Danskcolin: Thursday June 16th 2022

Not much of a day - I spend the morning digesting an email from our son-in-law Ed about the subject of wills - Lois and I are both 76 now. When it comes to wills it can be handy having a lawyer like Ed in the family, that's for sure.

Lois and I are both determined to make it to 96 at the very least, but we're not sure whether we can guarantee that 100%, call us pessimists if you like haha!

Yikes !!!!

The world's oldest man is conventionally reckoned to have been Methusalah, at 969 years, and people often wonder what he looked like, but these days it's easy - you don't have to try and imagine him: nowadays there are lots of pictures of him on the internet. This one for instance -

Methusalah as an old man

You can even see on the web pictures of him as a young man - he was quite good at snooker in his youth, but later found it difficult to stand up to vertical after stooping to hit the ball, so he had to give it up, which was a pity.

Methusalah (left) as a young man, at the peek of his career

on the snooker table, before his back started to play up

14:30 The afternoon is dominated by a zoom session. Lois and I run the local U3A Intermediate Danish group, and today is the day for our fortnightly meeting. We are careful not to accept new members who haven't a clue about how to speak or read Danish by the way, so don't try and gate-crash any of our zoom meetings will you, that is, unless you've graduated from "Beginner" status, and have the certificate to prove it.

We're very fussy, so no "time-wasters" please haha!!!

One of our members, Jeanette, is actually Danish, so her credentials are impeccable. And even if you are Danish already, there's always room for improvement: that's what I always say!

At least everyone else in our class is British, so learning Danish is more of a challenge to them, to put it mildly! And because of that there's much more of a "buzz" about the class than there is in Terry Jones's Italian Conversation Class at Gerald's Cross, Buckinghamshire, for example, where all the class members are native Italians and can already speak the language considerably more fluently than their teacher.

Terry Jones's Italian Conversation classes - but were

the questions too simple for the class's students, who were 100% Italian nationals?

This afternoon we're reading a bit more of Sissel Bjergfjord's book of Danish short stories, all about the hidden passions of a group of deceptively stolid-looking Danish vegetable and flower-growers, who spend their weekends working on their out-of-town allotments.

Danish short-story writer Sissel Bjergfjord showcasing her

book about the hidden passions of a group of Danish vegetable-growers

a typical Danish out-of-town allotment complex

In the story we're reading at the moment, Leonora has been trying to years to hook up with Karl, who owns the next allotment to hers. She's quite attracted to him, because he looks quiet and dull, and he's always careful to stay out of the sun, which is the kind of guy Leonora likes. Lois says that Karl is a bit like me, and I'm not sure if that's a compliment or not - perhaps I should be told!

Then suddenly one weekend a somewhat uppity woman, Elsie, appears in the little house on Karl's allotment, and she appears to have installed herself as Karl's live-in lover - Elsie is her name, and she's everything Karl isn't: flashy, extrovert and rude. And Karl met her on Tinder, the dating website.

"Karl on Tinder???? He's not the Tinder type surely!" thinks Leonora! "What madness !!!!! Why didn't Karl just try and get off with me, instead of going on Tinder? I gave him the green light, didn't I?"

Well, Leonora's struck out with Karl, that's for sure!!!!! She's missed the boat big-time haha!

breakdown of Tinder users by age -

not what you expected is it? No, it's not full of us old people haha!!!

But what fun we have trying to translate the Danish. And aside from all our group's obsession with gossiping (in English), this is the kind of slightly saucy story that we like in our group - we're all extremely shallow, no doubt about that! My god!

Tremendous fun !!!!!!

20:00 Lois and I settle down on the couch and watch last night's programme in the Springwatch series, a series which monitors wildlife in the British Isles with the help of a team of presenters and a network of hidden cameras.

Who knew that the sweet little puffins who nest on many of the west-facing coasts of the British Isles are strangely comforted by the presence of humans, and will happily stand around preening each other etc on the rocks, only feet away from people, be they naturalists or tourists?

If there are no people around, however, the puffins tend to seek shelter in the water, where they are safer from their major predators, the black gulls. If there are people around, however, the puffins are happy to remain on the cliffs, because they know that people scare away gulls, and they know they will be OK.

Awwww !!!!! Isn't that sweet !!!!!!

presenter Iolo Williams demonstrates how puffins will happily

settle only a few feet away from human beings, because it makes them feel safe!

Awwwww !!!!!!

And who knew, also, that Britain's gaudiest-looking caterpillars, the swallow-tail caterpillars, have a cunning way of scaring off their major predators, the spotted shield-bugs?

Yes, it's true haha!

the swallow-tail caterpillar, possibly Britain's

gaudiest caterpillar

If approached by a predatory shield-bug, the lovely swallow-tail caterpillar will extend the osmeterium on top of its head, and emit a smell of rotten pineapples at the same time? You couldn't make it up, could you!!!!

"What's an osmeterium?", I hear you cry. Well it's a bright orange organ that suddenly protrudes from the top of the caterpillar's head, like 2 horrible fingers.

a swallow-tail caterpillar, under attack from a predator,

extending its orange "osmeterium", which resembles two horrible orange fingers

The "Springwatch" series, however, can never be accused of being a dry, academic series, and, true to form, tonight we see presenters Chris Packham and Michaela Strachan "acting out" one of these iconic encounters between a swallow-tail caterpillar and a shieldbug, with the help of props from the series' extensive props department. Marvellous stuff !!!!!

And after this instructive display I don't think Lois and I are ever going to forget what happens when a swallow-tail caterpillar meets a shieldbug, that's for sure. And we can almost smell the stench of rotting pineapples, into the bargain - my god!

But it's certainly all worthwhile to protect this sweet little caterpillar, because if it survives, it morphs into what's possibly Britain's most beautiful butterfly, the swallow-tail butterfly, which has a massive 3.5 inch (9cm) wing span from wing tip to wing tip.