flashback to June: we demonstrate our thinness to potential
old codger ad agencies, on a visit to Battledown Hill, Cheltenham
10:30 We have a cup of coffee and I look at the Hungarian news media (Insight-Hungary): I need to keep making sure that the country is getting on okay without my help haha!
The interview that the US Fox News's Tucker Carlson conducted with Hungary's right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has at last attracted a bit of attention in Hungary - it's surprising but seems to be true that the interview has attracted far more attention in the US than in Hungary.
Orbán explained in length to Carlson that his vision of Christian
conservatism in Hungary contributed to a successful society, envied by the
West, and that he could very well imagine westerners immigrating to Hungary,
seeking refuge from the societies that have become far too liberal: “We can’t
exclude the future of the European history when there will be a new migration
from the West to the East.”
“Democratic thinking has lost two major international supporters. And the
opponents came into power. This is a totally new circumstance around Hungary.
For me as a politician, it’s a strong challenge, how to handle it,” Orban
lamented at the end of the interview, speaking of Donald Trump and Benjamin
Netanyahu.
Call me an old cynic, but, although Hungary is a beautiful country, I can't see this mass migration from the West happening, to put it mildly. Still stranger things have happened, I suppose!
Where did Orbán go wrong? When the Communist world was collapsing in the early 1990's, he used to be an iconic young idealist, offering a brighter future for Hungary. Oh dear. Go back to your roots, Viktor!
Flashback to 1994 and my first visit to Hungary: me standing in front of hoardings -
and what were Hungary's two most ubiquitous advertisements in 1994 - an advertisement
for Blikk magazine (right), and an advertisement for Viktor Orbán's Fidesz party (left):
"if you are bored with the banana, why not try the orange [the Fidesz symbol] ?"
14:30 The U3A Danish group (the only one in the UK), which Lois and I run, holds its fortnightly meeting on Skype.
An interesting session, although Lois and I feel totally drained by the end, as usual. We're reading a Danish crime novel, and we've got to the bit about a chain of Danish brothels that employs mainly foreign women.
Anna Grue's "Dybt at falde" (literally "The Further You Fall",
the Danish crime novel that our group are reading -
all about Estonian and Nigerian prostitutes working in Denmark
This afternoon we come across an interesting Danish phrase that doesn't really have an equivalent in English - "to howl with the wolves". This means to do what everybody around you is doing, a bit like the English expression "When in Rome, do as the Romans do".
An Estonian woman comes to Denmark as an au pair, quite legally on a temporary residence visa, but she has a rather naive little secret plan - her aim was to find a Danish man, who would marry her, so that she could then stay in the country indefinitely.
She decided that the quickest way of achieving that was to seduce the man of the house where she was working as an au pair. When she got pregnant she assumed, somewhat naively, that the man would divorce his wife and marry her instead. Of course he had no such plan, and when she, again rather naively, complained to his wife, she was thrown out, and found herself on the street.
When she ended up on the street with just the clothes she stood up in, she found herself surrounded by foreign prostitutes, and so, to survive, she naturally decided to "howl with the wolves", and become a prostitute herself. Makes sense to us !!!
18:00 We are both completely exhausted, as usual, at the end of a so-called "Danish Day", so we just have a CookShop ready meal.
pork dijon from CookShop - yum yum!
20:00 We watch a bit of TV, the latest programme in Prof. Suzannah Lipscomb's series on "Walking Tudor England".
It's fascinating tonight to see the 14th century Wheatsheaf Inn in Sussex, where Henry VIII used to drop in for a pint of ale when he was courting his second wife, Anne Boleyn, who lived at nearby Hever Castle.
Presenter Prof. Susannah Lipscomb mounts the steps of
the 14-century Wheatsheaf Inn, where Henry VIII used to drink
when he was courting his second wife, Anne Boleyn
Who knew, that although in Tudor times they didn't have a "star system" for hotel and eating and drinking places, there was already a kind of a graded system, Grade 1 being "inns", Grade 2 being "taverns" and Grade 3 being "ale-houses"? [I expect a lot of people knew that! - Ed]
Suzanne visits the Wheatsheaf Inn tonight and talks to historian Dr Tim Reinke-Williams, an expert on Tudor pub-culture. "Inns" would have had accommodation and stabling for horses, and would also have provided meals, apparently, and music.
Susannah asks Tudor expert Dr Tim Reinke-Williams
about the services offered by inns in Henry VIII's time
"Taverns" even provided wine from the Continent as well as ale or beer. Ale-houses, on the other hand, were often very small, and were often run by women. widows in particular. The authorities were always very keen to grant licenses to widows, because it saved these poor women from having to be supported financially by the Parish. Makes sense haha!!!! Women were, in any case accustomed to brewing beer in their own family circle, so it was just a natural extension of this.
Although the Church frowned on drunkenness, ordinary people saw no objection to drinking alcohol, and the general notion was that it encouraged a sense of community in a town or village, and also community between the sexes. Who would have thought it haha!
And what lovely hair Prof. Susannah Lipscomb has, as always. Lois and I just want to touch it, just once will do. We're so shallow haha!!!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzz!!!!
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