I'm pleased to see the return of butter in restaurants, after years of those saucers of olive oil with their sunken puddles of balsamic vinegar. I have never quite worked out the etiquette of the shared olive oil plate: if you dip your piece of bread into the oil and take a bite, is it then permissible to dip the same piece in the oil again? You see people doing that; I've become a bit precious about this sort of thing since chemotherapy wiped out my immune system. What about grinding salt and pepper on to your side plate and wiping it up with the oil-soaked bread? Perhaps Mary Killen could advise. Anyway, now that butter is in fashion again, it gives me an excuse to show solidarity with the Danes by buying lots of Danish butter. Lurpak Danish Butter, unsalted or lightly salted, with a picture on the packet of a medal saying 'World's Best Butter' - as judged at the Wisconsin Cheese Competition in 1998 and again in 2000. Very creamy and delicious it is too. But even if it were not I'd be buying it, however unpatriotic it is not to support Australian dairy farmers. They're doing all right anyway.
We are all Danes now. And Australians have a special connection with Denmark because of the marriage of 'our Mary' to the Danish Crown Prince Frederik. Mary Donaldson, a law graduate from Tasmania, 'captured the heart', as the tabloids say, of the Prince of Denmark, when they met in a bar in Kings Cross, Sydney, six years ago. He was visiting Australia with the Danish sailing team for the 2000 Olympics. In May 2004 Australians in their thousands stayed up late to watch the television broadcast of their 'fairytale' wedding in Copenhagen. In January this year the couple's three-month-old son, the future king of Denmark, was christened Christian Valdemar Henri John in the Christianborg Palace Church, Copenhagen. Crown Princess Mary, who is pretty, dignified and clever - she was speaking fluent Danish within months of her engagement - has done Australia proud. I hope she is keeping her head well down until the (largely manufactured) rage of millions of Muslims against all things Danish abates.
Watching the boyish-looking Prince Frederik's eyes filling with tears as his bride walked down the aisle to meet him, it was hard not to conclude he's a fairly soft, nice fellow. Hard not to conclude he is simply a better person than those among the hordes of Arab men, fists in the air, endlessly and tiresomely calling for death to America, death to Jews, death to the infidels. It is of course entirely likely that not all Danish men are as sweet as Prince Frederik; still, pictures of Danish men with raised fists calling for the beheading of some group or another do not come readily to mind. The question is, what makes one group of people kinder and gentler than another? Since - scientists tell us and I believe - racial differences are only skin deep, it can only be culture. Or religion. There may be nothing 'in' race, but there is plenty in culture and plenty in religion, even though pointing this out can bring accusations of racism. To deny it is to say environmental influences are not important. And it is curious that much of the Left, which has always preferred nurture over nature in the genes versus environment debate, is so reluctant to acknowledge the harmful aspects of some cultures and religions.
Of course the Prince has had a very privileged life, and the young Arab men mostly have not; nor are Danes nursing well-justified ancient and modern grievances against the West. Even so, a good deal of what is wrong in Arab countries is the fault of a culture that has not grown up and a religion that has not grown up (let's face it, throwing stones at a representation of the devil would not normally be considered mature behaviour) - a culture that childishly blames others for anything that is wrong. Easier to cast stones at satan than take responsibility for your own behaviour. It's all the fault of the Americans, or the Jews, or women. Make women shroud themselves from head to toe in case looking at them provokes a sinful thought (it is amazing that so many women have fallen for this for so long; thank God, some are waking up). Even the economies of these countries are immature: because they have oil they have not had to develop sophisticated technologies or invest heavily in the education of their people. (Israel, with no oil, has more engineers per head of population than any other country in the world.) But the biggest cause of difference between Arab countries and Scandinavian countries is the position of women in each. Wherever women are oppressed there is poverty and overpopulation. Most of the problems of the world could be solved simply (?) by liberating women.
I must say that, having retired telling everyone I'm dying, I now feel a bit of a fraud. I have multiple myeloma, a cancer of the bone marrow. But at present I feel almost normal, having at last recovered from months of chemo and other awful treatments. I look well because I'm plumped up with steroids. And because I no longer feel so sick I feel happy. Health is the greater part of happiness, I think. I have to remind myself that myeloma is still fatal and incurable, and that the median survival time post-treatment is only about three years. The latest newsletter from the Myeloma Foundation reported a promising new combination drug regime for 'relapsed and refractory multiple myeloma', under which patients had more than a year before their cancer 'progressed'. But that is still only a year! Never mind. The best advice to people suffering a terminal illness I've read was this: 'Yes, you are going to die, but until you do, you are alive.' So that's what I'm doing: being alive. (Pamela Bone)