• “Went (hic!) to the (hic!) Carlsberg factory (hic!) with Dad – good! – got souvenirs.. 18 beermats”
• “Went to Holgers for the day – nufin’ much done except eat, drink, walk, eat, drink and eat”
Ah yes… the famous Carlsberg brewery. It is located just half a mile or so outside Copenhagen’s city limits. Unlike many other beer tourism attractions (i.e The Guinness Brewery in Dublin) the Carlsberg brewery (more correctly named the ”The Jacobsen Brewhouse”) remains a fully working brewery, continuing to churn out some of the specialty beers the company (perhaps less famously) is responsible for.
For a 15-year-old who apparently has already discovered beer, a trip with my Dad to the brewery must have been a special event. I know I held onto many of those mentioned beermats for many years afterwards, only discarding them when the cardboard had rotted and broken down to such a degree that they were unusable.
Carlsberg was founded in 1847 by JC Jacobsen who pioneered the concepts of steam brewing, refrigeration techniques and the first propagation of a single yeast strain. The first brew was poured on November 10th – co-incidentally my wife’s birthday – and Carlsberg beer has been enjoyed all over the world since.
In 1939, a staggering 55% of all the imported beer in the UK came from Carlsberg. Their famous – very strong – “Special Brew” was launched to commemorate a 1950 visit to Copenhagen by Winston Churchill.
It would be two years after my visit that the beer would launch its iconic “Probably the Best Lager in the World” slogan – voiced by Orson Welles – and another 19 before it controversially merged with English tea maker Tetley.
In 1973 there was one thing on my mind… the very end of the tour you take round the brewery.
Back then – unlike now when you get a 1 free beer token when you buy your admission ticket – each group were taken to a set of tables in a very stately room and told they could drink as much as they wanted from what was available in front of them. In the middle of the table there would be at least 6 bottles of every beer and soft drink they produced, from the regular Pilsner via the aforementioned Special Brew, and right up to the export-only “Elephant Blend”.
I’ll bet my Dad had a few (not too many) and I’ll bet I had a few (too many) that day, before snaffling away those beermats in my coat pockets.
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Holger was my uncle, one of my grandmother’s many brothers. He was a somewhat misogynistbachelor who lived in a sizeable bungalow on the inner Danish coast in a tiny village called Sønderby. Getting there required the services of several buses, tube trains and overland connections from Denmark’s excellent public transportation system. (The system remains astonishing to this day, and I often dream of living in Denmark and not needing a car at all!). Upon arrival at Holger’s place we would – seemingly immediately – all chow down on a stunning selection of foods, beers and spirits he would have ‘brought in’ that very morning from a local store.
After lunch we would invariably take a stroll down to the shore, paddle our feet in the sea and then walk back for…. even more food and booze.

Sønderby North Church
Holger had a clever (and super intelligent) agreement with the local authorities in Sønderby regarding his property. Instead of having to pay property and land taxes every year he instead willed his home to the authority, the latter taking the (well judged) opinion that the value of the property would always be worth more than any unpaid taxes accrued over Holger’s lifetime.
This arrangement has always sat well with me as an idea and I trot it out to friends on a regular basis. It won’t appeal to families who would doubtless prefer to leave the house to their children, but for childless individuals/couples I think it is a perfect local taxation compromise.
Despite opening as early as the year 1843 Copenhagen’s
The pantomime theatre opened in 1874 and is perhaps one of the park’s most famous images, its original resplendent curtain – a huge peacock’s tail that folds open – still in full working order. On its stage the same Italian pantomimes that entertained folk back in the 19th century are performed on a regular basis, with the familiar characters of Cassander, Columbine, the Harlequin and the iconic Pierrot.
New rides have been added more recently, one of the latest being 2006’s Himmelskibet, an 80-metre high carousel offering fantastic views over the city.
Unlike most Americans – and many Brits – though they seem to savour the time they spend at the lunch or dinner table.
Thanks to a glitch at WordPress, this is the second time I have tried to write this post. My initial post was a free-flowing stream of consciousness concentrating on how, even though this 36+ hour journey from Eastleigh to Copenhagen was somewhat arduous, it was nevertheless quite exciting in its own special way.
• Get an early morning taxi from home to Eastleigh railway station (one of the rare times my Dad would spend £££’s on a taxi service)
Out of curiosity – and because the fair always comes to town when the festival is on – I checked to see if this year’s Eastleigh Carnival coincided with the time I was planning to be in England for my Dad’s 80th birthday next month.
Not that these guys ever got hit – at least as far as I saw. Instead, they adopted a somewhat cocky attitude, running across the track and hanging fearlessly onto the rear pole of the cars to (as was the case back then) collect the fare from each rider. It was a role I never wished to emulate, but captured perfectly by Ringo Starr in the 1973 movie “
We probably caught the train to London, each buying a simple ‘cheap day return’ ticket for travel from Eastleigh to Waterloo, the only restriction being you couldn’t arrive in the capital before 10am.
In London, I suspect Trev and I eschewed the regular tourist haunts and instead headed straight for the capital’s Tottenham Court Road. In the 50’s and early 60’s, the road found itself home to a peculiar concentration of shops all selling surplus post-war radios and electronics equipment. In the late 60’s and early 70’s many of the shops had switched to selling hi-fi equipment, running the gamut from high-end name-brand stuff to knock-off Japanese radios.
The other “Hawkwind” painting I can remember, although it too appears to have been discarded along life’s journey. It was based on
Joe Stevens’ traveling funfair came to town once a year, always to tie in with the Eastleigh carnival. I have
I was thinking about headphones the other day.
Many people state that “this album” or “that album” changed their lives.


Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells” ended up to be a turning point for me… even if I had NO idea at the time.
Deep Purple’s “In Rock” album, was notable at the time because it was the first album they released where every track was written by members of the band. Gone then are the cheesy Neil Diamond covers, replaced by ‘proper’ tunes.
I have written about Tonto’s Expanding Headband’s “
Don’t get me wrong, I admire John McLaughlin and everything – especially the time he spent with the MIGHTY Miles Davis – and I admit he is an accomplished virtuoso guitarist. However, the material he did under the “Mahavishnu Orchestra” moniker was – for the best part – dull pretentious dreary rubbish. The pedigree is massive – fellow jazz greats Bily Cobham and Jan (”Miami Vice”) Hammer amongst the other band members – but the end result is 40 minutes of turgid nonsense.
I will now pause whilst the more juvenile amongst you make up your own jokes…………