Beach, help !

Last Monday I told a friend how I for once hadn't gained any weight during my holiday. This is thanks to the impressing 10 km I managed to swim in France. Some of that was with a "monopalme" as I happened once to be swimming on a wrong track, a track where there was swimming instruction for this special swimming flipper. The instructor was so occupied with the girls in bikinis that he didn't think at all it being weird me swimming together with the 13-year old boys. He just threw a monopalme down to me and commanded "Off you go Pierre (????)". Very soon I learned the special technic, probaly due to the unexpected confidence my involontary pseudonym Pierre gave me, and I was swimming like Hans Christian Andersen's Little Mermaid. Some would say like a huge mermaid or a whale.


But back to my friend. She proposed we could go to the beach together this Friday. "I haven't lost 20 kilos, it is just status quo ! " I protested. She made an unapproriate remark how the circus with elephants was coming to her town, I decided to ignore this comment (as I didn't really get it). But now I cannot find my wet suit, I must wear my swimming suit ! I haven't been eating for 4 days; my vision begins to blur, I feel dizzy, I think I am going to faint soon. I rather give the kids intructions how to call an ambulance to bring me to the beach tomorrow morning if I am too weak to get up from the bed. And just for safety's sake to go to bed this evening with my swimming suit already on.

What's new ?

I seem to have a very boring life as whenever I meet somebody I haven’t seen for a while, I don’t really have anything else to answer to the polite question of how I am doing than a simple “Fine”. Sometimes I try to make myself more interesting and will say “Fine, but busy”. Usually the person just nods and wonders in silence what the hell is she busy with, just like my boss, except that she wonders quite loudly.

This situation culminates when I monthly call my dad who, if possible, has even a more boring life than me. I have nothing to tell, and being a Finnish man he only can answer questions that require a simple “yes” or “no” as an answer. So a typical phone conversation with my dad would be:

“Hello dad, it is me, are you doing fine?” “Yes”
“Is mom doing also fine ?” “Yes”
“Have you been to Ethiopia lately ?” “No”
“How about to Kazakhstan ?” “No” (If I have just been reading some Russian literature, I will add several cities along Volga.)
“Have you considered in near future riding a camel from Ouarzazate to Timbuktu ?”
Not understanding the question, and with a hint of panic in his voice “What ?”
“Never mind dad, have you been to Polynesia this month?” “No”

I will continue with many exotic places but just to check if he is sleeping, I will suddenly add the name of a nearby village where he makes his grocery shopping. If he says “No” I will discretely cut the phone line and let him sleep until I call him again next month. But if he still is awake, I will keep on an hour or two until I run out of geographical destinations. Then I end the phone call with “It was really nice talking to you, dad, say hello to mom”, and feel like I am a really good daughter.



But I must say it really bothers me being such a boring person with nothing to tell. Every year during our holiday to South of France we spend some days in Italy visiting old friends. As this is a “once a year” visit there should be a lot to tell, but apparently there happens NOTHING in my life. I have maybe been on a spa holiday in Budapest or on Easter break in Portugal but this seems so unimportant when Gianni begins to tell about his yearly tour to North Africa with his 4 x 4. His jeep getting stuck on Mauritanian dune or getting ripped by the Nigerian Bedouins sounds without doubt more exciting. But next year I promise I will beat him. When Gianni again politely asks me “Come sta” I will promptly tell him how I just have shot my lover, tortured the neighbors’ kids in our basement for 3 weeks and burned my in-laws ‘ house down. The fact that I have no lover nor a basement, and I would for nothing in the world risk my in-laws moving under my roof are irrelevant details. It is about being the talk of the night. Gianni will probably terrified withdraw his invitation to take me next year to his 4 x 4 safari, but isn’t that a small price to pay ? Everybody knowing what a boring life I have wouldn’t anyhow believe me when telling about how our camp was attacked by Algerian guerilla.

Tennis

Yesterday I played some street tennis with my son and can now inform that there are several other injuries caused by hard playing (or lack of practice ?) than just tennis elbow. This morning I can report tennis wrist, tennis knee, tennis ankle, tennis neck and tennis ear.

And while we are talking about tennis... I have always wondered about the romances between women and their tennis pros that the motion pictures give us many examples of. My first tennis coach was three times my age, my au pair family's slightly alcoholic "Oncle Bob" in France. Do I need to say more. I can maybe add that he in fact was the former French champion in table tennis, and here over 20 years after he suddenly gets my respect now knowing that table tennis actually is a sport, thanks to Michael Maze (in my younger days table tennis was just a basement flirt with the neighbour's handsome son). Well, Oncle Bob, I might revert to you later as I got inspired to write about "Indecent proposals" from JB's funny blog.

My next tennis pro was a hairy Greek, lisping and with IQ of 10. Do I need to say more. The last one was a Spanish guy, only twice my age. But at that time I was more preoccupied by Sr Rioja who used to play at the same time on the court next to me. He was maybe also 3 times my age, but I dreamed badly having Rioja as my last name. Then I found out that in Spain women don't take their husbands' last names, and I went back to work.

So these tennis romances, do they exist ? Yes, as the house where we live in now, was sold as a result of a bitter divorce. The wife had left the husband one morning and moved together with her tennis pro.

Why should cyclists wear black bike shorts

In this Tour de France fever, I must add this picture.

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Yesterday biking around with my daughter in my little Danish village, we met one of these bicycle racers on the way. My daughter asked if he also was in "Tour de France", she is not a blond for nothing. Or is there one of the racers that took a wrong turn on the way to Champs-Élysées ?

Television

Danish television is about as bad as Italian, though many men would consider Italian TV to be much better as they do have quite many beautiful girls with minimum of clothing presenting game shows, weather forecast, news, boxing, motor programs or whatever they show. In Danish TV there is practically only American crap. I wonder if George Bush has called our prime minister and said that if you don't fill the national television with American crap, we will erase the Queendom of Denmark from earth. And for national security's sake has Anders Fogh made this conspiracy with all the TV bosses.

(Is this Italian or Danish television ? Click for a bigger picture if in doubt. )

Apropos Anders Fogh, I am quite disappointed. Every month I deliver half of my salary to you, and while sharing the same flight to Nice some weeks ago, you didn't even give a cup of coffee. Wasn't it you that said "Noget for noget" ?

Luckily I have about 100 French tv-channels (for once I do not exaggerate !) at home, though not much time to see them. But I manage often to get my daily dose of "Un gars, une fille", wonderful chauvinistic French humour, an occasional French policier and even once in a while French synchronized American crap, "Grey's anatomy". We also have this show in Danish television but the so called "original" voices appear very strange and wrong to my ear now. Infact I suspect that this show is originally French and has been synchronized to English in other countries. The funny thing is that French television shows considerabely more Danish films or Danish series than the Danish TV shows French ones but let's just blame it on Mr Bush.

There is also some media law in Denmark that forbids the radio stations to play any foreign language music if it isn't in English. Luckily there are now tons of webradios and my favourite is definetely Cheriefm Frenchy. But I also know that my influence to my kids is getting smaller every day. They are bombarded with Anglo-Saxon music at school and at "SFO" every day, and even I still can say that my son's favourite music video is Renan Luce's "Les voisines" (recommended to any Hitchcock fan) and my daughter's Pauline's "Allo le monde", I can hear Justin Timberlake approaching with terrifying speed.

Child education

Having 2 children of ages 6 and 8, I have read hundreds of books about the children's education and their behaviour. There are not two books that agree about any of the methods, but finally last February, visiting one of my oldest friends in Finland, I found out that there is no need to read all these thousands of pages of wise words. My friend with 4 extremely well behaving sons ages 9-16 and all of them giving hand and saying how nice it was to meet us (yes, this is you Saga), told me that the 3 important words are THREATNING, BLACKMAILING AND CORRUPTION. So simple is that ! And it works better than any pedagogic interference which my sister-in-law is such a big defender of.

In another moment of madness I agreed the kids to get a hamster. It was so easy, we got it free from a friend of my daughter's with the cage and everything. The first thing my husband asked was how old it will get and how old it is now. Well, they will live a whole 2 years and this small rat (call it what ever you want, it is a rat with just another name) is already 6 months . So we have to suffer for another 1,5 years. Or do we have to suffer ? I am Candide's Pangloss and try to find something positive in this awful situation, and yes, this hamster is a new way of getting my will with the kids. Now I can threathen to kill the bloody rat if they refuse to take a bath, brush their teeth or go to bed. The words have been enough until now, I haven't fortunately needed to touch this hairy thing yet. And I must say strangling it would be extremely difficult as it seems to have no neck.