March 2003
The biggest event this month was Tony’s defence of his doctorate thesis at Copenhagen University. Yes, we know he already wrote one for his PhD, but for the Danes a PhD does not entitle you to the title doctor whereas this, a thesis based around his publications to date, is the real thing. In Denmark and other mainland European countries they do things rather differently and instead of a private and quiet oral examination with three examiners in a little room somewhere in the darker recesses of the university, the process is carried out publicly in a lecture hall open to the public, with well-wishers invited to view your discomfort. Don’t know why thoughts of Christians being thrown to the lions come to mind at this point.
Tony brought the goose lamp, last seen in public in the European Parliament building in 1994, to shed light on his talk and discussions and the audience included family, Doreen and us three girls. Gwen and Mia sat very patiently through two hours of scholarly talk. In the audience were also many friends and colleagues, some bussed in with us from Kålø and others from the rest of Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, Ireland, UK and the Netherlands. One supporter lowered the tone of the proceedings even further (than the goose lamp) by posing as Chris Tarrant and asking what Tony would do if he were given zillions of Euros to carry on his research and after Tony had given his very reasonable answer, this retired Dutch professor turned to the auditorium and bellowed that he hoped the powers that be were listening. The question was judged out of order by the adjudicator but one of the examining academics then proceeded to ask Tony very much the same question except that the fictitious amounts of money were a little more restrained and the question was couched in terms of research priorities.
After the business, the party could really start, interrupted only by several flattering speeches and many gifts including a pair of clogs decorated with teal wings. At 6pm we had to get on the bus and go home where the party continued on a smaller scale with Doreen, Oscar Merne from Ireland, David Stroud from Peterborough and John Turner from Devon, despite complaints from Gwen upstairs that we were laughing too loudly. The next day, the same group came up with the Nimtofte Nexus, a very satisfying, if ineffective, exercise in which, seven days prior to the outbreak of war in Iraq, we solved the world’s problems via ten guiding principles, which included the pivotal importance of bullfinches.
Tony’s defence was a welcome distraction for a department which is struggling with the animosity of a merger with another department, the uncertainty of not knowing who their head of department will be as the present incumbent’s contract ends in March and the near certainty of redundancies within the coming 12 months as the government’s war of attrition against environmentalists continues. Still, mustn’t grumble, eh?
So in Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany Tony is Dr Fox and elsewhere he is presumably Dr Dr Fox. As for the Professor job, he has been offered the position now, but this is still in negotiation; it should all be sorted out during the first week in April. But the question is, is somebody who sends an email to Blackwells in Oxford that has been rejected as obscene, suitable professor material? It turns out that the offending phrase referred to “nigra” the scientific name of the Common Scoter. The firewall at the erudite publishers thought the word “nigra” racist and offensive and threw the e-mail back with a lecture on propriety. In the end Tony was forced to fax his message since fax users are deemed more robust than e-mail users. You really have to admire a filtering system that can filter out messages from illiterate racists.
Even though events like that make you think the world has gone mad there is still room for a little deliberate eccentricity with Mia’s upside down day at the kindergarten in which she went in her pyjamas and the day started with a bedtime story. They had lunch at 9.30 and breakfast at 3.30 with afternoon snack at 12 noon. The children were in the staff room drinking coffee while the grown ups had fruit juice followed by a nap and morning assembly was in the afternoon. This sort of thing is a great hit with Mia who was sorry that it was her last ever as this time next year she will be in school. At the moment Mia is rather nostalgic asking to see photos of when she was born rather than having a goodnight story and today they both watched the video covering the period when she was born.
Both girls have been curious about the idea of family trees and I dug out some free software I got which supposedly does it all for you. The one thing it doesn’t do is produce a nice graphic in the form of a tree but what it can do is to provide web-ready pages of all the information. This is not a project I will be able to devote time to in the next few months but who knows one day I might be able to put it on the web (not for public consumption though) so let me know now if you don’t want your darkest secrets revealed to the select band of people who will be allowed access to this.
The next month should be busy with us being away in Spain at Easter, Mia going on her kindergarten holiday almost the day after we get back and the Chadwicks visiting us at around the same time. Gwen’s school holiday away will be at the beginning of May and Tony will have to attend a meeting in the UK just before we go to Spain. It’s a good thing that spring growth comes later in Denmark because there won’t be too much time to tend the garden in the next four weeks or so.
February 2003
What they do in Denmark instead of Pancake Day is have a festival to chase away the evil winter spirits in which you have to wear fancy dress. When I told Gwen that there were Hogwarts robes for sale at the supermarket she immediately wanted me to buy a set so that she could be Hermione on Monday March 3rd. If you’re familiar with the Harry Potter stories then you will know that the Hermione character suits Gwen to a T. Hermione is studious, clever and very sensible just as Gwen sees herself I think. It’s also kind of ironic that having railed against school uniforms (me) the first thing Gwen wants to do is have me buy her a school uniform.
Mia had her first sleepover at a friend’s house where she and Johanne chatted and played until 11pm! The parents thought they were never going to go to sleep. As far as Mia and Johanne were concerned it was a complete success which they want to repeat as soon as possible and Mia thinks she might want to move in with them. Mia has therefore beaten Gwen who has had us fetch her at 11pm from a friend’s house because she couldn’t settle down.
I went to the UK with the girls at half term where I got to grips with digital cameras as Grandpa had just bought one and wanted to practice using it before the trek to New Zealand in March. I still don’t know what you’re supposed to do though if you’re in the middle of nowhere and your camera is full of pictures you want to save. Otherwise it’s a very neat gadget which gives very good results.
The very next week Tony had to go to the UK at short notice for two meetings over three days. Stansted is becoming like a second home to him. He was making his way to the gate on his way home having taken an hour to get through the security checks when there was a loudspeaker announcement ‘Will parents not leave their children unaccompanied in the terminal building.’ Pause. ‘Any unaccompanied children may be taken away and destroyed.’ I wonder what all the foreign travellers made of that. (Tony swears it’s true!)
Tony continues to catch and ring birds in the garden. Last week he caught a sparrowhawk, a dangerous first and this weekend he caught a tree creeper, a species which he didn’t even know was in the garden. Our window bird feeders are a rip roaring success and Gwen has made yet another bird feeder which sits in another part of the garden. On his way home from the UK last week Tony bought a CCTV which he hopes he can use to find out more about the animal life round about the house just as soon as he’s worked out where all the leads should go.
At work he is being asked to make difficult decisions about what to serve at the reception of his thesis defence on March 14th. Sausage rolls or vol au vents, wine or champagne? It’s a tough job.
Meanwhile though he was supposed to be starting his new job as a professor on February 1st he still hasn’t had any written or oral confirmation except a slip of the tongue by one of the office staff who told him he’d got it. Meanwhile the union is negotiating his new salary even though he hasn’t been officially notified or even knows what the job specification is.
January 2003
Happy New Year!
We have had about three falls of snow since the last newsletter, the third and last happening as I write and obviously the leftovers from the UK’s latest traffic-stopping storm. The first didn’t stop us going in to Aarhus so that Tony could be interviewed about maritime wind turbines by the BBC. We all went in to a very empty Danish TV centre for that and the result was broadcast in the third week of January and can still be heard at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/nature.shtml Click on ‘The Common Scoter’.
The second fall prevented us from going to work but I don’t think this present snowstorm is going to present any difficulties. It hasn’t stopped Mia passing her Mooncar driving licence which states that she can drive around and avoid puddles, doesn’t hit other children, doesn’t hit toys, didn’t hit other mooncars and bicycles and only drove on the tracks. Mia promises to uphold the regulations.
The snow could have been a fine excuse for the inauspicious start of the Arriva train company in Denmark but they had a whole lot of other excuses instead so that one was not needed. The current excuse for mass cancellations is lack of trained train drivers. Funny, but we thought you were supposed to plan for that. Anyway who can deny the delights of privatisation?
So much snow but still the wrong sort of snow for a good snowball fight and snowman building. Fortunately there was no snow while Grandma was here over Christmas. Christmas Eve was instead a very windy night which, together with the excitement of Christmas kept the girls awake so late that father Christmas couldn’t fill the stockings at the foot of their beds but rather ingeniously found a couple of plastic bags which he left downstairs instead. Many thanks for all the lovely presents. The girls have just put together their Christmas cash to buy an outrageously expensive Harry Potter castle so thanks for making that possible. Hope the news that we are trying to organise a holiday to Barcelona doesn’t fill you with dread that next year’s batch of presents will be all Flamenco dresses and sombreros.
Gwen has learned how to make coffee, which is quite nice as she wants lots of practice and keeps asking if we would like one. She’s keen to learn to cook and it has been decided that she will learn how to make bacon, fried eggs and sausages next week. Well, it’s a start!
There has at last been a lot of sewing with two skirts and two tops finished and one top still to go plus the Chinese silk still untouched as I’m worried about how easy it would be to unpick mistakes.
Tony has had word that his defence of his doctorate will be on March 14th in Copenhagen in which it is usual to have an audience so we will all try to make it, as will his colleagues and there is even a chance that some of Tony’s Irish contacts will come over for it as well as Doreen. In reality, the big attraction is not to hear Tony talk for ten minutes about some abstruse subject but the big party afterwards. You are very welcome but don’t feel obliged.
Earlier in the month Tony went as the sole representative of our family to a surprise birthday party for Janet Kear in Devon. It turned out it was not a complete surprise although the size of the guest list certainly was.
I made a second trip to Cologne, Germany last week after hearing that our group has got the go ahead to apply for money. (Comes to something when you have to apply for permission to apply but that’s what we did last November). If successful, we probably won’t need to meet for another year. The money would be for devising a way of getting teachers to promote inter-cultural understanding in adult education. Why be modest, eh, of course we can do it!
Next Thursday I take the girls to Peterborough for a few days for their almost half-term holiday so poor old Tony will be at home alone.
September 2002
It’s been almost non-stop sunshine this September, first with high temperatures and this last week accompanied by the first frosts of the autumn which meant we had to light the fire disappointingly early. The sunflowers are in full bloom at last and the apple trees heavy with fruit.
For the first time ever Gwen expressed a wish to have a birthday party but for girls only. I was a little wary as anytime a child has a birthday party here it is usually the whole class which is invited. I still wonder about repercussions although one mother told me not to worry about it as in her day birthday parties were single sex. Anyway it went off well enough despite the fact that the school had gone on a trip to the local zoo and were let down by the coach company so that the party started an hour later.
Last weekend we went on a secret mission to the UK flying in at Friday lunchtime to rendezvous at the Bath Hilton at 6pm and flying out again Monday evening having accomplished our mission which was to surprise Tony’s Mum on her birthday. Though we lived within day tripping distance of Bath for seven years, we had never visited properly, only popping there a few times for a quick shopping trip so this was the first time ever that I had visited the Roman Baths and even Tony only visited them first a couple of years ago courtesy of a big Department of the Environment meeting he attended in the city. We enjoyed the joys of urban Britain, being loudly serenaded under our window until three in the morning both nights, but the Government push to improve foreign language skills seems to be working since they were singing ‘Alouette’ in the original French.
We even joined the late twentieth century while we were in Bath by buying a mobile phone but were naïve enough to let someone stick a SIM card in it so we are now having to battle with PIN codes, PACs and PUKs to get it to work with another provider here in Denmark. We went with o2 and cannot now use the free-phone numbers while the website won’t accept emails because they are too busy! I’m sure it will all work out in the end but just not as easily as the salesman made out after we carefully explained what we wanted from the phone.
Anyway Bath was great and highly recommended as a weekend break.
Gwen has just returned from one of her regular trips away with the after-school club. It was only one night. They took the bus to the next village but one and slept on the classroom floor of the local school in sleeping bags. They went to the local swimming pool in the afternoon and had a treasure hunt in the woods before being picked up by parents on Saturday lunchtime. Gwen loved it and Mia was annoyed that she wasn’t going on a similar trip with the kindergarten. Next one is the beginning of May for both of them.
Coming Up:
Next Saturday we will be going to see a West End show in Grenaa, Umoja, a South African dance troupe. This time we’ll have to persuade Gwen to leave the camera at home and I hope that the performance will match the other two theatre experiences we have seen so far this year. Coming up also is a business trip for Tony on October 10th to London, then we have some friends from Egham coming for the weekend of the 18th and finally I have a mysterious trip to Cologne at the end of October to see if we can get some EU money for an as yet unspecified project. I have known about this since the beginning of the year and it is almost as unclear to me now as it was when it was first suggested to me. I am hoping the trip will clarify things a bit.