Month: September 2005

Sooooo… Yes…. Well Mia and I managed to get a ticket to this closed event which Gwen went to with her school yesterday. It sounded like a music concert but really it was a recording session and the famous groups and singers were just there to make the whole thing a little more palatable for the 9000 children. In between the songs was a poor woman with a flag and a microphone trying to coordinate the singing of 9000 children in a football stadium. ‘On the count of 3, la la la la la la laaaa.’ ‘Now we need to all start at the same time this time.’ ‘Fantastic… but there was just one little thing – so let’s do it one more time.’ ‘OK, it’s a wrap!’

Some of the boys around us took great delight in screeching disharmoniously rather than singing which annoyed me greatly. Then I found out that they’d been selling T-shirts saying ‘I screeched the loudest at Verdens.’ so then I stopped feeling sorry for the organisers and thought they’d brought it on themselves.

The event was featured extremely briefly on the Danish news in the ‘and finally section’ when the singing sounded very good. I won’t give a link to this because it is an extremely involved process and all in Danish to get to this video extract.

All I can say is that I expect record producers are very good at extracting the best out of their performers so I am sure that your CDs will all sound tip-top. You DO remember that you signed up for these Christmas song CDs don’t you?

Tomorrow Gwen will be going to the football stadium in Aarhus to take part in a world record breaking attempt for the largest choir. It is being done to support the Danish branch of Save the Children and includes the presence of royalty (well near royalty, Princess Alexandra is only just still a princess after having divorced the prince) plus the cream of Danish popular music and the Ant and Dec equivalent from children’s TV as host. Mia and I are going to try and sneak in too (we will have the right papers but security will be tight).

The children have been practising their singing and the words have been changed after complaints from the teachers about swear words and so on. And you will have the opportunity to judge for yourself when you receive the CDs which you kindly paid for in advance about 3 months ago.

I’m afraid that there are no photos because Tony has the digital camera with him in Iceland. But there is a video on the newsletter website if that is where you are reading this from.

Last Friday we took delivery of a 12 week old kitten who was re-named Hazel after a he turned out to be a she. The girls had known about this for a week and had carefully planned what we needed. I managed to convince them that a box with a blanket would be OK for her to sleep in but we did invest in a transport cage. The poor thing miowed all the way and is now incarcerated in the hall for a few days until she decides that she shouldn’t run away when she is finally let out in the garden. She is very well behaved and used the ‘toilet’ properly from the word go.

Having the kitten has persuaded Gwen to take the 12.30 bus home to keep her company otherwise we normally don’t get home before 3pm. Normally Gwen is dead set against taking the bus. We still haven’t worked out exactly what will happen when we go to Greece in October though Gwen’s friend, who supplied the kitten, offered to feed her that week. But it’s a long cycle ride.

Yesterday Gwen’s after-school club took them to the next town for a traditional harvest time fair. It is a mix of fun fair elements and market and was the first time that we were aware of it even though it is a tradition that goes back over at least a hundred years apparantly.

Gwen thought the whole thing was not very exciting and even though she went with about £5.50 in her pocket she had difficulty finding something to spend her money on. What she did approve of though were the stalls dishing out free sweets and balloons but especially the sweets. When we took a closer look at the wrappers we were horrified to see that these were given out by the Danish equivalent of the BNP or National Front. So now we have Dansk Folkeparti balloons laying about the house and any visitors over the age of about 15 may ponder the contradiction of a house full of foreigners seeming to support the Denmark for the Danes party. But they seem much more mainstream here than the equivalent parties in the UK. We are forever seeing the partyleader on chat shows and being invited into her home to admire her tasteful decor in the gossip magazines.

Thank you for all the cards and presents which Gwen received on the occasion of her 11 th birthday. There was a definite horsey theme running through a lot of the cards and presents. Don’t know why really! Gwen asked to go and see Madagascar as her birthday treat so as it was the weekend we went all the way into Aarhus and went to see the English version.

Two weeks ago we finally went broadband which means that we don’t have to count the minutes any more, a huge relief plus will turn out to be cheaper as we now pay a flat rate.  While we were at it we also took the opportunity to go wireless which means that we can surf anywhere in the house and theoretically also in the garden although we haven’t tested that out yet. Since we have been enjoying an Indian summer this last two weeks or so we really should try it out now before the winter sets in.

There is a new head teacher at Gwen and Mia’s school and he takes Gwen’s class for woodwork (last year they had needlework). Last week, one of the class was missing. Big mistake! This boy lives just over the road from the school so the head master took the whole class across the road to collect the miscreant who was at home with his Mum and playing computer games. I think there would be a 101 rules and regulations to prevent this from happening in the UK and I don’t know if this is going to be the standard way of coping with truancy from now on. We have yet to see if this strategy will have a long term effect. This is a boy who has a habit of just leaving school to go home if things get too tough for him.