An interesting way to get to know your neighbours

I'm concluding that Danes are a shy people. I moved to Stillebæk in the autumn of 2019. Ok, there has been Covid, but that didn't happen till we'd been here six months and this is a tiny village. Until mid-last week I had met (and spoken to) seven of my neighbours (that is to say two couples and three single individuals). Then a bus happened to crash in our main street on Friday at 2pm. 

By 2pm most people were either home or working from home, the weather was stunning - full sun and mid-twenties. We were in the house when we heard some loud tooting and a screech of brakes. Out we wandered, all five of us, and saw a bus leaning at an incredibly precarious angle, which over the course of the afternoon only got worse and worse. How they managed to fall into a ditch on such a completely straight road was a puzzle. Several neighbours had the same idea. We hovered in little groups. An ambulance screeched up, followed by a police car, an emergency doctor, a second ambulance, two fire engines, a couple of tow trucks and then two vans from TV2 news. 

Over the course of the next hour we found out a coach of pensioners from Jutland were visiting the bison farm in Morud for lunch and the newly-qualified driver had managed to swerve into a ditch on the way home. No one was injured but everyone was trapped. Once we had that news, relief swept over the village and everyone sprang into action. Four or five residents took turns at diverting traffic away from the closed main road. Others turned up with cool drinks for the traffic wardens and the kids who were hanging around the TV vans waiting, unsuccessfully, for their five minutes of fame. Many neighbours we'd never met introduced themselves to us and other new inhabitants of the village. By the time we'd been directing traffic for four hours they were arranging a village party and offering everyone strawberry plants! It seems to take something to bring everyone out their shell, but once out, I imagine they'll stay out.

Finding me

I just finished Viola Davis's book Finding me. I actually listened to it as an audiobook while I was driving the other day. I'm not sure if hearing the memoir read by its author or just the sheer power of the book itself was what made it outstanding but I have not been moved this much by a book in a decade. I thoroughly recommend it to everyone. Its power is unequalled. I'm now going to buy a copy to keep, it's too important not to.

What's going on, Scotland?

I need to go over to Scotland again to help with emptying mum's house. I am looking at 14-18 May. I thought to maximise my time, I'd hire a wee car rather than relying on public transport. So I stuck those dates into all the car hire places in Edinburgh airport with a view to picking up a wee Fiat 500 or similar and paying no more than about £120. I've done that time and again so was more than gobsmacked when the best they could offer me was £457 for four days for a 4 seater biscuit tin on wheels! I figured it might be something to do with the short notice, though that has made little impact on the price previously so out of curiosity I stuck in the dates 10-14 September in Edinburgh and the cheapest car they could offer then was £422, despite it being out of season and in the more distant future. I then assumed it might have something to do either with Brexit or with the global car issues caused by Covid - I know that second hand cars are dearer at the moment globally because of chip shortages, so I played about with different destinations for my May dates. These are my interesting findings:

If I want to hire a small car in Aberdeen airport 14-18 May, the smallest and cheapest on offer is £457 (Fiat 500)

If I want to hire a small car in Glasgow airport 14-18 May, the smallest and cheapest on offer is £435 (Fiat 500)

If I want to hire a small car in Glasgow town centre 14-18 May, the smallest and cheapest on offer is £622 (Ford Focus)

If I want to hire a small car in Manchester airport 14-18 May, the smallest and cheapest on offer is £112 (Fiat 500)

If I want to hire a small car in Stansted 14-18 May, the smallest and cheapest on offer is £91 (Fiat 500)

If I want to hire a small car in Copenhagen airport 14-18 May, the smallest and cheapest on offer is £166 (Ford Focus)

If I want to hire a small car in Madrid airport 14-18 May, the smallest and cheapest on offer is £65 ( (Fiat Panda)

If I want to hire a small car in Frankfurt airport 14-18 May, the smallest and cheapest on offer is £198 (Hyundai i20)

So I can see that not only is there a shortage of small cars for hire in Scotland but also a massive hike in prices that are not reflected elsewhere in the UK or in random big cities around Europe. So, what's going on and why exactly are Scotland and its tourists being shafted?

More than just a car

We have (or rather, had) two cars: the smaller yellow one, that we bought and that Thomas uses for work, and the larger one, the lease car, that I used as my car and we used for all family and shopping outings, not to mention trips further afield. This means that I have spent a great deal of time in the larger one since we moved to Denmark... 43000km of time to be precise. A lot of that is playing the mum taxi. I drive each of the kids to music lessons, often close to home but sometimes further afield. I even blogged it at one point. Sometimes there isn't time to go home before pickup, so I go for a walk if the weather is nice, but often between October and March, I sit in the car waiting on whoever is being driven about. 

Sitting in a car for hours can be tedious. Also, with so many kids, finding time to stay in touch with everyone can be hard too. I killed both birds by bluetoothing a lot of my conversations onto the car speaker. At least 10% of my chats to Marcel and Charlotte happened in the red car, but given they are at work or uni till after 5 or even 6 pm most nights, the vast majority of my car chats were with mum. Mum liked to chat an hour or two over her afternoon coffee and that often corresponded with the kids' music lesson or other trips here. Every Tuesday and Thursday, I would drive round Funen chatting to mum. 

That means that Tuesdays and Thursdays are now eerily silent in my car. Suddenly I feel very alone, driving about, like a rather little woman in a rather big car. I tried music at first but I'm a bit of a sing-along type and Tuesdays and Thursdays don't feel like sing-along days, not yet anyway. After that I took out a subscription to a Danish audiobook site, trying again the two birds technique - increase my Danish vocabulary while convincing myself that the car isn't a big lonely place. 

But this week has now taken the issue to a new level. As I mentioned previously, we had to give back the lease car this week. So, over and above the inconvenience of sitting in the village with no means of leaving it thanks to the dearth of public transport, I sort of feel like I have given away my chats with mum, my memories and our special space. Weird. I guess it is a bit like as if you always met someone in the same café and suddenly that café shut down, only this is the international version.

While I look forward to getting a new car in the next few months, from a practical perspective, I expect even if I go for the same model again, I doubt it will feel quite right.

Storbæltsbroen

I like to moan about the fact that the Billund - Edinburgh route is often, though not always, mothballed over the early months of the year, usually after the Xmas rush but before the Easter one. It means that to go back to Scotland, I have to pay to travel the 90 minutes east to Copenhagen only to take less than fifteen minutes to fly right back over the top of my house. For obvious reasons, I was home a lot of times this winter. Though the reason for my trips was both stressful and upsetting, the view I got on one of the flights home seemed incongruously beautiful. I've rarely had such a clear view of Funen as I did in February and to see the whole 18km of the road and rail bridge to our island from the sky was quite something. It's hard to believe looking at it from 37000 feet that it takes around 15 minutes to drive over at full speed (110km/hr).

 

The car

When we moved to Denmark we decided to lease one car and buy the other - at home we had always bought cars cash, having saved up for them, so we didn't know if a loan or a lease would suit us best. It wasn't that we were super rich. With our own company, we simply didn't have the visibility or stability to take out loans, other than the mortgage, so we put aside money whenever things were going particularly well so we could buy cars when that became necessary.

So on Monday the lease on our main car was up and it had to be returned. Unlike in the UK, there is no option to buy your lease car here, you are simply forced to give it back and either take out a new lease on a newer car, or revert to buying something if you have the cash. 

I think we'll stick to buying in the future, as this system is rather inconvenient. Stillebæk isn't somewhere a couple can live with just one car. With just two buses a day (at 7.43 & 15.45), I can no longer do anything while Thomas is in the office. The kids will need to miss their music lessons which we've prepaid and which cost a great deal of money, I won't be able to simply pop over to Léon's school when he inevitably forgets his violin or similar and picking any of them up from school even if it is pouring with rain is now a no-go. Their schools are 3km, 4km and 10km away. As for shopping or working, I can't get anywhere from here so those are no longer possible either until Thomas arrives home after 4.30. I've been trying to get some work as a supply teacher but am now hoping that no one phones for me to cover them as I can't get to any schools from here at the moment. Having to turn work down would be terribly upsetting as I desperately want to integrate into Danish life properly.

So, top of the agenda is finding a replacement as soon as possible. Leasing is annoying because you have to give your car back on the day they want it, rather than waiting till a time that is actually convenient to you. Had we owned it we'd have been at liberty to give it back once we had found an alternative. So, we'll definitely buy next time, it just might take a little time to get the funds together to do so.

Different cultural encounters

When you move to a different country half way through your childhood, you become a different person to the one you would have become... No shit, Sherlock! Ok, so I'm stating the obvious, but this can be completely subtle and at other times it can be wholly obvious.

To give an example of the subtle ways you might change... In Scotland my kids went to a 'posh' school so not only was there a uniform, but it was the strictest of strict - everything was prescribed, right down to the shade of grey your socks were allowed to be. As kids they were told ad nauseam that it was a good thing because kids wouldn't be shamed for lacking the money for designer brands and it was safer as you could spot someone who didn't belong in the playground. They were told it was more practical to have an obvious outfit ready every morning. 

Now they live in a society where no one wears a uniform, but funnily enough there is no issue with designer brands, kids from other establishments infiltrating the playgrounds, and they can wear waterproof shoes and coats in the rain rather than the inadequate footwear and blazers they used to don. So, my kids haven't obviously changed in this regard, but were I to return them to their old school in August, after three years here, they would be more critical of the uniform rhetoric and less likely to swallow it wholesale, I expect. Never once on a snowy day has my child begged to go back to court shoes and a wool blazer, never once in the sunshine have they complained about being allowed to school in shorts and sandals. Never once have I had to rush to get specific clothes clean for the next day...

A less obvious example is the language and culture they are exposed to, and I don't mean Danish. When I lived back home, had I asked my kids what language do you think sounds nice, even if you don't understand it, they might have replied 'Spanish' or 'Italian' or something they were used to hearing but hadn't started learning yet. When I asked this question of Amaia the other week, I got an answer that I would never have got in Scotland. Of this I am 100% sure! She replied 'Greenlandic sounds cute - all those clicky hissy sounds are so sweet, not like Faroese, that just sounds like another version of all those other Scandinavian languages!' There is no way a Scottish child could pick Greenlandic out of a line-up (unless they have maybe been tuning in to Borgen Series 4, if that is out already in the UK), but here there are many Greenlandic people and kids including Uiloq in her class, who inspired this comment by speaking her own language in class one day to show her classmates how she sounds. And for anyone who wants to be able to pick it out a line-up going forward...

Summertime

I woke up late and tired this morning - no wonder - someone stole an hour in the middle of the night... I'm not fully complaining - I loathe wintertime and wander about moping constantly and bemoaning the darkness. But why have we developed a system that steals an hour from us in the middle of the night, in the middle of the weekend?

I can fully get on board with gaining an hour in October during the night, during the weekend, but it suddenly struck me this morning just how much nicer with would be to switch to summertime at say 1pm on a Tuesday? What do you reckon? Who's with me?

A granny's legacy

Most grannies in cartoons and popular children's literature wear a skirt, round glasses, and have their hair swept up in a grey bun. They like knitting and sewing, gardening and baking with the grandchildren. I'm not sure my mum was a likely candidate for 90% of this. 

She always wore trousers, her hair was a dark, and latterly salt and pepper afro, untameable and unbrushable. My mother didn't actually own a hairbrush, only an afro comb. This was something I found odd in my teens as the only other woman in the house with almost straight hair. If I couldn't track my brush down in a rush, there was no one else's to borrow. 

And although she knitted, mainly baby items and only when Amanda or I were pregnant, she loathed and sucked at sewing in equal measures. Had we not had enough money for clothes, making them ourselves would never have been an option. 

Gardening and even house plants were a bit of a no no too. I don't think there's a single flower in her garden, just bushes and trees and most of them donated by me. I actually cannot remember her ever baking anything in my life, and definitely not with us, her kids, or any of her grandchildren. I baked with her mother growing up, but never with my own. And it wasn't that she lacked a sweet tooth, there were copious amounts of cake and squares of millionaire's shortbread or similar in her house, they just always came in an ASDA or Aldi box.

She will be remembered for many things:

• her colossal general knowledge, well other than geography... She spent endless hours watching quiz shows with the kids who were desperate to enter her as she always beat all the guests who actually appeared on them.
• her surprising ability at Wii ski-jumping!
• her jigsaw skills
• her ability to match anything - wallpaper to furnishings, clothes to her car, her jewellery, towels - you name it, it matched
• her surprisingly dirty mind when it came to Cards against Humanity - she always, always won that one
• her sharp and cutting wit
• her no-nonsense approach to grandparenting

and much more, but nothing culinary, or so I thought...

It is therefore strange that here on Funen, she is going to be remembered for her baking... her hot cross buns to be precise. I can safely say, hand on heart, my mother never ever made a hot cross bun in her life! So, how will she be remembered for that? It's all down to Léon... as these things often are! 

Last week in his English class, being the life and soul as always, he volunteered to bring in the British speciality of hot cross buns to educate his fellow classmates on UK culture. After a quick poll, that suggested 90% of his class hated raisins but loved chocolate, he decided to adapt the recipe, replacing one with the other. Having never made them himself, a quick google gave him a fail-safe recipe, thanks to BBC good food. He baked thirty and took them in the next day. So impressed was his teacher, that she took a photo of him dishing them out and asked him to translate and then write out the recipe... This then got back to management, who thought it would be a great story for the school's internet page, to advertise what a nice school it is. Léon, of course, thought sharing a BBC good food recipe, especially the week he'd missed Monday at school to attend his gran's funeral, was a bit impersonal so claimed this was his gran's family recipe. The school has now shared my mum's world famous hot cross bun recipe for anyone who wants to honour granny's memory by baking her buns. And given it isn't the BBC one, as the raisins have been swapped out for dark chocolate, and it is now written in Danish, no one can see the correlation! You couldn't make it up!

So, we now live on an island with 500 000 inhabitants who are now all potentially trying out my mum's hot cross bun recipe this Easter. If I had any religion in me, I'd like to think of her up there having a right old chuckle about the whole thing! It definitely isn't the legacy she'd have been counting on.

And for anyone who wants to try out her speciality (if you have google translate on hand anyway):

End of the blogging break? Another kick in the teeth.

I enthusiastically wrote on 11 January that I hoped my blogging this year might pick up a bit after the health hell that was 2021. I genuinely thought we might get a break this year - no health scares, no major operations, no Covid, no immigrating, no starting my life from scratch again, no redundancies, no divorces or any of the other joys we have been through over the last decade or two.

I should have known better.

Back on 19 January life was normal, till the morning mum rang us to say she couldn't seem to get out of bed. A day and a number of scans later, we got the news that what she thought was a chest infection was actually lung cancer, with an extra tumour pressing on her spine. I flew over alone the following day. 

A two week stay in hospital stabilised her but unfortunately found further tumours in her bones, liver, and brain and we were given a prognosis of 12 weeks. Derek and Amanda brought her home to their place and I flew the whole family over and Marcel and Milly came up from London. We spent a wonderful week all together as a family and I flew home again on the 21st with a ticket to return alone yesterday. 

But as you can see from the photos I've been uploading to Facebook and Instagram of Glasgow this week, that plan didn't quite work out either. I had to bring my trip forward to last Sunday as she died on Saturday Feb 26, only five weeks after diagnosis, four days before what would have been her 78th birthday, a birthday she shared with Amanda who was turning 50. 

Derek, Amanda, and I are dealing with the funeral, the house and all the paperwork and the funeral has now been arranged for next Friday at 3:45 at Maryhill crematorium. 

Marcel and Milly are coming up on Wednesday and Thomas will fly the rest of the grandchildren over on the early morning flight on Friday, fingers crossed there are no delays. 

So, it's been a shocker of a start to 2022, but if she had to go, I guess 5 weeks is the way she'd have wanted it, not months or years of treatment and suffering, like dad. 

I'm ok for now but I expect, it'll be a while before it all sinks in. In the meantime, please toast my wee mum with a glass of wine tonight with your dinner, if you get a chance. This is us together last October.

Ann Buchanan 2/3/44 - 26/2/22

Kæpheste

It's been interesting watching each of my three youngest kids' Danish development since we moved here in 2019. Obviously, they could all speak Danish when we moved here, given Thomas had spoken to them only in Danish for the entirety of their lives but that was a very passive situation. They understood everything he said, understood the stories and later novels he diligently read them every night before bed, carrying on the tradition much longer than most kids' bedtime stories as it was the only way to make them bilingual, or so we thought before immigrating showed us there was another even more efficient way to make your child truly bilingual! Still they replied to him only in English as most bilingual kids do, preferring their dominant language, even though to the non-bilingual replying to Danish only in English might seem harder than carrying out every conversation in just one language! They had 100% understanding and could swap into Danish when they needed to, for example when their cousin, who was yet to start English, used to visit us in Scotland. But good as they were, their reading skills were minimal and they sounded like shrunken 40 year olds, knowing very few of the words their own generation would use, drawing entirely on Thomas's vocabulary, or stranger still their grandparents'. There were gaps in their knowledge compared to English, of course. They might have known some tools, spices, games or similar only in English as they had never encountered a setting where they had to use them in Danish. But all in all, for kids who had spent less than a total of 8 weeks in Denmark in their lives, they were bloody good - Daddy wasn't a linguistics graduate for nothing, every ounce of linguistic theory was used up on them.

We'd been here about six months when Léon started to sound like he came from deepest, darkest Nordfyn and maybe six more before the girls both developed an authentic, not so Funic accent, but it has only been in the last six months that I have noticed a reversal. I was running Amaia home from school one day and she was telling me about her Maths lesson, which seemed to have been geometry-related. Having only been schooled up to p4 in Scotland terms for acute or obtuse angles, isosceles triangles and similar were not something she had encountered yet before we left Scotland, so she stopped dead in her tracks, unable to explain her Maths to me in English, which we still speak together, having to swap into Danish to fully describe her Maths problem to me. She looked rather shocked that Danish had overtaken English in that subject field. She's also more confident explaining grammatical terms in Danish than English now but all in all, most non-specific vocabulary is still evenly balanced between the two languages, so she's happy explaining everything to me in English and her teacher in Danish.

That was until yesterday, when she really made me laugh. She's in the oldest year in her school and she is the oldest child in her class, so she feels mature and feels greatly superior to the younger kids who are all the way down to three. I think she almost considers herself staff, rather than pupil these days! The younger girls are all into horses as horses are a big pastime on Funen. Given that, many of the younger girls have taken to bringing hobby horses to school to ride around the playground on at break time. They are trying to outcompete each other on sequins, bows and other fancy accessories. Amaia, of course, thinks herself way too mature and sophisticated to even consider playing on hobby horse, at 12 going on 17. So she pranced out of school and wanted to tell me scathingly about all these silly little girls and their hobby horses... She started moaning about them being young and immature and nauseatingly girly, working up to telling me about their hobby horses, when she suddenly realised she had never encountered the word in English. So in the middle of her English sentence she used the term 'kæpheste', because she had no English word for them. I guessed immediately what she must have been referring to, despite never having heard the Danish term. After all, what other kind of horse would an 8 year old girl bring to school!? Suddenly she looked worried... 'You do know what I'm talking about mum, don't you?' she asked and before I could nod she elaborated 'You know, it's kinda a decapitated horse on a stick!' That had me in stitches - the thought of a playground full of girlie girls outcompeting each other with various fuchsia and lilac-coloured 'decapitated horses on sticks' conjured up all sorts of macabre images. 

It is sweet to think the kids are now so bilingual, there are also some spheres of vocabulary they only have in Danish now.

End of the blogging break?

For only the second time since I began this blog back in 2006, I seem to have blogged fewer than 100 days last year. I think, for the first half of the year, that was probably because I was concentrating on my more quirky Contemplating Denmark blog, where I managed 60 posts in just three months, but it too fell away by the summer. 

So, why have I fallen off the wagon? I'm not 100% sure. I have still been writing, but it has been more for me and for my kids (and their kids) to read hopefully one day in many years time, than for the world. 

I remember many moons ago, when dad was still alive, discussing what blogs were for. Dad and I loved the idea of rambling into the void, whether or not anyone was reading us. Mum, on the other hand, couldn't understand. She thought it was somewhat like publishing your personal diary. But I didn't agree. Blogs are for many things, but the deepest and most personal aspects of life never really make it onto here, so blogs are more of an anti-diary. So, maybe Covid dragging on and on-going health issues have led to a year of deeper thinking and therefore less publishing.

Last summer saw another health scare in my life, after 2018's 56-day+ ovarian cancer episode, I thought I had earned the right to a few years of peace on that front... silly me. In April, my annual mammogram showed some microscopic micro-calcium deposits along the insides of my milk ducts. That didn't sound scary to me, but apparently it can become worse than scary if left in situ so they whipped me in and removed all my milk ducts, and basically everything else on the right side, then reconstructed it. They then remodelled the other side to match and that led to many months of physio. I can now report Danish NHS food is 100 times better than Scottish NHS food😂

There have been several plusses: 

• clothed, my boobs now look like they did in my 20s (though naked, I look like I have taken on a shark in shallow waters - no more skinny dipping for me, I suspect)
• going from an E to a B means no more backache 
• they signed my left-hand boob up to the mammogram programme that ends at age 80 because of my history 
• (there's nothing left in the right-hand one that can go wrong apparently, which is possibly another plus?!)
• talking to consultants and physios for six months has been great for my Danish - I might still struggle to explain what haircut I want in the local salon, but I can hold a full-on consultation on breast health and physiotherapy, in fact I could even give a lecture on the subject!
• given I'd had the other scare 2 years earlier, they did a genetic check on my pathology from here comparing it to the report I had sent from Scotland to check that my three daughters (and niece) are not at any increased risk and that all came out fine

I think I'll refrain from illustrating this post with a pic! Bet you're relieved!

Once it was all done and dusted, I asked the consultant what she thought had caused the calcium to form. Her answer amused me somewhat:

You can never tell, she said, but it's a problem that often occurs when you:

• have never been pregnant😂😂😂😂😂
• have never breastfed😂😂😂😂😂
• drink too much alcohol😂🍸🍷🥂
• smoke😂😇

Given I score about -99% on all counts, being a non-smoking, (almost) non-drinking person who has birthed a football team and fed them for over a decade, she was left scratching her head, but at least I got a bit of a laugh!

Covid hitting the world two months after we moved to this house and then last summer's shenanigans have not been great for our integration here. I assumed by now I'd have at least a part-time job out of the house, rather than the lonely freelancing of the last few years, and I'd have a host of new friends. Instead we've been holed up for so long, I can barely remember what socialising is. Thomas is turning 50 in five weeks time and I sat down to draw up a guest list for a potential party... only to realise that we know almost no one within driving distance, especially on a Tuesday night! Ho hum. I guess I should get to work on his 60th instead, as we might be back to normal by then!

Anyway, the long and short of it is that I am hoping that in 2022 I will find myself a little more often in the blogging saddle. Fingers crossed.

One for posterity

 

When you know you're parenting right 😂😂😂 

Amaia : Mum, do you think there's anything I could ever do that would make you disown me? 

Me : Yeah, you could tell me you'd voted for Boris Johnson!😉 

Amaia : (laughing) Come on mum, I meant something realistic! 😂

Easirent Edinburgh Airport

I've been hiring cars several times a year since the spring of 1992. I have never before felt compelled to write a car hire review however... 

Because of Covid, many of the car hire places in Edinburgh airport are not operating as usual. Seeing that the Copenhagen flight gets in exactly an hour before the car hire companies shut was a cause for concern therefore. I rang ahead and asked what their policies were concerning delayed flights or other issues. Easirent assured me on the Tuesday morning that that would be no problem. If I could see already in Copenhagen that I was delayed, then I should ring up and let them know to wait, otherwise I should ring on arrival and they'd send down the shuttle bus no problem, but whatever the issue, they assured me they never closed if they could see on their booking form that someone was coming for a car. They sounded perfect, so I booked with them... Next time I'll remember to ask the name of the person doing all the promising...

Our flight touched down exactly on schedule but Brexit means delays at customs and passport control and further delays at baggage handling. Half an hour before Easirent's closing time, I rang to alert them we'd be cutting it fine but no one answered. I rang non-stop till five minutes before their official closing time to let them know I'd be between 5 and ten minutes late. Mr Jobsworth answered and told me he would be closing at half past on the nose, booking or no booking. I explained calmly the assurance I'd got from his colleague four days earlier but he was less than interested. I explained I needed to get to Glasgow and then Newton Mearns, that I had tired children and numerous cases with me and that an eight day booking was a significant amount for his company. He hung up on me. We rushed to the shuttle bus and over to Easirent, assuming we might just catch him. And we did. Thanks to a lovely shuttle driver we got there at breakneck speed and arrived before he'd even closed up for the night. The guy on the desk told us he was not interested, he was closing and we could do what we liked. We pleaded and begged as he chained the car pound up for the night. The shuttle driver begged on our behalf and told him he'd report him, to no avail. Thomas took out his phone and tried to take a time-stamped photo of the man locking up for our official complaint and the guy ran at him wielding his fists, till the shuttle driver, Léon, and I stepped between them to keep him safe. All this in front of our 11 year old child!

The shuttle guy offered to drive us to McDonald's or a hotel and eventually drove us back to get the night bus to Glasgow. He was an absolute star of a man. The night bus to Glasgow costs £50 when you buy in advance, but fully £70 when you have to buy on the day and we'd to wait an hour to catch it. Finally dropped in Glasgow at 3am, we had no choice but to get a seven seater Uber out to my mum's as there were no trains or buses for nearly four hours and the kids had been up 22 hours at that point.

£105 down, physically threatened and with no hire car for the week or to get us back to Edinburgh for our flight home, we ended up forking out another £105 to insure me on mum's car for the week but that left us with just one five seater for seven people so I had to drive every trip twice meaning I had almost no time left to visit the friends I haven't seen in nearly two years.

All in all, I would say that Easirent in Edinburgh airport is by far the worst renting (if you can call it that) experience in all my car renting years and in all the countries I have rented. If you aren't willing to stay open when baggage or a flight is delayed, that's absolutely fine, but say it upfront so people don't book with you!

Rip-off Britain

I know the Tories love to line the pockets of their friends but my god this Day2 PCR test nonsense takes the biscuit. 

Here in Denmark we kindly offer tourists free PCR tests, done in person and available within about 15km of anywhere you happen to find yourself, including airports, border points etc Charlotte needed three tests while she was here for various reasons, Marcel and Milly took two each - one to get into Germany and one to go back home.

The UK currently requires you to take a PCR test two days after arriving in the country, fully vaccinated or not, but there are no free tests on offer. You click on the government website and it offers you tests starting from £2 per person. Not too dire, so you book your flight. Then four days before your flight you click to book your test and of course the first one on the list says they have none of the £2 tests left but are, funnily enough, willing to send you a test for £68 per person. You go onto the second on the list and as if by some miracle the same happens. You then go through the first forty on the list and every single one of them has the same message - Cheap tests sold out, tests start at £68 or £70, and the tiny little test that fits in a tiny little envelope somehow requires £10 in postage per test! Because you couldn't possibly stick five in one envelope if you could charge £50 in postage instead, could you?.

I would sympathise slightly if I thought these were in place to make the UK a safer or more Covid-free place, but these tests are sent to your home/holiday address, done in private and returned to the lab in the post so there is no way of knowing whether the passenger has completed them or if they have asked a friend or relative to scrape their nose, mouth or wherever. These tests serve three purposes as far as I can see. Firstly to line the pockets of labs that have been okayed by the government, secondly to pretend to the public they are keeping the UK safe, unlike their abysmal performance throughout the pandemic and finally to hack off the foreigners so they stay away... I'm sure that will be great for the economy going forward.

I, for one, won't be caught out like this again. Next time I want to see my mum, I might just fly her to Amsterdam or the Canaries instead of wasting £350 on bogus Covid testing. Then I can use my money to boost some other economy instead. Grrrrr!

Oh and this all means by the way that I may be in the UK Mon-Fri next week, or I might just take my £350 and bugger off somewhere nicer and more tourist-friendly instead!

The Paris marathon

Marcel's done a lot of charity work over the years, from building irrigation systems in India, to volunteering in charity shops and soup kitchens and giving up his time to paint vulnerable people's houses free of charge.

His latest offering seems to be running the Paris marathon (he's never run a marathon before) for a cancer charity. So if anyone fancies rewarding his hard work and training, here's the necessary link!

Brexit and language students

How can destroying a young person's ability to educate themselves ever be good for a country?

Charlotte is in 4th year at Glasgow university studying for a language degree. As a compulsory part of the degree, she needs to spend a minimum of 9 months in the country of her primary language and after that a minimum of 3 months in the country of her second one. Charlotte went to Madrid last year and spent exactly 51 weeks there before returning to see us in Denmark and finally after 54 weeks, returning to Scotland. She battled Covid alone, twice, was in lockdown away from her family and all the friends she knew in Spain from previous visits and spent Christmas day alone... Yet the hesitant, though adventurous young woman who left us in September '20 had been replaced by a self-assured, open and very capable adult on her return a year later.

She now has to go to France around February 25 next year. If you look at previous year's recommendations on the uni syllabus, kids were advised to go to the second country for the three months, so until around May 25, and then to try to work the summer in that country, to further improve their language, or to return to the country of their first stay to brush that language up before returning to Scotland at the end of September for their final year at uni. Of course by this point in their studies many have picked up a foreign boyfriend or girlfriend, some foreign friends they'd like to visit or even just a friend from uni who is staying nearby who they might like to interrail with. In Charlotte's case she has her family in Denmark she'd like to see at some point after those three months. And over and above that she has the two families in Madrid she has au paired for since she was 18, not to mention her step-grandparents in Tuscany, and potentially her aunts, uncles and father who live in France, who she also might like to drop in on. 

This year's students were called to a meeting yesterday to look into the logistics of this now they are post-Brexit. The year long assistantships are still going ahead where possible for now as visas can be obtained for those, though at some cost. Though some kids have gone straight from second year into fourth bypassing the once-compulsory part of the degree. As someone who has been through the system, there is nothing quite like a year in a country to change your ability to speak. Waiving that year will belittle a language degree enormously. 

This year, however the 'minimum three-month stay' now reads 'maximum three-month stay'. They have to find a job before they go, as they are no longer allowed to seek work on arrival. They can't obtain a longer visa without a more permanent signed contract, and of course once they have found an employer who will allow them to stay less than 90 days, they have to leave before the end of the 90 days and go back to the UK where they need to sit it out until the end of August when their 90 day clock is reset. But let's face it, who is going to run back to France or Spain with three weeks to go before uni starts after spending the entire summer tied to the UK, unable to further their studies? 

And those who made some good friends during last year's stay can't visit them again this Christmas as that would eat into the 90 days the student is allowed in the EU which they need to save for February, nor can they visit them after their stay in the other country as they would again need to wait until the last week of August. Going forward, those who are passionate about language will find themselves constantly being sent back to the UK to cross off days on a calendar in much the same way as a prisoner might in his cell.

When you study languages, you want to work in that country in your free months, you want to be free to visit the friends you made last time round, you want to be able to fall in love in that country. If you're studying in Spain, you might want to jump over and learn a bit of basic Portuguese for a few months. Leaving this generation in limbo by negotiating no student exchanges or visas will have two effects as far as I can see. Some will muddle through, resentfully working their summer in the local supermarket or McDonalds in Glasgow when they really want to be doing the same but in Madrid or Bordeaux, finally becoming a slightly more mediocre version of what they wanted to become and others will bottle up their resentment till they can get on the first plane out of the UK as soon as they graduate, having negotiated a contract that will slowly bring them closer to a residence permit for a different EU state, never to return.

Charlotte, of course, is in the odd situation where the new rule does not affect her. She can fly into France on her French passport, so have no stamp and no 90 day countdown, and yet it does affect her as she is surrounded by students who are being forced back home when the summer is about to begin. As the friends she would have interrailed with are forced back into exile, she will be left all alone to backpack round Europe, a kind of post-Brexit Norma-no-mates. But had she not had her other passport, she would have to choose between completing her degree requirements and seeing her mother, her siblings, her friends. All because the Tory arrogance opted not to negotiate any sort of reciprocity for students. Why would the Tories want to encourage the youth to mix with Johnny Foreigner types, after all? 

My heart is breaking for these kids. At that age, I spent 13 months in France over the course of my 3rd year of uni and then went on to stay in Germany and France again from the February to the October of the following year, not to mention a further trip at Christmas of the same year. This did wonders for my languages. There is nothing quite like an extended stay abroad to broaden your mind and make you grow and mature into an outward-looking person. You open your mind to new ways of doing things, thinking about life and accept new possibilities. My five months in Germany are still amongst my fondest memories to date and the friends I shared those times with will be with me to the end of my days.

Coupled with the 50% fall, this year alone, in EU students applying to Scottish unis, which I expect to increase, not decrease as time goes on and fees become transparent, we are looking at a generation of kids who will have little opportunity to have their minds opened to new cultures both at home and abroad. I find it hard to imagine being as passionate as I was about language in my early 20s, and as Charlotte is now, but being sent back to the UK every 90 days to cross off the days till I could once again spread my wings.

Some say it is time to move on and work within the confines of Brexit, but I for one will never move on and will never get over what ignorance has done to a whole generation of kids. I, for one, hope they all up and leave as soon as they can.

An allergic reaction

When Léon was a small child, he had a bit of an allergy to blue food colouring. It always manifested itself as skin irritation, rather than breathing issues, thank goodness, but still, he was sent home from school on several occasions when staff refused to believe it was an allergy rather than a contagious disease.

We thought it had gone. He's had various blue sweets and similar over the past few years with no side effects. 

At the weekend we went to a family confirmation party in Copenhagen. They were serving blue fizzy juice to the teenagers. Léon had two over the course of a couple of hours. He was sitting on the opposite side of the hall to us with the other adolescents so we hadn't noticed till, when listening to one of the speeches from that corner of the room, Charlotte spied him from a distance. What a state he was in! His normally blemish-free skinned looked like he'd been roasted in front of an open fire.

Back in the day I would never have left home without an antihistamine in my bag but it's been so many years since this happened, I had no supplies. I double checked it was only his skin and he had no tightening in his throat or similar. What could we do? I suggested, for want of a better idea, that he should maybe drink some water in an attempt to dilute the effects or flush out his system. He disappeared into the kitchen area and returned with a glass of juice. I went for elderflower juice instead of water, is that ok? Of course, I said, positively encouraging him to down copious amounts as quickly as possible. Six elderflower juices later he looked more relaxed and laid back and was no longer scratching. I wandered through to the kitchen to get myself a juice too. Standing on the table where both Léon and I had served ourselves elderflower earlier in the evening was a large juice dispenser but it no longer contained elderflower, but rather mojito! I rushed to Léon and asked him if I could taste his elderflower juice. He handed it to me and I immediately noticed some tell-tale leaves floating on top. The silly wee bugger had only gone and downed six mojitos in the space of ten minutes, for purely medicinal reasons, while also mentioning how good his aunt was at making elderflower juice!

To cap it all, when I related the story to his aunt, she delved into her handbag and handed me an antihistamine! But I guess it had the desired effect, given he didn't seem in the least bothered by the irritation in his face afterwards and he was more than pleased that he'd managed to acquire six mojitos entirely innocently!

The difference ABBA made to my life.

I don't think I saw the Eurovision Song Contest in Brighton in 1974. Obviously I've seen the footage countless times since then, but on the actual night, at the tender age of six I was already long tucked up in bed before ABBA were declared the winners and their Scandinavian isolation came to an end catapulting them onto the international stage.

Fast forward a year to the spring of 1975. I had just turned seven and I remember my mum was ironing. Whether she was listening to the radio or ABBA the album, I don't know but I heard the song I do, I do, I do, I do, I do come out of the speaker and it was a life-changing moment, literally... I thought it was to most beautiful and romantic song I had ever heard and once we had the record, I used to play it while having my teddy bears marry each other. I admit I was a nauseatingly sweet child at times!

For the remainder of the 70s I lapped up their every offering, joined the fan club and subscribed to the magazine. Through the magazine, I got myself dozens of like-minded pen pals from as far apart as Iceland and Malaysia who in turn fostered my love of language, travel and the exotic. By the time I started high school in '79, I was trying to write to my ABBA pen pals in their own languages - first French then later German. I'd noticed another girl in my s1 class with ABBA badges on her blazer so Elaine and I became firm high school pals. By a year later, kids were starting to insinuate that ABBA were passé and punk was the way to go. Most jumped on that band wagon, but Elaine and I stuck to our ABBA badges despite the derision. 

When ABBA stopped recording in 1982, I had nothing new to listen to. I followed their solo careers, while also importing all their original late 60s Swedish material. I knew no Swedish so sat and diligently transcribed all the old songs in Mickey Mouse phonetics so I could sing along in Swedish. I could sing whole albums, despite not understanding what I was singing about. At the age of 22, I was offered a choice between extra Middle High German as one of my Honours modules in German or learning the Swedish language... There was no contest and I found myself in a small group of semi-closet ABBA fans, learning finally what I had been singing about a decade earlier.

With the Mamma Mia revival in the 90s, all notion of them being passé flew out the window and I even bumped into several of the punk proponents from my schooldays in the foyer at the Odeon in Glasgow!

Many years later, with my marriage on the rocks, I had fallen in love with my best friend after hours and hours of heart to hearts. I had small kids, I was a complicated package, so I decided not to enlighten him about my feelings. After a year of keeping my secret, we were at the work's New Year party when he asked me to dance. I refused, saying I was pretty shit at dancing, he insisted and dragged me onto the floor, we danced for 30 seconds to some Robbie Williams track before it came to an end. I turned to walk off the dance floor and had taken two steps when I heard the famous piano intro; our fate was sealed. I turned back and we danced to Dancing Queen and by a year later we were a couple looking for our forever home. ABBA had once again changed my life and that of my kids and kids to be, quite drastically!

Today I live in Scandinavia. My passive Swedish is definitely now at a level that would have helped me significantly back in the day, though my Danish is now much better. I was sitting on the computer this morning writing some applications for freelance work when who should pop up on Messenger, but one of my old uni Swedish class pals, Marc. What he sent me blew me away. It was simply the letters OMG and this link. Seeing the logo again after all this time, the backwards B, that this 13 year old used to wear around her neck always, the typeface, the sleek image brought it all back in an instant. I'm thrilled, I'm excited, and at the same time I'm devastated my dad and my friend Sheina aren't here to wait with me in anticipation. 

Bring it on!

Nacho

 How adorable is this little boy?