I get up super-early (6:30 am) so I can squeeze in a shower and
still be in time to open up for the painters when they arrive at 7:45 am –
yikes!
We get ready for our U3A Danish group’s fortnightly meeting online.
I panic at the last minute because I can’t find the link I sent out to members,
for joining the meeting. Then I remember it’s on Skype, and not on Zoom, and after
that find the email containing the link without a problem.
A fun meeting – we are all old crows, so we don’t get out much at
the moment. So it’s a bit of excitement for all of us to be able to get
together and chat about this episode in the Danish crime novel we are reading. A
Nigerian prostitute working in Denmark gets murdered and her body gets dumped
on the seashore – what could be more different for a bunch of old fogeys, largely
confined to their own houses, and not really knowing that much about prostitutes, than that sort of caper!
“The
Further You Fall”, the English title of the Danish crime novel
that is our U3A Danish group’s current project.
An Estonian prostitute is the next victim to get killed, but by a
different murderer, and Lois and I suspect that this second murderer is a
woman. The murder weapon this time is a garotte, used for strangling the
victim, and a garotte is apparently the sort of weapon you don’t need a lot of
strength for, according to the book’s author: we take the author’s word for
this - none of our elderly, mild-mannered U3A group members has ever committed
a murder, so we’re not too well up in these things!
The hero of the novel is Dan, who is an executive in a local
advertising agency. Dan is the classic “amateur” in the Sherlock Holmes mould,
who tends to solve crimes before the more pedestrian local police can do so.
However, as a non-policeman Dan needs to get his information about
cases from somebody in the force, and that role is played by Flemming, a
detective in the city’s police force, who just happens to be Dan’s lifelong friend.
The local press are nonetheless rather
critical about Dan’s involvement, which they interpret as pointing to the inadequacy
of the professional detectives, Flemming included.
There’s a bit of a “bromance” going on between the two men. But we
note today how vain the two men are. A local tabloid has published pictures of
them both – Flemming thinks his own photo makes him look like a complete “no-hoper”,
in comparison to Dan’s picture, which Flemming thinks makes Dan look “super
cool”. Dan however looks at the same
photos, and takes the opposite view – he wonders why the paper has chosen a
picture of him in which his left eye looks more closed than his right eye,
making him look like a “complete idiot”.
Oh dear – who said men have no vanity?!!!!
The Onion News, America’s most trusted news source, recently
uncovered a story which sort of backs up how dangerous pride and vanity can be, especially when it comes to men.
The story went viral, predictably!
LOS ANGELES—The grave implications of his
vanity dawning on him, local man Ed Paitz realized what an arrogant fool he’s
been after skipping the moving walkway at Los Angeles International Airport,
sources said Thursday.
“My god, what have I done?” said a despairing
Paitz, realizing that, alas, he must live with the sorrowful consequences of
his own hubris and proceed down the carpeted corridor on his own two feet,
watching in shame as other travellers with the humility to board the conveyor
platform flowed past him with ease.
“My pride—my accursed pride—has brought me
to this! Like Icarus and Arachne before me, let my tale serve as a warning to
all those who would surrender to the vile temptations of the ego.”
Oh dear, what a crazy world we live
in! Let us all commit now to put aside foolish pride, and just lean back and enjoy the ride!
17:00 The meeting is over, and Lois and I relax on the sofa with a
cup of tea. After that we go round to our neighbour Frances’s house to water
her plants and greenhouse, and stare again at the horrible new modern houses
being built just feet away – yuck!!!!
We water our neighbour Frances's greenhouse and plants,
and take another opportunity to make scathing comments
about the horrible modern houses being built just feet away.
20:00 We watch a bit of TV, the last part of ex-cabinet minister
Michael Portillos’s series “Great Continental Railway Journeys”. Tonight he’s
in Sweden.
A pleasant, undemanding trip with Michael starting in Stockholm and working up
to the Arctic Circle.
Lois and I didn’t know that Sweden’s generous welfare system was
inspired by a serious “Spanish flu” epidemic in the town of Östersund in 1918, in
which two thirds of the town’s population died.
And who knew that the full generous welfare system, including two
weeks paid holiday a year, instituted in 1938, was funded by the big profits
Sweden was making in the 1930’s by exporting iron ore and engineering products
to Nazi Germany?
[I expect
a lot of people knew that – Ed]
22:00 We go to bed – zzzzzzzz!!!!!
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