Monday 26th Feb 2018

Really quite cold today. -7 when I got up. Clear, sunny, snow on the ground.

Decided in my usual wisdom that today, being bloody cold, would be perfect for trying to use pinecones as kindling.

It didn’t work of course and half an hour later I was having to breath life into what embers were there so they’d catch and set the squashed up bag of used tissues I’d dropped in alight, hopefully for long enough to let the briquettes catch… which they did and the day’s heat was saved!! Hah. I doubt I’ll learn from that. Well, I won’t learn not to use pinecones… I have learned that I’m not too bad at rescuing a dying fire!!

As well as the usual fire / mum duties though today I spent a chilly half hour stripping a length of mains cable for its copper, to make a kind of harness for a tin of sticks and sawdust to be lowered into the furnace, hopefully for it to be turned into artists charcoal. Never done this before, only vaguely have any idea what I’m doing, have no idea quite how it’ll turn out… Have to wait until tomorrow to put it in the furnace though because it was gone half past two by the time I’d sorted out the harness. There’s mainly sycamore twigs in the tin as we’re still dealing with that sycamore we felled last month, and it’s packed out as much as I could with sawdust. Partly which I assume will ignite and burn, and partly perhaps as protection for the twigs as they cook gently.

Cats sat outside asking for breakfast, waiting for me. I thought, as they hadn’t totally scarpered when I went to put their food out, that I’d stay in the porch and see if their desire for food would overcome their wariness of me… Smudgey came in and decided food was more important. Tiger jumped when it saw me and decided to wait outside where it could keep an eye on me!

Danish language lesson this evening. Two buses up to the school, had to high-five Steve as he ran in from his bus home so I wouldn’t miss mine, but got there nice and early so I finally had chance to do the homework we’d been set the previous lesson: writing short sentences about your family and who’s related to whom. Once in class I was the first to present my homework and off the back of that, plus how I interact in class, my teacher has decided my language fluency (within the parameters of what we’ve learned) is already good enough to bring my module 1 test date forward by two and a half months! Instead of my first test being in week 24 (ie about 6 months of classes) it’ll be in week 13 or 14. I’m proper excited by that, and a bit thrilled! The test involves giving three short verbal presentations, and asking and answering questions about those presentations. So far I’ve covered the vocabulary for two of them… another presentation’s worth of vocabulary in three weeks? Erm…. yeah okay, bring it on!

I walked back to the station with Chaine after class, she lives in Nørre Vissing and has to get two busses from the station to get to her home. She is Philipino and is here working as an au pair for a year. It was really nice to have company walking back, I kind of don’t want the next eight months to go too fast because I’ll miss her when her year in Denmark is up!