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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.
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.
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
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!
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