I step under the pegs, through no washing, pass axe-split trunks, put the walnut brandy (too weakly brewed) to balance on my book as I walk to write something of my stay. And then out onto the green lane, not London's various 'Green Lanes' of Turkish produce and busy backs, but mild-wild-blown reeds and seeds, pressured flat down by sea-violent air. I catch back-flung cries of sea-settlers in the flexible stems, cleverly bending in this northeaster. Too fierce for canoeing. Crouch down on the grey sand of broken shells, I think of England, wrecked in a pile of snails and cockle homes griefed at my toes. In the depths of midsummer, Teddy and I fished this shallow reach for mussels; the iron pin points religiously up from the waves, where I knotted the net of sea-beasts to clean themselves for our better eating.

We push onward into theatrical jungle: purple skirts for a can-can, tiers of red top-hats, white suits rough-sewn sporting lapels felt-tipped green. A pink, fluffy unicorn is preened to charm audiences with a string of pearls wound round its magic horn. Often we do Hans Christian Andersen, says my host before grabbing a plastic broom to twirl an impromptu majorette moment, which prompts her colleague to run over and tap out a tattoo on the snare. A plasticine Michael Jackson, who wears his military jacket lightly, stands to attention inside a cabinet where he performs his part in quite a complex model of a drama between good and evil; Lying on the shelf above, an orange dog with beady eyes has tipped over, and his neighbour duck may not quack for help, as his beak has got bent. Circled by bushes of red berries, hemmed in by cold air, warmed with coffee, our hearts glitter like the plywood cut-outs madeto sell in a gift shop. Tacked up on a wall are our instructions; blow worries at a dangling Danish puffing troll; patient pustetrold will carry cares away.

This landscape is ancient. After the last ice age there was no soil, no humus, no trees. Denmark was flattened by glaciers which rolled across the land leaving nothing but rock, sand, gravel. And the first plants to grow were the grasses, and then the heathers. Then the trees began, bit by bit, until the beech came, when the woods really grew strong. People lived off the food from the marsh, catching and chomping lizards, voles, ducks. The sacrifices that were thrown into this peat that have been preserved till the present day. Teddy initiates a sacrificial victim being despatched in a Monty Python style.