Danish footnote- we went to see the little mermaid, of course, although there was one at the airport, another at the hotel and hundreds in the souvenir shops. The soft focus postcards don’t prepare you for the somewhat industrial background and we were braving freezing sleet and stair-rod rain by the time we got to her. David risked the rocks and possible falling in the water to pose next to her but most grockles stayed in their tourist coaches. I noticed that there was a discreet waterproof camera trained on her near the waterline and I don’t know if it was a webcam or (more likely) a police watch for beheadings- she has been vandalised several times over the years.

One other odd sight- both Karen and I couldn’t keep a straight face when we saw some wittily named sweets in Tivoli. I saw them again at the Zoo so invested 11 DKR in two boxes, the wine gums in the green box and the liquorice in the black box. Both David and Karen liked the wine gums but they both hated the liquorice as it tasted very salty. I thought that it being very salty was somewhat appropriate and find it hard to believe that the author of Pippi Longstocking didn’t know the english meaning of her chosen title.

David was very puzzled as to why I wanted to keep the boxes, I explained it was for my “interesting box collection” which now stands at two.