Dec 04/Jan 05 news
You will recall that we were all ready for Christmas by December 1 but even so December was a busy month because Tony had several meetings in the UK as well as attending Janet Kear’s funeral. John Turner came to stay with us over Christmas which made a nice change from our usual private Christmasses, followed immediately by Brian Hindmarch, an old friend from Aberystwyth days, who came for a few days, overlapping his stay with John’s for a few hours.
Thank you very much for all of the lovely presents you sent us and we hope that all ours reached you safely too. Gwen has suddenly become a real bookworm and demands total silence while she devours books about endless tragedies in an American stables. Makes a nice change from intrusive noise of endless cartoons, we suppose. Meanwhile Mia still devours her maths homework so it’s all rather quiet in the house now. Birthday and Christmas money goes into the horse-box, which is where funds towards the purchase of a horse go. The rate at which the savings accumulate means that we parents have quite a while to work out the practicalities.
November 2004
As November comes to an end the house is decorated, the Christmas cards almost all written, the advent candle is ready as are the three advent calendars and the tree is dressed. Somehow it was important for Gwen and Mia to greet December in top Christmas gear. Wonder what we’ll do in December?
Greg and Sarah chose November to come and visit us when everything is either dead or closed. So it was board games and seeing the Asian holiday photographs most of the time. We did make one quick foray into Aarhus to the Museum of Modern Art that was sufficiently different from when we went there in July to be still interesting for us. When we got home we all set to making our own pieces of art the only credible response after going round the museum repeating ‘I could have done that!’ countless times. It’s not as easy as it looks though. and talking of art, soon after they left, we had our annual septic tank drainage inspection and passed with flying colours!
Encouraged by the book Dad sent us about using E-Bay we have finally become E-Bay traders. You have to buy before you sell in order to establish trust. While we adults were a little stuck thinking what to buy, Gwen soon found something which was missing from her life and so recklessly we bid £2.79 for a Harry Potter PC Lego game and got it. We’re getting the hang of this now and attempting a couple of Xmas pressies in the same way. Soon the way will be clear for us to make a fortune on some of the precious things we have accumulated over the years. Beats car booting anyway.
Gwen has been to two evening parties in this month, one a birthday party and one a school do. She seems to find it incredible that she should be allowed to stay up so late and arranged to be collected early from both events. We also went to parent’s evenings for both girls and heard nothing but complimentary noises regarding both which obviously went down well with their parents.
This month the conference Tony organised at Kalø took place after months of planning. Too busy and anxious to enjoy it himself, it seems that it was nevertheless one of the best conferences ever according to the participants. They didn’t even mind that Tony met some of them at the airport with their names and ‘Travelling to Breed’ on a big sign.
For Anne, the month’s nerve-wracking event was an intensive 2-day face-to-face training course for Danish teachers of English to introduce them to the wonders of using computers in their teaching. Anne’s boss is normally reluctant to offer anything to this group because she feels that they are very difficult to please, still less to win over. One of the main aims was to encourage them to talk with each other about their various plans and ideas after the 2-day event and this part seems to be almost impossible to achieve. This is the unofficial website complete with spelling errors.
On Thursday December 2 Tony is off to the UK for a week for yet another intensive, multi-task trip. Included in the itinerary are two meetings, a conference, visits to both sets of parents and also unfortunately, a funeral. Those of you who were at our Welsh party will remember Janet Kear and John Turner who live in Devon. Janet was diagnosed with a brain tumour less than two months ago and it has already claimed her.
October 2004
This has been a quiet month as we hunker down into winter. We face the prospect of a winter of discontent without Kellogg’s cereals as the Danish Coop have had an argument with Kellogg’s and has stopped stocking their products and since the Coop dominate food retailing in Denmark this means we will have to make special efforts to get ‘real’ cornflakes. We’ve had our best ever year for hazelnuts which gives Anne a stomach ache but also attracted our first ever red squirrel to the garden (you don’t get greys in Denmark but the native reds are not much in evidence). We also had a shock one day when we woke to find yet another track ploughed up. Anne was down to the council before you could say ‘Freedom to roam’ and discovered this was illegal but we later found out that the farmer was just “smoothing it over” and we can still use it. We’ll see.
Gwen resumed the apple sales that netted the girls some extra pocket money. We also had a bumper grape harvest which we will attempt to turn into wine but the wisdom of this decision is doubtful if Tony’s allergy to wine continues. Gwen stayed up late one night to watch ‘Whisky Galore’ but a crucial element of the story was incomprehensible to her as she asked at one point ‘But why are they so sad just because they haven’t got any whisky?’ Gwen’s worst school day of the year is over. This is the school run where they have to make a 10km circuit. Perhaps it doesn’t help that this is always the day after the school festival which goes on late into the night so the bleary-eyed participants are not in peak condition.
Both girls now ride regularly but there is always an unseemly scuffle over Mia’s favourite horse, Curly. Another girl, Cecilia, also likes Curly and was arriving earlier and earlier to make sure that she got him. Finally the riding teacher said that Mia and Cecilia ought to take it in turns to ride him but Cecilia has tantrums on the weeks when she has to ride another horse so the emotional blackmail factor is high and we hope that Mia won’t succumb.
At work Tony’s colleagues are cracking up left, right and centre but this only increases the pressure on the remaining staff. So Tony cancelled a planned trip to Iceland in order to be able to take over a big project that had to be completed by the end of the month. Meanwhile he still had to make a trip to London and Malvern at about two days notice on another matter. There was a badly signposted diversion in Cheltenham, a familiar place, but even so he and his colleague got to see the Regency magnificence of the town four times before they eventually found their way out to the A40.
Anne has been filling in applications for money for a couple of big projects which is like writing an exam answer but stretched over weeks rather than hours. Now the big worry is that they will both be accepted because that means a lot more work will follow! Meanwhile Anne has found some old copies of an account given of the flight from Vietnam of a ‘boat person’ she had in her class when she was in Llandrindod Wells twenty years ago. Technology in those days was not so good and they are fading fast. Feeling an obligation not to let such traumatic experiences literally fade away she has been copying them into electronic form and the first, most interesting, article is available here.
One of the last things we did in the holiday was go to the cinema to see ‘Polar Express’ a computer cartoon animation that was very well done. Then, in January, we went to see a ballet in Grenaa which had something to do with Hans Christian Andersen, whose bicentennial it is this year. We are expecting to know everything about him by the time we get to the end of the year including what he liked for breakfast and how much rent he paid for his house.
On Monday January 3, the builders moved in to start our grand renovation and extension project and on January 4 Tony disappeared off to the USA for a conference in Reno, Nevada. Based in a casino and snowed in by 6 feet drifts he didn’t leave the hotel until the conference had ended, being confined to the murky artificial neon light and sea of mirrors that characterised the establishment. Release came when he ventured up the Sacremento valley for two days with a friend from Alaska. The 9 hour time difference and $6 dollar charge for the first minute of connection time made it difficult to get hold of Tony. Until, that is, we became his early 7 am morning call which cost us 8 cents per minute call at about 4pm our time. Tony could feel good and guilty about leaving the girls behind by following progress through photographs posted on the internet here. Tony also returned to find his boss had resigned and his whole workplace in turmoil about the future.
Also while Tony was away, Denmark was struck by a once in a hundred year hurricane event which was about as bad as the one we had six years ago. Mia had chosen that evening to sleep over with a friend and what she remembers most was the power cut which meant that the family rang for a pizza from Randers (45 minutes drive away). Gwen and Anne struggled to keep the protective boards over the new window holes but then had to give up and call the builder who came and secured them so well that they were still in place next day. Unlike the 8 trees which fell over the track making our northern exit unusable and the tree which fell over the turning into the house track down by the road the other way that necessitated very careful avoidance.
Over Christmas we visited a free outdoor ice rink in Aarhus but couldn’t use it as we had no boots and they weren’t hiring them out. So the very next time there was a special offer in one of the supermarkets we went out and got 3 pairs and this last week of January it has been cold enough to test them out. Anne was very pleased to find that she hadn’t lost her touch after a 30 year interval while Gwen was totally frustrated that she couldn’t immediately set off at a graceful glide. Mia got the hang of it quite quickly because she is more prepared to tolerate falling down. Tony has yet to try and now the weather is getting milder!
February will be a blur as Anne is going to Ireland on an EU project and then immediately afterwards goes off with the rest of the family to Tenerife for half term. You can keep up with our comings and goings with this online calendar (there is also a link to it at the top of the page which will remain).