Author: Anne Fox

When I started all this inter-cultural stuff about four years ago, I made a collection of photographs which to me epitomise Denmark. One of them is of a bonfire. The Danes say ‘Oh yes, midsummer’ but I then tell them that it means more than that. I chose the picture because to me it signifies the Danish love affair with the naked flame. A stately home near us regularly has romantic nights in the summer where they open up in the evening and the whole house is lit by candlelight as it would have been in it’s heyday. The evening is rounded off by a firework display in the grounds. No special occasion is complete without a candle, Danes had the second highest percentage of smokers in the pre-2004 EU (Greece since you ask), wood burning stoves are normal means of heating and at Christmas time there are always a few house fires due to the live candles placed on the Christmas tree. Advent candles are everywhere in shops, schools and work places, candles are placed in shop displays and torches are placed at an angle both sides of the shop entrance.

So you won’t be surprised to learn that every classroom in Gwen and Mia’s school has matches, (you never know when you will need to light a bonfire or a candle after all) and Gwen came home yesterday announcing that she will take a night light in decorative holder to school because it is allowed to have one on your desk during the school day in December and despite the fact that she is scared rigid by candles. One boy in the class has been banned from this privilege but I have mentioned him before. So he goes round blowing all the other kids candles out. … as long as that is all that he does!

While I was away in Germany, the girls watched the Junior Eurovision song contest. I am sure that you did too. And what they saw inspired Mia to think that she could do just as well. She and two of her friends have been huddling together for over a week now composing a song. And it aint easy! What should it be about? Friends, love or holidays. OK let’s go for friends. Their manager, Gwen, has been there in the background, sounding the voice of reason. ‘That’s too boring. You need another line there. Shall we write down the words so that we don’t forget?’ Unfortunately they also needed to write down or record the music and I’m afraid that a couple of cracking melodies have been lost on the drive to horse riding.

Then yesterday, an old lady visited the afterschool club and our intrepid and determined trio quizzed her about her contacts. Didn’t she know anyone who could help them with this song composing business? Well, she did know a singing teacher. ‘Who? who?’ they chorussed and it turned out to be the mother of one of their friends in the year above. So immediately Mia was on the phone organising a meeting and tomorrow they go to Daniella’s house, not to play with Daniella but to get some hot tips from Daniella’s Mum.

Meanwhile Gwen stayed up to watch a programme about champion entrepreneurs. Maybe we don’t have to worry about the pension after all.

A quieter day, Gwen went horse riding and showed great poise on Beauty, with which she has a good relationship.  She would have galloped more than she did, but for the fact that Bella was in front slowing down rather often.

Dear Diary,

No Monday morning blues this morning, beautiful sunrise and huge moon with a halo.

Today was Mia’s school party and her friend Mille’s birthday, let her tell you herself: “we had a limbo competition, and I was amongst the last 5 to be knocked out.  We had an eating competition where we had to eat “sweet string” (not sure what this is called in English!!) as fast possible.  I bought raffle tickets and won some sweets and I also bought a coke and there was also musical chairs, but I did not play.  We danced to music.  Tonight we made pancakes.”

This evening Mia was practicing her Christmas songs, so we were treated to a house full of music.  Now we are going to write Christmas cards (yes, we known, its only mid-November, but the post takes a long time to some places!).

Whilst the cat is away…

Little does Anne realise that we have access to her blog!  Gwen, Mia and T put Anne on the plane this morning and just to prove how perfect we are, we came straight home and did ALL our homework (well, Mia did, Gwen still has 2341 pages of Harry Potter to read…)

Gwen takes over the story:  “After that we made a packed lunch with tomato soup and went out to the pond. We ate our lunch and then Mia skated on the ice (I did too but without iceskates). When we got home we played Settlers (Dad won boo!), and now we are going to make the dinner (quiche).”

On Tuesday Mia’s class walked over to our house as part of their outdoor life lesson. They had their packed lunches in the loft and then picked our apples, bounced on our trampoline and played hide and seek.

Mia was allowed to avoid the long walk back to school and stay at home and I am sure that this breaks a hundred rules in the UK.

Yes, the moment you have all been waiting for has arrived. The CD is out and ready to mail. The world’s largest children choir singing 5 Christmassy songs with the help of Danish celebrities. It has been played innumerable times in our house already and Mia is always humming one of the tunes from it. And there’s more! There are computer games on the CD which we haven’t tried yet but they are probably all in Danish so even more challenging.

We received the first Christmas parcel from Santa yesterday, seems he was passing through Rotherham, gave up and stuck it in the post.

And finally, the photograph is a sunrise from yesterday just outside our house. Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning they say and indeed the weather wasn’t brilliant.

I organised a conference this week but didn’t need to go anywhere as it was an online conference. However it did mean that I had to shut myself away with the computer for long stretches of the day four days on the trot.

Gwen and Mia cooked macaroni cheese, cheese on toast and pizzas to keep me going.

Tony has been and returned from his conference in Maryland. The autumnal colours were wonderful apparently but the pictures fail to convey them so this time you get a picture of the cat washing his face becuase he obviously didn’t wash properly while he was away.

They hired a car to get back to Washington Dulles airport because it was cheaper than talking a taxi and there was no public transport. Inevitably they took a wrong turning (following the hotel’s ‘excellent’ instructions) but happened across a gas station attendant who had no idea where they were when asked to point out their location on a map of Washington city.

Tony has been and returned from his Russian conference, lucky not to have hurtled to his death from the hotel balcony. There are no pictures of St Petersburg because they were stationed two hours drive away (too expensive in the city itself) and only ever visited it at night (to avoid the horrendous traffic).