11:00 Today is a bank holiday in England, so true to form, the weather is fairly miserable. At least it's dry, but it's rather chilly and cloudy, to put it mildly.
In temperatures that are still only down in the low 60's Fahrenheit (15 to 17 Celsius), Lois and I go for a walk round the local football field, and on our way round we stop at the Whiskers Coffee stand, for a hot chocolate (Lois) and a flat white coffee (me).
The Polish girl who serves her tells her it's been a "crap summer" in Poland too, and Lois compliments her on her grasp of colloquial English! Still, it's better than being in the hot countries where they have all the fires, that's for sure!
After we finish our drinks I continue the walk home while Lois goes into the bushes to pick blackberries.
Once again there are no naked men in the blackberry bushes, she tells me later. We are now more or less 100% certain that nudity in fruit bushes must be an exclusively Danish phenomenon.
we start our walk and huddle together in the chilly north-easterly wind
for the now obligatory selfie - the temperature is barely above 60F/15C.
Brrrrrrrrr !!!!!!
to warm up, we have a hot chocolate (Lois) and a flat white coffee (me)
on the recently varnished so-called "Pirie Bench"
flashback to last Friday - the Pirie Bench in less happy times:
when the Parish Council had labelled the so-called "Pirie Bench"
out of bounds due to a still-drying coat of varnish
12:00 I go home but Lois dives into the blackberry bushes with an empty ice-cream tub, to see what she can find to pick.
flashback to last Monday - Lois in a typical foray into
the blackberry bushes
Later in the day I showcase what Lois has picked today -
she wasn't available to present them in person, so I stepped in
As stated above, Lois reports that once again there were no naked men in the bushes, so that's a relief, to put it mildly!
flashback to last Tuesday: on Ordrupvej in Ordrup, Gentofte,
Copenhagen, a suburb Lois and I know well, a 19-year-old naked Danish man had to be
cut out of a blackberry bush by police after being spotted there by a passer-by
I look at my smartphone. I'm always interested in developments in the English language, so I'm immediately drawn to this article on Yahoo/Life about criticism of non-black [are you allowed to say that? - Ed] celebrity Olivia Rodrigo for speaking in a "blaccent".
According to the article, "In a controversial video mashup, resurfaced last week, Rodrigo, who is Filipina-American, speaks in a way that is commonly known as Black vernacular, using forced phrases like “I be trending,” “AF” and “y’all,” sparking accusations of cultural appropriation."
I can guess what "I be trending" means, because that theoretically exists in traditional South West British English dialect, where "I be" is rampant in general.
I don't know what AF is, so I look it up. I see it means " as f*** " and I've got an idea, without being 100% sure, about where I would put it in a sentence, although I think I should ideally be told, or given a few lessons. But I've heard "y'all" lots of times.
How interesting! I look forward to possibly buying a primer in "blaccent"-speak for my newly-resuscitated Kindle, so I can talk blaccent myself, like Olivia. Then my plan is to master the similar so-called MLE (multi-cultural London English) - with those two languages under my belt I should be able to travel anywhere in the world, hopefully!
After that I'll try and research what "cultural appropriation" means haha!
what is correct MLE and what isn't.
Stormzy is bare nang, blud!!!
What a crazy world we live in !!!!
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 in the living-room to see the 10th and final episode of the third season of "The Killing", the Danish crime series that Lois doesn't like.
It turns out that the bad guy is Reinhardt, played by Stig Hoffmeyer, who doesn't even make the credits, even though he's been in every episode (see above).
Poor Stig !!!!!!
When Inspector Sarah Lund of the Copenhagen Police realises that the serial child-murderer is businessman Reinhardt, but that he'll never be brought to justice because of cover-ups by his business associates and by collaborators in the government, she decides to exact her own "rough justice" by shooting Reinhardt in the head somewhere up in the Norwegian fjords. Then she takes a private plane to Iceland to start a new life under a new identity.
Well.... I didn't see that coming, that's for sure !!!!!
when Inspector Sarah Lund realises that businessman Reinhardt is
the serial child-killer, but that he'll never face charges, she decide to
exact her own "rough justice" and shoot him in the head - oh dear!
... and then she flies off to Iceland in a small private plane,
determined to start a new life under a new identity - my god!
Yes, you never know how these Scandi-whodunnits are going to end, do you! What madness!!!!
21:00 Lois emerges from her zoom session and we watch one of our favourite TV quizzes, "University Challenge", the student quiz. Tonight's contest is between Exeter and Manchester Universities.
1. Edinburgh is twinned with which town in New Zealand, settled by Scots in the 1840's. Its name is from the Gaelic for Edinburgh.
Students: Auckland
Colin and Lois: Dunedin
2. The favourite son of a king in the Second Book of Samuel, which charismatic figure leads an unsuccessful rebellion and is killed by Joab to the great grief of his father, David?
Students: Solomon (Manchester), Saul (Exeter)
Colin and Lois: Absolom
3. The Anvil Chorus occurs near the beginning of which opera, first performed in Rome in 1853.
Students: Turandot
Colin and Lois: La Traviata
4. A music question - identify the composer.
Students: Gluck
Colin and Lois: Schubert
5. Self-portraits: a work in gouache and watercolour is one of the few known self-portraits by which Pennsylvania-born artist? It was created in about 1880, shortly after she began working with the French impressionists.
Students: Gertrude Stein [Say what??!!!! - Ed]
Colin and Lois: Mary Cassatt
6. The 18th century German naturalist Georg Steller: in 1741 Steller joined the Great Northern Expedition, an exploratory journey in the North Pacific planned by Vitus Bering, and sponsored by which country?
Students: the Netherlands
Colin and Lois: Russia
7. Stella's jay, the provincial bird of British Columbia, is a colourful member of what family of perching birds?
Students: parrots
Colin and Lois: crows
8. Complete with four words this line from a poem by Rupert Brooke: "Stands the church clock at ten to three, and is there...."
Students: [pass]
Colin and Lois: ".... honey still for tea?"
22:00 Good enough! We go smugly to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!
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