Saturday, October 5 2019

08:00 Lois and I tumble out of bed and have a quick breakfast. Lois told me last night that we had an appointment at 9:33 a.m. today at our doctor’s surgery, to get our annual old crows’ free flu shot, along with all the other local old crows. I quickly get in the car and start the engine while Lois brushes her teeth in the bathroom.

I sit and wait in the car, with the engine idling - Lois is taking longer than expected. I dream that instead of my little Honda Jazz, I have a Buick Regal, named  2 years ago by my go-to news site, the influential Onion News, as the best car of the year for idling outside an off-track betting shop, whenever you feel like sticking your head in and checking on how your "ponies" are doing  mid-race.

Flashback to 2017: for the third year in a row, Onion News names the "Buick Regal"

 as the year's best car to keep idling outside an off-track betting shop

Suddenly, Lois hurtles out of the bathroom and hurries out to the car, motions me to open the window, and then tells me she's got the date wrong - it's next Saturday we have the appointment - damn! We come back into the house.

It is a bit strange when you suddenly realise that you have some unexpected free time. I had written off this morning because I knew we would get our flu shot, come home and sit drinking coffee for the rest of the morning, with an unmerited sense of achievement.

09:00 What should I do now? I decide to do some research on the web. I am a member of Lynda's U3A Middle English group and Lynda has asked members to say what direction they want the group to take, now that we have read a lot of Middle English poems and other works from the period 1100-1400 or so.

I send Lynda and the other members an email, suggesting that at some point we could “move on” and maybe read some early modern English works - and I recommend Malory's "Le morte d'Arthur" as a possible first project.

Thomas Malory's "Le morte d'Arthur" (1485)

To be perfectly honest, I don't really know anything about Malory and the other English writers who lived and worked in the 1400’s, but I feel that situation in Lynda's group has arrived at a difficult impasse. We go around in circles, just busily reading more and more excerpts from Chaucer, without making any further progress, and not really  sure what to do next. It needs a forceful, radical person like me to break the deadlock.

I expect that the other team members, who are a bit on the conservative side, will not like my suggestions, and will say that I am acting too hastily and impulsively, but that does not bother me. It is high time we broke free from the shackles of Middle English and dragged ourselves kicking and screaming into the 15th century, where the books and language become a little more familiar. 

What was it that I used to sing some 600 years ago, when I first suggested that the group move forward to “Early Modern”?

“Everything today is thoroughly modern -

Minstrels getting jazzier,

Everything today is starting to go -

Doublets getting snazzier!

Crows say, it's criminal

What Colin'll do

What they're forgetting is, this is 1422 ”

- excerpt from the movie musical 

"Thoroughly Modern Colin" 
[copyright Universal Pictures - Fifteenth Century Fox, 1467]

While I sweat over the wording of my email, Lois meanwhile rushes into the backyard to prune our prunus-mume shrub, a very aggressive shrub that has grown a little too big for its britches, to put it mildly.  She decides to take a brutal approach, for the shrub’s own sake.

final score: Lois 1, Prunus Mume 0  – enough said.

12:30 We have lunch and afterwards I go to bed and take a gigantic afternoon nap. I get up at 3 pm and we relax with a cup of tea on the couch.

I sit down with the computer and compile a Danish vocabulary list that I want our U3A Danish group members to learn by heart before the group's next fortnightly meeting on Thursday. The list contains all the difficult words we encountered during our last meeting. I also prepare a vocabulary test, based on the list.

The correct answers to the test spell out another of our favourites from a selection of stand-up comedian Tim Vine's famous one-line jokes: "I saw this bloke playing 'Dancing Queen' on a didgeridoo, and I thought, 'That's Abbariginal.' “

Not one of his best maybe, but I’m going to let that one slide because he's basically a kind-hearted man who took a wrong turning at some point or another in his life.

16:30 I hop up on my exercise bike and ride my usual 6 miles. I'm looking forward to following up my bike training with a little  light weight training, but unfortunately, I'm still browsing through my shiny  new instruction book for people over 50, trying desperately to navigate my way through the book's scary health warnings and death threats - yikes! I’ll be living "on the edge" when I first gear myself up to picking up those weights, no doubt about that. And I'd better invest in a bunch of new insurance policies first ha ha ha! But I jest merely.

18:00 We have dinner and spend the rest of the evening watching some television. We watch the first hour of a 2-hour long film, "The King's Choice". We decide to see the second hour another night.

Lois and I don't watch a lot of movies, but we like movies based on historical events because we feel we are learning something.

Before tonight, we didn't know much about Hitler's invasion of Norway, allegedly to "protect Norway from the British and their aggressive intentions against the country". And we did not know that King Haakon VII, along with Crown Prince Olaf, the prime minister and the entire parliament managed to flee north just before the Nazis invaded the country and occupied Oslo.

Lois and I have a soft spot for Norway because we visited the country in September 1970, almost 50 years ago, just after we first hooked up, so the holiday was very romantic and exciting, to put it mildly. At that time, the war was even then still very much in the minds of the older Norwegians, and Lois and I met a young German student on holiday in the country who told us she was pretending to be English to avoid any trouble – my god, what madness !!! I expect that nowadays British tourists pretend to be Germans ha ha ha!

flashback to 1970: Lois and I, newly hooked-up,

on holiday in Norway: doing some research on Norwegian road signs ha ha!

Until this evening we did not know that Haakon, the king of Norway, was actually a Dane, whom the Norwegians invited to take their throne in 1905. And who knew that Haakon's queen, Maud, was English, the youngest daughter of King Edward VII ? Unfortunately, she died in the 1930's, so tonight we only see her lying in a coffin - poor Maud !!!!

the film includes actual news footage of Haakon and Maud's

arrival in Norway...

...and of Maud's funeral

  

Haakon was actually born in Charlottenlund, a small suburb of Copenhagen. Lois and I know Charlottenlund well because our daughter Alison, along with Ed and their 3 children, lived in the area for 6 years from 2012 to 2018.

Flashback to 2013: Lois and I visit Charlottenlund

for the first time with our daughter Alison, who was then living nearby

Flashback to 2018: Alison and her family in their final days in Denmark, 

just before they returned home to England. They took a series of nostalgic photos 

of all their favourite Danish haunts, including Charlottenlund beach.

(from left to right): Ed, Josie, Alison, Rosalind, Isaac

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

Danish translation: lørdag den 5. oktober 2019

08:00 Vi vælter ud af sengen og snupper en hurtig morgenmad. Lois fortalte mig i går, at vi havde en aftale kl 09:33 hos vores lægeklinik, så vi kan få vores årlige influenzaskud, sammen med alle de andre lokale gamle krager. Jeg stiger hurtigt ind i bilen og starter motoren, mens Lois brøster tænderne i badeværelset.

Jeg sidder og venter i bilen, med motoren i tomgang. Jeg drømmer om, at i stedet for min lille Honda Jazz havde jeg en Buick Regal, nævnt for 2 år siden af mit go-to nyhedswebsted, det indflydelsesrige Onion News, som årets bedste bil til at vente i tomgang udenfor en off-track indskudsbod, når man har lyst til at stikke hovedet ind og tjekker på sin hyphests midtløb præstation.

tilbageblik til 2010: Onion News nævner for 3. år i træk ”Buick Regal” som årets

bedste bil til at vente i tomgang udenfor en off-track indskudsbod

Pludselig skynder Lois sig ud til bilen, beder mig om at åbne vinduet, og fortæller mig, hun har fået datoen forkert – det er næste lørdag, vi har aftale – pokkers! Vi kommer tilbage ind i huset.

Det er noget mærkeligt, når man pludselig bliver klar over, at man har lidt uforventet fritid. Jeg havde afskrevet formiddagen, fordi jeg vidste, vi ville få vores influenzaskud, komme hjem og trænge til at sidde og drikke kaffe resten af formiddagen.

09:00 Hvad skal jeg lave nu? Jeg beslutter at gøre lidt forskning på nettet. Jeg er medlem af Lyndas U3A middelengelske gruppe og Lynda har bedt medlemmerne om at sige hvor retning de vil have gruppen til at tage, nu hvor vi har læst en masse middelengelske digte og andre værker fra perioden 1100-1400 eller deromkring.

Jeg sender Lynda og de andre medlemmer en email, hvori jeg foreslår, at vi før eller senere kunne komme lidt videre og læse nogle tidlige moderne engelske værker, og jeg anbefaler Malorys ”Le morte d’Arthur” som et muligt først projekt.

Thomas Malory’s ”Le morte d’Arthur”

For at være helt ærlig, ved jeg ikke særlig noget om Malory og de andre engelske forfattere, der levede og arbejdede  i 1400-tallet, men jeg føler, at situation i Lyndas gruppe er gået i hårdknude. Vi går rundt i cirkler, beskæftiget bare med at læse flere og flere uddrag fra Chaucer, uden at gøre nogen fremskridt mere, og ikke særligt sikre på, hvad vi skal lave næst.

Jeg forventer, de andre gruppemedlemmer ikke vil lide mine forslag, og vil sige, jeg agerer for hastigt og impulsivt, men det rager mig ikke. Der er på høje tide, at rive os løs fra de snærende bånd af middelengelsk og slæbe os selv sparkende og skrigende ind i det 15. århundrede, hvor bøgerne og sproget bliver lidt mere moderne ha ha ha!

Hvad var de, man plejede at synge i de der dage?

“Everything today is thoroughly modern –

Minstrels getting jazzier,
Everything today is starting to go -
Doublets getting snazzier!
They say it's criminal

What Colin'll do
What they're forgetting is, this is 1422”

[- uddrag fra musicalen  “Thoroughly Modern Colin”]

I mellemtiden skynder Lois sig ind i baghaven for at beskære vores prunus-mumebusk , en meget aggressiv busk, der er blevet lidt stor på den, den er indbildsk, for at sige mildt. Hun beslutter at tage en brutal tilgang, for selve buskens skyld.

photo: finale score: Lois 1, busken 0 – nok sagt, ha ha ha!

12:30 Vi spiser frokost og bagefter går jeg i seng for at tage en gigantisk eftermiddagslur. Jeg står op kl 15 og vi slapper af med en kop te i sofaen.

Jeg sætter mig med computeren og udfærdiger et dansk ordforrådliste, som jeg vil have vores danske gruppes medlemmer til at lære udenad før gruppens næste fjortendagsmøde på torsdag. Listen indeholder alle de svære ord vi stødte på under vores seneste møde.  Jeg udarbejder også en ordforrådtest, baseret på listen.

De rigtige svar til testen staver endnu en af vores yndlings-standup-komiker Tim Vines berømte en-linje-vittigheder: ”I saw this bloke playing ’Dancing Queen’ on a didgeridoo, and I thought, ’That’s abbariginal”. Ikke én af sine bedste måske, men det springer jeg over, fordi han en godhjertet mand, der tog en forkert drejning på ét eller andet punkt i sin ungdom ha ha ha!

16:30 Jeg hopper op på min kondicykel og cykler mine sædvanlige 6 miles. Jeg glæder mig til at kunne følger min cykeltræning op med lidt let vægttræning, men desværre er jeg stadig i gang med at blade igennem min spritnye instruktionsbog for mennesker over 50, hvor jeg prøver desperat, at navigere min vej gennem bogens skræmmende helbredsadvarsler og dødstrusler – yikes! Jeg er ved at leve ”på udkanten”, når jeg først svinger mig op til at samle de der vægte op, ingen tvivl om det. Jeg må hellere købe et bundt nye forsikringspolicer ha ha ha! Men jeg spøger kun.

18:00 Vi spiser aftensmad og bruger resten af aftenen på at se lidt fjernsyn. Vi ser den første time af en 2-timers lang film, ”The King’s Choice”. Vi vil se den 2. time en anden aften.

Lois og jeg ser ikke ret mange film, men vi kan godt lide de film, som er baserede på historiske begivenheder, fordi vi føler, vi lærer noget. Før i aften vidste vi ikke særlig meget om Tysklands invasion af Norge, angiveligt for at ”beskytte Norge mod briterne og deres aggressive hensigter mod landet”. Og vi vidste ikke, at kong Haakon 7., sammen med kronprinsen Olaf, statsministeren og hele parlamentet flygtede nordpå lige før nazisterne invaderede landet.

Vi har en svaghed for Norge, fordi vi besøgte landet i september 1970, for næsten 50 år siden, lige efter vi først fandt sammen, så ferien var meget romantisk og spændende, for at sige mildt. På det tidspunkt var krigen stadig meget i hovederne af de ældre nordmænd, og Lois og jeg mødte en ung tysk studerende på ferie i landet, der fortalte os, hun lavede som om, hun var englænder, for at undgå noget ballade – du godeste, sikke et vanvid!!!

tilbageblik til 1970: Lois og jeg, nyforelskede,

på ferie i Norge: vi gør lidt forskning om norske vejskilte ha ha!

Vi vidste ikke, at Haakon faktisk var en dansker, som nordmændene inviterede at tage deres tron i 1905. Og hvem vidste, at Haakons dronning, Maud, var englænder, den yngste datter af kong Edvard 7. Desværre døde hun i 1930’s, så vi i aften kun ser hende i en kiste – stakkels Maud!!!!

Haakon og Maud ankommer til Norge (nyhedsfilm fra tiden)

Mauds begravelse - nyhedsfilm fra tiden

  

Haakon var faktisk født i Charlottenlund, en lille forstad til København. Lois og jeg kender Charlottenlund godt, fordi vores datter Alison, sammen med Ed og deres 3 børn, boede i nærheden af Charlottenlund i 6 år fra 2012 til 2018.

(2 fotoer) tilbageblik til 2013: Lois og jeg besøger Charlottenlund

for første gang med vores datter Alison, der dengang boede i nærheden

tilbageblik til 2018: Alison og hendes familie i deres sidste dage i Danmark,

tog en serie af fotoer af deres yndlingssteder, herunder Charlottenlund.

(fra venstre til højre): Ed, Josie, Alison, Rosalind, Isaac

22:00 Vi går i seng – zzzzzzzz!!!!!