Danskcolin: Thursday March 12th 2026 "Grandparents, do YOU view with suspicion your grandchildren's sudden interest in you?"

Yes, Friends, do YOU view with suspicion your grandchildren's sudden apparent interest in you?

We've all been there, haven't we - unless we're not grandparents! And Onion News has at last brought the problem to world attention with their today's front page "splash", to put it mildly!

Poor Grandma!!!! And reading the story today, here in rural, semi-automated Liphook, Hampshire, brings a certain sympathetic smile to the lower part of the faces of both me, and my wife Lois, as we trudge through the mud of local soccer heroes Liphook United's "hallowed turf" this morning.

Luckily Lois and I are completely on our own when our laughing starts in earnest. Nobody else in Liphook - bar none - is apparently willing to brave the incipient drizzle and 50 mph winds today to enjoy the pastures of the semi-disused "recreation ground" where so many dreams of soccer glory have bitten the dust, which is a pity!

Lois and me this morning on our drizzle-affected windy walk this morning

over local soccer heroes' Liphook United's "hallowed turf", where

so many dreams of soccer glory have bitten the dust,

and come to a very muddy end, to put it mildly!!!!

At least, "the lads in blue", as Liphook United's players are known in these here parts (!) scored a creditable, and nail-biting, goalless draw away last Saturday against Hampshire Premier League top-of-the-table giants Locks Heath, which has lifted "the lads" from second-from-bottom to third-from-bottom in the table, and confounded a lot of the local doubters, and surprised a lot of other local "Moaning Minnies" (!), as they all downed their pints in the local pubs last Saturday night, no doubt about that!

Still, it's going to be a long climb up the table if "the lads" want to ever get to play in Europe before they retire! Just saying!!!

But a journey of a thousand miles begins with but a single step, "as Confucius say" haha!

flashback to last Saturday: a nail-biting moment in Liphook United's exciting

goalless draw against league leaders Locks Heath. Go the lads !!!!!

You'd never believe it to look at us, but Lois and I are fully-paid-up "old codgers" and grandparents to five, but, at 79 going on 80, we're well past the age of being used by those grandchildren of ours as "homework fodder" - see Onion Story above, if you want "chapter and verse" (!!!!).

Lois and I are still, however, just about able to do our job as leaders of the local U3A Intermediate Danish for Old Codgers group, "for our sins" (!), and it's the group's fortnightly meeting at 2:30pm today, which, if nothing else, keeps Lois and me out of bed this afternoon, a complete "change of pace", to put it mildly!!!

me and Lois trying to keep control of another rowdy online

meeting of the local U3A Intermediate Danish for Old Codgers group,

which we lead "for our sins" !!!!

The group actually boasts a Danish grandmother, Jeanette, in its serried ranks, which is useful in many ways, as she guides us painfully through the torture of pronouncing the language, an experience which has often been described as "trying to talk with a potato in your mouth" (!).

(left) Jeanette, the Danish grandmother in our local U3A "Intermediate Danish

for Old Codgers" group, and (right) some YouTube guidance on

what best to have in your mouth when trying to talk the language (!)

Lois and I first took an interest in the Danish language during the 7 years our daughter Alison and family were living in Copenhagen (20012-2018), during which period Lois and I visited them several times.

flashback to May 2013: Lois and me larking about

in the "dressing up room" at the Viking Museum, Trelleborg, Denmark

Happy days!!!!!

20:00 Strange though it may seem, a lot of Danish was being talked in England, over a thousand years ago, especially in the north of the country, as Prof. Robert Bartlett makes clear in the second programme in his fascinating series "The Normans". In the series Prof. Bartlett describes how William Duke of Normandy invaded England in 1066. The Normans seized control of not just England but, eventually, also the rest of the British Isles, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, changing them all for ever.

After William defeated the Anglo-Saxons at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, he met with growing resistance as his plans to transform the country began taking shape, and the strongest resistance was in the north, where it erupted into open warfare, Prof. Bartlett tells us.

In 1069 King William marched on York and crushed the rebellion, and just to ram the point home, on the third anniversary of his coronation in Westminster Abbey, William donned his crown and robes again, this time in the ruins of York Minster, as a symbolic gesture of triumph over the rebels.

What madness!!!!

In all the public offices of Anglo-Saxon England - the bishops, the county sheriffs, the land-owners, anybody with any authority - Anglo-Saxons were replaced with French-speaking Normans.

It's fortunate, perhaps, that we're not all talking French today, over a thousand years later, but our dear English language was preserved in the end, thanks to the Normans' one critical mistake: they mostly didn't bring their lovely Norman womenfolk with them - which was a bit of a rookie error, as Prof. Bartlett stresses.