29.05.2020 US public execution for breathing while black.

~~

Friday 29th 49-65F, bright sunshine [again.] No walk. Nothing to say which you haven't heard before.

Saturday 30th 52-70F, bright sunshine promised all day. A bit of thin cloud coming over now and then. Went for a walk in 69F warmth at 11am. Still lots of birdsong. Traffic light.

Sunday 31st 52-70F bright overcast. As society opens up there are further hurdles to clear. The elderly are known to be at greatest risk if they become infected. The elderly are also far more likely to be hearing impaired. Now add a mask to the person they are struggling to hear. We may need AI universal translators to speak Mask and LOUDLY!

Global research show that there are many symptom free carriers. Since the vast majority of people have yet to be tested then huge numbers could be infected but feeling perfectly normal. The staff at old people's homes are rarely tested. The politicooze can be tested for the virus, morning noon and night. Essential workers? Let's see now. Pick a card.. any card.

Are the demonstrators in the US practicing safe, social distancing? Rioting in the middle of a pandemic? Where "minorities" are already proving to be, by far, the most vulnerable? You really couldn't make it up! 100, 000.. and c00000unting.

~~

28.05.2020 100,000 US dead but Chump bashes Infantile Twatter for censoring his fake news!

~~

Thursday 28th 52F, clear and sunny with more promised.

Interesting news for those who do not practice a sedentary lifestyle: Hard physical exercise clears the muscles of "tired" proteins and replaces them with fresh proteins via the production of amino acids through breakdown of the old protein.

Weight loss involves breathing out the lost fat as water and CO2. It doesn't "evaporate" as fat through sweating. Nor by "burning" the fat away. Though these may well give that appearance.

BMI is measured, not on your waistline, but by the weight of the crap you place on the supermarket checkout belt.

The Infantile Twatter and Maskbook dictatorships are facing the wrath of Herr Retardus Von Chump [German immigrant to the US] for supposed crimes against his falsehoods. This at the time when 100,000 real people have died of the virus. Which Retardus Von Chump dismissed as "fake news." Not a great time to be a real German and unable to vote this vile fascist scum out of office.

Meanwhile, white scum, imitating serving US police officers, were emboldened by their own leader's overt and rabid racism. So that they slowly and deliberately murdered a black person, on camera, in a public street, in front of countless witnesses and the entire world. It is ironic that the fear of 1984 and universal "government supervision" has put cameras in almost every person's hands. Which brings many crimes to light. Rather than the reverse.

Except under Sly Jinping's brutal and genocidal dictatorship of course. The world's richest man must now boost his flagging wealth. With the destruction of HK's independence by his jackbooted Brownshirts, his loyal SS and Gestapo. History comes and goes but evil dictators never grow old. They just keep changing the devil's names. Over and over again.

"Green" Denmark has been pouring untreated sewage into the sea for four years! Some of Denmark's imported "pretend" biomass energy is worse than imported coal in its CO2 footprint. Denmark's government, which was elected on a "climate" ticket has now had to put off its promised 70% CO2 reduction to 3130. Meanwhile a Danish bus driver has thrown a 9 year old child off the bus because of "overcrowding." Fortunately the school rang the boy's mother to ask why the child hadn't turned up.

~~

26.05.2020 Cummings + Cooper + Infantile Twatter.

~~

Tuesday 26th 58-61F, clear blue skies and sunny.  Busy at home. No walk so far. Nor was there today.

I deleted my little tirades against sociopathic racists and the sociopathic self-entitled scum. The post title says more than enough. No point in predicting even more deaths. Just remember their names. Add them to the endless list of criminals and other deluded fools who make the news headlines every single day of the year.

Scum behaves as scum always does. It rises to the top of every human sewer. It does not conceal the darkness beneath the surface. It merely highlights its presence. Ask Infantile Twatter or Maskbook. Both profit from being global conduits for sewage which they deliberately fail to filter. Before releasing it untreated into the oceans of human misery and drooling idiocy.

Wednesday 27th 54F, grey overcast but calm. I had better have a walk before I fall off my soapbox. Or trip over it while trying to climb back up to my elevated advantage point. A walk to the lanes in fairly light traffic. The news is that traffic has halved during the pandemic but not accidents and deaths on the roads. The willfully educationally challenged simply increased their speeds. Without having the skills and/or intelligence to manage a task which is quite clearly well beyond their abilities. If only these Darwin Award recipients would go without taking others with them. The world might slowly improve by iteration. Two hares dashed across the winter flood, mud flats on a field. Lots of plants and trees in flower now.

A five mile afternoon ride to watch more ducks. The light was completely different to my usual, morning walks. The owner of the lake came along and invited me to use the grass banks of the lake for my bird watching. Which was a kind offer as the lake is almost closed off on all sides by mature trees and lots of other cover. I saw a Grebe, a large grey heron and a Shelduck family with three chicks. Plus lots of Mallards of course.

~~

25.05.2020 Conspiring against the conspirators?

~~

Monday 25th 49F, overcast and breezy. We are being offered quite a lot of sun. Or quite a lot of cloud. Supercomputers, eh? Who needs them?

My usual, shambling gait to the lanes. Traffic sparse with long intervals between clumps. Birds still singing and busy. The purple, hedgerow lilacs are in flower. The yellow, oil seed rape flowers are now scarce. Gone over to seed. They will turn from green to fawny brown. Making the place look untidy.

I ventured [briefly] along the spray tracks in the crops yesterday while I was taking some photographs. Then all afternoon I was feeling unwell. I am assuming I was poisoned but how can you tell? I shall be social distancing myself from the fields in future. Hopefully it is still safe to walk to the lanes with miles of fields in every direction.

Mind you, I was standing in the corner of a field for an hour on Saturday. That was on a public footpath taking pictures of ducks and some large, but still unidentified, fuzzy, white birds.

How long does it take to show symptoms of toxic exposure? Hmm. Google suggests I had only some of the normal symptoms of organophosphate poisoning. Typical of me to only get it half right.

Google's spelling checker doesn't even recognise organophosphate. That'll be the supercomputers again. I could start a conspiracy theory about Google's spelling checker. Though that will have to wait while I start another one about my blog crawling during updates.

Have Gloogal sold out to Sly Jinping of Pandemic fame? Or Chancellor Adolph Von Chumpo? Or Fat Boy Nu-Kim? Or Boris The Party Clown? Or Ballsarnarrow? Somebody really isn't taking their essential, conspiracy work, seriously enough! Loonies in charge of the asylum? Probably. 🤣

~~

24.05.2020 Just another Sunday.

 ~~

Sunday 24th 51-58F, overcast and expected to remain that way. Though I saw my own shadow briefly on my walk to the lanes. My winter, walking coat provided the necessary warmth. Traffic light, with long pauses between vehicles.

Denmark's plans to have its citizens sort refuse into 10 types, for improved recycling, has received a bit of a knock. It will cost at least 10 times the calculated sum per year. Instead of a modest 55 Danish Kroner [about £6] per year it will cost at least 500DKK or £60.

I hope they call it off. It is hard enough dragging the present two wheely bins the 100 yards along the drive. To reach the nearest point where the binmen will [sometimes] deign to empty them. When they feel like it, of course and can't find a reason to leave it all behind. With a decorative card hooked on the handle to point out assorted crimes against recycling. Give a little man a little power and they become all "entitled."

~~

23.05.2020 Out and about.

~~

Saturday 23rd 53F, dull and overcast with  distant mist. It rained quite thoroughly yesterday afternoon and evening. We must all pray that the mist isn't just the rain going back up again. That would never do! Now the sun is trying to come through! [6.45am]

I keep thinking I should have another ride but it never happens. It became such a habit to have a "proper" goal and a purpose for every ride. Just to ensure I had one. Without that stimulus it is hard to find a good enough reason. Particularly when I am denied entry to so many of my former goals without seriously risking infection. The ride itself is no longer sufficient excuse for having one.

It remained bright but not continuously sunny for my walk to the lanes. The mist had lifted by then. I spotted several different warblers in the roadside hedges. Their very high activity level actually helped me to see them if I was patient enough. My neighbours have taken up jogging during the pandemic. Their fitness seems to be increasing quite nicely. Traffic was light with longs gap between them.

I think I might have a ride to do some spotting, for water birds, on some slightly more distant ponds. That was all the excuse I needed to do my familiar Saturday morning ride. I hung about for an hour by a shallow, flood prevention lake. There were swans, coots, Black headed gulls, geese and two families of Shelducks with lots of chicks. The geese were innocently grazing around the Shelducks but this prompted a few threatening charges.

I broke quarantine to buy a few items we can't get from home delivery. The shops were all but empty and I used the provided, alcohol hand rinse each time. The downside is that the same pump button was touched by everybody! Naturally I was very careful to avoid everyone and checked the car park was all but empty before risking a visit. Probably 15 miles today but all three batteries are flat in the Sigma cycle computer.

~~

22.05.2020 Badlands/Great Depression Adventure Park?

~~

Friday 22nd 54F, bright start but a chance of rain this afternoon or evening. A walk to the lanes in warm sunshine and a pleasant easterly breeze.

I was teased by a hare. It watched as I slowly took out my camera and turned it on. It sat there motionless as I carefully raised the camera to frame the shot... and then it vanished into the oil seed rape crop. Don't you just hate it when that happens?

The Head Gardener will certainly be pleased if it rains! [As will I, of course, if it means that She lets My stress levels drop.]

The low rainfall has already turned Her soil "to dust!" From Her dire warnings I am almost expecting tumbleweed to be crisscrossing Her garden. 

We had a long drought back in 2018. So this is becoming "a bit of a habit." The grass turned straw coloured back then! Perhaps She should order some desert plants online? Then She could have a cactus garden and offer camel rides to tourists. We could call it "Badlands Adventure Park" with a strong "Great Depression" theme.

We could pretend the cracked and dried up [winter flooding patches] on the fields are dried up lakes. And the empty house next door could be our abandoned, gold miner's shack. Or even our "abandoned gold digger's brothel and bar." We can pretend all our neighbours' visiting cats have become "feral."

Nah. It would never work. We don't have the space for a proper car park and you'd never get coaches down our narrow drive.

~~

21.05.2020 Offshore energy? At what cost to the consumer?

 ~~

 Thursday 21st 58-69F, bright overcast. Variable sunshine offered in parallel forecasts. A walk to the lanes in warm sunshine. The warbler birdsong from the hedgerows for company. Traffic sparse with long quiet intervals at first. Busier later. It is a bank holiday. The oil seed rape flowers are going over to seed. The intense colour is already going out of the fields.

Late climate news: The Danish government is to build two offshore "energy islands" to house wind farms. The plan is for 2GW installations to start with. Growing to 10GW over time. Cables will run to Norway and Poland to share excess energy. Now just imagine how many millions of lorry journeys that is going to cost just for the landfill to build the islands. The Carbon Footprint from the construction alone would take years to neutralise.

There has been growing resistance to Danish onshore wind turbines. With complaints of infrasonic [VLF] noise and flicker from the blades when they are blocking the low sun. Many neighbours of wind turbines claim they cannot sell their properties because of these problems. There is nothing in it for the turbine neighbours except loss of freedom. They don't get an automatic income. Unlike the farmer who rents the turbine footprint and access roads on his land.

There were plans to replace older, existing turbines with huge, modern examples. However they are said to have even more antisocial problems [than the smaller ones] due to their sheer scale. Wing tips are already approaching the speed of sound. With blade circles hundreds of meters in diameter, the flickering shadow arc grows far larger in the cooler months or when the sun is low.

Offshore turbines are far more expensive to erect and maintain. Probably making them less attractive to tax-free, offshore investors/money launderers hoping to profit from them.

The news was greeted with skepticism and disappointment by Danish climate experts. "Like a kid wishing for a Lego set for Christmas and getting a hand knitted jumper instead."

My better reading of "hand knitted pullover plus the Lego set" would be solar panels on every domestic and private business roof. Cut out the middle empire builders man and put people back in direct <cough> charge of their own energy production and consumption.

This could expand the need for paid and taxable work. Just as we descend into mass unemployment from the robot/AI takeover of most jobs. Let's look at democratizing energy production instead:

What if you don't have tens or hundreds of thousands of staff wages and salaries to pay? Nor the 17 "green" taxes and huge bills for rolling maintenance work of countless properties as well as the electricity network. Then there is the vast fleet of vehicles and the dividends to pay to tax free, offshore investors. Plus the tens of millions in directors' salaries and their expense accounts on top of every consumer's, quarterly bill.

Would taking the <cough> power away from present energy monopolies really lose jobs or would it improve efficiency? You can retrain these workers to set up domestic solar panels, low voltage heat pumps and rewire the home for domestic 12V equipment.

Get rid of the need for all those costly and wasteful, domestic inverters so typical of solar systems. Which monopoly, mains supply equipment demands. Not to mention the literally vast number of plug-in mains power supplies sitting there 365x24 for every single piece of domestic equipment. This is already low voltage anyway but demands a mains plug? Why not make everything low voltage to efficiently match the source? Add mass but parallel domestic storage as soon as it becomes sufficiently and efficiently affordable. Electric commuter cars and scooters can help out in the meantime.

There is also the security aspect. Bringing down completely unprotected, rural pylons carrying the nation's vital VHV cables is absolute child's play. Compare that to attacking an infinitely parallel, domestic, solar energy system.

Big projects may grab news headlines but costs are always 3-4 times the original estimates. Energy poverty is not an efficient means of keeping CO2 production artificially low. Making electricity too expensive for most people is not democratic socialism. It is energy dictatorship.

Insulating real people's homes and providing for private energy production is democratizing energy usage. It leads directly to climate change reduction efficiency. Supporting abusive monopolies and spending vast fortunes on mega-projects, just to make news headlines, is the empty propaganda of the existing, energy dictatorship!

Will they build these "energy islands" using borrowed, Chinese "dirty" capital and by abusing forced, North Korean labour? Will a large fraction of the interest payments and profits go directly to propping up two foul, genocidal and corrupt dictatorships?

Afternoon update. 14.30[CET] Suddenly, after weeks with clear skies, we are seeing vapour trails from airliners. From zero to four at the same time! We could even hear them above the absent traffic!

~~

20.05.2020 Nothing is [really[ being done.

~~

Wednesday 20th 44-65F, misty with a promise of brightness. Walked to the lanes as the mist lifted to expose the warming sun. Surrounded by birdsong on every side. Dodging traffic on the boundaries of their territory.

Danish experts are questioning Denmark's strategy of offering coronavirus tests to all who want them.

As I pointed out yesterday this does not reach those most at risk. The young will be freed of responsibility for their own behaviour. The elderly will be put at increased risk by the young getting negative results. 

The risk is low for the young so they have little to fear. The mass testing does not even reveal vital information about the numbers and distribution of infection in society. So could be seen as a cheap,  political ploy to make their pandemic response look more proactive and responsible.

Then hopefully nobody will notice their empty promises on climate responsibility in exchange for cheaply bought votes. Nobody cares about the empty promises of the previous lot on stopping open immigration. The damage has already been done. The demands of parasitic, alien races were met with total capitulation.

The ghettos became criminal sanctuaries and no-go areas for the police. Responding to the regular arson in blocks of flats made the emergency services easy targets. For a race of youths with giant chips on their shoulder. As they say: No good deed goes unpunished.

Climate is now being being pushed to the front again by opposition and coalition parties. The Jinping Pandemic is seen as a mere blip on the radar. Climate, the tsunami racing across vulnerable nations under our ephemerally monitored  radar. The pandemic may cause a momentary dip in pollutants. Then as soon as the economy returns to the New Normal the air thickens and temperatures go on rising beyond potential tipping points. 

Those who make most of the toxins, the filth and the rubbish are virtually immune to climate change. While whole swathes of the equatorial world are facing intolerable temperatures and mass famine. Further impoverishing those most in need and least deserving in the eyes of the wealth-owning, 1% elite, further north. 

The Jinping Pandemic provided the perfect insight into the very real damage humanity is doing to itself. By their own sociopathically selfish lifestyle and choices. Amazon can provide for your every whim except health and happiness. Though that doesn't stop countless people from pretending it does. Let us all celebrate the arrival of a drone service carrying the toxins right to your own, allotted parking and dormitory space to ensure instant gratification.

Mere ownership of products is seen as bestowing glamour and individualism. When all of it actually comes from low pay, Chinese factories. The "label" has become the only measure of quality in today's world. When the stark reality is that every single label is applied by the same workers. In the same department. Of the same, anonymous, Chinese factory.

Do we really deserve smog from exhausts infiltrating our every pore so that even more people can [statistically] drive to the nearest corner shop?

Do we really need the damage the oil industry is still doing and has done to humanity? Those who control the supply of oil are some of the most evil dictators who have ever existed.

Terrorism, corruption, war, global famine and mass poverty all lie directly at their gilded feet. They pontificate about [our] morals from their glistering, marble palaces on raised platforms. Floating high above the filth only we have to endure.

More of the same will no longer do. They took away our freedom [long ago] but still they offer us nothing in return. Except the empty promise of a better life. If we work all our waking hours in their money mills. To own this car, that phone or this TV. With its built in obsolescence written into the small print of their guarantee to be worthless beyond our immediate attention span.

All we have to do is be their slaves and their canon fodder and watch their advertising. Until we grow too old and too broken to be profitable. In exchange we shall inherit their vast wealth. Their freedom from taxation, hunger and crippling bills. Their health. Their green spaces. Their privacy. Their justice. Their education. One day! But never soon.

~~

19.05.2020 Goof Plan!

~~

Tuesday 19th 51F, overcast and breezy. Some sunshine is promised. Woke early but remained in bed until 6am. Still no sign of the promised sunshine at 6.30 7.30 8.30 9.30 10.30! 👎

Denmark now wants its citizens to sort their rubbish into 10 different categories to aid recycling and reduce CO2 mass production. That will mean the bin men will now need 10 different cards to say why they haven't emptied overflowing recycling bins this time. Give a little man a little power... Goof plan!

Denmark's [allegedly] ambitious plans to reduce its CO2 mass production by 70% by 2930 3030 has a new Great White Hope. By reducing VAT slightly on heat pumps for those replacing their old oil and gas central heating boilers.

Private electricity bills will increase massively. While Denmark's CO2 mass production will fall microscopically. The Danish Government will only ever reduce CO2 by the Three Ts. Their tried and trusted, traditional methods. Just keep adding more <cough> "green" taxes to bills until you cause energy poverty amongst the vast majority of ordinary Danes.

Who will then turn to alternative [invisible] sources of energy production. Like burning industrial pallets and demolition materials for warmth and hot water.

As these materials are already secondhand, they will contribute far more to CO2 mass reduction! Than anything the politicooze can possibly come up with on the back of a napkin at their favourite 5-star restaurants. Goof plan!

Electricity production in Denmark from "biomass" is to be more carefully scrutinized in future. To ensure it is actually reducing CO2. Not just another con for Eastern European cartels to illegally fell and transport endangered forests to richer lands. i.e. Those with even less conscience than their own. Goof plan? Who's actually checking until now?

The EU, in the shape of The Macron & Merkel Comedy Duo, want to redistribute 300 billion in taxpayer's money to the tax-free, offshore rich. Supposedly to help pay for their pandemic losses. When in fact the tax-free offshore rich have multiplied their wealth or done very nicely out of the Jinping Pandemic. The tax-free, offshore rich have already laundered most of the promised 300 billion in funds. Before it has even been officially approved! Goof plan! 

260 million in compensation, supposedly for lost worker's wages, has already been handed over to the tax-free, offshore rich, by Denmark. This was absolute peanuts compared with the billions they cheerfully gave away to crooks around the world in VAT repayments for totally imaginary bills. Why? Because the politicooze cut the relevant tax authorities to the bone. Just to save a few thousands on salaries. Goof plan!

Denmark failed to find competent mathematicians during the early Jinping Pandemic. Which now raises serious doubts about the true effects of its early and very severe lock down. They were using the wrong figures for infections and lives saved. When in fact the beneficial effects were much less than they claimed. So some of the severe economic damage this caused was pointless.

I'm a firm believer in saving lives. So better to have early and tight control. Rather than late and disastrous loss of life. Whatever the real truth, Denmark survived the first wave, relatively unscathed. With "only" 540 deaths so far, as of today, the 19th of May 2020. Many of whom had preexisting health issues.

Testing is still way below a useful level to have a statistical clue as to how many are infected. So might be potential carriers at loose in society. Without accurate figures to better represent the whole population, they cannot predict, nor measure the effects, of a staged return to normality. How can they re-tighten control? Or open up more quickly, without remotely enough data? The number of tested is almost inversely proportional to the risk levels in each age group!

In alternative news channels it is announced that anybody in Denmark can register online and request a coronavirus test. [From Monday 18th.] They would have to attend one of the white tents set up in 16 Danish cities so far. There was also mention of mobile testing but no further details were shared. A minimum 45 mile round trip seems rather pointless. Our weird symptoms could be flu or toxic agricultural spraying. Neither of us is suffering from shortness of breath.

~~

18.05.2020 An oversized dollop of Danish, rural misery!

~~

Monday 18th 50F, heavy overcast with rain promised for later. With or without sunny periods depending which seaweed reading team you favour. I was up at 5am today. Already wide awake before that. It used to be 7am and then it became 6am. Now I spend most afternoons dozing off. 

No particular reason. I am just as active as usual minus the cycling. Still enjoying my morning walks. An hour and twenty minutes yesterday in a big loop up to the forest. I am hardly aware of the Jinping Pandemic here in our rural isolation. It is more frustrating than terrifying at this distance. Not being able to get our usual fodder for fear of infection is irritating. 

The grocery, home delivery service works well enough in keeping us going. Minus all the usual "out of stock" items which once formed our carefully chosen, largely, organic, healthy diet. I used to circle around all the supermarket chains in turn on each ride. With a short shopping list for each. None of them enjoyed a monopoly in our trade and we were very well served by branches of the different chains. Particularly when it came to the number of easily reachable outlets. 5-7 miles in every direction would pull in an example of each supermarket. Often several.

Denmark's habit of sharing supermarket outlets between larger villages avoided the grocery shopping famine in Gravely Blighted. Which deliberately forced the elderly and poor out of the "gentrified" commuter/dormitory villages. Nobody needs to travel far to shop for essentials over here. A cycle ride, or even a walk, will usually reach a supermarket from many rural locations.

There is always the same full range of goods and the prices are universal. Though there is usually no longer a small, village shop. Where you are torn between high prices and a limited range. So that city hypermarket shopping on the way home takes you away from their trade. There is no local post office to support the local shop with trade and an income.

Rural home prices have not gone through the roof over here. House price inflation is not the obvious driver of the economy. As it is in the UK.

The asking price of our previous, detached, rural cottage in the UK increased by seven times in the twenty plus years since we have been over here. Let's say the original price kept being added every three years.

Meanwhile, the official [taxable] valuation of our present, very similar, rural home, in Denmark, hasn't changed, at all, in all that time! The official value is purely imaginative anyway. Our home would never sell in today's depressed, rural property market. Even in this delightfully picturesque and quiet rural area.

This lack of property price inflation affects all sorts of Danish economic behaviours. Which are commonplace in the UK. There is no constantly inflating property value to borrow against. There are always cheap, rural houses looking for owners over here. Properties often sits for years on the market. Then is eventually sold at auction. Sometimes when the owner walks away from their mortgage. Why buy a house at market price when you only have to wait long enough? To snap it up for small change at auction. Some property investors buy these places up at auction. Paint them white inside using "cheap imported labour" and then rent them out for more than the original mortgage payments.

This slow property turnover can lead to strong, downward, social pressure on the whole area. Those who would not normally own a house can just afford one at auction. Since they don't have much money left afterwards they can't improve their new home. Nor do they have the same social standards as the existing neighborhood.

This is not just snobbery on my part. It is a common fact of life: Using chain saws in the garden to produce firewood from industrial pallets is extremely commonplace in rural Denmark. It blights many village and hamlets. As do barking "guard" dogs left in outside cages, year round, to bark, day and night. Which all leads to more negative pressure on local property values and their overall appearance.

Nobody wants to live next door to them. So the existing occupants put their own homes on the market. Which then languish for more years until the whole neighborhood is blighted by unkempt, auction bought or empty, unkempt properties.

There are none of the UK grants available for home improvements. So owners must finance their own. Which means using terrifyingly expensive tradesmen. Or DIY spread over several years. Or, they can use black market tradesmen and risk truly massive fines. Taxation obsessed Denmark doesn't like not being able to tax something. Unless you are rich enough not to pay taxes of course.

So usually the home improvement/repair work never really ends. The place soon looks like "a tip" for years on end. As a half finished building site with a garden full of rubble, rotting windows and chest high weeds.

Rural property prices in Denmark are a fraction of those in the UK. The trend is a constant, population movement towards the cities. Where property is expensive and increasingly unaffordable. Because so much is owned by foreign property investors and money launderers.

Many Danish rural homes are blighted by farmer's toxic spraying. Strange flu-like symptoms and headaches after spraying is the norm around here.

Then there is the universal carpet bombing of pig's diarrhoea at regular intervals. This means your clothes constantly stink of pig's diarrhoea and ammonia. Even after it is washed indoors and dried indoors. And, no, the windows are never opened. Not even in a heat wave in summer. That would let the stink in. Not to mention the neighbor's foul, pallet burning smoke. Because they heat their water 24x365x25 years in an inefficient old, water jacket stove!

All this certainly denies you the ability to dry your clothes outside. That would be complete madness! Can you even imagine going to work , every single day, smelling exactly like a pig farmer's dirt cheap, Eastern European, trafficked labourer? On who sleeps in the same building as the pigs? That is the reality of living in rural Denmark today.

Imagine drying yourself on a "fresh" clean towel which always stinks like pig's diarrhoea? Imagine pulling a freshly laundered jumper over your head and it already stinks of pig's diarrhoea? Imagine that every time you go outside your own home you have your head blown off by the foul stench of pig's diarrhoea?

I went on a course a few years back and several of those present could be easily identified as rural dwellers from the strong smell of pig's diarrhoea on their clothes. Imagine how many Danish, rural, schoolchildren are bullied daily? Because they smell constantly of pig's diarrhoea.

This is the norm for Danish factory farming today and blights many, many, Danish rural homes. You may not live next to a factory pig farm [we don't] but there will always be one within a mile as the crow flies in every direction. Which means they have land next to your home to take the full burden of their pig's diarrhoea production capacity.

Industrial quantities of mass produced pigs are housed in truly vast, prefab sheds. Each pig produces industrial quantities of foul smelling diarrhoea. Which is collected and stored in vast, concrete, ring tanks to make it even more pungent.

Then it is dumped in truly vast quantities. Repeatedly, across the mono-crop prairies surrounding or adjoining people's homes. They pour so  much of the filthy stuff on the land that it lies in deep, black, stinking puddles and stains the soil. And along the muddy roads on which the vast machines travel back and forth. There is even a fleet of huge stainless steel tankers plying the roads to supply more pig's muck.

Remember this as you tuck into your wholesome, heavily advertised, Danish Bacon. We can easily smell the pig shit even on the cooked bacon. Which is why we haven't eaten any in years. Many Danes [allegedly] eat pork every, single night, at 6pm precisely, for dinner. As dirt cheap, fried, minced pork, meatballs with coloured gravy: "Frikadeller med brun sovs." [Meatballs with brown sauce.]

frikadeller - Google Search

A walk to the lanes in fine, but easily visible, misty drizzle. The roads were saturated. So that I chose to cross the road as each lorry approached on my side to avoid a guaranteed drenching. The verges were inaccessible due to long wet grass and nettles. Lots of traffic, including a high proportion of tradesman's vans and huge container lorries. I left slightly later than usual so did not catch the normal commuter traffic.

Denmark's schools and some service industries return to work today. Though social distancing and viral hygiene are still high priorities. Fingers and toes crossed it doesn't lead to a massive, second wave of infections. Damn! I have picked up a deer bug on my travels!

~~

17.05.2020 Like trimming all of Jinping's, Danish palace hedges with nail scissors!

~~

Sunday 17th 51F, overcast and breezy. A walk up to the woods and back down by the Western Ridge Direct Descent Route. It remained overcast but provided rather even and moody lighting for my 72 images.

The sun has come out now I sit here typing. Having replenished my energy reserves with coffee and marmalade on toast. Still no wholegrain rolls!

A pair of vast tractors were resting between harvesting trees and chewing them into  bits in a giant pencil sharpener. [Technical terms.] The vehicles were marked as Bio Energy. Presumably the coarse sawdust has sufficient value to pay back the huge investment in machinery, salaries and transport costs. Don't be fooled by my poor photographs. The wheels on the tractors were far taller than I am! 

Meanwhile, Denmark is to build hundreds of new, inner city, coal-fired power stations to satisfy expected European demand for electricity. To charge, slightly cheaper VW battery cars in the post-Jinping Pandemic World. VW/AUDI/BMW [wholly owned subsidiaries of Jinping Mafia Industries.com] used their Jinping Propaganda Daily news-sheet to welcome the news.

This, as their tragically under-performing battery cars trail decades behind "Tesla Boy" and his "off-world" car and battery technology.

But never mind. Europe's poor and lazy don't deserve anything better. Not just to drive 100 meters to the corner shop and back. [Via the inevitable, gridlock traffic jams.]

The VW lead-acid batteries will be lucky to manage more than a few short trips in real world tests. But will still be praised to the skies by [advertising sponsored] European motoring advertising magazine correspondents. Then panned by the multi-millionaire slebs on "Missed Gear" from the hand made leather seats of their million pound, £ports dinosaurs.

Imported Australian coal is expected to be <cough> dirt cheap in future and therefore an ideal fuel for Denmark's major CO2 expansion plans. Australia has no logs left of their own. Having burnt them all in recent forest fires. All started by drunken, blond, surfing, drug addicts on their way to the burnt plastic, dead marsupial and ash coated, bleached coral beaches.

Danish opposition politicoozers complain that it is far too little and far too late to increase CO2 now: "Like trimming all of the Russian and Chinese, Government Mafia owned, Danish, palace hedges with nail scissors!" Was famously quoted by one of the Farmers Rool Forever Party mouthpieces from a piece of paper written by his Jinping Propaganda Daily handler. Whatever!

There was an overpowering stench of paint thinners on the air at lunchtime. Well, it is blowing a gale. So agricultural spraying carries a very long way, doesn't it? Sunday, with the sun out? Everybody at home? All the children playing on their garden trampolines? What could possibly go wrong?

~~

16.05.2020 Reset +2. A famine by any other name..

~~

Saturday 16th 47F bright with a fitful wind. Expected to be cloudy or sunny or windy or all three. Or none of the above. It was mostly overcast and blowing hard for my walk to the marsh pond. No sign of any wildlife except for a dozen swallows skimming back and forth over the lake. I could have done with my winter walking jacket as I hung about. Hoping for at least one duck or even a coot. It wasn't to be. So I returned home.

UK motorists, who were stopped and questioned about road closures and expanded pavements to make room for walkers and cyclists, are complaining about a savage new anti-car mentality. They then drove the last 30 yards to the nearest takeaway, or corner shop. Before driving the 70 yards back home again.

The cost of building the equivalent of another 0.07 yards of new, inner city motorway is to be spent on new, but temporary cycle and walking routes, in cities across the entire country, over the next 25-75 years. These new cycle lanes will be ripped up, to add another lane to existing roads, as soon as public attention turns to the next media fabricated disaster.

The UK government is to follow well established, Danish taxation policy on electric vehicles. By raising import duties on bicycles and walking boots by 3000%. This is to pay for individual therapy for the motorists claiming compensation for PTSD due to these unwanted changes.

Massed convoys of protesting drivers are expected to increase Britain's CO2 production by 80%, year on year, in line with Britain's strict new CO2 expansion policies.

Warning: The following video shows cyclists cycling on motorist's territory. Which might inflame owners of cars. Adult supervision is strongly advised:

 https://www.bbc.com/52670597/lockdown-is-opportunity-of-a-lifetime-for-bike-lanes

~~

15.05.2020 A New Dawn +1. Rye bread's half-life.

~~

Friday 15th 45F, overcast and occasionally breezy from the west. The sun will be rationed today. It's official.  Both competing meteorological services agree for once. I had better dig out my suntan cream and winter cycling gloves. I should have worn my winter walking coat for the stroll to the lanes. It has already reached 50F and still felt cold.

I hear from the BBC see that Gravely Blighted needs more <cough> "hospitals for the criminally insane." There is a war on birds of prey by the shooting estates. The serial killers are emboldened by the Jinping Pandemic, lock down. May the stain of the blood on their hands remain indelible.

Yes again we are in a bit of a pickle: We keep ordering our favourite wholegrain bread rolls and they keep being out of stock to our "personal shoppers." We had changed to rolls because edible, wholemeal  bread is very hard to find in Denmark. Once found, it keeps shrinking in its dimensions and is then quietly discontinued once it fully achieves its "ridiculously overpriced" status. To be replaced by man-made, white stodge masquerading as bread.

This keeps happening and has been happening regularly since we came over here. The Danes like rye bread. Which has a density close to the heavy elements. Moreover it must be sold so cheaply that it is almost given away. The general rule is that it should be cheaper than the one-use, carrier bags. Rye bread is a commodity best carried home from the supermarket in a junior, bricklayer's hod. While fresh, rye bread has the consistency of big quarry, dumper truck, tyre rubber. 

Worse, it has a half-life shelf life best measured in microseconds. Beyond which, it turns to into rather emaciated, but incredibly tough, small scale, building blocks. No doubt it was the original trigger for the Lego building boom. Though no pure-bred Great Dane has set their minds to discover the full potential of this building material at full scale. So, under strict Janteloven Rules it cannot be used as such. At least not yet. I have no clue as to its insulating values but it is said to make an excellent wheel stop on steeper parking spaces.

The point of this saga? I may have to steel myself to don my [unapproved] hazard cagoule and dusty woodworking mask to grab some stock at the local supermarket. THG has tentatively suggested I add a footnote, or clause, to our personal shopper's, shopping list. Indicating that failure to purchase our bread rolls will  make the entire [remote] shopping spree null and void. I can't see that working somehow. No personal shopper, worth their salt, will accept conditional shopping embargoes. 

Besides, it might start another international spat. They might bung us on the next plane "home" to Gravely Blighted. If it were not for the lack of airlines left to carry out these "cleaner" jobs. THG is excused air flight on the grounds of there not being enough "walk on" luggage space for all her pots, seedlings and bags of compost.

While Denmark only offered me temporary asylum [due to PTSD] from having lived through the Thatcher Tyranny. They feared I might suffer further torture if I stayed. That "stay of execution" could easily be rescinded if the wind changes.

Imagine if I found myself back in Blighty, completely alone. Bereft of the other half of our cooperative understanding that only a ceasefire has been agreed. Not a full declaration of peace in our time. 

And who knows what trouble THG might get into without my <cough> calming influence? She might even go critical! Chernobyl had better look to its laurels if that should happen. However good it might be for the local wildlife, the blast radius alone could fell quite a few stacks of chainsaw produced kindling. All hewn from toxic, soiled industrial pallets made from endangered hardwood species.

All it would take to set her off is an errant Wood pigeon or yowling neighbour's cat. Or [god forbid] both!! I had better warn the Space Station crew to keep an eye out for the flash. They might want to wear their welding goggles while flying over Denmark. Just in case.

~~

14.05.2020 Reset! Day 1 Of Self Isolation II. Director's cut. "A New Journey Begins."

~~

Thursday 14th 38F, bright sunshine and breezy but more cloud is promised again. Lumps of cloud are traveling across my field of view like rogue, passenger liners, in quarantine, looking for a friendly port.

A walk to the lanes into a cold headwind. The usual cacophony of birdsong to put up with. Some of them even flaunting themselves shamelessly in the roadside hedges. Well, you have to stare, don't you?

A deer stepped though a gap in the hedge and cantered across the road. By the time I reached the junction it was a hundred yards up the hill. It decided I could not be trusted and disappeared through another hedge. Coming down the other way was a hare. It almost reached me before it recognized me as a potential threat. Then turned and lolloped back up the hill.

OMG! There is Wood pigeon calling in the garden! Miss Betsey Trotwood and "donkeys" do not even register on the Richter scale. Not where THG and pigeons are concerned! I think She was triggered by Fred Dibna's run in with a pigeon soiled cap in a rooftop puddle. I keep explaining that, no, you can't buy 1GW laser bird scarers on German eBay [in English.] Not even on Amazon Prime! But it's water off a duck's back.

Yesterday I was prodded out of the Under-gardener's Gate with a specially sharpened [regulation, 1 meter long] gardening cane by THG. [Aka. The Head Gardener] My mission [whether I chose to take it or not] was to return with enough potting compost to ward off a famine of the same. 

THG has countless tiny plants, growing on from seed. But has no remaining soil to plant them in once divided. In previous years it would have been a mere trifle to obtain more soil from the most desirable source which She [THG] hadn't yet fallen out with. The Jinping Pandemic has ended all that.

Sewing compost is a touchy subject in these here parts. Each bag of peat is highly individual. [Allegedly] Even if it all comes from the same, endangered, organic, Swedish peat bog. You can't buy John Innes over here for love nor money. Particularly in rural, lock down exile. It's like speaking a foreign language if you so much as dare to ask for a bag of No3. [Cue Fawlty jokes about being from Barcelona.]

THG's endlessly recycled, assorted pots are neatly arranged in high, tottering stacks. Just as they always are, unfailingly, in this annual season of renewed, gardening optimism. Meanwhile her seedlings are jostling for room and therefore, quite unable to maintain safe, social distancing. Not even by the relaxed, New Rules & Regulations P.2 with Additional Paragraphs. You can't just run red tape arbitrarily across a crowded pot and expect immediate obedience. Fines or no fines!

So, I used the lame excuse that I needed to take a trailer full of hedge hackings to the recycling yard on a weak [sic] day as my exercise routine. Luckily, my fears that there might have been a shortage of garden waste, because of the pandemic, were soon confirmed. The disposal area was looking severely depleted by pre-Jinping standards! So it was lucky I had timed my arrival to perfection.

There had been a total ban on recycling yard <cough> "congregations" after a most unfortunate, early incident of non-social distancing. By a now infamous couple of Twirlies. Who were duly, but not entirely unfairly, character assassinated online [in Danish.] They have been enjoying celebrity status as Infantile Twatter "influencers" ever since. It's an ill wind.

They obviously hadn't been monitoring the Danish TV news. Just in case of a world-changing event. Like a [chance] Jinping Pandemic attack of "Pearl Harbor proportions" causing an outbreak of social distancing. Quite what they would have made of a sudden presence of aliens in the street is quite another matter:

"Oh, no! Not more, scrounging, bløødy immigrants! You mark my words: They'll be taking over the drugs trade, opening takeaways and building bløødy pyramids on every street corner!" [Or words to that effect.]

It took me all of ten minutes to undo my usual "abundance of caution" in the way of old ropes, bits of netting and tired ratchet straps. Then I was finally able to slide several cubic meters of stiff privet cuttings straight out of the trailer all in one go! Even I was impressed and I have much to be impressed about in my [long] life. Though nobody else really cares. So I shan't burden you with a list.

The next stop was The Garden Center. Where they had obviously decorated early for Christmas [by 7 whole months!] With much red tape and more sharpened canes. Perhaps they were expecting jostling crowds of over-eager gardeners? Each with that strange glint in their eyes [spring sunshine] and clutching a sun-bleached, cat-gnawed, debit card in their soil-ingrained and sweaty mitts. 

The Garden Center's ancient, manual card reader had clearly been replaced in my absence. By a shiny new remote, radio-controlled jobby. So I waved my card as casually as possible over the screen and was handed a pass.

To be let out by the heavily armed sentries at the heavily reinforced gates. Watched from on high, by further, specially hired, village mercenaries. They glared down at me from the machine gun towers surrounded by heaped coils of razor wire. They must really take social distancing seriously in this village!

The previously emptied trailer now sported my [carefully spaced] bags of sewing and potting compost and some larger grow bags. Achieving balance is still important. Even if you must space them a full meter apart. We don't want any unwanted "wheelies" in the high street, do we? Or they'll be talking about me for generations to come!They will anyway but it is worth mentioning.

So now you know the full sordid [sob] story of my breaking quarantine after two whole months living alone with THG. Apart from the time when I had to collect parcels because of an acute failure by Danish online businesses to adhere to the laws of the land during the Jinping Pandemic! 

BTW: You'll be glad to know that the rubber bands on my 3M dust mask broke as soon I pulled the mask slightly away from my face. This was to speak to the staff on The Garden Center counter.

Mind you, the mask was years old and heavily soiled by sawdust and probably a bit of "shed mould" if the truth be known. So, if I start coughing unexpectedly you know Who to blame! The lengths I will go to for her recycled pots of Salvia officionalis "Unobtainium," eh?  😷

~~

13.05.2020 Day 61 [ignoring infractions.] Nike Suicide Blackbird Squadron!

~~

Wednesday 13th 35F, the grass is damp and the air is cool. A slight risk of brightness is jostling feebly with the overcast. A walk to the lanes. A slightly chilly wind but otherwise pleasant enough in the sunshine.The birds were quite literally queuing to be identified this morning. A spotted a pair of Redpolls on our 50' high Hazel bush. I have yet to confirm the "Orangy Bullfinch with a snow white crown. "I'm quite tempted by "White capped Redstart" but none of the Redstart family match my
needs.

It is still before 7am and I have already been out to deposit the recyclable packaging. From the grocery, home delivery service. Now safely ensconced in the now familiar wheelbarrow outside the gates of Chez Hovel. This saves me rushing about like a headless chicken when they arrive unexpectedly during morning coffee and marmalade on toasted, whole grain rolls. 

I threw a smallish tarpaulin over the three boxes to ward off any risk of inclemency. I also recited a little known chant to the Norse Gods to ensure the wind did not rise enough to cause a major international incident with "The Official Neighbours From Hell." There is always a chance that the tarpaulin might take to the skies. Where it might land, "quite unexpectedly" on their specially trained cockerel. Which screams in the middle of the night and that would never do. 

This particular, home delivery service is coming from somewhere north of the Arctic Circle in Jylland. i.e. Jutland, to those locals and immigrants who still celebrate The War with Gravely Blighted. "They" erect effigies of Invading Brits and "We" of Vikings and have annual bonfires and watery Danish lager. They have long memories in these parts. Despite Gravely having put an end to The Occupation! Another, much celebrated event.

The change in the service level of the grocery <cough> delivery service is truly quite remarkable. In fact we may be their very last customers now everybody has gone back to work. We went from a grudging 20 day distant, delivery slot to [quite literally] overnight! All thanks, it seems, to a new delivery company. The previous lot would sneak down the drive, in the dark and dump our stuff on the damp grass outside the gate and run. 

The new chap apparently enjoys more sociable working hours, but is also quite shy. So that he reverses rapidly back down our drive and away in a drifting turn at the junction with the main thoroughfare. With the newly laid gravel kicking up from his wildly spinning wheels. Perhaps he fears the unseen Jinping zombies? Who must surely be hiding inside our sombre, peeling gates. So that he must escape before they can muster a serious attack.

He has little to fear [apart from appearances] and the resident Blackbirds. I really am not that terrifying beyond the official 2m social distancing rule. Though that has since been reduced to 1m. Even I wouldn't want to be within that distance of me with my "morning hair" [and Jinping Pandemic beard.]

I practice strict social distancing in the bathroom mirror. With a handy metric tape measure. Which I placed there precisely for this very purpose. My laser rangefinder is a bit too fierce indoors. When I am half asleep and there are mirrors involved.

Where was I? Oh yes. Marauding blackbirds! The van driver must think they are Ravens on the gates of Baskerville House from some silly old, B&W, horror film. The birds will insist on sitting on top of the gates and crapping all over the imported and galvanized, Suffolk latch.

We have tried applying high voltage electrodes to sharpened copper spikes, projecting from the top of the gate. But to little avail. The birds just sneer at such Tesla-like frivolities as a minor entertainment in their otherwise busy day. Of repeated evacuation in the Gardens of Feline Delight and Carnal Pleasures.

I find the the long, blue lightning bolts entertaining myself. Even if there are no fatalities. Our "electric fence" has the dual role of impeding local cats from penetrating THG's other defenses. Which I shan't name for security reasons. I am given fairly free reign with the giant copper coils and snaking high voltage leads crisscrossing the lawn. Though god help me if I desecrate a sacred, ancestral, wild flower bed with my shenanigans!

We know the Blackbird gang leader well. Because he sports a white Nike emblem on one wing. You'd have thought such outrageous, cosmetic extravagance would mark him out for early erasure, but no. The years pass and still  he persists! Always surrounded by his evil [crapping] henchmen [Aka: His extended family.] There's a lot of it about in these rural settings with so much inbreeding going on. [Or so I hear on the Resistance Grapevine.]

A walk to the lanes amidst the cacophony of a myriad of warblers and others. A slightly chilly wind but otherwise pleasant enough in the sunshine.The birds were quite literally queuing to be identified this morning. A spotted a pair of Redpolls on our 50' high Hazel bush as I followed the sneaky, Ginger cat down the drive. IT hides in our "natural undergrowth habitat" and yowls for hours like a drunken slut. Or a randy tom cat? I haven't decided which side it dresses yet.

I have yet to confirm the "orange breasted bullfinch with a snow white crown songbird." It was blasting away right at the top of a neighbour's ancient ash tree. It should have flown away [the bird not the tree] but completely ignored my presence as I stared up at it with my binoculars in total disbelief.

I'm quite tempted by "White capped Redstart" but none of the extended Redstart family match my exact needs. Don't you hate it when that happens? It's no use Googling a list of bird identification indicators. The daft things simply don't exist over here. Or have never been seen outside the Steppes of China or coastal swamps of Madagascar! I am not allowed to mention tropical birds in Scandinavian bird watching terms. It's just not the done thing. You'd think there would be an online calculator for this sort of thing, or something. Tick all the boxes of your bird's size and colours and out pops a cross between an American Robin and a... juvenile Orangutan?

~~

12.05.2020 Day 60 of self isolation and we've run out of coffee and tea! 😱

~~

Tuesday 12th 36F, bright but rather cloudy. I risked hypothermia on a brisk walk to the lanes. Every time the wind blew it went from "a bit chilly" to "downright freezing!" I even had to put my hands in my pockets despite fears of arrest for loitering in a pandemic. A filthy Volvo 4x4 gave me the close brushoff. He was wearing dark glasses so I bet he brags he came a close 7th in the Paris-Dakar as his explanation for the muddy exterior.

We have run out of "my" instant coffee. Apart from missing two, pleasing cups from my morning routine, that puts a further burden on our limited, Twining's, organic, tea bag supply. Which we now have to buy from a distant shop, online. Simply because there is no delivery service from any of the supermarkets which stock either product. They have a branch in every village but are too idle to provide a home delivery service? What's the matter with them?

I didn't dare take the last spoonful of "Her" organic coffee in case she had run out too. The Head Gardener was still in bed with the dreaded "Here Be Dragons" sign ominously lit. Should I risk a tentative audience at the likely cost of a roasting?  Better not go there!  

What to do then? Should I be waiting, beside my patient trike, outside the supermarket as it opens. In the, perhaps, vain hope that nobody else has the same idea? Should I wear one of my "slightly soiled" woodworking dust masks? What about my wrap around, yellow safety glasses? Usually reserved for overcast weather on trike rides. I'm extremely cynical about cyclists wearing dark glasses in overcast conditions. So have to avoid the burden of extreme hypocrisy by doing so myself.

Should I use up my last pair of disposable gloves? The only ones which are strong enough to actually survive putting them onto my over-generously sized hands. What about my old, zip up, lightweight, waterproof jacket to discard into the laundry system [or the shed] on my return? That would make a passable, nominally disposable, hazard suit.

OMG! I could be refused service for covering my face! My beard and hair have grown extremely long in only two months. They might think I'm one of those copycat, American Hipster [neo-terrorists] with a "carry permit" for a beard comb!

Should I pray that the supermarket's routinely sloppy, stock ordering system will actually provide some shelf space of their "own label" jars of organic coffee? Without my having to bother the staff. Who will trot out their endlessly rehearsed, parrot routine: "It didn't arrive on the lorry." Ironically, it is the only instant coffee I have found so far which doesn't actually reek like a wet, months old, unemptied, pub ashtray!

What then? Should I grab some of the other stuff we haven't enjoyed for two months now? Does the risk increase the longer the time I spend there? Does my chance of dying statistically increase the more items I put in the basket? More importantly: How will I cope with my first try at social distancing? Are you allowed to retake the virus test if you fail on the first go?

OMG! Will the contactless card reader actually work this time? It was completely routine for manual button entry to be demanded prior to the outbreak.  My hunch was that the banks and supermarkets were in collusion. That they have an algorithm to penalize only older people who buy mostly organic produce.

Or to get back at daft old buggers, like me, who insist on carrying a supermarket wire basket. [For the exercise!] Instead of leaning, panting like a fat, pregnant drunk, over the handle of an overloaded, supermarket "pram" full of unhealthy crap and extra toilet rolls.

Will I be marked as a hoarder if I buy two jars of coffee? What do they do if you are blacklisted? Paint a cross on your forehead with 60% alcohol, hand wash? Talking of which we ordered some Palmolive hand wash from the home delivery supermarket. Thinking it would be milder on the acute dermatitis from prolific hand hygiene . This new stuff stank strongly of some hideous and unrecognizable perfume industrial scent remeniscent of the stuff they mix with the pig's poo around here. So that we should have worn hazard suits and respirators just to open the dispensing bottle! Well,  now we are just going have to use it to deter our neighbour's stray cats. Which frequently visit our garden without a signed permit from THG.

But I digress: Do, as I suspect, the checkout staff have a secret, hidden button marked "REVENGE!" Which refuses the card on the contactless reader while you are in mid-flight of hurriedly loading all your purchased goods into your very own, and extremely grubby, cloth, shopping bag.

Or worse, you have filched one of their near-empty boxes from the fizzy, sugar bomb, drinks display. For the arduous and potentially dangerous carry out to the trike's patented, 40 liter "Overboard," duffel-saddle bag. Or [heaven forbid] to the rusting car boot with the broken lock. So I have to manually open the driver's door to release the boot latch. All the while balancing the cardboard tray on my head. To leave the necessary pair of hands free required for such tasks.

The passenger's door lock doesn't work either. Getting it all fixed would easily exceed the market value of the car. Besides, I'm still waiting for my free, electric runabout "to save the world." I wonder if they come with a tow hook? That would be handy for the run to the recycling station. To illegally congregate amongst the 24x7, gardening detritus.

[Meanwhile, back inside the shop:] So you have to manually enter your pin code. Instead of just waving your card safely and hygienically over the machine. Thereby causing a breakdown in the deliberately orchestrated, endless queuing system. Because you have already put your card safely away! This despite having shopped there for 25 years and and always maintaining a safe balance in the bank account.

They should recognize me, by now, but you never see the same pre-pubescent face behind the checkouts. At last, not twice running. My own [educated] guess would be that the checkout operators are abducted from the junior school next door. Then human trafficked onto a fast track course in dealing with elderly customer disobedience.

Could I posthumously sue them for unhygienic payment conditions if I die? So many questions. So little time! And we are out of coffee!!!  😱

False alarm! Having arisen, THG informed me that She had a jar of "my" coffee hidden in her secret [emergency] hoard. She was terrified the Anti-hoarders Thought Police would call round unexpectedly. So had hidden it well out of sight. Now I am torn between "grassing her up." Or being suitably grateful for further rations. However humiliating that might be. Anything to ward off the risk of a trip to that particular supermarket. Well, we don't want to encourage them! Do we?

~~

11.05.2020 More isolation. Mindless and heartless: The business, serial killer, sociopaths.

~~

Monday 11th 40F, cooler, windier and cloudier. A bright start is expected to become cloudy with sunny periods. A run of cooler weather is expected after a warm and sunny spring.

Danish society now begins to open up in careful stages. Denmark has had a relatively low death toll but it could still all go horribly wrong. People must still respect the rules of social distancing and hand hygiene. The elderly should still remain isolated because of their much higher mortality rate with infection.

The front door or garden gate is still the best possible mask and hand wash you can't even buy. Some businesses, like parcel delivery firms and wholesalers still haven't got the message. They think an order for home delivery is an open license to ignore the rules. Worse, to bully the elderly into going along with their cold-hearted, casually evil sociopathy. 

Strong words? Not if countless lives depend on their adhering to the rules and laws of the land. The whole point of the exercise is not their easy path to continued profit during these difficult times. 

The rules and laws of the land are there to protect the most vulnerable members of society. An infectious driver is the perfect route to mass infection. They have access to far more people than most other members of society. They are most likely to pick up the virus from regular contact with a wide range of people. So they can mount a biological attack on their victims when they are are at their most vulnerable. i.e. When they are at home, relaxed and wrapped in their own, completely false sense of security. 

The "home alone" elderly are usually looking forward to a pleasant experience. That they are receiving something interesting to punctuate the long days alone. They expect care and courtesy and reasonable kindness from the delivery man bringing their exciting "object of desire." At least, that must have been in their minds when they optimistically handed over their dollop of pension to a sales website.

What do they get? A bullying van driver with a towering sense of self importance. An aloof sense of absolute authority. An iron sense of elitism. These characters obvious consider themselves Mafia foot soldiers for the Big Boss back at the parcel delivery office. That they are somehow protected from above. Regardless of their serial crimes against humanity. They offer only the equivalent of a rifle butt. Instead of a warm memory of a unique social interaction in a complete social vacuum.

These people are the very last thing you want where direct human relations are involved. They haven't a clue who actually pays their wages. i.e The customer. Where else did they think the money comes from? Their Boss?

Thankfully our regular postman is the complete opposite. Careful about distancing, relaxed and respectful of the customer's needs and always cheerful and thoughtful. A real pleasure to deal with.

~~

9.05.2020 Day 48 + 9 & 10. A real weekend!

 ~~

Saturday 9th 48-64F, rather cloudy but trying to be bright. A brisk walk to the lanes. Half an hour and a gain of 10°F. Quiet traffic and noisy birds. Warm and completely still. Sunny but with variable cloud.

I was allowed out for a ride to the village but became lost on my way home. So I spent two hours in perfect cycling weather not being at home. Going well, even dancing on the pedals over long uphill drags.

I took loads of photographs of the magical, spring, beech woods. Saw a covered carriage drawn by two black horses in the forest. Two cheerful girls were doing the driving. I haven't heard horses hooves in years. They could still be heard half a mile after I passed them going the other way. There was no traffic to drown them out!

I had been making my own racket rattling over the cobbles at the stately home on rock hard, Schwalbe Durano tyres. Most of the noise coming from the empty Overboard duffle bag. I should have left it at home because I am not allowed in the shops.

Quite a lot of keen cyclists out training. Many of them greeted me as they passed. The village supermarkets were packed with cars and people. Just like a completely normal Saturday. Though I sensibly kept my distance. Safely home in time for lunch.

What a wonderful day to live in the Danish countryside! Superlatives are superfluous. Even approaching the gates along the drive. With its central stripe of tufted grass. Held its own sleepy, almost summery charm.

Sunday 10th 47-66F, calm, bright and slightly misty. With thin, high cloud. A leisurely walk to the lanes in an eery silence. Only the squeak of my boots and countless birds for company.

There was literally no traffic at all before my turning point. Then only three cars and a large motorcycle on the last leg. As I plodded back along the almost deserted, humped and wriggling, main road. A young lady battled against the odds. As she jogged for weight loss but seemed to be going in the opposite direction.

The cloud is thickening now. White speckles against a blue sky. Radiating away from the sun in huge, long, "vapour trails." It is already warm and 58F at 8.30. As I wait for coffee and rolls before I properly start my day. A sparrow keeps hovering at my dormer window. In search of wrapped snacks provided by the spiders. The tall, garden trees beyond, are animated by the birds. All looking for their own, tasty breakfasts.

~~

4.05.2020 Day 48 +5, +6, +7, +8.

~~

Monday 4th 43-56F and bright sunshine all day. Though with a variety of cloud. No walk today.
Too busy at home. One of the parcels was taken away. Still waiting for a visit from the postman.

Tuesday 5th 39-56F Day 48+6. Bright sunshine from a blue sky. Light frost on the grass. Cloud expected later. A very early walk would be sensible. No walk today. No post.

Wednesday 6th 35F, white frost on the grass, bright, freckles of small clouds and calm. I could be sunny all day. Or sunny periods all day. Up early again. Just a half hour, brisk walk up the road and back again. A cold NW wind and too much cloud. Traffic almost normal.

Thursday 7th 45-61F, bright sunshine. An early, brisk walk to the lanes. Only half an hour of dodging the busy traffic. Talking of which: We have seen the first vapour trail in ages. Probably heading for Copenhagen. Denmark is opening up again, in stages, from next Monday. Strict social distancing is still expected. A long and sunny afternoon when it reached 61F.

Friday 8th 42-65F, clear and bright with a westerly breeze. An early walk to the lanes helped to avoid the rush hour. Birdsong from every bush. The warblers, in all their variety, have joined the Chaffinches and Blackbirds in competing with the steadily increasing, traffic noise. A long and warm, sunny day.

~~