Friday, November 10

 

 

I skipped breakfast this morning, except for the fruit smoothie. I still felt overfull from yesterday’s eating.

The Nobanet meeting spent the morning eating, drinking coffee, and working hard. By lunchtime we had achieved almost everything we had set out to do. I had also started to develop a chill from my exposure to the conference room, and my bedroom last night. The entire hotel feels cold except for isolated spots where it feels unhealthily hot. I had spent the night covering myself with my duvet, waking up hot, putting my legs and arms out, waking up cold, and so on in a circulation motion. I spent the morning doing something similar with my cardigan.

The meeting finished at about 16:00 and some people went for a walk while others headed for the airport or train station. I went upstairs to my room because I suspected the darkening gray sky presaged rain. It did: a lot of very hard rain that fell until the sky became properly dark and night fell on Denmark at about 17:00.

When the meeting ended I decided to take a photograph. I stepped outside the hotel and took a picture of the building opposite, that has a gold plaque claiming that someone somewhere has voted it Copenhagen’s best strip club. I noticed yesterday that the building behind the hotel also contains a strip club and fantasised that people might have voted that one Copenhagen’s second best strip club. They probably didn’t.

I will go back up to my room and stay there doing some Arcada work, answering students and reading draft theses, until Hafdis, Maira, Vera and I agree over social media to meet for a final dinner at Jensens Böffhus, about 200 metres from the hotel. For some reason Maira will announce that she will not come and the three of us will walk another two hundred metres to an Italian restaurant where I will have lasagne.

We will walk back through drizzle and I will climb into bed at 21:45 and fall asleep a few minutes later.