06:00 We wake up to discover that it's only 6 am not 7 am, because the clocks went back one hour last night - damn! Still it gives us a bit more time in bed and more time to get ready for our daughter Sarah's call from Perth, Australia: clocks in Western Australia stay the same year-round. As it happens, Sarah texts us to say the family - she and Francis and their 7-year-old twins Lily and Jessie - are on a whale-watching cruise near Rottnest Island. I text back to say let's try a whatsapp call around 9:30 am our time, or 5:30 pm their time.
10:00 Sarah's whatsapp video call comes through, and Lois and me are ready for it. They went on their whale-watching cruise, on a boat that wasn't too crowded: a 300-seater with only about 100 people on it, so there was no problem seeing the whales. They're going to send us photos in due course, which will be nice.
Till the photos come Lois and I will just have to imagine it from pictures on the web, which is fair enough!
It looks fantastic to us!
The twins are anxious to wish us Happy Grandparents Day, which is a thing in Australia apparently. We don't have such a day in the UK, so that's a pleasant surprise, to put it mildly - my god!
flashback to April 2018: Lois and I go on a cruise with Sarah and family around the Swan River
10:45 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in the first of her sect's 2 worship services taking place today on zoom. I settle down in the living-room and watch the first part of a new Danish thriller series, "DNA".
Lois and I have been studying Danish since 2012, when our other daughter Alison, together with Ed and their 3 children, moved to Copenhagen for a 6 year stint to do with Ed's job as a legal adviser.
I carried on studying Danish even after Alison's family returned to the UK, because I became fascinated with what a big influence Danish was on the English language, to the extent that some academics actually classify English as a Scandinavian language. It's partly a chance effect that the dialect of English that became the standard was the one spoken in the East Midlands area of England, where the population was massively dominated by Danish settlers - witness, for example, all the towns that end in the "-by" suffix: Derby, Grimsby, Whitby etc: "by" means 'town' in Danish.
And Lois and I still like to watch Danish films occasionally to pick up tips on pronunciation etc, also to pick up any cultural pointers.
Unfortunately the dialogue in these films is far too fast for us to catch more than the odd word - damn! Also, Danish actors, just like British ones, tend to mumble. And not only that, the lighting in most of the scenes is incredibly dark - this adds to the tension, no doubt, but for us it adds to the annoyance, to put it mildly. It's not that we're getting old by the way - that's totally irrelevant haha!!!
Episode 1 opens with the hero, Copenhagen detective Rolf Larsen, who's about to go on a trip to Poland to try and solve a kidnapping, realising he's got to take his baby, Andrea, along with him on the ferry. That's nice in a way, though. I couldn't imagine we'd ever see a UK detective carrying a baby around with him in a little buggy. It's very Scandinavian isn't it. He has to take the baby with him on the ferry, basically because the baby-sitter didn't turn up and Rolf's wife is in London on a health-and-safety course - very British haha!
Unfortunately the ferry trip to Poland is a rough one and Rolf is no sailor. While he's throwing up in the toilets, the baby disappears.
(stage direction) "he mumbles" - you're telling me !!!! He checks the baby is okay.
he weighs up whether he's got time to just slip into the toilets to throw up
he emerges from the toilets, to find that the baby has vanished - yikes!
he tries to get the captain to stop the ship, but they're already docking in a Polish port - oh dear
Oh dear - I don't think Rolf's wife will be very pleased with him when he rings her in London and she hears what's happened, that's for sure. I wouldn't want to be in his shoes. Watch this space - yikes!#
Naughty Rolf! Bad Rolf!!!
21:00 We watch some TV, an interesting documentary about the Swedish pop group Abba, featuring recent interviews with 3 of the group members.
An enjoyable programme. Lois and I didn't know that, in the early days of the group, what they most wanted was acceptance by the "Anglo-Saxon world" - 50 years ago, record companies in the UK and US wouldn't in general look twice at groups from continental Europe or Scandinavia.
And it's well-known that their breakthrough came in 1974 when they won the Eurovision Song Contest, staged that year in Brighton in the UK, with the English-language version of the song "Waterloo", which became a number one hit in the UK and many other countries.
Lois and I didn't remember, however, that "Waterloo" was followed by an absence of any further hits in the UK for many years - record companies were still reluctant to issue any of the group's follow-up releases, including songs like "Mamma Mia". It was only when these songs became popular in Australia that UK record company executives changed their minds, and unimaginable success followed, continuing to this day with the Mamma Mia musical and spin-off films.
We learn tonight also, that the later divorces of Agnetha and Björn, and Anni-Frid and Benny in 1979 and 1981, which at the time were portrayed to the press as "amicable", weren't really as jolly as was made out at the time - oh dear!
The divorces proved fortunate for the men, however, in the sense that it gave them inspiration to write deeper, more emotional lyrics, and tonight we hear Björn say that this is a "very Nordic" thing - Nordics like to be sad, it seems.
Lois sympathizes with the women in the group, particularly Agnetha who was torn between the pressure of going touring across the world with the group and what she really wanted - to stay at home and bring up hers and Björn's children. Lois thinks it was all right, fine and dandy for the men - they could go touring without these torn feelings, and even after the marriages were over they were still able to continue much as before, writing and arranging their songs.
There are some interesting and unexpected anecdotes, like the reported sight of the then US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, seen dancing in the aisles at a performance of "Mamma Mia, the musical".
And it's nice to see a rare reunion picture of all members - Agnetha doesn't travel - appearing at the 2016 opening of an Abba-themed "Mama Mia the Party" dining experience in Stockholm, which now has a branch in London apparently, since 2019.
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzz!!!!!
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