Wednesday June 12th 2024 "A nice piece of herring with your afternoon tea, Sir?"

Extramarital affairs - why do people have them? They just seem to make life so devilishly complicated, don't they. And Lois and I have been feeling very sorry this week for local woman Joyce Reynolds (46) who seems to have the problem in spades with her husband [source: Onion News].

For some womanising husbands, the choice of women is immaterial. "Anything in a skirt" is what they used to say, isn't it, or even "anything that moves". 

But let's give credit where credit's due - some men are more discerning about their choice of mistress, and maybe spend a lot of time thinking it out and "getting it right" - like, famously, Ealing Studios feature film director Peter Hastings (52).

"Why are you and Lois talking about extramarital affairs?", I hear you ask. [it wasn't me! - Ed]

Well, seeing as you ask, it's all to do with the Danish crime novel we're reading together at the moment. We're both members of the local U3A Intermediate Danish group, and the group is currently reading Danish writer Anna Grue's humdinger of a "Scandi noir" murder novel, "Judaskysset" (the Judas Kiss).

And you see, the novel's hero, Dan, Dan the Danish advertising man, who's also an amateur crime sleuth in his spare time, has, like film director Peter Hastings (see story above) also been "triaging" a bunch of young female interns at his advertising bureau, trying to find just the right face and body to be his next "squeeze".

"Dan Dan the Advertising Man", the adman with

an eye for the ladies, played in the TV version 

by Danish actor Peter Mygind.

And the whole thing is just so desperately sad, Lois and I think, because Dan is married to such a lovely woman, a nice local GP called Marianne. [It's only a story, Colin! - Ed]

Dan's lovely GP wife, Marianne, played in the TV

version by Laura Drasbæk

Advertising guy Dan (right) looks distinctly guilty as he gives 

a sideways glance to his GP wife Marianne, sitting informally, 

with her knees up, at the couple's breakfast table

Why do these men do it? You'd think Marianne would be enough "squeeze" for any husband, but no, apparently not!

And what about these young female interns at Dan's advertising bureau, the ones that Dan is "working his way through" just at the moment? Lois and I have been discussing them as well, today, because the next meeting of our Danish group is tomorrow, and we'll be struggling through another 5 pages of the novel - well, it is in Danish, remember haha!

some of the young female interns at Dan's advertising bureau, some of

the young women that Dan is gradually "working his way through"

Lois and I love words - we can talk all night about the meanings and origins of words, and we love nothing more than a cryptic crossword to work on when we're in bed. 

And we can't help noticing today that our current novel's Danish writer, Anna Grue, is calling these young female interns "Dan's herrings".

"Dan's herrings"? Surely not! But yes, Anna Grue calls them Dan's "reklamesild" (literally: advertising herring). And you've probably already seen the word "sild" plenty of times, when you're out shopping, and certainly whenever you've bought a tin of Scandinavian herring in Tesco's or Sainsbury's.

"Sild no.1" - a typical tin of Norwegian Sea herring

Sild no.1 - sounds like a cigarette, doesn't it, but no, it's just a herring! However, apparently, in Danish the word has also, since around 1982, meant in Danish slang "a sexually attractive young girl or woman", at least according to our online Danish dictionary. 

The dictionary gives the example sentence "Store-Mulle måtte se sig nødsaget til at score endnu en uskyldig sild - den aften sov han ikke hjemme".

Or, in English, " Store-Mulle [who he? - Ed] was forced to score another innocent herring - and that night he would not be sleeping at home". 

Why use the word for herring in this kind of sense? Well, Lois suggests that the "Scandis" do like their herring, perhaps even more than we do, and it's maybe the equivalent of the British use of the word "crumpet" in this sense, because we Brits do like our crumpet, don't we.

So at the Danish group meeting tomorrow, Lois and I have decided, provisionally, to translate the word "reklamesild", literally [Dan's] "advertising herring", as Dan's "advertising crumpet". Your suggestions are welcome, however, as always - but only on a postcard please!

an excerpt from the vocabulary sheet which

I've prepared to help our group members

through this difficult passage in our Danish book

- I'm all heart haha!

20:00 And Lois and I can't help thinking about Dan's string of nubile young "herring" when we're on the couch tonight, watching the penultimate programme in this year's "Springwatch" series, which for 3 weeks has been monitoring the current state of wildlife in the UK, with the help of a team of live presenters from around the country.

Tonight presenter Megan McCubbin is on tiny Skomer Island off the southwest coast of the county of Pembrokeshire, Wales, where every spring, 40,000 puffin head back across from the Atlantic to hook up with their old partners in the self-same burrows that they lived in the year before.

tiny Skomer Island, off the southwest coast of Wales,

home each spring to 40,000 cute little puffins

And incredibly, every puffin chick needs to eat about 40 sand-eels a day, which keeps its parents busy "foraging", to put it mildly - my goodness !!!!

a sweet little puffin - awwwww, how cute is that !

Unfortunately many of the UK's puffin colonies have sadly been in a decline, a development linked to the decline of the sand-eel population, and here we see presenter Megan discussing the problem with puffin-expert Dr Matt Wood of the University of Gloucestershire.

All the red dots on Matt's map represent puffin populations in decline, like the one on Fair Isle, in the far north of the UK, halfway to the Faroes. The big factor in this decline is probably the warmer sea-temperatures, which are making the puffins' favourite prey, the sand-eel, harder to find, and so the puffins have to travel many miles further away to find enough sand-eels to keep their little families alive.

The UK has recently (March 2024) banned the fishing of sand-eels in British waters, in a bid to help the puffins, and it seems to be working - the puffin population on Skomer Island is now flourishing, so this is very much a good news story. It's just a pity that the EU has refused to follow suit with a Europe-wide ban.

Bad EU haha!

And it's nice tonight to see presenter Megan go "under cover" to observe the puffin of Skomer Island at close quarters, wearing this cute "puffin decoy hat" to go diving in, just to put the hundreds of local puffin here at their ease.

And just to make sure that the heartening upsurge in the puffin population continues, the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) has asked the UK's thousands of camera-wielding puffin-lovers - the so-called "pufferazzi" - to take periodic pictures of puffin and their mouthfuls of sand-eels, so that the Society can keep track of the ongoing quality of the puffin's diet.

Fascinating stuff, isn't it - and in case you're wondering, yes, Lois and I are thinking of ordering a "brace" of puffin decoy hats to wear at the next fancy dress party we get invited to. [I don't see anybody inviting YOU two noggins any time soon! - Ed] 

So watch this space!

[Oh, just go to bed!  -Ed]

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzz!!!!!