Thursday December 1st 2022

Oh dear - bit of a rubbish day here "on the building site" where we live. It's dark, damp, cold and misty, which isn't a good start. 

And mechanical diggers rule OK: and they're churning up the mud as they dig. At one point Lois goes out to post some more of our Christmas cards, but unfortunately she drops the bag of cards in the mud, so she has to come and wipe over the cards. Plus she is afraid that some digger will drive past her and spatter her with mud as well, so she comes back in the house.

What a madness it all is!!!!

the scene on the road outside our house - what madness !!!!

Luckily we've got our next U3A Intermediate Danish group meeting to look forward to on Skype this afternoon. It's the group's first meeting for nearly 2 months - in early September Lois and I put the group into cold storage while we coped with our downsizing and moving from Cheltenham to Malvern. Now we feel it's time to revive the group and have at least one meeting before Christmas.

14:30 The meeting begins. The group is reading a nice little Danish short story at the moment, from Sissel Bjergfjord's book of short stories, all of which are about a group of passionate Danish vegetable-growers who have allotments in one big complex near Copenhagen. 

Danish writer Sissel Bjergfjord, showcasing 

her book of short stories about Danish vegetable-growers

The current story is about a woman who is regularly being beaten up by her boy-friend Sergio. Eventually she fled with her two children to a house in the allotment complex, and she seems to have shaken Sergio off for now.

Luckily the woman has spotted another gardener in the same allotment complex called René, a shy boy whom she frequently imagines having sex with. But how will she get to know René better? 

It turns out that René enlists the woman's help in finding his missing cat Oliver. And by chance the woman spots Oliver in the bushes after she comes back to the allotments after a walk, although it's obvious that Oliver is badly injured and, in fact, dies before she is able to summon help.

Later that evening René turns up at the woman's little chalet with a bottle of wine, but at this point our Danish meeting ends, so we're left with a cliffhanger: will he spend the night there, or "will he just politely say good-night" (copyright Hazel O'Connor)?

Hazel O'Connor: "Will you just politely say goodnight?"

Well, we'll see next time - but if it's any guide our little Danish group splits 60-40 in favour of the sex, but that vote would be totally predictable if you knew what our members are like - my god !!!!!

16:30 The meeting ends - half an hour later than usual because the interval after our last meeting being two months ago, there's a lot of chat about what members have been getting up to in the meantime.

And of course the chat is all in English - what a crazy group we are haha !!!!

Lois and I are totally exhausted, as usual, by the end of one of these meetings. We're getting old, that's for sure!!!!