fun at home and abroad

My good­ness, we’ve been rushed off our feet these days.  Hal­loween and Avery’s birth­day, two of my favorite days of the year, have come and gone in a blur.  Our new neigh­bor­hood is quite chock­ful of chil­dren, so hap­pi­ly we had plen­ty of lit­tle mon­sters and angels, dev­ils and Drac­u­las to grace our doorstep.

And for Avery’s 17th birth­day we head­ed to a mati­nee of quite the most per­fect com­e­dy any of us can remem­ber.  Go and see “Per­fect Non­sense,” a Jeeves and Woost­er farce, if you pos­si­bly can.  Star­ring the divine Matthew Mac­fadyen (one of my most deserved crush­es) and Stephen Man­gan, it’s start-to-fin­ish glit­tery, clever and sleek.  Laughs at itself as much as you will.

Emerg­ing after the play we were faced with this beau­ti­ful Lon­don sun­set above, remind­ing us how lucky we are to live here and have this scene right at our fin­ger­tips every day.

There have been the usu­al grey, driz­zly days so typ­i­cal of Lon­don in Novem­ber (or almost any oth­er month for that mat­ter!) filled with meet­ings for the church Christ­mas Fair, meet­ings to stuff envelopes of Christ­mas cards for my beloved Home-Start char­i­ty.  Christ­mas in Lon­don begins too ear­ly, in my view, because of course they have no Thanks­giv­ing to obsess over.  I have, how­ev­er, been obsessed, and our table will be groan­ing with del­i­ca­cies to feed 19 of us!  My new tri­umph: cornbread!

I am espe­cial­ly pleased about final­ly find­ing the per­fect recipe for this fill­ing and home­ly dish, because one of our expect­ed guests on Thanks­giv­ing is a young friend of Avery’s, a ROW­ER.  I have been told by no few­er than a dozen peo­ple that row­ing young men eat as much as three army reg­i­ments!  I will arm myself with two turkeys, a ham, three pota­to dish­es, and… cornbread.

Per­fect Cornbread

(serves one row­er, or prob­a­bly 6–8 nor­mal people)

1 1/4 cups/175 g plain flour

3/4 cup/105 g corn meal

1/4 cup/35 g sugar

4 tsps bak­ing powder

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

1 cup/225 ml milk

1 tbsp olive oil

1 egg, well-beaten

Place a cast-iron fry­ing pan (about 8 inch­es across) in a hot oven, 425F/220C for half an hour. (Thank you to my friend Annie for this sage advice!)

Mix the dry ingre­di­ents thor­ough­ly with a fork, then add all the oth­er ingre­di­ents and stir until just mixed.

When the pan is hot, pour the mix­ture in and bake for about 20 minutes.

***********

Per­haps it is the aro­ma of such com­fort­ing delights as my corn­bread that led this lit­tle fel­low (lady?) to our door one chilly evening last week.

He/she played on the doorstep as John was tak­ing the rub­bish out, and slid right in under his feet, to the frank curios­i­ty and con­ster­na­tion of our cats.  We hope for a return vis­it soon.

Avery of course is deep into rehearsals for the upcom­ing school musi­cal, “Les Mis.”  What I don’t know about “lib­erte, egalite, fra­ter­nite” is real­ly not worth know­ing, and our fam­i­ly has been treat­ed to many ver­sions of every musi­cal num­ber on YouTube.  How I will get through the pro­duc­tion (I get to see it twice!) with­out cry­ing buck­ets I can’t imag­ine.  Even stal­wart Avery admits she has fears of sim­ply break­ing down onstage.

Of course no Novem­ber would be com­plete with­out the bell-ringers’ annu­al Train­ing Day, a tru­ly chal­leng­ing event in the coun­try­side, being taught the most impos­si­ble things by the most tal­ent­ed people.

How love­ly these ancient places are, sleep­ing away in their misty churchyards.

The bell-ringers of cen­turies gone by were not humorless.

We rang hap­pi­ly all day, com­ing home late and tired.  But not too tired to get up to ring for a bril­liant­ly sun­ny Remem­brance Sun­day.  The ring­ing was more beau­ti­ful than ever, I think, with the sound half-muf­fled in respect, and all our atten­tion giv­en to mak­ing it sound as per­fect as possible.

After­ward in the church­yard the ter­ri­bly mov­ing poem was read, and the trum­pet sound­ed.  “They shall not grow old, nor the years condemn…”

My ring­ing friend Tri­cia said sim­ply, “It’s love­ly when Remem­brance Day is sun­ny, and we can wake up to appre­ci­ate it when so many peo­ple can’t.”  Pre­cise­ly so.

All this activ­i­ty, and I haven’t even told you about Copenhagen!

We were deter­mined this year’s half-term break to go some­where real­ly for­eign.  “Real­ly for­eign” mean­ing, to me, a place where I don’t speak a smidgen of the lan­guage.  I can get by in France and Italy, and of course Avery can thrive in Rus­sia.  We could even sur­vive in Moroc­co.  But Den­mark!  Not a word of Dan­ish.  Well, “tak” for thank you, but that was the extent of it.  We set off in high spir­its, and no won­der, because this is what we found.

This is called Nyhavn, “new har­bor,” and it’s a gor­geous canal lead­ing — as we found on our first day’s boat tour — to the love­ly rivers that form Copen­hagen’s water­ways.  Much was made of the his­to­ry of Dan­ish ship­ping (and not so much of the his­to­ry of slav­ery that accom­pa­nied it) and their mas­sive Navy.

And about speak­ing Dan­ish?  We found instant­ly that absolute­ly every­one speaks per­fect Eng­lish.  So we con­tent­ed our­selves with perus­ing menus and street signs in the local lan­guage and sim­ply shak­ing our heads in amazement.

After our boat tour had giv­en us some ideas of what we want­ed to vis­it, we sat down at a dar­ling creperie called “La Petanque” and enjoyed crisp, lacy crepes stuffed with spinach and goat cheese, with grilled chick­en and cumin, and final­ly for Avery, Suzettes, suit­ably flam­ing.  We were restored enough for a vis­it to the tru­ly lux­u­ri­ous (and hideous­ly expen­sive, like every­thing in Den­mark!) Torve­hallerne, which means “food mar­ket.”  I want­ed one of every­thing, but I was restrained.  Just look at the dis­play of fresh pine cones!  Have you ever?

I perused all the incred­i­ble pre­pared foods — every smoked fish you can imag­ine, tiny lit­tle open-faced sand­wich­es piled with shrimp, hard-boiled eggs, and plat­ters of sushi — and con­tent­ed myself with three gor­geous pork meat­balls in a creamy sauce (which com­bined with Dan­ish eggs, sausage, Havar­ti cheese and a crusty roll made the best break­fast EVER.  Although we ate it for dinner!).

For a full food­ie run­down of our stay in Copen­hagen, read all about it here.

We vis­it­ed Rosen­borg Cas­tle, which one of Den­mark’s kings built as a sum­mer house for his lover.  That would be a pret­ty fair induce­ment for a love affair!

We vis­it­ed the palaces of the roy­al fam­i­ly of Den­mark, Amalien­borg, one of four build­ings around a cen­tral court­yard which has been devot­ed to a muse­um hous­ing real­ly touch­ing mem­o­ra­bil­ia of cen­turies of seem­ing­ly delight­ful, hap­py peo­ple who grow up to mar­ry oth­er hap­py peo­ple and pro­duce gen­er­a­tions of pleas­ant mon­archs, all incred­i­bly beau­ti­ful.  And in the court­yard we wit­nessed a small Chang­ing of the Guard (small because appar­ent­ly the Queen was not in res­i­dence at the time), and an even small­er devot­ed admirer.

We had found a tour guide online who would be will­ing to show us the sights in Copen­hagen asso­ci­at­ed with Dan­ish crime dra­mas!  I know it sounds daft, but in fact, the tour was only a lit­tle bit about crime scenes and much more about Dan­ish life for real Dan­ish peo­ple.  There is no one like a for­mer teacher to give you a guide about any­thing, I know, and we came up very lucky in our guide, Lise Lotte Fred­erik­sen (I know!) who oper­ates Peter and Ping, lit­er­ary tours of Copenhagen.

We tramped all around the city, vis­it­ing first the police sta­tion, scene of many a fic­tion­al inter­ro­ga­tion, unmarked save for its tra­di­tion­al star.

She took us to the famed Black Dia­mond roy­al library and cul­tur­al cen­tre, whose gran­ite sur­faces reflect the sparkling water of the canal.

There, we were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of Den­mark’s most famous young poet, Yahya Has­san, who has received death threats after writ­ing poet­ry crit­i­cal of Islam.  Inside the library, he was sur­round­ed by enthu­si­as­tic sup­port­ers hang­ing on his every word.  We would nev­er have known about him with­out Lise to explain for us!

She explained so many things, includ­ing the Dan­ish char­ac­ter, which she described as rather iron­ic, self-effac­ing, with a wicked sense of humor.  Rather like the British, in fact!  “We are a very small coun­try and have just one of every­thing here in Den­mark: one famous nov­el­ist, Isak Dine­sen, one famous philoso­pher, Kierkegaard.  So we are very proud of them.”  My phi­los­o­phy-major past came rush­ing back.

Final­ly we hopped on a bus and made our way to the lit­tle enclave where Carls­berg beer is every­thing, built by a Vic­to­ri­an brew­ing mag­nate in 1847.  He was one J.C. Jakob­sen, and a benev­o­lent patri­ar­chal fig­ure to his fief­dom.  The archi­tec­ture knows no bounds, as befits a man deter­mined to build an entire lit­tle vil­lage around his fac­to­ry.  He liked to think big.

He built an entire neigh­bor­hood of hous­es for his work­ers, much the same as the Fuller Brew­ery here in Lon­don did for theirs.

And the entrance to the grounds is like that to an entire town.

Final­ly we part­ed with Lise over enthu­si­as­tic thanks, and spent the rest of the after­noon valiant­ly try­ing to help Avery spend her grand­moth­ers’ gen­er­ous birth­day mon­ey!  There are love­ly small shops in Copen­hagen sell­ing beau­ti­ful clothes at unbe­liev­able prices, but final­ly she found a crispy white cou­ture shirt, and was happy.

Next day found us walk­ing through the city hear­ing church bells ring­ing.  “That’s Grandsire,“Avery said at one point, and I went into a long, tire­some harangue about how Euro­pean bells don’t live on frames and as such can­not ring meth­ods, they can only chime.  She lis­tened patient­ly to me and then repeat­ed, “That’s def­i­nite­ly change-ring­ing in the dis­tance.”  We fol­lowed the sound and found the adorable St Alban’s Angli­can Church.

This church serves the Eng­lish pop­u­la­tion of Copen­hagen, and as such has an incred­i­ble peal of 15 “tubu­lar” bells, which are played via a com­put­er pro­gram!  What an amaz­ing sound to hear in the Dan­ish air, and how gen­er­ous of HRH Prince Charles to put his pow­er behind the project and make sure the ring was com­plete.  And how won­der­ful that my daugh­ter could recog­nise the sound!

After a love­ly train ride through the autum­nal coun­try­side (much more col­or­ful than in Eng­land), we found our­selves at Kro­n­borg, the cas­tle that inspired Shake­speare to write Ham­let.  You may have noticed that near­ly every place name I’ve men­tioned ends in “borg.”  This word, Lise explained, means some­thing like “pow­er,” so it’s nat­ur­al that kings, queens and heads of state might name their palaces and places of gov­ern­ment with this word.  Of course it’s the root of the fab­u­lous Dan­ish crime dra­ma “Bor­gen,” set in the Prime Min­is­ter’s office.

Kro­n­borg is just massive.

Some of the walls of the cat­a­combs are three meters thick!  The sense of his­to­ry is palpable.

Avery dressed appro­pri­ate­ly, of course.

Final­ly our luck with Dan­ish weath­er broke.  The heav­ens opened.  We got com­plete­ly soaked on the way to the train, and soaked again when we emerged in Copen­hagen.  It was deemed that din­ner out was a good idea, and we repaired to the near­by Rav­age Restau­rant, which we can all high­ly rec­om­mend.  Melt­ing­ly ten­der steak, crispy, fluffy fries with real, fresh Hol­landaise, mus­sels in a creamy, winey sauce.  It was heav­en to sit back and be fed, since I had been cook­ing for us the rest of the hol­i­day.  Super­mar­ket shop­ping in Copen­hagen is a treat because of Irma, the fam­i­ly of gro­cery stores that stock Dan­ish pro­duce (at hor­rif­ic prices, but amaz­ing qual­i­ty).  I have nev­er cooked with such mag­nif­i­cent dairy prod­ucts!  The cream made a pota­toes dauphi­noise to die for.  But going out for once, was nice.

Per­haps the sin­gle most charm­ing thing about Copen­hagen is its bicy­cle culture!

As a cyclist in Lon­don, I often feel that it’s me against the world, with cars and bus­es and lor­ries all bat­tling for ways to unseat me from my char­i­ot.  Not so in Copen­hagen!  The bicy­cle lane is ful­ly as wide as the auto­mo­bile lanes, and peo­ple ride — styl­ish­ly, wrapped all round in clever scarves! — three abreast, stop­ping at the lights just like the cars.  In fact, Lise explained to us that it is against Dan­ish cul­ture to cross against the light, whether as a pedes­tri­an or a cyclist.  It’s so civilised!

And that was our Dan­ish hol­i­day.  We came home with a deep admi­ra­tion for the friend­li­ness, gen­eros­i­ty, calm­ness and life-affirm­ing qual­i­ty of the peo­ple we met, and a deep desire to live there one day.  If we win the lot­tery!  Real­ly the best part of the hol­i­day was get­ting to spend so much time with Avery, relax­ing in con­ver­sa­tion that did­n’t have to be rushed or on-top­ic.  Over one of our many meals togeth­er, she tried to explain Russ­ian gram­mar to us.

“There are many cas­es.  The nom­i­na­tive, the accusative…”

“Accusative?” John asked.

“Yes, like I love water, or I hate water.”

“ ‘I hate water’ sounds a lot more accusative to me,” John said.  “J’ac­cuse!”

And so now life moves with its inex­orable ener­gy toward the hol­i­days.  First among the cel­e­bra­tions will be John’s mom’s her­ald­ed arrival next week!  We have much to look for­ward to.  Thank good­ness we have some ener­gy stored up.