The sky finally cleared the other night, so at 04:00, I got on my bike and cycled out to the countryside and up a nearby hill to watch the Leonids. It turned out to be fairly impressive too, with sometimes two or three shooting stars at a time crossing the sky and leaving green trails in their path. When I arrived, there were only a few people there, but gradually more and more turned up until finally there were about 25 of us. Later, when I told Nina about it, she asked if everybody had been there to see the stars, or if I'd unwittingly stumbled into a gay pick-up place. I'd wondered why everyone was so friendly.
While cycling into town the other day, we noticed a bright yellow circle painted on a wall, and wondered if it had been someone warchalking without chalk. As we continued into Copenhagen, however, they became more and more common, until finally there was one on almost every shop. Then we spotted some lettering in the same day-glo yellow - the word lott.dk. So we checked the site when we got home. As Denmark currently has presidency of the EU, the next EU summit will be held in Copenhagen on Friday the 13th December, which is perhaps not the wisest choice of dates. Lott.dk appear to be planning a huge 'day of action' on that date, and their website describes it in a frighteningly black, fairytale style. Worrying stuff.
Wired is reporting that water voles are being pushed towards extinction in Britain due to people confusing them with rats and killing them. They are now the country's fastest declining mammal, having disappeared from 90% of their sites in the last 60 years. The Wildlife Trusts website helps you discover the difference.
I found this Bush Speech Generator on BoingBoing today. Make your own George Bush speeches, then watch him read them out!
Last week was the October holiday here in Denmark. Chris was over to see Berit, Nina was off university, and we all ate and drank far too much. Chris had his credit card retained by an ATM for no reason at all, and was lucky to retrieve it before they sent it to the UK, where he no longer lives. ADSL was finally installed into the flat on Friday, giving us an always-on connection, except when windows98 crashes, which is half of the time.
We spent the weekend at the summerhouse with Lisbeth and Jesper, and on Saturday evening we all sat down to eat a lovely dinner of steak. The back door is right next to the table, and it was open to let in some fresh air when suddenly Nina shouted that a dog had just come in and run out again. We jumped up and looked out onto the porch to see a fox holding one of Nina's trainers in it's mouth, which it had just grabbed from inside! Nina, whilst being amazed to see a fox so close, was a bit concerned in case her trainer got rabies, and so I was sent out to retrieve it from the fox. It dropped it happily, as I'm sure it didn't taste very good, and I got it back, but the fox was really tame and just stood looking at me so we gave it some steak, which it seemed to like, and eventually we sat down to dinner again. It continued to look through the window at us for twenty minutes or so until finally it wandered off into the trees again.
(all pictures on this page can be clicked for a bigger image)
