The Year of Living Danishly (16 page)

It's at this fairly fraught moment that Lego Man chooses to tell me his contract has been extended. He knows it's not great timing, he says, but how would I feel about staying in Denmark longer?

‘Like, say, for another year…?'

I raise my eyebrows and give him a look that says: ‘
are you kidding me? You're asking now?
' He assures me that we don't need to decide just yet. That we've got a few months to think about it. And that he's made me something special for supper. And that there are ramekins involved.

Things I've learned this month:

1. Denmark isn't quite the gender-equality utopia it's sometimes made out to be
   
2. Feminists in Scandinavia still have work to do
   
3. …but fortunately there are some ace ones doing their damnedest to make things better
   
4. And there are laws in place to make it better to be a woman in Denmark than it is in many other countries around the world
   
5. I live in a lunatic asylum. But then, perhaps I knew this already…
   

Footnote

*
Important stuff to follow but FYI, it turns out that birds sing first thing to defend their territory but power nap in summer to get through the long working day (according to research from the University of Western Ontario and the Max Planck Institute of Ornithology, respectively). Ancient Egyptians paved the way for waxing with sugaring (messy, don't bother) – and there's nowhere decent to buy bras near me.

7. July

Going Away & Playing Away

It's still hot here. Really hot. It's 5.30pm and I'm driving home from an interview when I'm nearly blinded by the sun and struggle not to veer off the road. Searing white rays are beaming down while simultaneously being reflected back up from an immense liquid mirror of sea, coming at me from all angles and rendering sunglasses useless. I bead up with sweat as my car puffs out tepid air from its fans before wheezing to a stop outside our house. There are wavy lines coming up from the tarmac and the heat has left me dizzy.

Levering open the molten hot door, I'm met with a wall of humidity and waft of honeysuckle, out in abundance this month. Mr Beards I, II and III are pottering about in their gardens and wave a ‘
hej!
' as I pass. I note with interest that the residents of Sticksville have taken to sporting short shorts for high summer. I've never seen so much septuagenarian flesh before. They're also not shy of a medallion. It's all gone very Costa del Sticksville.

Inside the house, it's just as warm and the thermostat in the hallway registers a blood-boilingly balmy 33 degrees Celsius. Scandi-issue glasshouses, it turns out, may just be
too good
at thermal insulation. I find Lego Man already home from work and stripped down to his pants. He's surrounded by guidebooks, G&T in one hand and scrolling furiously on the trackpad of his laptop with the other.

‘What
are
you doing?' I ask, slightly horrified at how our standards have slipped. He doesn't look up, so I steal what's left of his aperitif and take a big swig before realising it's not going down as well as it normally would and giving it back.

‘We need to leave the country,' he says, frowning.

‘Why?' I ask, but he's already up and rifling through the sideboard drawers for our passports. ‘What's wrong? Has something happened at work?' I ask, immediately fearing the worst.

‘No, work's fine,' he replies. ‘We just have to go somewhere that isn't Denmark. Soon.'

‘What?' Life with Lego Man is, sadly, never dull. ‘Are they transferring you? I thought you liked it here! You wanted to stay another year last month! And now you want to leave?'
I'm only halfway through my project,
I think.
I know that last month was a setback but I can't possibly leave now. How will I know why Danes are the happiest nation on the planet? I haven't had my first white Christmas yet. I haven't even sampled all the seasonal pastries this country has to offer…

‘Do you mean going back to the UK?'

‘If you want to,' he says, ‘but I was thinking somewhere sunnier. Maybe the Med.'

‘You want to live in the Mediterranean?' This is new.

‘Not
live
,' he says, looking at me as though I'm deranged. ‘Go on holiday! There's literally no one in the office the whole of this month and Lars says that if we don't book something soon, there won't be any flights left out of here.'

Lego Man's colleague, Lars, has become our font of all knowledge on Danish customs. We'd be lost, or at least desperately under-informed, without him.

‘Oh!' I exhale heavily.

‘I knew lots of people were off in July but I didn't realise the whole country shuts down,' Lego Man explains. ‘Most of my office takes all four weeks off.'

Like the Italians, the Danes like to take their holiday en masse, only they chose July as the month to hit ‘pause' on normal life and decamp to foreign climes. I wonder if this need to travel has been entrenched in the Danish psyche since the Vikings set off into international waters in the 8th century.
Perhaps wanderlust plays a part in the country's impressive happiness record
, I think. The British philosopher A.C. Grayling described travel as ‘expanding the mind and spirit' and scientists from the University of Pittsburgh recently discovered that regular holidays cut the risk of dying from heart disease by 30 per cent. There's also evidence that taking a break reduces blood pressure and stress levels, according to research from the UK's Nuffield Health charity. Which is bound to make you more upbeat. Lego Man has convinced himself (or Lars has convinced him, it's unclear which) that long holidays are another reason the Danes are so content and he's determined to get away on a summer break, Danish-style.

‘I've been doing some research into what's still available and France and Greece are already out,' he tells me with a nod at a couple of
Lonely Planet
guides that have been hurled across the room once he'd discovered there was no flight availability from Billund airport. ‘So is Gran Canaria,' he clicks to close the offending window on his screen, ‘as well as Tenerife, Spain and Portugal.' Danes, Lars has informed him, love sampling the exuberance of the Southern European lifestyle as tourists on their holidays before returning to their own, more ordered lives in Denmark. ‘Oh, but hang about…' Lego Man scans the lone remaining window before sitting back in his chair and taking a celebratory swig of gin: ‘Bingo!'

‘You've found somewhere?' I peer over his shoulder as he nods.

‘How do you feel about Sicily?'

It turns out we both feel very good indeed about Sicily. So we book, pack our bags and head off two days later. The roads are virtually empty on the way to the airport, the rest of the country having shipped out a week ago, and when we drop the dog off at the ‘
dyrepension
' or ‘animal hotel' (a jazzed-up kennel), we learn that the owners too are away. ‘A month in Namibia,' the teenage daughter tells us, ‘but don't worry, me and my boyfriend have this place covered…' This doesn't fill us with confidence, but the dog bounds off merrily to play with the other animals and doesn't seem to mind being left in the care of the substitute teacher equivalent, so we leave while the going's good.

Four hours later, we're sitting in Castellammare harbour, watching Italians fight, kiss, talk, laugh, pose, promenade and ride up and down on scooters. Car horns beep, tatty cats roam the streets, and generously proportioned old women with crinkly eyes make their way slowly up the steps of the small town to their homes or sit on stools in the shade. We eat pecorino cheese, salami and tomatoes that taste as though they're made from pure sunshine. Delicious cooking smells waft out from every home and I can feel my senses fill up as I take it all in. There is noise and colour and passion in abundance. It is the antithesis of pared-down, ordered Denmark and we revel in its difference.

I'd forgotten how much I missed
bustle
and
mess
and
chaos
. The security and stability and ‘knowing what you're in for' in Denmark is great – really great – most of the time. But it does take some of the excitement out of life. You wouldn't get an obscenely glamorous Danish policewoman pulling over a motorcyclist to give him a snog then waving him on. You wouldn't catch her colleague issuing a parking ticket to a banged-up Fiat 500 whose driver has simply stopped, mid-street, before reapplying her lipstick in its wing mirrors and sashaying off in stilettoes, channelling Beyoncé. But in Sicily, this is a typical Tuesday.

Our first week away is a joy. We walk in the mountains, lounge about on sandy beaches and swim in a never-ending expanse of turquoise sea. But by week two we're flagging. In London, we never had the luxury of being able to take two weeks off. Even when we got married, we could only manage a week and a half for the big day itself
and
a quick honeymoon (it's a champagne problem, I know, but there you have it). We've never, throughout the course of our relationship, spent two weeks away together without the dilution of family, or friends or
work
of some kind. And now that we have the opportunity to do so … well … it's a bit weird.

It feels like an admission of failure to say out loud that spending two weeks with your life partner in beautiful surroundings can be anything other than idyllic.
And yet
, Lego Man and I find it tough.

I look at families frolicking on the beach and can't help wondering whether things would be different if we had children. Whether this trip would mean more if there was a child with us, experiencing everything for the first time. Lego Man asks me what I'm thinking about, but I know that telling the truth will only make him sad. So instead I say it looks as though his nose is burning (aren't I a helpful holiday companion?). My husband reluctantly agrees to apply factor 30 and I try to shake off my melancholy. There isn't any point getting down about this now. For the moment, it's just us. But I wonder how life will be if it's just us, for ever. I wonder how we'll navigate this. Whether it will be enough for me. And what I'll do if it isn't.

Week two doesn't begin well. By the Monday, we're repeating conversations and commenting on other diners for something to talk about over dinner. I start thinking fondly about work and wondering when I can get back to it. I finish all the books I've brought with me and stare, wild-eyed, at the empty boxes in my iPhone calendar calculating how many days are left before we go home.

Having adjusted to the shorter Danish working week and spending more time together than ever before, it feels as though the endurance test has now been extended to 24 hours a day. We are together
all the time
. Our normal routines and structures can't save us from ourselves out here and I start to feel irritable in our poorly air-conditioned pressure cooker of a hotel room. Soon, the petty grievances we both keep a lid on in everyday life start pushing through, like angry green shoots.

‘You've left the loo seat up again.' It begins one evening, as we're getting ready to go out. There's some huffing as Lego Man pushes past me to flick the seat down.

‘Is that what you're wearing?' he asks next, looking me up and down.

‘Yes. What's wrong with what I'm wearing?'

‘You said those shoes killed you the other night.' This is true. But they are pretty. So pretty. And they go with my dress.

‘They're fine,' I lie, doing a few, already painful, laps of the room like a show pony to demonstrate their comfort.

‘
Fine
,' he repeats with a barely concealed eye roll. ‘But will you at least take a jumper this time?'

A jumper will not go with this outfit. A jumper will make me look bulky and accentuate the slightly bloated food baby I've become conscious of during the course of our trip. I do not plan on taking a jumper.

‘It's still warm out,' I counter.

‘Yes but it gets cooler once the sun's set. And you always get cold. And I always end up having to give you
my
jumper. And then I'm cold.'

This is also true.
Damn it
.

I agree to take a wrap with me in case of a chill and then sit on the bed of our hotel room, ready to go, as Lego Man potters around some more. I glance purposefully at my watch, seeing the numbers on my digital Casio flick over ever closer to the time of our dinner reservation.

‘Ready when you are,' I say, hoping to prompt a response along the lines of: ‘
Great! Me too! Let's go!
'

Only that doesn't happen. Lego Man likes to cut things fine, as though life is one long
Top Gear
challenge. Even before moving to Denmark, the promptness capital of Europe, I liked to be on time. Life, I feel, becomes unnecessarily stressful if you're rushing all the time, when a little planning can ensure that you arrive on time, unfazed and Zen-like (at least, this is the goal). Lego Man does not share this rationale.

Midway through our year of living Danishly, my own fear of being late has escalated. I now find myself constantly on edge whenever Lego Man and I have to go anywhere, fearing the drama that will ensue and the sabotaging of my attempts to get to our destination on time. It makes catching flights, social engagements, even meeting people for coffee, a potential tinderbox of bickering. And tonight is no exception.

‘We should probably get going or we'll miss our reservation,' I try saying, in as neutral a voice as I can manage.

There is no response, so I presume he hasn't heard me from the bathroom. I repeat myself, slightly louder this time. ‘I said, we'll miss our reservation—' I start, but he cuts me off.

‘—For god's sake, this is
Italy
!
Nothing
happens on time here! JUST. RELAX.'

It is a truth universally acknowledged that being told to relax makes the action itself impossible. Instead, we both fume silently until he is eventually ready to go. I hobble out in my impractical footwear and he follows, forgets the key, goes back, and returns with a bulky jumper that he insists I take with me. Over dinner, more mundane matrimonial feuds float to the surface.

Me: ‘Why do you always drop your laundry next to the laundry bin. Why can't you ever just put your dirty clothes in the laundry bin?'

Him: ‘You never squeegee the shower.'

Me: ‘You leave wet towels on the bed.'

Him: ‘You eat all the fun bits from my cereal when I'm at work, then pretend the manufacturers aren't putting in as many chocolate chips as they used to.'

We are both right. We are both ridiculous. We argue for much of the next day before declaring an amnesty until the end of the week when we fly home and immediately make plans to get out of the house. Independently. Lego Man goes to pick up the dog from kennels while I pop next door for coffee. Conducting a post-mortem of the trip with Friendly Neighbour, I run her through the highlights of our domestic disputes.

She laughs before explaining, kindly, that this is entirely normal: ‘Everyone fights over their summer holiday – it's because we spend so much time together.' I'm just feeling comforted when she adds, ‘I split up with my husband after three weeks in Tuscany last year. It was too long with nowhere to hide.'

‘Oh, I'm so sorry—' I start. I had no idea she'd been married.