Danskcolin: Tuesday October 19th 2021

What a crazy day. Lois and I spend the morning doing more preparations for the weekend, when our elder daughter Alison, who lives in Headley, Hampshire, together with Ed and their 3 children Josie (15), Rosalind (13) and Isaac (11), have asked to come and stay with us for a few days.

This morning we finish getting the bathrooms ready and making up their beds - the family last came to stay in October 2018, a whole three years ago and well before the pandemic and all that stuff. They had recently moved back to the UK after 6 years in Copenhagen.

flashback to October 2018: we make up 3 beds for our 3 grandchildren

on the last occasion they visited

...and this is the bed we made up for Ali and Ed

October 2018: a relaxed meal at Wyevale Garden Centre

in those happy pre-COVID days !!!!!!

It's all going too smoothly - and in the afternoon Alison texts us to say they're having second thoughts about coming. Some of the girls' friends and members of their school tutor groups have fallen victim to COVID, and although Josie and Rosalind haven't caught it themselves, Alison thinks it would be devastating to them if it turned out that they managed to infect us with it.

the article from inews.co.uk that Alison sends us

This is really disappointing to us, to put it mildly, but we think it's the right choice not to come this time in the circumstances. Ed says that when the schools' Christmas break starts the whole family can isolate themselves, to ensure that it will safe both for us and for Ed's parents to visit them in Headley for Christmas, which is a good idea.

17:00 So, decision taken, next week's visit is officially off - but unfortunately now in this house we're positively drowning in food. In the freezer we've got 3 meals for 8 persons from CookShop that were delivered this morning: the Grand Lasagne al Forno, the Grand Cottage Pie, and the Green Thai Chicken Curry. Plus 3 desserts for 8: Billionaire's Shortbread, Belgian Chocolate Brownies and Honeycomb Ice Cream.

We've also got a ton of bacon, sausage and cheese being delivered tomorrow by Waghorne's, the village butcher's shop. My god !!!

And to crown it all, at 5:15pm our neighbour Bob rings the doorbell - he's got 2 frozen meals he can't use, so he's giving them to us.

to crown it all, our neighbour Bob gives us a couple

of frozen meals he can't used - what madness!!!!

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

19:00 Lois has done her back in a bit today so she doesn't want to take part in her great-niece Molly's yoga class on zoom, or her sect's weekly Bible Seminar, also on zoom. So we settled down on the couch and watch a bit of TV, the latest programme in the series "Who Do You Think You Are", which traces celebrities' family trees. Tonight's subject is the actress Judi Dench.

Lois and I knew in advance a little bit about Judi's ancestry, because of the programme's advance publicity.

Judi's parents met and married in Dublin, and her father was an officer in an Irish regiment of the British Army during World War I, winning medals for bravery. Judi tries to find out the details about what he actually did, but when it turns out that the bravery involved shooting Germans, it's a shock reminder to her that real war isn't all just a boy's adventure story, "ripping yarns" and all that kind of thing - oh dear!

Her mother's ancestry goes back to Denmark in the 16th century, and to Helsingør Castle (Shakespeare's "Elsinore" in Hamlet) which fascinates us, as we visited there with our daughter Alison during Alison's family's 6 years residence in Copenhagen.

This revelation of Danish ancestry, coming from an archivist in Dublin, completely dumbfounds Judi, to put it mildly, and understandably so, because nobody in her family had ever ever mentioned Denmark.

Judi's mother's last name was Bolton, and her 6-times great-grandfather Richard "Dick" Bolton married a Danish woman called Anne Catherine Bille, the daughter of Steen Bille of Copenhagen.

Dick, who had been orphaned, was taken to Copenhagen in the 17th century by Dublin-based envoy Robert Molesworth, to work as his assistant. However, Molesworth was soon writing letters back to his wife Mrs Molesworth, in Dublin, complaining about "Dick's behaviour" with a young woman he described as "Dick's mistress", who was this Anne Catherine Bille.

Dick and Anne were apparently very much in love, but Molesworth was very disapproving of the affair, mainly because Anne didn't have much money - what a crazy world they lived in in those days!!!

Although Anne was short of money, she came from an illustrious family. Her grandfather was Anders Steensen Bille, an aristocrat, who was "Counsel of the Realm" and a playmate of the Danish King and the King's brother. Anders was in love with a peasant girl, Katherina, but Anders wasn't allowed to marry her because of her lowly status.

So the two lovers never married, but they went to bed with each other anyway, and Katherina the peasant girl gave birth to Steen Andersen Bille, and all his other children too - oh dear!

So Steen Andersen was illegitimate, and that's why he couldn't inherit his father's title and his daughter Anne Catherine didn't have a lot of cash to spare either - oh dear (again) !!!!

Further back in the tree, Judi's 9-times great-grandfather Steen, had a sister Beate, who was married to Otto Brahe, and their son Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) was a Danish astronomer, one of the most famous astronomers in the history of modern science.

Tycho was working at his uncle's castle when he found a new star in the Cassiopeia constellation, a supernova, which he observed for a full year before it faded away.

Beate was a lady-in-waiting of the Queen Sofie at Kronborg Castle, Helsingør, Shakespeare's "Elsinore", from about 1584 to 1592, at a time when Shakespeare was starting his career as playwright in London.

Judi, whose first professional role as an actress was playing Ophelia in Hamlet, is completely overwhelmed by this revelation, and says she's "going to bore the pants off people with this story" ! My god! She visit Kronborg Castle to find out more.

It turns out that Beate's astronomer son Tycho, who published a book about his supernova discoveries, included in his book a picture of himself with various heraldic shields surrounding him, two of which were Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, part of Tycho's family, the two guys who feature in Shakespeare's Hamlet. It's thought that a copy of the book could have ended up in London, and been seen by Shakespeare, who then included the names of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in his play Hamlet.

King Frederick and Queen Sofie were great lovers of the arts, and they arranged performances at Kronborg Castle by entertainers from many countries in Europe. There were several tours by English actors, including one in the summer of 1586 which included the famous English actor Will Kempe, who worked with Shakespeare at the Globe Theatre in London. Beate Bille, the woman in Judi's family tree, would have seen Kempe perform, that's for sure. And Shakespeare even wrote roles specifically for Kempe to show off the actor's comic talents.