too quickly here - he should have reflected a little longer, I think - but his first thought is to answer, "Maybe it's because you go around everywhere in your slippers,"  - which I suspect is not the kind of explanation his wife is searching for, though I could be  wrong here, who knows? There’s nowt so queer as folk, as my mother used to say!

It may also be that the man "paid" for his unwise answer later in the day, but that's something Ingemann is silent on - sometimes it is best to leave a few things to the imagination, so this call was probably wise.

18:00 We have dinner and spend the rest of the evening listening to the radio and watching television. For starters, we hear the first part of tonight's BBC Proms concert: Schubert's (8th) Unfinished Symphony and Tchaikovsky's 1st Piano Concerto.

Then we turn off the radio and watch some television. The latest edition of the TV quiz “University Challenge” is on. Tonight, Wolfson College, Cambridge, and St Johns College Oxford are the two teams we see battling it out. The programme's host is, as always, the charming Jeremy Paxman.

Lois and I always try to come up with the right answers before the healthy young brains can, because we imagine it proves that we’re not yet suffering from dementia.

Anyway, tonight our performance is absolutely fantastic, I have to say, though these 2 teams are not the best we have seen, to put it mildly.

We often come up with the right answers before the participants can, but, what is better, we answer 10 (yes, 10 !!!) questions correctly that the participants get wrong, which is really encouraging from our point of view.

Our best performance ever, totally unprecedented - ha!

One of our many triumphs is the quiz's final question about hybrid animals and griddle cakes.

the final question before the gong signals the end of the quiz

21:00 We continue to watch some television, an interesting documentary in the series "Who Do You Think You Are", which is all about genealogical studies to find the ancestors of some celebrity or other. Tonight's edition is about movie star Kate Winslet's family origins.

An interesting programme. Kate was born not far from here, in Reading, Berkshire, but it turns out that her direct 19^th century ancestor on her mother's side was a tailor who immigrated in the 1850’s from Halmstad, Sweden to London, then the world's largest city. 

And her corresponding ancestor on her father's side had Irish origins, and was a soldier in the British Army, and later a prison guard in Dartmoor prison.

The young Kate (in the middle) with her siblings and parents

Kate becomes very emotional, shocked and weepy when she hears about some of the troubles and tragedies in her ancestors' lives, which makes Lois and me think, "Doesn’t she know anything about history at all? Does she not know that most people in the 19th century were poor all over Europe and that many babies died at birth or at a very young age? "

At this point, we are forced to remind ourselves that most people are not interested in history at all - history is one of our passions, and it is salutary sometimes to be reminded that not everyone is like us in this. 

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

Danish translation:  mandag den 12. august 2019

10:00 Jeg skriver en check på £255 ud som restbeløb til det feriehus, vi næste måned lejer i det nordlige Devon – i hvad er blevet til vores sædvanlige feriekompleks: det er lidt usædvanligt nu til dags at måtte skrive en check ud – og min håndskrift er helt til rotterne, ingen tvivl  om det. Du godeste!

11:00 Lois og jeg går ud i baghaven. Lois rydder op og klipper grene her og der i buskene, og trækker de gamle hindbærrør op. I mellemtiden luger jeg lidt i grøntsagshaven – vi har bedt vores naboerne, Stephen og Francis, om at vande vores grøntsager under vores fravær hjemmefra, og vi vil gerne gøre det nemmere for dem, at skelne grøntsagerne fra ukrudtet – yikes! Vores grøntsagshaven er blevet til én stor jungle, ingen tvivl om det!

Lois og jeg rydder op og luger lidt i grøntsagshave

så vores naboer sagtens kan skelne grøntsagerne fra ukrudtet 

– du godeste, sikke et vanvid!!!

Da jobbet er færdigt, finder jeg, at jeg har ondt i ledene – pokkers! Men der er gået nogle uger, siden jeg sidste gang satte mig på knæ i grøntsagshaven og gik i gang med en omgang seriøs lugning, det må jeg nok sige. Pokkers (igen)!!!

13:30 Vi spiser frokost og bagefter går jeg i seng for at tage en kort eftermiddagslur. Jeg står op kl 15:30 og vi slapper af med en kop te og en kiks i sofaen. Bagefter går vi en kort tur rundt omkring på den lokale fodboldbane og jeg lægger min check for feriehuset i den nærliggende postkassen.

17:00 Jeg kigger lidt på min smartphone. Jeg finder en af Morten Ingemanns seneste tegneserie og jeg får lidt af et chok, for at sige mildt.

Danske Morten Ingemann, min yndlingstegner

Danske Ingemann er min yndlingstegner  – ingen tvivl om det! Han interesserer sig især for grimme, overvægtige, midaldrende eller ældre folk, de slags mennesker, som de fleste tegnere sjældent giver opmærksomhed til.

Ingemann kan ofte være helt filosofisk i sine tegneserier, hvilket er rart, og han kan godt lide at dukke ned i de grunde, vi laver dét vi laver, som ikke altid er 100% på det bevidste niveau: disse grunde kan være nogle gang meget komplekse, men Ingemann har altid fingeren på pulsen, jeg har fundet. Og han udfordrer os konstant, at eksaminere vores motiveringer, hvilket er en meget sund tilgang, er jeg helt sikker.

I formiddagens tegnestribe imidlertid ser vi en meget gammel mand i seng med en ung asiatisk kvinde. Mandens kone er lige braset ind i værelset, og hun er i gang med at skrælde sin mand ud.

Hun siger, at nu er det 2. gang hun snupper ham i fersk gerning, og så denne gang med deres au pair pige. Og hun spørger ham, om han har en god forklaring.

Det kan være, at manden svarer hende lidt for hurtigt – han burde have overvejet lidt længere, synes jeg – men hans første tanke er, ”Måske fordi du går med hjemmesutter”, hvilket jeg mistænker, ikke er den slags forklaring, hans kone er på jagt efter, selvom det kan være, jeg er forkert her, hvem ved – der er intet så mærkeligt som folk, som min mor plejede at sige!

Det kan også være at manden senere på dagen ”betalte” for sit uklogt svar, men det er Ingemann tavs om – nogle gange er det bedst at overlade nogle ting til indbildningskraften, det må jeg nok sige.

18:00 Vi spiser aftensmad og bruger resten af aftenen på at lytte til radio og se lidt fjernsyn. Til at begynde med hører vi den første del af aftenens BBC Proms-koncert: Schuberts (8.) ufuldendte simfoni og Tjajkovskijs 1. klaverkoncert.

Derefter slukker vi radioen og ser lidt fjernsyn. De viser det seneste afsnit af tv-quizzen University Challenge. I aften er Wolfson College, Cambridge, og St Johns College Oxford de to hold, vi ser. Programmets vært er den charmerende Jeremy Paxman.

Lois og jeg har for vane at hygge os med at prøve at komme med de rigtige svar, før de friske unge hjerner kan, fordi vi forestiller os, det beviser, vi endnu ikke lider af demens.

I aften er vores præstation helt fantastisk, det må jeg nok sige, selvom disse 2 hold er ikke de bedste vi har set, for at sige mildt. Vi kommer ofte med de rigtige svar, før deltagerne kan, men, hvad er bedre, vi besvarer 10 (ja, 10 !!!) spørgsmål korrekt, som deltagerne får forkert, hvilket er meget opmuntrende fra vores synspunkt, det må jeg indrømme.

Vores bedste præstation nogensinde, fuldstændigt uden fortilfælde – ha !

En af vores mange triumfer er quizzens  allesidste spørgsmål, der kredser om hybride dyr.

21:00 Vi fortsætter med at se lidt fjernsyn, en interessant dokumentarfilm i serien ”Who Do You Think You Are”, der handler om genealogiske undersøgelser, der kredser om forfædrene af en eller anden kendis. Aftenens afsnit handler om filmstjernen Kate Winslets familieoprindelser.

En interessant program. Det viser sig, at Kates forfader på hendes mors side, en skrædder, indvandrede i 1850’erne fra Halmstad, Sverige til London, dengang verdens største by. Og hendes tilsvarende forfader på hendes fars side havde irske oprindelser, og var soldat i den britiske hær, og senere en fængselvagt i Dartmoor-fængslen.  

Den unge Kate (i midten) sammen med sine søskende og forældre

Kate bliver meget følelsesmæssig, chokeret og grådkvalt, når hun hører om nogle af de besværligheder og tragedier i sine forfædres liv, hvilket får Lois og mig til at tænke, ”Kender hun overhovedet ikke noget til historie? Ved hun ikke, at de fleste folk i det 19. århundrede var fattige hele Europa over, og at mange babyer døde i fødslen eller i en meget ung alder?”

Vi bliver tvunget på dette tidspunkt til at minde os, at de fleste mennesker interesserer sig slet ikke for historie – historie er én af vores lidenskaber, og det er sundt nogle gange at blive mindet om, at ikke alle er ligesom os i dette hensyn – du godeste!

22:00 Vi går i seng – zzzzzzzzz!!!!