I told you it wouldn't take us that long. First we decided that the volcanic ash clouds drifting south from Iceland were not as dangerous to jet engines as we feared at first, and then we demanded the threatened strikes by British Airways cabin staff should be called off, or rather we found ways of making them illegal every time they called a strike day. And so panic over, we can all have our summer holidays, flying whenever we want again.
That is the way we Brits like our politics, a certain frisson of foolhardiness, like you say. Or call it that shudder if you prefer; Surprise-Astonishment-Fear-Horror (along a path to a Theory of Evolution by Charles Darwin), or what TS Eliot named as the 'bewildering minute', when something utterly takes our breath away because for us Brits, it is the same whether it is our politics, or our poetry, a bit of a thrill for the natives – Shock! Horror! A serious quarrel – but only for a minute, and then everything back to normal.
After all it is only three weeks until England kicks off in the World Cup.
What my Danish friend had previously noticed and described to me as the British habit for disempowerment and apathy. What do you do in Denmark then, I asked indignantly, Oh we take our politics more seriously, he said by which I think he meant the Danes over the last generation have been more seriously committed to expressing the principles of Fairness and Equality in their politics, And we are good listeners, we have to be, you see Denmark is a small country and we have some very big neighbours.
No blocked ears there. That great listening poet, Hans Magnus Enzensberger from over the border in Germany, is featured in last Saturday's Guardian, a listening capacity combined with an ability to speak his mind. Never mind that the mind faces in two directions simultaneously, that is simply the way the Germans do their politics.
We have such a lot to learn.