08:00 I send a text to Sarah, our daughter in Perth, Australia. She and Francis have recently bought a 20 foot reconditioned Red Witch boat, and they have asked for suggestions for names to give the boat.
the family's 20 foot boat, when it was being refurbished
Yesterday we suggested calling her "The Jolly Rioja" [this Spanish red wine is pronounced "Roger" in Australia] , in reference to the red colour in the type of boat - Red Witch, which is a local Perth product.
Francis has also said he would like the name to channel both the colour red, and also the name "Anne", the name of his mother who sadly died a few months ago. So we suggested some name like "The Red Anemone", "The Red Angelica" or something similar. [i.e. Red Anne-gelica - geddit????}
Today we have another suggestion to send, which concentrates on the "red" theme - "The Ruddy Marvellous" - we think that Sarah and Francis's Aussie neighbours would appreciate that type of name because of its cheery informality, but we're not 100% sure: the jury's still out on that one. But oh my god, is there no end to our inventiveness haha!!! Boat-names R Us haha!!!
Lily, Francis, Sarah and Jessica on the shores of the Southern Ocean,
Christmas 2020: next stop Antarctica - yikes!
11:00 Lois and I go for a walk on the football field, fearing that it's going to start raining any moment, which always adds a pinch of spice to the walk haha! [I think I'd be looking for something more than a pinch like that to make this news interesting! - Ed]
we start our walk as storm-clouds gather (not shown)
I reserve a seat on the shiny-new wooden bench provided by the parish
while Lois queues up at the Whiskers Coffee Stand;
a bunch of harassed mums stand outside the Pavilion Play group (right)
Lois turns to see if I'm still got the bench to myself
a flat white coffee for me and a hot chocolate for Lois in her re-usable mug
When I take my plastic cup back to Whiskers, I say "Thanks!" to the Polish barmaid, and it strikes me again forcibly how very white a lot of Polish people's skin is and how blonde their hair. Lois always said this is what distinguishes them from British blondes, who often have quite a ruddy complexion. What a crazy planet we live on !!!!
12:00 We come home and relax. I see on my smartphone's Danish news media feed that after 28 years there's a new mayor in Gentofte, the "posh" suburb of Copenhagen where our elder daughter Alison plus her husband Ed, and their 3 children lived for 6 years, from 2012 to 2018.
Yes, Mayor Toft, who was in post for 28 years, is at last standing down in favour of Michael Fenger, Toft's colleague in the local Conservative Party.
Before leaving his post, Toft took a hefty swipe at his political enemies. If only British politicians could be this frank!
Yes, Danes, particularly Jutlanders like Toft, always tell you exactly what they think - unlike us Brits, that's for sure. And in his farewell speech outgoing Mayor Toft said what he thought about MPs in Christiansborg, seat of the Danish Parliament.
In his farewell speech, Toft said "I would like to venture the claim that no one
knows the lice in Christiansborg's corridors better than me." My god, he doesn't mince his words, does he! There's some really violent animosity lurking there beneath Toft's good-natured Danish brow, I'm guessing.
How refreshing!
a typical session of the Danish Parliament in Christiansborg. Mayor Toft says he "knows those lice in the Christiansborg corridors
better than anybody does!" How bold!!!!
However, Toft made clear he didn't regret being mayor of Gentofte for 28 years. It has been, he said, "a little more fun than sitting in front of a computer all day and then going home and seeing the Wheel of Fortune in the evening".
I must say I don't agree with Toft on this - before I retired I used to like nothing better than sitting in front of a computer all day, and then going home and seeing the Wheel of Fortune in the evening. And much more fun to me than being the mayor!!! But I'm going to let that one slide - Toft has done the citizens of Gentofte proud over his 28 years no doubt about that!
Hail to thee, Toft, you kept Gentofte out of the war, that's for sure! [Which war was that? - Ed]
the US version of "Wheel of Fortune", with Vanna White (left) and Pat Sajak, that we used
to watch when we lived in the USA, 1982-1985
I must say I feel a bit sorry for Lisbeth, Mayor Hans Toft's wife, who's now going to have her husband under her feet all day, watching 28 years of reruns of the Danish version of Wheel of Fortune, or "Lykkehjulet" as it's called over there, literally "Luck-Wheel".
My god!!!!
Poor Lisbeth !!!!!
the crowd listening to Hans Toft's farewell speech today -
his wife Lisbeth is centre stage in the foreground:
poor Lisbeth !!!!!!
19:30 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect's weekly Bible Seminar on zoom. I settle down on the couch and try to finish Episode 3 of the Danish crime series, "The Killing".
I'm really getting behind with this - I think the BBC have already broadcast episodes 1 to 9, but I am only on episode 3: I can only watch these episodes when Lois isn't around, because she finds them a bit too violent and upsetting, which I can sympathise with - my god!!!!
I mainly watch them for the opportunity to hear the Danish language, and I like to sit and imagine what it must have been like for the English of Anglo-Saxon times to hear this Danish language being spoken all over the eastern half of England, after all the Danish settlers started coming flooding across the North Sea. Eventually, as we know, the two languages kind of merged, and the rest is history haha!
To give this series due credit, it isn't just an intellectual Agatha Christie-style "whodunnit" murder-puzzle. They really take you through the emotions of the people involved, especially the poor parents of Nanna, the teenager cruelly murdered by person or persons unknown: the girl having been raped and left to die tied up in the boot of a car that gets driven into a waterway and sunk there - yikes !!!!!
We see the murdered girl's mother, Pernille, exploding with rage at the poor priest who is trying to comfort her, for example.
Powerful stuff !!!!!
20:45 Lois emerges from her zoom session, and we watch the second episode of "The Pursuit of Love", based on Nancy Mitford's 1930's novel about two "besties", the conventional Fanny and her emotional, romantic and rather unstable cousin, Linda.
Of the plot's two central characters, Fanny and Linda, it's obviously Fanny that's the "sensible one", settling down to a happily married life with Oxford don Alfred, and embracing the motherhood duties that quickly follow.
It's interesting to watch this with Lois, who's read the book. For instance the TV version paints Alfred as a bit of a neat-and-tidy man, by including a number of incidents that Lois doesn't think are in the book. I imagine, however, that for brevity's sake the TV is trying to show Alfred's personality by means of concrete incidents that it has had to invent.
There's a passionate scene for instance between Fanny and Alfred where they start to tear off each other's clothes, but the TV version makes Alfred break off, in order to fold his trousers away carefully to preserve the creases.
Later in a scene in the garden, Alfred gently reprimands Fanny, in a friendly way, when she puts the marmalade spoon in the jam. He also reminds her about not putting a cup down without a coaster, because it will make rings on the table. Luckily Fanny doesn't seem to mind, which is nice!
The "coaster" obsession with cups reminds me of a famous episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm", where Julia Louis-Dreyfus reprimands Larry David - much more forcibly than Alfred does - about allegedly putting his glass down on one of her tables which she says is a family heirloom. Then she goes on to demand $500 from Larry to pay for "repairs" to the table.
Larry, however, suspects that his manager's wife Suzie was the guilty party. When Larry next sees Suzie he attacks her with the pointed question, "Do you respect wood?".
Apparently you can now even buy coasters with Larry's question on.
I don't know! What a crazy world we live in !!!!!!
21:45 After the programme finishes, Lois tells me she thinks that the TV version has misinterpreted Alfred as a neat-and-tidy, fussy man, because she remembers reading in the book that he "squeezes the toothpaste tube" in the middle, not at the bottom, which of course is a no-no for fussy men!
Could some enterprising graduate student perhaps research a thesis on this subject, so we can find out the truth? [I think you're straying into the realms of fantasy here! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!!
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