» Don’t run before you can walk
The Landlady
I have just returned from a weekend in Denmark with The Boyfriend. Unfortunately, the day before we left, I went down with a stinking cold,which was really quite annoying as I hadn’t had one for four years. The Boyfriend, of course, in true man-flu fashion chose to have his cold last May on our trip to Greece, where he spent a great deal of time in bed, only managing to get up in order to watch an Arsenal/Chelsea match. Although I was determined not to let my cold ruin our trip, I thought my eardrums were going to explode as we came in to land. The Boyfriend suffers from extreme ear pressure when landing on airplanes, regardless of whether he has a cold or not, so we were both stone deaf when we arrived at Kastrup, which didn’t help with the confusing ticket-buying procedure that we had to negotiate in order to get into the city centre.
Things improved dramatically on arrival at our apartment, which looked just like an Ikea room-set and had everything one could wish for in a holiday let. The Boyfriend was delighted to find ample cooking facilities and I have never seen a man so overjoyed to discover a full set of cooking pots and a brand new frying pan, which still bore a price tag confirming its virgin status. Determined to christen the new frying pan, The Boyfriend immediately set off to the nearest Netto to stock up on provisions. By the time I’d unpacked my very small bag, the fridge was already stocked up and His Lordship was busy making salami and cheese toasties.
“By the time I’d unpacked my very small bag, the fridge was already stocked up and His Lordship was busy making salami and cheese toasties”
By our second day, we still hadn’t eaten out and, although we were determined to do so that very night, we got terribly waylaid by huge amounts of Tuborg lager (a blast from the past, for those of us who remember the 1970s) and ended up not eating anything at all. Much the worse for wear – Tuborg and Night Nurse are a cathartic, but not ideal combination – we went to bed at some ungodly hour and just managed to wake up in time to go back to the pub and watch the Arsenal/Man U game with a load of Danish blokes. Not my idea of the perfect holiday activity, I can tell you. Especially not when the Tuborg was £5 per pint and then they do that terrible thing of not filling it right to the top of the glass and leaving a huge frothy head on it. Because we were a little the worse for wear, we decided not to eat out that night either and The Boyfriend paid another visit to Netto and knocked up some chicken breasts in peppercorn sauce with sauté potatoes and green vegetables.
The following morning – our last day – I felt much better and decided to go for a jog in the nearby park. It was a clear, frosty day and no one was around because it was 8am on a Sunday morning. I was just admiring the autumnal colours of the trees, when a stern-looking young lady stepped out in front of me and said something firmly in Danish. I thought she’d said that running was forbidden, but told her I was English and didn’t understand. She then repeated in English that running was forbidden in the park, but I was allowed to walk. Kind of negates the whole point of going for a run, and I found it very strange, and told her so. It reminded me of a time when, out running on a beach in Essaouira, Morocco, I was chased by a furious policeman on a camel. Don’t you just love foreign regulations?
