Sunday 3rd March: Artificial sun bathing on the winter patio.

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Sunday 3rd 44-48F, dark grey, breezy with rain and brighter intervals. Even patches of blue sky appearing now. A walk to the lanes in a chill wind despite soaring temperatures. Now 46F at 10.30.

There is a political argument going on in Europe about the legality of children taking time off from school to protest against climate change. I wonder, do those same students insist on walking or cycling to school as we did in previous generations? Or are they driven up to the school gates by their doting parents in a large and impressive saloon? Just in case the other students sneer at them for their family's, undoubted poverty.

Perhaps the same students should protest against the use of patio warmers? 1500W electric, radiant heaters, for use outside. While the owners enjoy nature in the raw.  Probably while wearing the traditional Danish, winter wear, of short sleeved, cotton T-shirt and shorts. As they do all winter in Denmark with the central heating turned right up.

Add that to the strings of "landing lights" burning all day long outside. So that the home owners can come home, in their individual cars, one for each member of the family, to a safe and welcoming wash of artificial daylight. While simultaneously advertising their absence from home, all day, every day, to any passing thief looking for an easy target.

These <cough> security lights often use old fashioned light bulbs burning hundreds of watts per hour, often 24 hours a day. Because their owners are too lazy to update to compact florescent, let alone fit modern LEDs. I blame the crooked, compact florescent manufacturers. Flogging expensive "low energy" replacements for traditional incandescent bulbs.

The light outputs were obscenely overrated per claimed, replacement wattage. Which often meant buying several examples before enough light could be had. Of course nobody mentioned they filled the house with mercury dust and vapour when they broke. As many of them did. Not to mention the heat they produced. Often on a par with incandescent bulbs!

Just think: They could close one of the many, Danish, [imported] coal fired, power stations if they banned patio warmers and security lights, left on during the day time. We had "night and day" overrides on outdoor, proximity sensors [motion detectors] well over 30 years ago in Gravely Blighted.

However, under the rigid rules of Janteloven, this means that the Danes can't have them. Not until a pure bred Dane, with at least a thousand years of recorded pedigree in the same village, independently invents them. Since, under Jante's Law, nobody is allowed to feel superior, nobody bothers to invent anything useful like that.

The ordinary Danes would just sneer at them for trying to be cleverer than them. So it could take thousands more years before the electrical component monopoly starts manufacturing [in China of course.] For resale under a Danish label with non-Danish instructions and markings. Finnish is the most popular language for "white goods" sold here. You'll almost always find it on cookers and washing machines. And, it's no use contacting the manufacturer for instructions in a language you can understand. 

Thankfully, for the Danes, the trend towards "smart goods" means they can now have Google Translate built into the tiny screen. So that they can understand the gibberish printed on the control panel. Not that Google Translate is any better at translating, or pronouncing Danish, than it is at offering results to Danish language searches.

Sometimes, when we are really bored with Netfilch, which is all too often these days, we will do image searches using Danish language search terms. Just for the fun of it. It is absolutely hilarious! How you can have several pages of results? Without one, single image ever hitting the spot! 😏  

 

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