DANISH DRAMA

I think living in the village has turned me into a tea addict. Whilst in Copenhagen I have drunk copious cups, but fortunately for me tea abounds in this city where the locals appear as fond of tea as they are of their pastries - although I have to admit I have not seen or eaten one Danish pastry since I've been here. But I have had plentiful cups of freshly-brewed Earl Grey leaf tea - the Danes also appear not to have heard of the teabag which is rather quaint.

Tea is also good for calming  nerves in a crisis which is just as well because my dear daughter managed to have a first order drama whilst I was here which naturally she wanted to share with me at 3.00am - namely losing her mobile phone with all her friends' phone numbers; losing the key to her room at university which is pregnated with numerous security codes and costs $500 to replace; and losing the key to her bicycle lock so her bike is now immoveable on a street in Copenhagen near the nighclub where she last parked it. On discovering her loss, she immediately taxi-ed herself to my hotel, woke up most of the street and the night porter, banged loudly on my door, regaled her tale of woe and then curled up in my bed and fell asleep. You can imagine I am very pleased I came to visit her.

Today we have had many of cups of tea whilst trying to second-guess whether (a) someone will find her phone and even her keys (b) where the phone and keys were lost (c) if someone finds her phone and keys whether they will contact her to return them. Once this detective work exhausted itself we went for another cup of tea so Tess could (a) berate herself for losing her phone and her keys (b) swear a lot about the cost of the replacement key (c) be ever so thankful that her calm mother (thankyou tea) was there to remind her she has a spare bike lock key.

I then returned to my hotel and had a peaceful cup of tea whilst reading my book and ruminating on the fact that I will be quite pleased to return to the relative peacefulness of Scotland tomorrow.

The nicest cafe where we had a cup of tea was called, appropriately, Teatime, where everything is themed in pink and white, including the sugar which had pink pieces of candy in it. I purchased a charming tea strainer, packaged with pink marzipan squares, for Dawn. I expect she has masses of tea strainers but I think one more won't go astray.

This is keyless, phoneless Tessa nursing her sore head in Teatime: