Danskcolin: Saturday April 11th 2026 "Surely, not another new horse from Calumet!!! Those guys are really fizzing these days!!!"

Yes, Friends, have you seen the latest horse that those clever people from Calumet Farms are debuting this week? It's total madness, isn't it!

Onion News has the details - and what a photo, with it !!!!!

And at our lovely home in semi-leafy Liphook, Hampshire, the story has quite a topical significance for my wife Lois and me, and also a weird relevance, a relevance which we discuss today over a hasty lunch of toasted bacon-and-brie sandwiches, or is it a toasty lunch of hasty sandwiches (?).

Comes to the same thing, doesn't it, in the last analysis, when all is said and done, and eaten!!!!

my wife Lois and me, sharing a hasty lunch of toasted sandwiches,

or a toasted lunch of hasty sandwiches - take your pick haha!!!!

Horses for couples - it sounds like the perfect soundtrack for a novel by the UK's most popular 'bonkbuster' novelist, Jilly Cooper - with all her books' atmosphere of riding crops and sweaty jodhpurs, to put it mildly!

(left) authoress Jilly Cooper with horse, and two young male admirers,

and (right) one of Jilly's most popular 'bonkbuster' novels, "Riders"

You see, here in Liphook, Lois and I, 'for our sins' (!) run the local U3A online "Intermediate Danish for Old Codgers" group. Having become veritable experts in Intermediate Danish, due to our long association with Denmark, the country where our daughter Alison and family lived for 7 years, Lois and I have become very much a couple of trailblazers in promoting interest in the Intermediate Danish language, when it comes to East Hampshire, anyway!

(left) me and Lois conducting another rowdy on-line meeting of our local

"Intermediate Danish for Old Codgers" group, and (centre, right) our first-ever

visit to Denmark, back in 2013, after our daughter Alison and family moved there

To be frank, the study of Intermediate Danish isn't particularly 'mainstream' here in East Hampshire, even with the area's throngs of 'old codgers' - not yet, at least! So, for the moment, Lois and I find ourselves 'ploughing a bit of a lonely furrow' here locally, trying to popularise this all-too-often neglected language, which is a thankless task at times!!! You would not believe!!!!

For many years, our little online group has been reading a long series of Danish whodunnits together, quite happily, a lot of them by popular Danish crime-writer Anna Grue, but recently Lois and I have sensed that our members are getting a bit tired of the constant murders, not to mention all the post-murder 'sleuthing' and other Scandi high-jinks (!).

(left) me and Lois, and (centre, right) Danish crime novelist Anna Grue, with the murder

mystery that our little Danish group is currently reading - "Judaskysset" (the Judas Kiss)

One of Anna Grue's books has the title "One Murder Too Many" [Danish: Et Mord For Meget]. Is that title sending our little group a message, maybe? Is it a case of "One Murder Story Too Many" ?

I wonder....!

Danish crime-writer Anna Grue, with her novel

"Et Mord For Meget" (English: "One Murder Too Many" - yikes!)

And one of our predominantly female group-members actually said to me, "Oh not another 'Nordic noir' potboiler, Colin!", as I introduced our latest 'project', adding, "Can't we read something a bit more Jilly Cooper?".

Well, we'll see! But Jilly is so English, isn't she, and searching for a Danish Jilly Cooper seems to be just one more difficult, not to say time-consuming, task for Yours Truly, but I'll try my best, so watch this space!

some typical Jilly Cooper 'bonkbuster' novels -

too English for the Danes perhaps? I wonder.....!

But your ideas welcome - postcards only!!!!

20:00 Evening falls, and at last Lois and I can relax on the sofa, after another full day, with me working on Intermediate Danish vocab lists for our little online group of 'old codgers', and Lois busy in the garden doing some more 'muck-spreading' (!). She's also somehow found time to make a batch of scones, the first two of which we sample on the sofa together tonight. Yum yum!

our busy day: Lois 'muck-spreading in the garden' and baking a batch of scones

(with copious hand-washing in between (!)), and me working on my Danish vocab lists

What a crazy life we lead!!!!!

We switch on the telly to see a re-run of a 1975 programme from "The Good Old Days" series, which tried to recreate the atmosphere of an Edwardian evening of old-style music-hall entertainment.

And how nice tonight to see actor John Inman, before he achieved worldwide fame in "Are You Being Served?", the sitcom series in which he played camp department store menswear salesman "Mr Humphries".

Here is early-period John in tonight's show, singing and dancing in tandem with his then showbiz partner Barry Howard, as a pair of "pantomime dames", lamenting the decline of that much-missed traditional form of British entertainment.