Ahoy!

Wow! Amongst all the fab presents I got for my birthday - gorgeous bracelet, DVDs & CDs, beautiful flowers, jug/vase, Come to Denmark Ladybird book, Hairy Biker's Cookbook, jug with Weybridge coat of arms on it, Cath Kidston designed picnic backpack and many more besides - my dad & step-mother Jackie bought me a boat. Yup, a real life beautiful wooden rowing boat, which they bought from eBay and have spend the last couple of weeks doing up. It's amazing and am so chuffed I can't begin to say. So much time and effort has gone into it that I'm really touched, quite aside from the fact that I clearly now have the nicest boat on the lake! I couldn't resist a quick jaunt out before I headed out for dinner this evening:


I'm just off to pick up Mole and Badger...

Isn't it fantabulous? If you've over this way and fancy a tour of the Broadwater, I'd love any excuse to take it out!

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday dear meee, happy birthday to me...

Great Danes

...and so I had a lovely time in Denmark with my cousin. They live in the northern part of Jutland, in a tiny, two road town called Ørsø. Very rural. I'm talking 'walk over to the next farm to buy eggs, only one shop in the village' kinda thing. They have two bedrooms, one of which is normally their son Benjamin's, but which (unbeknown to him) he kindly offered to me. This meant, gawd bless 'em, the whole family were squashed into one room for the week.

It was an action-packed week, Camilla had lined up some cool visits for me. For example, we went up to see the birth centre where she had her daughter. I chatted to a couple of the people working there and we talked about work-load etc, whereupon I was told that they had around about 130 births. A month? I asked. No, I was told rather incredulously, 130 a year. Just to put this into perspective for you, my unit back home does 4,500-5,000 per year. There are no doctors there and they have two birth rooms, both with pools. Women and their partners can stay for up to a week following the birth and the food is fabulous and plentiful, as it is all over Denmark. Hmmm. I offered to learn better Danish and come and work there too. Because the weather was so good (it's ALWAYS good when I go to Denmark. I'm beginning to think the climate is somewhere akin to Antigua), we also popped over to have a quick dip in the sea in order to cool off. We paid a visit to one of Camilla's ex-boyfriends (also named Jesper) who is now married to one of her best friends, and who lives on a pig farm. Well, this is Denmark, after all.

On that note, I was disappointed to note that, once again, I came back from Denmark unable to speak the language fluently. Okay, so I suppose one week is not really long enough to learn a language but goddamn it I really feel like I ought to be able to speak this one. Very annoying. I did my best, and picked up a fair bit more than before I went, but still. Gah, as my friend Lisa might write. Maybe I'll go and live there for 3 months or so, that should do it.

Camilla and Jesper have two of the most gorgeous children around, Benjamin & Josefine. To Benjamin, I suspect that I remained 'that weird woman who stole my bedroom and talks funny', but I think I managed to win over Josefine, who, at 16 months old, wasn't that fussy about whether or not I spoke the same language as anyone else as long as I could feed her and help her put her wellies on. It was Benjamin's 4th birthday while I was out there and he had a party with some of his friends from Nursery. The cake was a damn cool giant Danish pastry (known as Weinerbrød in Denmark). The children sang Happy Birthday to him in English, which was fascinating because of course they had absolutely no idea what they were singing and, as a result, some of the words sounded a little odd. But then, I suppose, it's a bit like us learning Frère Jacques by rote...


On the Saturday evening the neighbours came over to throw an axe. That's not a metaphor. I had seen a large target out in the back garden and had idly assumed that it was for archery or something. But in fact, it was for the old Viking art of chucking axes, which is harder than it sounds. They're heavier than you think and to actually chuck it hard enough, and high enough, to get it to spin and hit the target is pretty bloody difficult. My first few efforts were disappointing - thought I should point out that several other members of the party couldn't hit the target either so I didn't feel too stupid - but, as I'm not a quitter, I kept on at it (long after everyone else had buggered off) until I managed to hit it bang on. Then I quickly stopped while I was ahead. I ached for several days following that. Then we played an old Viking game called 'Cube', which was like a cross between cricket, boule and quoits. We played boys vs. girls and although I hate to, ahem, boast, we thrashed them.

I brought my iPod over to Denmark with me and I showed it to Camilla and Jesper one afternoon. They couldn't believe how many songs you could fit onto it - my iPod is actually over four times bigger, memory-wise, than their home computer - and when I showed them my iTrip and began playing my songs wirelessly on their ancient kitchen radio their jaws hit the floor. They got the neighbours over to show them too! I thought for one horrifying moment that I was going to be burnt at the stake as a witch.

Oh one more thing. All week, I saw the kids watch telly precisely once. The rest of the time they were outside playing. Denmark has half an hour's children programmes every evening, between 6pm & 6.30pm. The one night we watched it, it was a Swedish programme called 'Emil' from 1972 (along the same lines as Heidi I suppose), about a boy who lived on a farm with HILARIOUS consequences, which the children watched rapt with attention. It was 25 minutes long and so when it finished, there was still 5 minutes of children's time left to go. So what do you think they showed to fill the time? Five whole minutes of someone stroking a parrot. Seriously. You have no idea just how long 5 minutes is until you have watched someone stroke a parrot for that long. I laughed so hard I thought I'd break something.

My cousin gave me a lift back to Aalborg station for my journey back to the airport, which because of the connections and the fact that it involved both a train and a bus, meant I got to the airport about 3 hours before the plane left. I'd thought that it would be okay, I'd have a wander round the shops. I arrived and looked on the flight board to check the flight was on time: well that was easy, since my flight was the only one left that day. Okay. So, time to hit the shops. Or should that in fact be 'shop'. Three minutes later I'd been there done that and now had 2 hours 57 minutes to kill before I flew... And I'd finished my book. Thank goodness for the iPod and The Geoff Show podcast I say!

Keep The Faith

I went to see Bon Jovi in concert last night at Milton Keynes National Bowl. Perfect weather for it of course, particularly given that doors opened around 3.30pm and you had to get their early to bag your space. There were ALOT of people there; around 70,000 if rumours are to be believed (and are they? Don't ask me, I'm a hopeless judge of crowds. I just know it was BIG).

Nickelback were supporting and they were excellent but the spectacular set only came into its own when Mr. Jonathan Bon Jovi Esq. and his boys came on stage. It sparkled and danced, whirled and entertained all on its own, which was just as well, given that - as you will no doubt note - the band might was well have been a bunch of performing ants for all we could see. The sun, not wishing to be outdown by a mere stage, also decided to put on a little performance of its own as it set.

Now, I've never been to a big stadium-style gig before. I'm much more used to turning up at the Shepherd's Bush Empire an hour or two before the gig, grabbing a pint of watery coke and trying not to stick to the floor all night. So, you can imagine, that this was a new experience for me. Also - and this is where I have to be careful not to come across as snobbish or elitist in anyway* - the clientele was a little different to my usual fayre. I am a dedicated people watcher at the best of times but this really was the most amazing fodder. Nuff said. You were not allowed to bring food or drink into the arena, other than SEALED bottles of WATER no larger than 500MLS - we brought four since it was so bloomin' hot - and the refreshments provided were ridiculously expensive, naturally.

Now think of how many people were there. If I tell you that between the two of us, we spent a total of £102 - £70 plus £10 booking fee for tickets, 4 beers, 1 Coke, 1 Calippo and a portion of chicken & chips - you can imagine how much money they must be making. And we didn't even buy any merchandise!

I think my favourite part of the evening was something that highlighted a modern phenomenon. When the old favourite Living on a Prayer came on, the view of the crowd in front of me suddenly looked like a million fireflies had appeared. It took me a moment to realise that it was in fact thousands of camera phones being held up...

I was supposed to have gone along with my friend Suzie, who originally bought the tickets, but she is quite heavily pregnant and has been really ill so the poor love very reluctantly handed me her ticket as she thought being stuck in the middle of a large crowd rocking out in a field whilst she was copiously vomiting was probably not the best plan. So instead I went with David, which meant that we got seats in the disabled enclosure and had our own toilets. Result! There really are advantages for the disadvantaged...

Now, here's the confessional: I'm not really a huge Bon Jovi fan. That said, I think they've done much for the rock scene over the past 20 or so years and not many bands have the staying power that they've shown so you gotta give 'em credit. They adopted Rock God Stance (legs wide apart and slightly bent: check. Upper body tilted slightly back: check. Orgasmic grimace: check) after relentless Rock God Stance and cheesed their way through hit after hit. Jon has aged terribly well and actually came out for the encore wearing an England shirt (last season's, I should point out) which made the crowd - bunch of footballing types that they were - go wild, so bless him.

There were three Norwegian girls behind us - clearly of the sapphic persuasion - one of whom was in a wheelchair and had 'Keep The Faith' tattooed on her arm. At the first note of Living on a Prayer, she was helped to stand by one of her companions and she then proceeded to blub her way through the rest of the concert. Aaahhh, you're probably thinking. Well I'd have had more sympathy if she'd SHUT THE HELL UP throughout the rest of the performance rather than jabbering away excessively loudly, nineteen to the dozen with her friends and blowing smoke in my bloody face.

How many of you have I lost now?

*and will no doubt fail

I'm in love. Seriously. You have to try this; it's amazing. I always knew their chocolate souffles (anyone know how to get an e with an accent over it without cutting and pasting from Word?) were fantastic but now they've moved their choco-expertise into the ice-cream market...well. And what's more, it comes in the coolest little polystyrene box - cool being the operative word. I just left mine out for the past hour and it didn't melt even one little bit.

Roll on summer picnics...