Danskcolin: Tuesday February 7th 2023

10:00 Lois and I get a shock visit this morning from Graham, the site manager.

Lois and I have been living in this new-build home in Malvern for a little over 3 months now, and a lot of that time has been taken up with finding all the faults there are with the building and recording these faults on a so-called "snagging list"; then passing our comments to Neil, the customer care guy; and then waiting in and waiting in, while painters, carpenters, handymen etc come round to fix things.

It's a total madness, but it's all part of life's rich pageant, and Lois and I, who previously have only ever lived in houses at least 50 years old, have been fascinated both to watch, and to take part in, the crazy circus of it all!

a typical couple working out what to put down on their "snagging list"

So what's this shock visit this morning from Graham, the site manager, all about? Well, it seems that Neil, the customer care guy, is O-U-T out, all of a sudden, and he is going to be replaced by "a nice young lad" (according to Graham), who is called Harry by all the guys. His real name is Kieran, although he likes to keep that quiet, says Graham.

I must say that Lois and I generally had a good experience with the just-ousted Neil, a really nice guy, but admittedly he was at times difficult to contact.

Poor Neil - but we think he's still on the payroll, it's just that he's been transferred to a different site, or something of the sort.

11:00 And on that bombshell.... Graham departs and we go off to our pharmacy to try and pick up our repeat medications for statins, which we tentatively ordered online last week, for the first time since moving to Malvern and joining our current doctor's surgery.

Did the incredibly challenging online ordering system work? Well, we're going to find out!

the pharmacy where we try to pick up our repeat prescriptions

- it's in the same building as our doctor's surgery, which is nice

Well, it turns out that my request for more medication worked, but Lois's didn't. Oh dear!

What's the explanation for this? Apparently Lois was ordering a repeat batch too soon, and so our doctor's surgery blocked the request. Lois thought she'd run out of the pills, but when we get home she discovers another two weeks' worth in her bedside cabinet drawer.

Naughty Lois !!!!!

"Naughty Lois!" - people don't realise, but Lois

can be quite mischievous at times: oh dear!!!!

And wouldn't it have been nice if the surgery had told us that they'd blocked the request, and also told us why?

16:00 Lois and I are meanwhile trying to get back into our Danish studies so we "do a bit" this afternoon with our 4 o'clock tea and iced bun. We lead a local U3A Intermediate Danish group and our next meeting will be on Thursday afternoon on Skype, so we need to get back up to speed and quickly.

The group is currently reading a book of short stories by Danish writer Sissel Bjergfjord, stories about a group of passionate Danish vegetable growers who share an allotment complex just outside Copenhagen.

Danish writer Sissel Bjergfjord

Our current short-story is all about a woman who's currently spending time at her allotments doing a lot more beer-drinking and cigarette-smoking than she's doing gardening. She's just received a cheery text from her partner, Mads, who's abroad on business. He's included a picture of his hotel room and balcony overlooking a lagoon, but the woman's noticed that there are 2 wine-glasses on the balcony table.

Suspicious, or what haha !!!!!

19:30 We see a bit of the lovely Yorkshire Dales in the new series "Spring Walks" with actress Nina Wadia.

Nina starts her walk in the quiet village of Muker, in the Swaledale valley.

Swaledale, Yorkshire - isn't it great!

When Nina gets to the equally quiet village of Keld, she meets an old Yorkshireman who teaches her a bit about the local dialect, "Swardle", which is fascinating to Lois and me.

Nina asks the guy to speak a bit of typical "Swardle", and he comes up with "I hugged a poke up a stee". This sounds a bit like it's going to mean something rude, but fortunately it turns out to be something innocent, which is a relief!

This is fascinating to Lois and me, because we know well that the Danish word for a ladder, "stige", is pronounced "stee", which is more or less the same as the Yorkshire word.

Nina used to appear in the late 1990's sitcom "Goodness Gracious Me", based around the experiences of an Asian family living in Britain, and she had a catchphrase "I can make that for nothing, except for a small aubergine". So today she asks the old guy how she would say that in "Swardle".

It turns out he can translate the first bit, but fails on the "aubergine" bit, which isn't surprising, really is it! Be fair, now haha!