I am old enough to predate the era of mass tourism. When I was young, living in Ealing, the only holiday we ever had was visiting family. Scotland at Easter and Denmark in the summer. Our palates unjaded by exotic school trips or weekends in European capitals, these destinations were to us infinitely magical. My grandparents' modest apartment in a nondescript suburb of Copenhagen was for us a cornucopia of delight, each and every object in it invested with that special aura only childhood can bestow.* Later, I came to Copenhagen as a student, learned to speak Danish properly, got a job, freed myself, to a degree at least, from the mental shackles of English sociology. I met my wife. The city will always have a unique and special attraction. Most years we try and spend at least a few days there. This time, not having been for a while, we thought we would stay for a whole week.

[*It's always seemed to me that this is the basic point behind Proust's "A la Recherche du Temps Perdu". Most of our so-called memories have a rather abstract quality, like a dry filing-cabinet of experience. Some memories, however, particularly those of childhood, retain a vivid immediacy as though somehow exempt from the ordinary dictates of time. My own suspicion is that the intensity of memory is a function of the directness of perception. Childhood memories are unsullied by any autobiographical preconceptions on the part of the perceiver. Hence their greater vividness. A special effort of imagination can allow you to somehow reconstitute these moments. Proust devoted a literary lifetime to that effort. But, to be honest, I never got into Proust, despite a number of goes. I know he has his devotees. It's precisely that degree of devotion that I find uncomfortable. I once heard someone actually say: "I don't know how I could get through the day if it weren't for Proust." Makes him sound like a heroin fix! Could it be that Proust is the opium of the effete literati? A sensibility supplement for the emotionally retarded? Apart from my allergic reaction to Proustians, I have a couple of rather flat-footed pragmatic reservations to the whole exercise of "A la recherche". 1. If we assume that time devoted to the reconstitution of vivid-memory experiences is time well spent, wouldn't we be better off working on our own memories rather than spending whatever time it takes reading Proust's copious tomes? 2. If, as seems to be implied, vivid immediacy of experience is the gateway to another dimension of time, wouldn't we (and Proust) be better served seeking to free ourselves from the veil of subjectivity which blinds us to the true vision of the world here and now? Where was Proust when he delved into his memory? Almost by definition he was not in the present moment.]

Romantically (it's certainly not cheaper), we took the night-train to Hamburg, where we changed for Copenhagen. The train clanked onto the ferry at Puttgarden. The crossing of water is one of the emblematic experiences of the Danish holiday. How to convey the unreasoned excitement of the short boat journey? Scrambling up to the lounge decks, force-feeding oneself the first wienerbröd*, pushing open the heavy doors to step out on to the soldaek (sun deck), sensing the invigorating breeze, feeling the movement of the sea, looking to the vast northern sky, turning one's face to the sun in that typically Danish movement of the head!

[* Known to most of the rest of the world as "Danish Pastry", this fabulous delicacy was by all accounts introduced to Denmark by an Austrian pastry-chef, hence the name. Much copied, nothing, however, comes even remotely close to the real thing. What is usually passed off as a "Danish" is a less than pale imitation which, in a just world, would be in breach of an international trades description act. The Swedes, just a bridge away across the Sound, produce a product which they shamelessly describe as wienerbröd: it's more like a two-day old Belgian "huit", but not as good.]

Across the aisle from us on the train were two Danish girls returning from a holiday in the south of France. From overhearing their conversation we gathered they were in their final year at "Gymnasium" which would make them about 18-19 years old. Sweet, intelligent, good-humoured, healthily good-looking, confident, unassumingly practical, they somehow embodied Denmark at its best. My heart melted. If only time could stand still and they could stay that way for ever. I was reminded of a line of verse from the Danish poet, Sophus Claussen:

Og det var paa Skandeborg Station

Der blev mine Tanker forflöjne

Jeg saa en nydelig ung Person

Med nöddebrune Öjne

[At Skandeborg station my thoughts were carried away, I saw a lovely young person with nut-brown eyes]

Entitled "Rejseminder" (travel memories), the poem bemoans the loss of youth and its enthusiasms in the stifling conformity of bourgeois middle age. Sophus Claussen may have a point! In any event, it is my impression that time is particularly cruel to Danish girls. It is as if they become prematurely petrified by the diminutive certainties of Danish life. I love Denmark, but Denmark sometimes irritates me as only those you love are able to irritate. And the most irritating feature of Denmark is in many ways its most admirable quality: that unhurried instinct for the practical detail, that unerring feel for the most sensible way to do things. Maybe it's just the envy of the organically disorganised for those who are able to keep their stuff in perfect order, but I sometimes want to shake people and say: yes, you're practical, yes, you're organised, but there must be more to life than this! HF, who, despite his Austrian blood, is as Danish as they come, summed it up as follows: after the loss of Schleswig-Holstein in 1864, Denmark became emotionally committed to being a small country. In making a virtue of this new necessity it proved to be tremendously successful. But this success was paid for by a certain blinkering of the spirit, a studied indifference to the big picture, an inward-looking self satisfaction. Hence the persistence of a semi-detached attitude to Europe, hence the quasi-racist asylum and immigration policy, hence the tacit assumption that nobody can do anything quite as well as us. As HF once put it: " Der er ingen is helt som Frisko is!" [There's no ice-cream quite like Frisko ice-cream (a bog-standard Danish brand).] I understand that this criticism must sound harsh. Perhaps it is just another expression of the deep psychological truth that we hate what we love and love what we hate. The only other country which can generate for me that same degree of inner frustration is Scotland, my other ancestral home. A country of incomparable natural beauty, with a population enjoying an in-built propensity for honest decency, open-hearted humanity, unaffected intelligence and boundless wit, which nevertheless devotes much of its energies to nihilistic self-destruction, mindless religious bigotry, senseless violence and the assiduous nursing of an imaginary grievance against its southern neighbour. A country in sore need, in other words, of some of the Danish virtues. The difference is that Scots would never claim to have the business of life "down". Nor would Danes, not publicly at least, but, deep down, it's what they think, and it's what gives Denmark a self-limiting feel. Opinion polls reveal, that of all European populations, it is the Danes that are most satisfied with their lot. Why is that so oddly depressing?

Meanwhile, it was bliss to be in Copenhagen. From the moment of arrival at Hovedbanegaarden (Central Station) every detail was pregnant with a preternatural inner intensity: the texture of the patterned floor-tiles, the elaborate carving of the the mock-viking wooden arches, the all-pervasive smell of pölser (Danish sausages) and - the sound of the language! It is difficult for English-speakers to appreciate the implications of a language like Danish. It is often naively assumed that language is essentially a means of communication. This is true of English, which, when it's not the first, is the second language of the whole world. Danish, however, by virtue of the fact that it excludes the vast bulk of the world's population, is as much a tribal Shibboleth as it is a mode of communication. To speak it is to belong. Which is what makes it so fascinating to hear people of obvious South Asian origin speaking absolutely perfect Copenhagen! Linguistically, they belong. Not only linguistically. They are Danish. The inner attitude, the body language, the colour of their thoughts are all Danish. They are more Danish than me, though I have the blood credentials. Some Danes might resent this intrusion into the inner sanctum. Personally, I welcome it. It is new blood, a breath of fresh air, a linguistic opening on the world. What this phenomenon does throw up is a series of questions about the nature of national identity. I can't help thinking that language is far and away a more determining factor than ethnicity. Within the great "Ummah" of the English-speaking world, it is language, in the sense of accents, which specifies the sub-groups: English, Americans, Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders, South Africans, Scotsmen, Irishmen, Welshmen, Indians, West Indians etc. The identification is instant. You can then go on to present the details of your ethnic CV, but it doesn't really count. I can go to enormous lengths to explain how my father is Scottish, my mother Danish, that I was born in France, but for all practical purposes I am an Englishman, because I sound like one.

All to say that the opportunity to speak and listen to Danish is a thrill in itself. After all, as my mother's tongue, it speaks to me in a particularly intimate way. The pettiest transaction contains a secret excitement. Ordering sausages, say: " To almindelige med bröd tak" [two regular with bread please.] This triggers the traditional response: "Sennep og ketchup?" [mustard and ketchup?] " Ja tak." "Ja! Det bli'r tusind kroner!" [Right! That'll be a thousand kroner] or whatever apparently fantastical price they seem to make up on the spot! In Denmark, I still reckon in 1973 prices, so things seem wildly expensive. It being Copenhagen fashion week, we couldn't rent an apartment in town as we'd hoped. We ended up in the tastefully decorated annex/flat of a pension on Amager Strandvej. Amager Strand, seemingly banal, is a venue of special intensity in my personal history. Most of the endless and endlessly sunny days of our childhood holiday would be spent at Helgoland, a wooden sea-bathing station which projected out into the Sound. To my horror, I discovered that it's now been demolished. "It was rotten and dangerous", our hostess explained. "They're building a replacement." Very sensible, no doubt, but how could she hope to understand?

So we spent a week playing "house" in Copenhagen - a life we could have lived if things had turned out differently. We did the "usual" things. Up and down "Ströget", the city's principle walking street, a boat-trip round the harbour and canals, the climb up the "curly-wurly tower" of Vor Frelsers Kirke, bookshops, clothes shops, art exhibitions, Tivoli (!), a trip to the romantic fishing-harbour of Dragör. One day we rented a convertible for a classic day-trip to Möns Klint, a famed Danish beauty spot which I'd never got round to visiting. Love blossomed in the prescence of the beloved. In my youth, Denmark had been for me a sort of promised land. But the trees don't grow up to heaven, as they say, and I was inevitably disappointed. Now I can accept Denmark for what it is, a country whose drawbacks are the inevitable reverse of its qualities, and discover a whole new affection for it. While visiting the National Art Museum, we came across a small exhibition dedicated to an enquiry into the nature of Danishness. On the wall was a printed extract from the Danish National Encyclopaedia:

Danskhed: I et positivt perspektiv bliver danskheden set som demokratisk sindelag, jaevnhed, tolerance, ligefremhed, og antiautoritetstro. I et negativt perspektiv ses danskheden som magelig, selvtilstraekkelig, ufunderet bedrevaerd, smaalighed og dyrkelse af janteloven.

[ Danishness: From a positive point of view Danishness is seen as democratic, unpretentious, tolerant, straightforward, anti-authoritarian. From a negative point of view it is seen as comfort-loving, self-satisfied, with an unfounded sense of superiority, small-minded, with a preference for safe mediocrity.]

The ruthless impartiality of the summary took my breath away. Something is healthy in the state of Denmark!