AND WHILE I'M RANTING...

When I was pregnant I signed up to a website that would give me a couple of lines weekly telling me what was happening with my unborn baby. I didn't know at the time that the web page would continue to send me updates after the baby was born. No problems there... except it turned out to be an American page and some of the ideas it sends me leave me open-mouthed. Take today's advice for example: What Might Concern You at 46 Weeks

Does your baby see you naked? If so, there is no need to be concerned. At this age your baby doesn't know what nudity is, nor will they remember what they have seen. This is true for kids through the toddler years.

However by the time your child could go to preschool, the opinions on this change. While most experts believe that a child seeing a parent of the same sex undressed is ok, they believe that a child seeing a parent of the opposite sex undressed should be avoided.

Sorry, but why do our friends across the pond believe the world comes to an end if a four year old child sees mummy's nipple? Nudity only becomes a problem when you make it one. I know it'll horrify them but my children (all of my children) are happy to walk in on me in the bath and ask what's for dinner or even sit on the loo asking for homework help while I get washed. Not only are they not traumatized by my wrinkly old body, they actually don't even notice it! Reading this kind of nonsense just underlines to me quite how European I am!

EASTER FLOWERS

We were sent a pretty Easter card by Thomas's mum. I have had a vague notion though, since we received it, that something was odd about it.
Suddenly today it struck me. It was the juxtaposition of snowdrops and Easter. To me in Scotland (with the obvious exception of this year) snowdrops are a January, or February at a pinch, flower. Easter is hyacinths, and maybe the tail end of the daffodil season, but definitely nothing to do with snowdrops!
It is funny how our climates are very slightly different despite the geographical proximity. After all the west Scotland is an area where you encounter dozens of palm trees - and I'm yet to bump into one of those in Denmark!

BEFORE WE IMPORT THEIR CULTURE LOCK, STOCK AND BARREL...

I notice the UK is slowly becoming America. When I was a child there were no drive thru burger places. There was no 24 hour shopping in supermarkets the size of small towns. We went out 'guising' at Halloween, not 'trick-or-treating'. Our lanterns were made of Swede, not pumpkin. Our cars had accelerators, not gas pedals and we parked in car parks, not parking lots. The list is endless.
But as a word of warning before we hang our culture out to dry and accept their way of life, we should occasionally look up at what is different and better here in Europe and the UK. Take holidays, for example - I for one couldn't imagine having any quality family life on a US ration of holidays.
Worse still, today I was appalled to find out about their idea of maternity leave. When I was pregnant, I joined an online web club which mailed me a weekly pregnancy update. As a rough guide I was told the approximate size of the baby, its development, changes to expect in my own body. I didn't realize at the time these updates would continue after birth. It was a US site. Today's update shocked and upset me:

• Your Baby Week 9

  Now is the time many mothers will go back to work. Leaving your baby will always be hard but there are ways to make the transition smoother.

  If you are breastfeeding your baby should be adjusted to taking the bottle when you are not around by this point. This will help the separation go smoother for both of you. Don't fret about taking a pump to work and pumping during your breaks. This is a good time to store up milk for the next day.

  Take the transition slow, introducing your baby to time away before the big day comes. Drop the baby off for a couple of hours at the day care, or child care provider's home where the baby will be staying. Spend time there with baby, letting the baby know that you are comfortable and trusting of the place, as it will then be less scary for your infant.

  Forgo the bottles on the weekend, and use that time for consistent nursing and to keep your milk supply going strong. This is also a good time to strengthen your bond with your baby after being away at work all week.

What crazy kind of society thinks 9 weeks is the point when many mothers should return to full-time employment? Apart from the physical demand on a woman who has only slept midnight to 3am, 4am-7am, (on a good night) this seems positively barbaric to me. I remember how I felt in 1997 when going back full-time was compulsory at week 29. I cried buckets, I held and hugged Marcel all weekend, I tried not to sleep at night so I could look at my baby, my breasts and heart ached for him. It wasn't until the UK brought in 52 weeks maternity leave in 2005 that I felt prepared to go back to work as a psychologically whole person. So today I have held and hugged Amaia and felt happy to live in a country where returning to full-time employment this morning is not a requirement. I have held her close and made her feel safe and when she's wanted milk I have been there for her to suckle on warmly, as I should be when she is so tiny and helpless.

GERMAN XMAS MARKETS

I see the German Xmas market is back in Glasgow. It has been here for the past few years and I've tried to drop by at least once. It isn't quite up to the standard of Trier or Freiburg where I went a few times when I lived in France, but it has enough Glühwein, sausage and gingerbread to make it smell right and often has some nice, though slightly pricey arts and crafts. That makes me wonder... after the pound's 35% nosedive this year, the Germans are going to have to make a decision on whether to make no profit over here by reducing their prices, or make their prices so high that no one buys anything. Hmmm - I guess what will be more interesting to see is whether they are back next year or not!

HOW MANY DOUGHNUTS (DONUTS)?

When Léon and I were in Manhattan a few years ago we decided to go up the Empire State Building one morning because our jet lag had got us up so early there was no queue yet. Figuring we'd be hungry before we'd done our sightseeing, I decided to buy a couple of donuts to go in a bag. Luckily there was a donut shop just across the road so I went in and asked for two. The man behind the counter looked at me as if I had asked for two live chickens in a bag. He proceeded to explain that donuts were so much cheaper to buy by the half dozen. I pointed out I was alone with a baby and two would be fine. I probably ended up paying as much for two as I would have for six, but I didn't see any point in carrying four spares around all day. Last night Lots and Thomas decided to make homemade doughnuts for breakfast for the first time. Thomas had a well-known American cookbook called 'Joy' and he and Charlotte disappeared into the kitchen for the best part of yesterday evening doing odd things with dough and yeast. It seemed like a lot of hassle. They made one batch of doughnuts as explained in the cookbook. This morning they were ready for frying. The one batch as recommended by the American cookbook contained approximately thirty donuts and mentioned they had to be eaten within two hours of frying. I assume most American families have two, maybe three kids at the most, so their breakfast batch suggests you should be eating six or even seven large donuts each for breakfast! Suddenly I understand both why the bloke in Manhattan had mocked my order of two donuts and why Americans aren't generally the skinniest people around! (Incidentally, I don't actually like doughnuts - they are greasy and heavy, and even one is too much, but these were light and fluffy and I probably polished off at least three in the required two hours, so maybe people should make their own.)

MONOCULTURAL BRITAIN

Thomas sent me a link to this the other day but I found it a bit too depressing to blog immediately. I think I first wanted to get it straight in my head what I thought was so depressing about it...
I think the end of the article sums up a great deal of the problem. By banishing language learning from the school curriculum, we lose out on a great deal of culture, literature and the likes in the nations geographically closest to us and therefore isolate ourselves and force ourselves to look outwards to countries that are much more remote such as Australia or the US. (And believe me reading the translation is NOT the same)!
We force ourselves to become monolingual and therefore monocultural which can only result in smaller-minded, less empathetic people. We assume (completely wrongly) that Europe is close and their 'culture' is similar to our own, but unless we learn their languages, we never find ourselves sitting round their dinner tables seeing the differences. By never trying to adapt to all the slight differences between the cultures around us we simply float on the periphery of what everyone else can see.
To me a greater achievement of bringing my kids up bilingually is perhaps their understanding that their French/Danish and Scottish parents are different from each other as are their German/Danish/Scottish/French grandparents. They realize they all behave differently and have different expectations. And of course they have all been used to sitting round a dinner table from birth where three languages are being spoken simultaneously so they all believe bilingualism is normal and not something only 5% of the population should be able to achieve.

POTATO PARANOIA?

Mashed Potatoes
Originally uploaded by jugglerpm

Thomas seems a tad more worried by green-skinned potatoes than me. In fact he approaches them in the same way that most Brits would approach a plate of toadstools collected randomly in the forest by an amateur.
Here in the UK we might avoid a dark green potato but a slight green haze on one potato in the bag wouldn't send us looking for an all-night doctor. We're used to the odd green chip or crisp in a bag and we happily munch them.
Thomas explained to me that Danes are so worried about the toxicity of green potatoes they'd take one back to a shop for a refund or bin it.
I thought I'd investigate.
It seems they are toxic but an adult would have to ingest 2kg of green potatoes at one sitting before the toxicity would start to affect them.
Interesting!
(I'm away to eat my mash - I hope Thomas won't notice the one greenish potato I threw in ;-) )

MOVIE DUBBING

Léon, Anna and Thomas are currently sitting watching 'Chicken Little' dubbed into Danish. Half way through the movie two of the Danish-speaking characters suddenly burst into song and sing the well-known Spice Girls number Wannabe. Unlike the rest of the movie, the song isn't dubbed - they have kept the original sound track for those 3 minutes. The first time I witnessed this phenomenon was back in Germany in the early 80s, watching an episode of Dallas when suddenly while the Ewings all sat round the table discussing life and the universe in German, they suddenly burst into Happy Birthday in English - the soap suddenly switching to the original soundtrack, complete with everyone's voice temporarily changing.
Obviously I was brought up as an English native speaker, so we don't have dubbed TV. If we never learn a foreign language, we never see dubbed TV. What I wonder is - when you are Danish or German or whatever, doesn't it freak you out a little when the characters in the soap or movie you are watching suddenly swap language and voice for 3 minutes once an hour (especially if they swap to a language you don't actually understand), or don't you even notice because you've grown up with this bizarre phenomenon? I'm also puzzled as to why they rarely dub songs?

TERMS OF ENDEARMENT

cutting boards
Originally uploaded by pinprick

Possibly the strangest thing you have to get used to when you live with foreigners is the terminology they use for endearment. I thought I'd just about heard it all with all the cabbage and rabbit stuff they used in France every year when I turned up with one of my little people, but Danish is weird too. I am beginning to suspect Danes are attracted by different types of animal to Brits... or maybe they just enjoy their bacon? Thomas invariably calls Anna his 'Anna-mouse' - how bizarre! Tonight she fell asleep on me and he volunteered to take her off me and up to bed. Come here, Daddy's little angel-pig he said, like it was the most normal thing in the world! What the hell is an angel pig? And what makes Danes think something as cute as a baby should be compared to a mouse or a pig?

MRS BUCHANAN??

 The bride Originally uploaded by PhylB

I blogged last year about the hassle value of changing your name in this day and age. The BBC was discussing it today too. Having got married two weeks ago and not changed my name, I am finding a bit of a shortfall in the English language. Maybe it's to do with the unpronounceability of 'Ms'? I tell people my name is Phyllis Buchanan, as soon as they ask my marital status, I am instantly addressed by people as Mrs Buchanan. She's my mother. I am Ms Buchanan or Mrs Widmann, but I am definitely not Mrs Buchanan. Whole professions, such as teaching in the UK, which still uses the formal Miss or Mrs address cannot cater for women getting married and not changing their name. If I become a teacher tomorrow, the kids can't address me as Miss Buchanan because I am not Miss, they won't necessarily know my married name so would I become Mrs Buchanan again?! It definitely doesn't work any more.

HOW DO YOU GET UNCHRISTENED?

Given I wasn't christened myself, it had never occurred to me until I read this today that this could be a problem. It got me to thinking about how I would feel as a devout () atheist, if I had been christened and I concluded that it would make me feel extremely ill at ease to belong on paper to a religion chosen by someone else and forced upon me. It would be a bit like my parents choosing to have me tatooed somewhere as a baby without my consent! I am relieved I don't actually have to face this dilemma! Thanks mum and dad!

WHY REFERENCES ARE A BAD IDEA INTERNATIONALLY

In the UK we often rely on references to get a job. If you have never worked anywhere else, you probably aren't aware how alien the concept is abroad. Some countries use them, but do them differently, some just don't understand the concept at all.
I remember when André first came to the UK to work and was asked for a reference. His company simply refused, saying it didn't know what that was. Fortunately, he still got the job. Recently I became very aware of the disadvantages of this once again through foreign contacts.
Last week I was asked to proofread a reference given by a Danish academic for student looking for a fellowship in the US. The reference was extremely long (several pages), positive and very gushing. He explained that he only wanted the English checked, he knew the reference seemed quite over the top from and English perspective but knew that that was the norm in the States. To read it, you would have believed you were employing possibly the nicest, cleverest person ever to walk the face of the Earth. That referee knew the game and was playing by the rules. Yesterday however another friend asked me to help with a reference. This time it was a German academic translating a French reference for a candidate to work in the States. The French candidate had worked in two schools. As I said above, the French are not great users of references. The two references this candidate was sending to the States in the hope of achieving employment simply said 'I confirm Mr X worked here in my school as a teacher, Yours faithfully Headmaster Y' Now if my Danish contact is correct and Americans like positive references, then this poor teacher doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of getting an interview, though he may be equally as suited to the job as the Danish candidate whose referee was more clued up. That's not ideal is it?
Thomas also amusingly told me of his own experience. When applying to work in the UK, he was asked for two references. One referee knew the system so wrote a few positives and sent them off, the other (a Dutch man) however didn't realize what form a UK reference takes so sent off a list of all the positive things he could find to say about him, and attached a list of areas where he could see need for improvement! Of course, this may be useful to the employer, but had the UK employer compared this to references he would have received about UK candidates, Thomas would of course have been at an unfair disadvantage. UK candidates would have areas they'd need to improve but these would not have been underlined in a UK reference. A UK employer who wasn't used to foreigners would probably have assumed Thomas was a less capable than normal employee if the referee had dared to point out areas for improvement.
I am tempted to say references are a minefield and not something we should be using in this new globalized work setting.

DECEPTIVE TARTAN

I was born a Buchanan as you know so I have always known what Buchanan tartan looks like. If you'd asked me to describe it without showing me a sample I'd have said predominantly red and orange with two shades of green and a wee bit of yellow. Yesterday I decided to colorize a photo of the wedding just for fun. To do that I obviously had to magnify if to 400% and colour in each patch of the kilt individually. I was amazed at how deceptive the overall effect is. Firstly it seems to contain almost no orange at all but has large patches of both bright blue and fuchsia pink. I stand amazed!

A CULTURAL DIFFERENCE OR A FAMILY DIFFERENCE?

M-Budget Kitchen Rolls
Originally uploaded by iwouldstay

Is it a Danish thing, or is it simply a Widmann thing?
I am compelled, from curiosity, to blog this as it has been puzzling me ever since I moved in with Thomas. You see, if it turns out to be a Danish thing rather than just a Widmann thing I swear we should all buy kitchen roll shares in Denmark and then retire!
I grew up in a house where there was always a kitchen roll hanging in the kitchen. We used it when someone spilled their coffee or if a child sneezed and we couldn't quickly find a hanky. That was about it.
We had it but it wasn't a big part of our life.
When I left home I didn't really bother with kitchen roll and when I lived with André, we bought it occasionally but 70% of the time we had none at all.
When I sneezed there I used a tissue, or loo roll (that I can't live without!!). When someone dropped a coffee, I'd throw a tea towel over it and then put the tea towel in the wash. To clean the table I'd use one of those little sponges which is green on one side, rough on the other. I dried the table with a blue cloth, which I would also wash afterwards. I never actually needed kitchen roll.
Then I moved in with Thomas and on our first shop in ASDA he bought a pack of six. Handy to have around, I assumed. A week later he bought 6 more, and so it went on!
His family came for the wedding. The pound has crashed against the Danish currency so his family had great days out at Silverburn stocking up on shoes, clothes, suits etc. They'd come home each time arms full of bags from various designer outlets, but I had to laugh because both his mum and his sister dropped into the big 24 hour Tesco and bought a six pack of kitchen roll for use here too! (His sister was only here 48 hours!!!)
If the UK was repopulated by Danes/or Widmänner tomorrow then landfill would be overflowing with kitchen roll by a week on Tuesday!
They use half a roll at each meal. They wet it and use it as a cloth to wash the table, then dry it with another 10 sheets, the pile of used kitchen roll taking over the bin. If they bake a cake in the kitchen and get chocolate, flour and icing sugar over 15 square metres, they happily go through 4 kitchen rolls cleaning the kitchen from head to toe! Now I don't argue with the fact that it must be more hygienic, but maybe it is the mean old Scot in me, but I just couldn't use pounds and pounds of kitchen roll after cooking every meal. I am happy for Thomas to come round the kitchen after I have used my trusty sponge and cloth, and wipe each surface once more with a sheet of the white stuff if it makes him happier but if I was expected to use a whole kitchen roll every day I'd be quaking at the expense. Amazingly, when Thomas runs out of the stuff (not that that happens often!) he is actually happy to use half a toilet roll to clean the dining room rather than a cloth. That is really weird, it just isn't absorbent enough to wet and use as a cloth to my mind!
Anyway I am really intrigued as to whether I have just stumbled upon a kitchen-roll-loving family or if the whole of Denmark is overflowing with used kitchen roll!?

HOW TO PHONE?

 Phoning Miriam Originally uploaded by PhylB

You wouldn't think in this technologically advanced day and age phoning would be getting harder rather than easier would you? Most families are one nation families so their phoning options are increasing greatly but multinational families are actually in danger of losing contact altogether simply because each country's norms differ vastly. Take our current situation. Up till Brita (Thomas's mother) retired they lived in a house with a phone so Thomas phoned his mum on average once a week for about an hour. Added to that his dad often called him more than once in the week for a quick 5-10 minute chat. No problem there, especially given we get free calls to Denmark with our digital TV package - way to go - I remember the early days when you paid maybe a fiver to phone a relative abroad. Most broadband packages come linked to a UK landline, all Sky digital TV services require a landline - the companies offer free phoning because phoning is no longer the primary use of your land line. Therefore the norm in the UK is to have a landline with free international calls. So where's the problem you ask? Read the smallprint - we get free calls to international landlines. In Denmark there is no countrywide link between landlines and broadband or digital TV services, add to that the fact that mobile calls in Denmark are 10% of the cost here - so what is becoming the norm in Denmark? No landline, only mobiles of course. So now Thomas's parents have moved into the flat our weekly call to them has increased from £0-00 to about the equivalent of buying Anna an extra 176 Pampers nappies a week! I am sure not many people would like to add that to their shopping list, especially not in these hard times. Adding 763 top quality nappies, or say 5 litre bottles of whisky (for those of you who don't understand nappy prices!), or 85 extra loaves (for the teetotalers with no kids) to your monthly shopping bill is just impossible unfortunately. So we need to find a way forward before international communications break down altogether! I guess there is Skype, but given they only have a laptop, they are unlikely to sit in their flat all day so we can ring them free on that. I can't really see Thomas on Skype to his mum. Thomas loves to pace all round the house when he's talking to her, so sitting immobile talking to the wavering image would be a big culture shock. I guess we could use email more but that doesn't really help Anna till she is about 8 or 9... Or snail mail - there's always that solution - aren't the advances in technology impressive?

BURIAL CARDIE

It's maybe something that happens to you with age but I have found over the past few years that I am less willing to put up with things I would have put up with when I was younger. (Hence the mid-life life changes amongst other things!)

I went to a funeral last December. One of Marcel's friend's fathers died suddenly in his mid-40s a couple of weeks before Xmas. Although I didn't know the man, I knew his wife and four sons, so went along. It was a humanist funeral. I had never been to a humanist funeral before. I had been to many religious funerals both Protestant and Catholic, including 3 of my 4 grandparents. You would have thought that the funeral of someone close to my heart should be more moving to me than that of a stranger, but I have never been to a more moving funeral than the humanist one and it was because I could relate to it.
I have never taken any comfort from being told about my loved one being under God's protection now, in a better place or that Jesus died for their sins. I have sat through every funeral till last December thinking and feeling it is utterly meaningless to me.
When I arrived, unsuspecting, at the crematorium last December, they were blasting out Hotel California. Interesting, I thought, but I drew much more comfort from a song I remembered my parents playing during my childhood, rather than a hymn with words I could not relate to. The speaker, a female humanist 'minister' (if that's the right word) stood up and spoke about how the couple had met, what they'd done in their life together, then she recounted each child's favourite memory of their father. Two other non-religious songs were played - one from an opera, one other pop song (I can't remember the details.) At the point where a normal religious minister would have been saying prayers, this minister told the congregation that if they were religious they could use a few minutes silence to pray, if they weren't they could feel free to use those minutes to think about the man and his family and any special memories we had of them.
Everything fell into place for me. At last I was at a funeral I could participate in. I stood their crying for a man I had never met and his 4 poor boys left fatherless at just 10, 11, 15 and 19. I cried because I could relate to thinking about a family and a missing member. I could participate. I could feel like an insider instead of some excluded weirdo for the first time in my life in that situation. I had found how I wanted my life to end. I think so many people assume a funeral (or wedding or whatever) needs to be religious because it is traditionally so, but I have always found that at the saddest times in my life, the last thing I want is to feel alien and excluded.
I went home and started to think through my funeral, hoping it wouldn't be for some time. Obviously I won't be there (except physically) so those I love could go against my wishes but they will know what my wishes are at least.
First I thought about my old cardie - I have had it forever - maybe 15 years. Every time I buy a replacement I revert to it because it is just the right weight and being cream it goes with everything - I thought I would get buried (or cremated) in my cardie (though I might change my mind now I have a new coat - photos to follow)! I would select 3 songs that mean something to me for the funeral so that when they are played those who really knew and loved me will be moved by them, knowing what I would have thought when I chose them for them to listen to. And I would ban religion from it. I don't mean I don't respect religious friends - I would have them say as they said at the funeral I mentioned that there should be time for those who do have a faith to pray to whoever they want, but I also want my non-religious friends and family to be given moments just to remember the good times, remember me at 80 in my scabby old cardie shouting at the grandchildren to smile nicely for the camera!
I got to talking about this with my dad a few weeks ago and he's been doing the same! He was considering being buried in his singing Santa tie (not sure if he's going to be wearing anything else!) and he's chosen a couple of very amusing songs and made me promise not to let mum opt for anything religious in a moment of grief and madness! I presume he'll be taking a golf club or two with him too!

A DANISH CHRISTMAS TREE

A Danish Xmas tree
Originally uploaded by PhylB

While Thomas is taking down our tree, I thought I'd take this chance to blog it and the Scottish reaction to it.
This is our Danish Xmas tree. If you look closely there are a few differences. For starters it isn't a lump of plastic like 80% of Scottish Xmas trees. Danes grow a good percentage of European Xmas trees so wouldn't contemplate a lump of plastic. Many of the elaborate decorations like the large white star on the left were handmade by Brita who taught Charlotte how to make them. The position of the tree is also very alien from a UK perspective. We tend to put a Xmas tree either in the window or in a corner of the room. In Denmark the tree needs to be in middle of the room because the gift giving takes place after you dance around the tree hand in hand. You couldn't do that with my mum's tree for example, as it is in the corner of the room between the couch and an armchair.
But the main difference as to be the fairy lights. They are real candles of course. Most people who dropped by over Xmas looked at us as if we were insane taking three steps back assuming the house was in imminent danger of burning down (of course you don't leave them on when you are out of the room). Aren't they beautiful? And so warm too. By the end of the dancing you are sweating because of the heat coming off the tree!

CHRISTMAS CONFESSION TIME

Xmas tree
Originally uploaded by PhylB

I've been part of a French/German/Danish family since 1985.
The French, like the Germans, like the Danes all celebrate Christmas on Christmas eve.
Basically the day goes somewhat normally till about 4 or 5pm when they start busying themselves with dinner - the kind Brits would eat on the 25th. In France around 7pm they'd suddenly get up, get all formal, kiss you on both cheeks and wish you a happy Christmas, offer a gift and food and drink would be the order of the rest of the evening with the more religious family members nipping out for a church service mid-evening.
In Denmark, it is the other way round. You go about your business normally till you eat a lovely big meal early evening and thereafter you go through to the room with the tree and sing carols dancing round it and at the end of the songs, you receive your gifts. Then again church is involved for the religious.
This is not what I grew up with. In Scotland we worked Christmas eve, and still do, though we often got to go home at 2pm instead of 5pm. Religious neighbours went to a service at 11-30pm. Before going to bed you left out a glass of milk or whisky for Santa and a biscuit of carrot for Rudolph. When you woke up on Christmas day "Santa" had been. There were gifts under the tree. At lunch time relatives came round and gifts were exchanged, and finally a nice meal would be had at 4pm. Thereafter you collapsed full on the couch in front of the Wizard of Oz, while playing a board game!
Now, I know I am a heathen so I am not best placed to question religious things such as Christmas, but isn't Christmas meant to be a celebration of the birth of Jesus, and isn't his birthday chosen universally to 25th December? Now, my birthday is 4th of February. I get my presents on the 4th. My family drop by on the 4th. We have birthday dinner on the 4th, work permitting...
So here's my confession - for the last 23 Christmases I have wondered why the Europeans are so obsessed with making the eve of the birthday special but the birthday itself a bit of a nothing day. Can any of you foreigners out there explain that one to me? Why does Europe celebrate 'Christmas' on December 24th? Though who am I to complain - I now get two Christmases a year...

THE ADVANTAGE TO SLEEPING WITH FOREIGN NERDS

Two oclock
Originally uploaded by rodneylibraries

Thomas and I were lying hugging in bed on Saturday night in the dark. We have a very cool (if nerdy) radio controlled digital projection alarm clock. As if by telepathy, as often happens between Thomas and I, we had the same thought at the same time: given Anna gets us up a few times some nights and at least once every night, then there was a chance we'd be up at the point in time when the clock reset itself automatically for British Winter time. That would mean we would see whether it counted backwards, or simply changed back one hour. Simultaneously, as I said Wouldn't it be cool if we were awake at 2am? Thomas said Wouldn't it be cool if we were awake at 3am? Weird! Who was right? We checked wikipedia - we both were - the UK changes to winter time at 2am, Denmark at 3am. I had always assumed everyone did it at 2am, he had assumed the same of 3am, but of course we have to all shift at the same time for the time difference to stay the same - it is so obvious, but I wouldn't have learned it from hugging a fellow Scot. Even more interesting in wikipedia is the fact that despite this being seemingly the only obvious way to do it in retrospect, the States does it differently - with everywhere switching at 2am locally, thus completely knocking out time zones all over the country temporarily, and in Australia they don't even change on the same day. Suddenly Europe seems to be the only sane place to live... did I say suddenly???

YMER

One of the best things about marrying into another culture (even if you don't marry) is getting to know the little hidden bits of that culture. If I was a normal tourist popping over to Denmark for a week, I would never have discovered Ymer for example, and even if I had, I'd never have found the sprinkles to go on top!