The Connection Is Made

Sitting here in dark, rainy Scotland does not feel so bad, when I look at the Danish Budget for 2010. Among all the talk about a new super-hospital and whatnot, the government is now going to offer non-Western immigrants up to £12,000 for giving up their legal residency and returning "home". The Budget also includes £500,000 to mark overseas Danish cultural heritage - particularly the former slave colonies of Ghana and The West Indies. At the risk of sounding cryptic: Denmark is now what the Daily Mail wants Britain to become. In more personal news, my aunt died this week and my family attended her funeral in rural Denmark today. Although she was a distant relative of mine - I think I met her four or five times - I am very sad on behalf of her siblings, her daughter and her grandson. Rest in peace.

And while I was pondering writing about my life and how it has changed these past ten years, I have decided against doing so. I am amused to note, though, that the Noughties are bookended by me sitting in a dreich Scottish city during November lamenting the lack of double-glazing and proper heating. In 2000 I sat in Stirling (also known as "Hellmouth" - after living there I swore I'd never return to Scotland) and here in 2009 I am sitting in Glasgow. I hope to finish the next decade sitting somewhere warm and sunny. Ha.

Finally, Other Half and I watched a snippet of a BBC programme last night about the Orient Express. We decided that a jolly little train trip would be good fun at some point in the not-too-distant future and today I checked just how much such a jolly little train trip would set us back. £3,700 for the both of us for a jolly little train trip lasting maybe 36 hours and not including any extra frills. I think we may need to rethink that holiday idea.

Croak, Croak

Health update: I think I'll be okay as long as I a) do not talk, b) do not laugh and c) keep drinking rum toddies. It is a slightly flawed plan, so I have stocked up on Halls Soothers. We are also on our third day of curly kale soup - it is my first time cooking this soup which was one of my great-grandmother's special dishes and I'm happy with the result although I'm going to tweak my recipe a tiny bit to make it a bit more like my nan's - and hopefully all those fresh veg will also make a difference. Knitting update: I have stalled on the first sleeve of Dave's pullover and am seven rows away from finishing my shawl's Chart B. Onwards, ever onwards. I am still pondering NaKnitSweMoDo (interNational Knit a Sweater a Month Dodecathon) for next year although both my knitting group and my beloved claim I will grow bored and whiny. We shall see. It depends upon the stash.

General update in the form of one link: These literary clutch bags make my heart go all a-flutter although I am most definitely not a clutch bag girl. They combine so many of my loves: books, paratextuality, craft, things handmade and geekdom. Be still my heart.

Also, I'm getting a bit nostalgic about the noughties almost being done and dusted, so expect wallowing entries in the near future.

Twenty Years Ago Today

Twenty years ago today my mother woke me up early. She was crying. Last time she woke me up crying, Olof Palme had just been assassinated. This time, though, my mother's tears were not angry, horrified and sad tears. She was crying with joy. The Berlin Wall had fallen. I went to school that day. My teachers cancelled all our scheduled classes and were bust talking amongst themselves. My German teacher - the great-grandson of Paul Gauguin, by the way - sat us down to watch news reports coming in from West Germany. I still recall another teacher crying in the school yard. She was part-German. Today I suspect her German family might have fled here from the East as they never visited any of their relatives until the early 1990s.

Today it is difficult to explain what life were like before the end of the Cold War. I lived in Denmark, a small country just north of both East and West Germany. Occasionally you'd hear stories about people escaping from East Germany across the southernmost Baltic Sea to southern Denmark. Occasionally you'd also hear about people travelling the opposite direction. Swedes were paranoid about Soviet submarines and Danes were paranoid about East German spies within Danish political ranks. I was just a child when it all changed but I could definitely tell something had changed. At school they stopped teaching us how to react in event of a nuclear war, for instance.

Twenty years ago today.

Thirty-Love

I have a very soft spot in my heart for tennis. Yes, tennis. It was one of the few sports I was ever good at in school and in the early 1990s I watched tennis broadcasts almost religiously. My favourite time of year is still Wimbledon time. My favourite player was a tall Croat, Goran Ivanisevic, who was maddeningly unpredictable: on good days, his tennis was stunning; on bad days, his games were like watching a car crash in slow motion. You never knew what kind of a day it would be. Ivanisevic wound up winning Wimbledon, but characteristically he didn't do so until he was well past his prime and only admitted to the tournament on a wild card.

Andre Agassi belongs to the same tennis generation as Ivanisevic, but although Agassi was a wildly popular player at the time, I never took to his game. Without going into too much technical detail, Agassi played a defensive game from the baseline relying upon serve returns and solid ground strokes (on today's circuit Scots Andy Murray plays a very similar game). He was technically brilliant, absolutely, and he had a colourful personality, but his game lacked the fireworks of players far more on the offensive (Ivanisevic, Pat Rafter, Pete Sampras, and, later, Andy Roddick).

Coloured me surprised, then, that Andre Agassi's autobiography turns out to be filled with offensive gameplay, if you will pardon the pun.

At the age of 12, Andre traveled to Australia with a team of elite young players. For each tournament he won, he got a beer as a reward. Then in the seventh grade he was shipped off to the Bollettieri Academy in Florida, where his tennis flourished, but his life turned feral. Drinking hard liquor and smoking dope, he wore an earring, eyeliner and a Mohawk. Nobody objected as long as he won matches. The academy, in Agassi's words, was "Lord of the Flies with forehands." Since the press and the tennis community still regard Nick Bollettieri as a seer and an innovator whose academy spawned dozens of similar training facilities, Agassi's critical opinion of him may shock the ill-informed. But in fact, Bollettieri is the paradigmatic tennis coach: that is, a man of no particular aptitude or experience and no training at all to deal with children.

Fascinating stuff which really appeals to my inner seventeen year-old girl who knew there was something sketchy about Agassi. Of course I'm unlikely to ever read Agassi's book (my inner seventeen year-old is torn, though) as I'm now thirty-something .. a fact that was brought home to me yesterday when I was watching the UK Top 40 and I knew exactly two songs..

Boredom Sets In

A brief link today pilfered from elsewhere: Hey, Oscar Wilde!.  It is "a personal art collection of various artists interpreting their favourite literary figure/author/character". I really like this Winnie the Pooh. Health update: I managed to get dressed and head outside today. Okay, I went across the road to the local supermarket and I went straight back to bed afterwards, but it's progress!

Speaking of progress, I finished the yoke on David's sweater tonight. He tried it on and we quickly agreed that the textured design on the yoke didn't work. I ripped back the 40-ish rows and I'm back to the drawing board. I know some might complain, but I'm fine with it. after all, I'd rather have him liking the finished sweater than me finishing something quickly which will never get worn. My shawl is also progressing well (and the list of unlistened-to podcasts is dwindling fast)..

.. I just want to get better really, really soon. If you think my blog posts are dull, imagine how I feel.

Mad, Bad & Orange To Know

Being ill has its benefits. Last time I was stuck in bed for more than two days in a row, I ploughed through Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell which I had previously failed to get into (the plot starts unfolding one-third through the novel). This time around I am knitting whilst listening to podcasts on John Milton (interesting) and Ezra Pound (dull and I even mouthed 'WRONG' at my ipod at one point). I'm knitting with my bright orange 2-ply baby alpaca (yes, the colour is accurate in the photo). It is underspun, rather fragile and almost angora-like soft. And I'm knitting Percy, a pattern which I have previously attempted to knit. I'm now halfway through my second repeat of the dastardly Chart B and I might add in another repeat before doing the edging chart, just to make the shawl a bit bigger. It almost seems a shame to knit an intricate pattern in fuzzy yarn, but the process knitter in me actually Does Not Care. It'll be a mad, colourful and warm shawl - and I will have conquered Chart B. That is all that matters.

I am still ill, alas, but I think today I will actually get dressed!

And here's a little news story which may cheer you up:

Rumors of a city of 25,000 lesbians have led hordes of men to contact Swedish tourist authorities and swamp the nation's Internet providers. Chinese media especially have spread the tale of “Chako Paul City,” supposedly founded in 1820 in northern Sweden by a man-hating widow who banned males, reports Australia's Daily Telegraph. Inhabitants then turned to lesbianism “because they could not suppress their sexual needs,” goes one recent account in China’s Harbin News service. Swedish tourist authorities are baffled. “I've no idea where this came from, but it's not true," said a spokesman. “At 25,000 residents, the town would be one of the largest in northern Sweden, and I find it hard to believe that you could keep something like that a secret for more than 150 years.”

(I cannot remember how I came across it - if it's via you, please let me know so I can credit)