07:30 We wake up to snow falling - about 3 inches we reckon. It was in the forecast, so fair enough!
I take a picture of our back garden.
our back garden early this morning
10:30 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in the first of her sect's 2 worship services, that are being transmitted on zoom as usual.
I look at the Danish news media on my smartphone. I am surprised to see that yesterday's exciting FA cup soccer game between our local "4th tier" soccer team Cheltenham Town, and the mighty world-beating Premier League side Manchester City has even made it onto the Danish media (TV3) - my god, what a crazy world we live in !!!!
13:00 Alison, our elder daughter, who lives in Haslemere, Surrey, together with Ed and their three children Josie (14), Rosalind (12) and Isaac (10) send us some pictures. Alison and the children enjoyed a very snowy dog-walk this morning with Sika, their Danish spaniel, up at the Devil's Punch Bowl.
Rosalind (12) (left) and Josie (14)
Isaac (10)
And after coming home the children built a massive snowman in their back garden. By tradition, the snowman had a carrot for a nose but unfortunately Sika jumped up, grabbed it, and ate it! Or did he get some help from an accomplice? Lois and I are not 100% sure - the jury's still out on that one. But then that's just the way dogs are brought up in Denmark - you can't blame Sika individually haha!
Rosalind (left) and Josie, with Frosty the Snowman
some unknown accomplice helps Sika to "get the carrot"
- what madness !!!!!
20:00 We watch a bit of TV, the second episode of the new Danish crime series "The Investigation", based on a real life story, the 2017 murder of Swedish journalist Kim Wall on board the Danish billionaire Peter Madsen's private submarine.
Journalist Kim Wall was known to have visited Danish billionaire Peter Madsen on his private submarine on the night she disappeared. Madsen initially told police that he let Kim off the boat late at night. Later the same night the submarine mysteriously sank in the waters between Denmark and Sweden.
When Madsen learnt that the police were going to raise the sunken sub off the sea-bed, he changed his story. He told police that Kim had died in an accident on board and that he had "buried her at sea".
All very fishy! And police arrested Madsen on suspicion of murder, even though no body had been found - under Danish law this gave police a maximum of 4 weeks to gather evidence.
Lois and I are enjoying this series - it's different from a made-up fictional murder plot, because it isn't all neat and tidy. In this episode, for example, the detective in charge of the case, Jens Moller (played by Soren Malling) admits towards the end of the episode that all their promising leads in the case have come to nothing. In particular they have been unable to establish whether Madsen and his victim had been friends or had had a relationship.
Just before the closing titles, however, we learn that the headless body of a woman has been washed up on shore, at Amager. Yikes - creepy!!!!
Jens and his assistant Maibritt do, however, learn a couple of things about the accused billionaire, Madsen. Firstly they learn he had told friends of his fantasies about "committing the perfect crime", and/or creating a weird spectacular "happening" that would capture media attention, with the proviso, however, that "nobody would get hurt", which is all a bit weird.
The second thing police learn is that Madsen has been dabbling in fetishism and "BDSM" sex (involving sado-masochism). Moller's assistant Maibritt questions a girlfriend of Madsen, and she gives them some background - she insists, however, that she is more into BDSM than Madsen: he's too "cautious", she says.
Gripping stuff. Perhaps by next time, the headless woman's torso will have been identified.
21:00 We continue to watch a bit of TV, the first part of a Channel 5 two-part documentary about Queen Victoria, "Love, Lust and Leadership".
Lois and I didn't realise how ground-breaking Victoria's reign was in many ways. When she got married, and then got pregnant (in that order!), she was the first ruling monarch to have done these things for 300 years. And hers was the first truly public "royal wedding", with crowds waiting outside Buckingham Palace to see her leave in the morning to take part in it.
We didn't know, either, that it was Victoria's decision to wear a white wedding dress that set the fashion for the preferred bridal costume ever since. Until then, white wedding-dresses were not the norm - they were considered an unnecessary luxury because of the difficulty of cleaning them and keeping them clean.
She really enjoyed her wedding night, to put it mildly - she wrote in her diary that she didn't get much sleep.
Victoria was a determined woman, resolute about combing her many roles of queen, wife and mother. They had a few days' honeymoon - Albert wanted longer, but she insisted that she had too much important work to do, as head of state. Bad luck, Albert!
She made the institution of royalty respectable and popular again, after all the excesses of her debauched Hanoverian predecessors. She liked to stay in touch with her people, riding around London in an open carriage, and awarding the Victorian Cross medal in person to all ranks of soldiery who had distinguished themselves, the first instance of a monarch touching her subjects - my god!
The programme reveals new evidence that after her first son, Edward, was born, she suffered from hallucinations, leading her to the fear that she was going mad, perhaps inheriting the madness of her forebear George III.
She had 9 children in all, and it was Victoria that made it "okay" for women to get pain relief: despite the medical world's reservations, she demanded to be given chloroform for her 8th birth, and it was a great success, she reported.
Lots of fascinating stuff here - we look forward to Part 2.
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!
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