Wednesday August 11th 2021

10:30 Lois and I go for a walk to see the building sites that we regularly monitor - what madness !!!! First the site on the main road where they're building the shiny new NHS doctor's surgery that we are hoping to sign up to at some point.

conscientiously we check on the front of the site and the rear (below)

one of the building sites on our building sites "inspection round" - 

this project we approve of haha! It's a doctor's surgery 

that we're hoping to sign up to when it's finished.

There's a nice bulletin board out front at the site, where the developers, Bowmer Kirkland, go out of their way to give the passing public some information about the project, but it's not perfect - we soon spot a mistake!

Wouldn't you think that with a nice display board like this,

with ads from the key players and sponsors down the side,

that somebody would have noticed that there's a letter 'r'

missing out of "Medical Centre".

What a crazy world we live in !!!!!

Also we're not certain we'd like to meet site manager Collier up a dark alley late at night, that's for sure!

the key Bowmer Kirkland project team players involved at the site

After that, we walk on a bit and check on the next building site on our round, where some horrible blocks of flats are starting to be built on the so-called "extra bit" of the football field.

aerial view of the football field, showcasing the running track (in red)

and the so-called "extra bit" where the nasty flats will go

a view of the "extra bit", where a pile-driver and a digger

are busy this morning - yuck !!!!!

After all this hard work of doing our inspections, we relax outside the Parish Council Offices at the Whiskers Coffee Stand, with a couple of flat white coffees on the shiny new bench provided by the Parish. A morning well spent haha!

14:00 I look at the Danish local news for Gentofte, the North Copenhagen suburb where our daughter Alison and her husband and 4 children lived from 2012 to 2018. There's news about a new film called "The Pact" about the pact between Danish writer Karen Blixen, author of "Out of Africa" and her "toy boy", Danish poet Thornkild Bjørnvig. The film's director Bille August gave an interview locally at the Movie House, Hellerup, about this new film.

Lois and I have been thinking a lot recently about how writers look on their writing as an all-consuming task, the reason for their existence. We've heard recently about writers such as Ernest Hemingway and travel-writer Paul Theroux, and how they insisted that their wives gave up their careers to devote themselves to their husband's needs, ensuring that they had all the peace and quiet they needed to do their writing.

Karen Blixen with her "toy boy", Thornkild Bjørnvig.

It seems that this quality isn't just confined to male writers. In their "pact" Karen Blixen insisted that her toy boy Thornkild Bjørnvig submitted himself 100% to her, and as his reward, that he would just get a bit of extra fame from being her "companion".

That's how it works with writers, seemingly!

Oh dear, don't get involved with a writer, lads haha !!!!

Poor Thornkild !!!!!

flashback to 2015: we visit the Blixen homestead and museum in Ringsted,

north of Copenhagen, with our daughter Alison

we have lunch in the museum's café

scene from the film version of "Out of Africa", Blixen's autobiographical study,

with Meryl Streep as Karen, and Robert Redford as Karen's lover, Denys

15:00 I have a bit more of a text conversation with my sister Gill in Cambridge about David, the online journalist, our "lost cousin" that we only discovered we'd got very recently, thanks to info from a DNA database. David's mother was one of our aunts.

In this hastily drawn chart is a part of the family from South Wales that David gets some of his genes from, poor chap haha! Just the three youngest of the brood are shown: our mother Nan plus the twins Barbara and Joan.

Gill says that David's DNA came back with:

41% Welsh

24% English and/or North-West European

33% Irish

David has found out who his late father was, Peter, and he has contacted his father's half-brother. David's father Peter was born in Staffordshire, England, but he has a typically Irish surname, hence (perhaps) this could be the source of the strong Irish component.

Gill's DNA came back with about 65% Welsh and about 35% English/NW European. So our apparently "English" father, Ken, must have had some Welsh blood, which neither he nor we were aware of. 

flashback to 1947: me with my Welsh mother Nan

and (as it now turns out) my partly-Welsh father, Ken, outside our house in Dover. 

It's DNA-madness, I tell you !!!!!!

flashback to the 1920's: Nan (front) with her twin sisters Babs and Joan,

and elder sister Ruth, plus their parents, on a sunny day at the beach 

near Bridgend, Glamorganshire

20:00 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect's weekly Bible Class on zoom. I settle down on the couch to watch Episode 9 of the 10-part Danish crime series "The Killing" (Season 3), a series which Lois doesn't like.

Shipping magnate Robert Zeuthen has had his young daughter Emilie kidnapped by somebody with a grudge against Zeuthen and/or his shipping firm Zeeland. 

The usual pattern in this series emerges again tonight. The people being suspected in Episode 7, the previous episode, are now seen to be innocent, and other candidates are now coming under the microscope. 

However, I can sense, palpably [That's the best way to sense! - Ed], that the series is drawing ever nearer to a conclusion, so that all the loose ends can be tied up in next week's episode, Episode 10.

Star detective Sarah Lund has identified the kidnapper - he made the mistake of coming forward to the police with "information" and then claiming the 100 million kroner reward: a bit of a rookie error for a kidnapper haha !!! He presented himself as a Swedish sailor, but later it turns out that he can speak all the Scandinavian languages equally well, and I think he's probably a Dane, like all the rest of the cast.

This Swedish-Danish kidnapper promises to show police where little Emilie is, as long as they guarantee to find the murderer of his biological daughter, Louise, who got murdered two and a half years ago, either by someone working for Zeeland, or by a leading politician - one of the two, anyway haha!!!

Simples!

Other signs that the series is drawing to a happy ending next Episode: Robert Zeuthen has made it up with his wife, now that her "fancy man" has cleared off, apparently bored with all the kidnapping hoo-hah.

shipping magnate Robert Zeuthen patches things up with

his estranged wife, Maja, now that her "fancy man" has cleared off

Awwww!!!!

And Prime Minister Kristian Kamper has made it up with his close aide, Karen, giving her the green light that they can at last start having a proper affair which is nice.

Prime Minister Kristian Kamper makes it up with his close aide, Karen,

giving her the green light for them start an affair

Awwwwww (again) !!!!

And Inspector Sarah's teenage son, Mark, has made it up with his girl-friend, who's just had a baby.

Inspector Sarah Lund's son Mark has made things up with 

his girl-friend, who has just been having their baby

Awwwww (again) and triple awwwwwww!!!!!

Heart-warming stuff!! And I can see everybody in the story will probably be all smiles at the end of the next episode, Episode 10, which I'll try to watch next week.

21:00 Lois emerges from her zoom session and we speak on the phone to our daughter Alison, who lives in Headley, Hampshire, with Ed and their 3 children. Lois and I are hoping to visit the family soon. Their 11-year-old son Isaac has been taking part in local Rock School's 3-day Band Skills Workshop. 

Isaac on lead vocals during a 3-day Band Skills Workshop

- my god !!!!!!!

Isaac takes singing lessons and recently played a lead part in a locally-staged children's musical, "What's the Crime, Mister Wolf", with Isaac playing Mr Wolf.

He's turning into quite a performer - my god!!!

What a pity  X Factor has gone belly up. Apparently millennials like to find their own undiscovered stars now on Tiktok and other social media. What madness!!!

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzzz!!!!