Danskcolin: Sunday April 14th 2022

Not much achieved today, to put it mildly. My biggest achievement is that I get into our garage and manage to read our cobweb-infested gas and electric meters before submitting the figures online to our energy-supply company. I'm still resisting letting them come and fit a smart meter, which would send them the figures automatically: I'm not sure why I'm not keen to let them do this: just cussedness perhaps!!

our old cobweb-infested electricity meter in the depths

of our garage: but then it's we who choose not to dust it, so it's our fault I guess.

- Oh dear !!!!!!

And also today I finish making up 5 sheets of vocabulary items to send to members of the local U3A Intermediate Danish group that Lois and I run - the only one in the UK, we're very proud to say, although some might say it's something to keep quiet about: so the jury's still out on that one.

Our little group is reading a Danish short story about Lise, a would-be author who is also a passionate woman and an enthusiastic part-time vegetable-gardener. She and her boyfriend Albert are having a "vand, sex og sol" holiday (sea, sex and sun holiday) in a little tent on top of a deserted cliff in Norway.

the best holiday Albert's ever had: camping with his girlfriend Lise,

on a typically deserted cliff in Norway

It's the best holiday Albert has ever had, he thinks to himself, and he also suggests to Lise that she could write a crime novel set on this particular cliff: because there isn't a soul around. The perfect place for a murder! And the place's apparent atmosphere of "hygge" (that fashionable, but untranslatable Danish word for 'feeling great and having lots of cosy fun in somewhere like a tent'), could so easily turn into something more menacing.

I think if I were Lise, hearing Albert saying that to me, I'd be a bit on my guard: after all, how does she know she isn't sleeping with a psychopath? But I'm going to let that one slide, because it's actually Lise who sounds more like a psychopath to me than Albert does. Albert is quite a dull man, I sense, but who knows! - we'll just have to see!

"hygge galore" in a tent - but make sure you don't share

your tent with a psychopath: something which I cannot advise, to put it mildly!

flashback to 1971: my sole experience of a camping holiday,

in Aoshima, Japan - happy days !!!!!

12:00 Lunch and it's more soft food on the menu. Lois had a tooth pulled on Friday and we're still being careful about having anything she would really have to bite into. Lunch is going to be paté sandwiches made with 2 slices of soft wholemeal bread, and dinner will be squashed meat-balls [French: boulettes de viande squashés], with everything else squashed to accompany it - like heavily mashed potatoes.

What madness !!!!!

15:00 Lois and I sneak out for a mini-walk round the local football field. Lois is still experiencing low energy levels, so again we're being careful to make sure she doesn't overdo it.

we go for a curtailed walk round the local football field

17:30 I see our next door neighbour Nikki mowing her front lawn and I take the opportunity to hail her and give her back her huge 6 ft high fence panel that blew down in the recent storm. The wind blew it our way, into our back garden, and it fell down on a lot of our plants and shrubs. What a crazy planet we live on !!!!!

our neighbour Nikki's fence, now

missing a 6 x 4 ft panel - oh dear!

19:30 A phone call with Alison, our elder daughter who lives in Headley, Hampshire, with Ed and their 3 children Josie (15), Rosalind (13) and Isaac (11). Ed is going to be away in the latter part of the week attending a "legal eagle" conference on Lake Como, Italy, one that he's attended a couple of times or more in the past.

a kaleidoscope of souvenir pictures and social media posts

from Ed's previous visits to Lake Como

Ali and Ed have this week accidentally and unintentionally been welcomed into Headley's local "croquet scene" and entered into this year's knock-out competition, where they'll compete against a bunch of local couples, who are mostly, but not all, retired old buffers, codgers and crows.

Ali and Ed are relatively young and fit, so Lois and I think their chances are pretty good. Plus they've got the ideal lawn for it - just take down the net on the enormous tennis court, and Bob's your uncle haha!!!

flashback to June 2021: Rosalind and Isaac play tennis on the lawn

21:00 We wind down with the second programme in a new series of "Grand Designs: the Streets", all about an area just outside Bicester, Oxfordshire, where a hundred or more couples have been encouraged to buy their own piece of land and build their own adventurously-designed super-modern house on it.

Who knew that there's a huge community of first-generation immigrants from India who originally settled in the same neighbourhood of Slough, Buckinghamshire, all wealthy professionals, who are now family by family moving out to this piece of land called Graven Hill near Bicester, and building their own horrible mad, massive, ultra-modern self-build houses there?

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

the land at Graven Hill near Bicester, where a bunch of crazy

couples are building their own horrible mad new modern houses

Tonight we follow two of these couples. The first couple are designing their own super-modern, horrible new home room by room, while the other couple are buying a horrible one "off the shelf" from a factory in Poland - a bunch of specialist Polish builders will accompany the bits of the house all the way from Poland and then erect it as a "kit" or "flatpack" house just outside Bicester.

What madness!!!!

Prabhjot and Shalimi have chosen their house from a Polish company's catalogue, but they haven't seen it, obviously, so manager Piotr takes the couple on a virtual tour of it, as it takes shape in the company's factory.

It's a pity that the houses, when complete, are just as horrible as all the other new houses we see on all the "Grand Designs" series. Nasty heavy, clunky dining-tables with nasty, heavy dining chairs, and sofas that are too deep to sit on in comfort, loads of empty space, huge windows, and pointlessly double-height hallways etc. What madness !!!!!

Vineet wanted a massive 85 inch TV, costing £8,000, but he was forced to get a slightly smaller one after a critical overspend during the final stages of the project.

And what is it with Asian women and shoes? We see closet after closet of women's shoes tonight. It's shoe-madness, I tell you !!! Imelda Marcos, eat your heart out !!!!