Camarooned (Queen Scenes Number Eight)

Scene: Buckingham Palace, the dining room. The Queen and Prince Philip are at lunch.

Queen: I say Philip, this is all simply too ghastly for words.

Philip: I’ll say it is! I distinctly remember ordering quiche with a light garden salad and we appear to be eating crab risotto! And some pieces of the crab seem to have gorne orf!

Queen: One’s not referring to one’s luncheon, Philip. The Prime Minister Mr. Cameron has vetoed a new European Union treaty to solve the Eurozone crisis, thus potentially isolating Britain from the rest of Europe.

Ask Your Pharmacist (And Be None The Wiser)

I am taking anti-inflammatory medication against pain and inflammation in my broken toe, but I have been told I should take an accompanying stomach-protecting medication. Last night I went to the pharmacy to buy some.

Kanga (plonking packet of anti-inflammatory medication on counter): Hello. I’m taking this anti-inflammatory medication for a broken toe and I’d like to buy some stomach-protecting medication.

Young Female Pharmaceutical Assistant: No problem. We can offer you this one with 14 days’ worth of medication from this manufacturer, or this one with 7 days’ worth of medication from this other manufacturer.

The Mummy and Daddy Christmas Present Fund

This is an excerpt from my unpublished novel "The Mummy and Daddy Christmas Present Fund".


Thursday July 27^th 1972

I organised The Mummy and Daddy Christmas Present Fund a few years ago for several reasons.

First of all, it means that the children (my little brother and sister) don’t have to worry about ideas for buying Christmas presents for Mum and Dad because it is all organised by the Fund. Second, it means that they don’t have to spend all of their pocket money on Christmas presents, because mostly the Fund consists of my pocket money. Third, my brother and sister are not very good at organising and planning things so the Fund (that’s me again) relieves them of these time-consuming tasks.

When I say that the Fund mostly consists of my pocket money, well just to give you an idea, two years ago we bought a toolbox for Dad, it cost 17 shillings and 6 pence down at the hardware shop. We bought Mum a pair of gloves from Hinds in Eltham that cost nearly 15 shillings. Now a few days before Christmas the Fund Box had just over 35 shillings in it. 32 shillings and 6 pence came from my pocket money, 2 shillings came from Lucy and about 9 pence came from Jonathon.

Friday Night in Copenhagen

I can tell you what possessed me to travel to Copenhagen last Thursday. It was an article in a glossy magazine extolling the virtues and beauty of Denmark’s fair capital, complete with a recommended hotel.

Never having set foot in Scandinavia before, I decided to start with this pleasant-sounding, artisan-rich and friendly land, which, in my (confused) mind was both a physical and cultural extension of North Germany.

How wrong could I have been and next time I must look at a map before I go anywhere. The journey itself was probably the most exciting, interesting and pleasant part of the whole experience. The couchette train from South Germany to Hamburg in the north was nearly empty, so the very kind Swiss ticket collector (the train came from Zurich) rearranged my sleep cabin and the one next door so that they turned into a single bedroom cum sitting-room.

Three Hail Marys and Two Lady Gagas

I was brought up a good Catholic girl. This stemmed from my grandmother being a good Irish Catholic girl who sent my mother to a convent boarding school when she was four years old. My mother stayed there until she was 18, and, according to her, rarely went home in the holidays.

My Dad was not a Catholic; he was a member of the Church of England. Unlike us, he didn’t have to go to church on Sundays and Feast Days. He just went once at Christmas, and one Christmas he took me with him, as I had been pestering him for a long time to show me what a heathen, sorry – Church of England – mass, sorry – service – was like. As usual, I was very quiet and obedient, absorbing everything and joining in the hymns, etc. But later, my Dad told me that the vicar had been angry and had specifically told him he must never ever bring me again, which made me very worried and ashamed and embarrassed for a very long time, thinking that I must have done something wrong.

Now, I just think that my Dad was cross because by taking me, he had missed out on something that he always did at Christmas at his church service. Maybe he went out for a drink afterwards to a pub, or maybe he met a secret friend. Who knows?

Beatle Sings Beatles

Two nights ago I went to a Paul McCartney concert in Cologne. I know! My son had two tickets and the friend he was going with was sick, so he called me and asked if I would like to go with him. I dropped everything, jumped in my car and drove the many hundreds of kilometers to Cologne. Miraculously, my son and I found each other outside the Kölnarena where Paul McCartney was performing, despite all the crowds, found a place to have a meal and then proceeded to our seats, which, I have to say, were excellent.

Paul and the band walked out casually onto the stage shortly after 8 p.m. There was no announcement, no hype, no drum roll or loud intro music, no “Please welcome to the stage…” The entire audience, I think, rose and applauded, whistled, shouted, cheered, waved their home-made banners. I caught hold of my son’s arm and babbled excitedly, “It’s him, it’s actually him! It’s Paul McCartney! Look!” And my son exclaimed, “I know, I know!” just as thrilled.

Hola Grandma

Yesterday I went into a store of one of my favorite boutiques. First, because I love their clothes, and second because the prices here in Barcelona looked a little cheaper than in the same boutique at home.

Straight off I saw a beautiful blue dress, a class act and perfect for both visiting customers and going to the theater. I have one a little like it at home, also from this boutique. So I was pretty certain it would fit and suit me perfectly.

I stood in a line at the entrance to the changing-room with a bunch of teens and twens. It was only then that I realized I might look a little out of place here. The radio was blaring out some state-of-the-art Spanish hit and the changing-room was being managed by two guys! I mean, they were right inside the girls' changing-room. At first I thought they were someone's boyfriends who had wandered in by mistake, but I realized how wrong I was when one of them charmingly showed me to a free booth with a disarming smile and some Spanish that I didn't get, but in my imagination was something like, Hola Grandma! Good to see you made it here!

One Flew Over

Last night I flew to Barcelona. I had some tranquilizers with me (my fear of flying is übercrazy) but had no need of them as a young man by the name of Julian came to my aid. Julian, a tattoo artist with tattoos from neck to foot, was sitting next to me. He held my hand all through take-off, and talked to me the entire flight. He was successful in banishing my irrational fears only in that he prevented me from bursting into the usual tears and becoming hysterical.

My fear of flying is surpassed only by... nothing! Having flown all over the world several times, I have now developed such terror of flying that I swore 4 years ago, when I last stepped out of a plane, that I will never subject myself to such idiocy again. This business trip is partially to prove to myself that I can fly, I must fly and I will fly.

Aunty Bailout

If you've been wondering how Germany plans to bail out all those other Eurozone countries that have not been looking after their piggy-banks as well as we have, look no further. This Cupcake and others like me will be playing a major role! Yes, we are the bailout aunties and uncles of the Euro family where a couple of the cousins and nephews went out and spent their pocket-money all in one go and forgot to save a bit for Christmas, birthdays and the like.

Having made what seems now to have been a disastrous decision to become self-employed 11 years ago, I am available 24/7 for work and do in fact spend a great deal of those 168 hours working. My most recent record was last weekend when I spent 22 hours working. I did exceed that when I was younger and my children were very little and used to go to their father every second weekend. On those weekends, I used to work 24 hours.

The Energy Cookie

Every morning, I consume a vitamin supplement drink that tastes and looks like fizzy orange juice together with two capsules packed full of vitamins, minerals, cod liver oil and the like.

I follow this up with a chocolate cookie and a cup of tea.

I know what you're thinking. Why bother with the vitamin drink and the capsules?

And you're right! I just wish they would find a way to fill chocolate cookies with all those vitamins and minerals and invent tea with all the goodness of that fizzy orange juice. First, it would save me time (I am just too lazy) and second, I could eat more chocolate cookies.

The Enemy Request

Have thought of a great new feature for Facebook – the Enemy Request, which as the name suggests, is kind of the opposite of the Friend Request. I’ve even thought up a verb for it – instead of “friending” someone, you could “enemize” them. Like the Friend Request, the other person has to accept the Enemy Request for it to work.

The Enemy Request could be used for various different categories of relationship and have different purposes, for example:

a)      You could enemize someone with whom you have a kind of Cold War relationship, and with whom you would like to become a little warmer. Through the enemyship (that’s enemyship, not an enemy ship like in Star Trek) you could go through a series of procedures that would enable you to iron out your differences and bring you a little closer to friendship.

b)      You could enemize someone you’re currently having a heated row with, or maybe someone you’ve broken off a relationship with. You want to get back on good terms with them eventually, but… only after you’ve both let out all your anger at each other. This would be a good alternative to “defriending” completely and blocking them from contacting you on Facebook.

c)       Or you could enemize someone you just can’t stand, have no interest in getting back together with and want them and the rest of the Facebook world to know about it. You could hurl virtual sticks or smoke bombs at them or poke your virtual tongue out at them from time to time. Well why not. 

The Doll's House

My Dad was a furniture designer inside an accountant’s body. Particularly, he was very concerned with the future of furniture. “In the future”, he used to tell me, “There will be sliding doors and neon lights everywhere”. This was the 1960s. He did have a point.

He worked as one of the chief accountants for a very renowned old establishment company with headquarters in Piccadilly in London. He had his own large office and secretary. I know, because when I was little I used to pretend to be sick once a month so that he would take me to work. I think we both knew I wasn’t sick. I used to sit in the secretarial pool and write poetry on a typewriter. And in the lunch hour we used to buy sandwiches and eat them in Hyde Park.

Stepping Over The Neumanns

In the last few years, the memorial stones known as Stolpersteine have been laid all over Germany and Austria. The meaning of Stolperstein in English is literally "stumbling block" but it can also mean "rememberance marker". They are the project of a German artist which was at first little known outside Cologne and Berlin, but has now become well-known in other parts of the country.

The Stolpersteine are usually laid in front of the houses of Jews who were deported to concentration camps in the Nazi era. They are sometimes also laid for Jews who emigrated during this time and survivors of camps, as well as for other persecuted groups, but mostly they are for deported Jews. The stones are square and replace a cobblestone in the street. They are covered with a brass top and inscribed with the name and birthdate of the person, where they were deported to, and when they died.

Silver October

The golden October we were enjoying only a few days ago has slipped seamlessly into a silver October with suddenly darker mornings and a soft, silent, silken rain that steeps my world in a silvery encasement.

When I was at university many decades ago, the academic year started in this week and I remember it always as a little cold, a little chill with a crisp morning air and a little mist that accompanied me on my way into classes. I always felt that the cold air did something to make my pale complexion even paler, highlighting my makeup and making it seem more vibrant, and somehow making my red hair appear even redder.

October was the time when you exchanged your pretty summer dresses and t-shirts for your sweaters and pants,  you settled down and became more serious again, and like the year itself, the older year, the wiser year, you left the innocent frolicking of the summer and the long, warm, casual days behind and welcomed in the more experienced, crisper, shorter and sober days of the fall.

Good Little Girls

When I was at primary school in the 1960's, the classes were divided up into what we called "streams". Due to the vast amount of children born in the 1950's and 1960's, we had three very large streams for each year. The top ability children were placed in stream A, the medium ability into stream B and the low ability into stream C.

I was in the A stream class, which had a total of 40 children, 26 of which were boys and 14 of which were girls. From this, you might assume the following:
- many more boys than girls were born in our birth year
- the boys were cleverer than the girls
- ability was measured in a different way back then.

A City Near The Polish Border

When I was in my teens, I read John le Carré's novel "A Small Town in Germany" because it combined two of my favorite topics - spy stories and Germany. Nowadays, I can't imagine that I ever enjoyed reading anything so thrilling or, let's face it, serious. Apart from reading the magazine "Vanity Fair" every month, the only literary material I'm interested in today is light-hearted, chic lit stuff, comedy, or at a stretch, something clever by Stephen Fry.

While I fully understood everything that was going on in "A Small Town in Germany", I think the only thing I probably didn't appreciate fully was the title. I mean, the story as I remember it centers around Bonn, and maybe Bad Godesberg, a suburb of Bonn. This was the town that had been chosen as the "temporary" German capital after World War II and of course the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. Berlin, the original capital of Germany, had basically been cut off from the rest of the country by the creation of the East German State (the German Democractic Republic) when the Wall was built. Only West Berlin, which was "supervised" by the American, British and French forces, remained a part of West Germany, or the Federal Republic of Germany.

Appendicitis in Pasing

This is an excerpt from my unpublished novel "The Mummy and Daddy Christmas Present Fund"

Saturday 25^thAugust 1973

The most awful thing happened.

I went on holiday to Munich, to stay with Jenny for her 14^th birthday, which is a few months after mine. And I got appendicitis and ended up in a hospital in a place called Pasing, which is a suburb of Munich.

It started after about one week. I got all the way to Munich, and everything was fine, I had a really nice bedroom in the top floor of Jenny’s house (which is huge) and about a day after Jenny’s birthday I started to have stomach ache and vomiting.

Well then Jenny’s Mum said of course that I should go to the doctor’s, so Jenny took me because she is the only one in the family who really speaks German. So Jenny and I went to see this lady doctor, and I was telling her about my symptoms, which took quite a long time because Jenny had to translate everything (and her German is really good! I couldn’t understand a single word) and then finally this lady doctor slapped herself on the thigh and said a word and Jenny also slapped herself on the thigh and turned to me and said, Appendicitis.

Midnight Shopping

Tonight is "midnight shopping" in our town. You can shop till midnight! And there are a bunch of events (looking out of the window, I see fire jugglers), and lots of music (mostly I have just been hearing drums for the last couple of hours, but maybe it will become more melodic later).

A friend is coming to pick me up in a few minutes so that we can go and explore together. Things are much more fun when you do them with together someone else.

Tomorrow, I am going to look at three different apartments with a realtor. The idea is not that I move to a new apartment myself, but that I renovate an old one as a hobby and possibly even rent it out. This will fulfil a lifetime's dream for me. Inside this Cupcake there is an interior decorator fighting to get out.

I will report more tomorrow.

In Slow Motion

About mid-way through yesterday afternoon, I was beginning to feel exhausted. I had worked until nearly midnight the night before, and continued all morning at full speed. Even my lunch break had only been short.

So I decided to take some time off and go for a stroll. There is an Italian ice-cream parlor about 10 minutes' walk from my office, so my plan was to go there, fetch an ice and then walk around the city for a little while before returning to work.

It was a beautiful day, very hot and just right for ice cream. I got two scoops in a cornet and then, instead of going for a stroll straight off, I decided to sit on the bench outside the ice-cream parlor and eat my ice there.

France Is A Different Place

Yesterday, an old friend came to visit me and she stayed the night in my appartment. Today, because neither of us had any plans, we decided to go to France for the day, to the Alsace.

It really does not take very long for us to get to the Alsace. Quite honestly, I don't think it even takes 20 minutes. And we can get to the famous pottery villages of the Alsace in about 35 minutes.

We had barely reached the Rhine, which is the divider between France and Germany, when the Difference that is France started to become apparent. At one junction, a makeshift traffic light hung from a similar makeshift and rather rusty traffic pole and my friend said, "Oh, it looks like we are in France already, judging by that primitive apparatus".

There is no doubt about it, France is a Very Different Place. Many things do not seem to work so well and if they do, they often seem to be on their last legs. However, everything looks beautiful and romantic, even when it is falling to bits. And it definitely looks French. Even in the (multiple) cafés and restaurants we visited (at least 3, yes we were a lazy, not to mention greedy pair!) the waitresses and other staff were instantly recognizable as French.

In one pottery, we started off by speaking French to the owner, but he obviously heard our accents and so replied in English. We ended up speaking German to each other as it turned out that was the language we could all converse in best. And he spent at least half an hour giving us a very interesting history of the Alsace, with the help of historical art books on the region, which was very kind of him and also in a way very French.

It is strange how you sometimes only need to travel a very little way to experience a completely different culture. I think the only possible explanation is one I learned at University, when I was studying politics and social institutions - a country always looks to its central place of administration for its direction, and this influences every part of its daily life. So that even at the country's borders, life is essentially oriented to that which radiates from the center.

This is why the Alsace in France is French, and so different from Germany (with the exception of some remnants of the language from the times when the Alsace was occupied by Germany), while on the other side of the Rhine, the influence from France is negligible, with the exception of some German dialect words that are French spoken with a German accent.

A Biodegradable Urn In The Forest

My friend Renate was buried yesterday in a biodegradable urn beneath a tree in the middle of the forest. There must have been well over a hundred people there, perhaps a hundred and fifty, although nobody had been told about it and it had not been announced in any newspapers.

Many people cried, even the men, but I did not cry at all until the minister said the bit with "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" and even then I only cried a little bit because I realized that that really was Renate inside that urn and she really was going a very long way down into the earth, where the biodegradable urn would eventually disintegrate and she would become one with nature.

We stood in a very large circle for about an hour, while the minister, who was a lady, spoke about Renate and read verses from the Bible. Next to her was a small shrine with a large picture of Renate, some flowers and the urn. Then many of Renate's friends of the last few years read out their favorite memories of Renate, and described her character. And some of the children played music, and her brother-in-law played two pieces (I think of his own) on the guitar.

While we were standing in the circle, I watched two shiny beetles scuttling over the wood shavings that covered the ground. They were so busy and so purposeful and I thought, I wonder if one of them is Renate? Is Renate now a beetle? And then the sun fell in a certain way through the trees and caught the dust in the air, and just at that moment a butterfly flew into that beam of light and I thought, is that maybe Renate?

Renate was a unique person and a talented painter, dancer and artist in general. She was also very spiritual and esoteric, and believed in all kinds of magic, healing and non-earthly matters that more down-to-earth people found hard to relate to. In fact, in the end, this did not seem to help her but had the opposite effect. She gave up her chemotherapy, which had been helping her greatly, and took to relying on more spiritual and natural healing.

Renate and I were inseparable friends when we were young, we met when we were 25. We stayed inseparable for 12 years. Then suddenly Renate ended the friendship. It hurt very much and I didn't understand what had happened or why. But I stayed good friends with her sister and her sister's family. When Renate became really ill, she moved to her sister's house and her sister took care of her. And six months ago, her sister broke off the friendship with me, after 26 years.

Unlike me, Renate was not close to any of the friends we had both had in our 20's and 30's. So all of us, 8 of the old guard in all, went to the funeral together yesterday and clung close by each other. Afterwards, we went to an inn and had some food and drinks and laughed and joked and had fun and comforted each other.

What I realized yesterday was that really everybody dies. Every single one of us is going to be confronted with this one day. Some people go earlier than others. We are all shocked and surprised when someone close to us does leave us, but it should not come as a shock or surprise at all. Never in the history of mankind was there were one person who just kept on living.

We spend so much time worrying about things when we are alive, concerning ourselves with all our earthly problems, when in fact what we should be doing is making the time here matter. We should be making the most of the time allotted to us, because we don't know when it will end. We should make a positive, good  impression in this world, so that we will remain in people's memories and thus live on.

Although I was hurt by Renate's rejection of me so many years ago, my memories of her are the ones of when we were younger, during those 12 years when we were inseparable, and with that she will live in my memory for ever and I will always love her. And clearly, she touched many people in a similar way over the various stages of her life. If even one-tenth of the number of people that were present at her funeral yesterday come to say goodbye to me when it is my time, I will have achieved much.

Where Do People Go When They Die?

Today is the funeral of my one-time best friend Renate. We met when we were 25 years old and were inseparable for most of the next 12 years. After that Renate changed a lot and we had very little contact. I stayed friends with her family and especially her sister, who looked after Renate in her last year of life. She died last week.

Everywhere I look in my life, in my home, in my office, I see Renate. All the presents she gave me: the pictures she painted, the funny feather ear-rings, the guest-book she had her sister make specially for me and all her entries in it, the porcelain swan in my glass cabinet, the decorations for the surprise 30th birthday party she gave me, which I still keep at the bottom of my wardrobe, the clothes she gave me in size 36 when I was ill 15 years ago and lost so much weight, and still kept in case I got down to that size again, the nameplate for my front door that she hand-made, all the many, many photos. And countless other things, too many to even start listing.

When I first met Renate, she desperately wanted a large brass bed. When I left my husband, one of the first things I bought was a large brass bed, but only because Renate had made it sound so attractive. I still have it and of course sleep in it every night. We were two very creative young girls with all kinds of crazy ideas, and we grew up into two very creative women, probably both a little eccentric. And even when she didn't want any contact any more, I still loved her.

I will always love her and think of her a little every day, and that is why I will go to her funeral today. I will take the funny feather ear-rings, and maybe try to leave them there. So that she will take a little bit of me with her, wherever she is going now. I wish I knew where that was.

Thank You For Not Smoking

Here’s a story I never thought I’d write. I smoked for over 30 years, with about 3 years break for being pregnant and breastfeeding. After I found out it was bad for you (lol) I continued smoking because I was truly addicted. But in the last 6 or so years that I smoked, I did try to quit several times because even I was having problems with it.

Once I managed to give up for around 4 months, but usually it was only for 2 or 3 weeks. At some point, some major stress would rear its head and I would be back on those babies. But finally, around about a year ago, the problems started to get much worse. I got out of breath climbing the stairs and my blood pressure increased to borderline high. It wasn’t so much a case of me having the choice about quitting smoking any more, it was more like my body was telling me – either you quit or I do.

Don’t Relax, Don’t Do It

That Frankie Goes to Hollywood song (you will know the one I’m referring to) came on the radio as I was driving home this evening, and this time I turned the radio off.

This was because a) I’m a prude and b) I think the lyrics are utter nonsense. Either there’s something I don’t know about the male orgasm (and I would be the first to admit that I know next to nothing about the male orgasm) or this song is an excuse to sing about a lot of naughty things regardless of whether the lyrics make sense or not.

Anyway, I’m not getting it. No pun intended (ladies, please!).

From what I’ve always understood (getting my information only from books, magazines, TV and the like, of course) the reason many people can’t achieve orgasm is precisely because they DON’T relax. If you do relax, you will apparently shoot straight to orgasm. And from what I’m hearing in this song, that’s precisely what Frankie is trying to prevent you from doing.

Although why he should be such a party pooper is beyond me. Again, it must be something about the male orgasm that I’m missing.

Surely it would make more sense to sing, Don't Relax, Don't Do It, or Relax, Do It or even, Stop! Don't Do It or Retreat! Don't Do It, although the last one might defeat the whole object of the -ahem- exercise.

Little Miss Noisypants

Back at the end of March, I got a new neighbor. I like to call her Little Miss Noisypants. That’s just behind her back, of course.

Before Miss Noisypants moved in, I had a family living in the appartment above me. A young man and his wife, and two fairly noisy little boys, both under the age of four. Sometimes, the little boys ran up and down the hall, and because we have wooden floors in this building, I could hear them. I could also hear them if they fell over and hurt themselves and when they woke up crying at night, and I could hear their parents going for showers in the morning. It was normal noise.

Little Miss Noisypants makes more noise than this entire family put together, and I don’t think she’s running up and down the hall.

Not Committing Suicide

This is an excerpt from my unpublished novel "The Mummy and Daddy Christmas Present Fund"

Friday 24^th October 1975

I didn’t really try to commit suicide. I’d just like to get that straight at the start of this. It is a long story. But maybe I would have tried to commit suicide if I really had been sure that I would manage it.

And I’d also like to tell you right now, if you are thinking of committing suicide, well if you are not 100% sure you can manage it, then don’t bother, because you are going to have a real problem dealing with all the problems of not committing suicide after you haven’t done it, plus you will still be landed with the same problems you had previously which drove you to trying to commit suicide in the first place. So my advice to you is, unless you are completely certain you are going to be successful, just forget about the whole idea.

Le Moulin de Skansen

When I was 18 I ran away to Paris and got a job as a waitress in a posh restaurant on the Boulevard Montmartre.

I bet you did not see that one coming! Us Cupcakes are full of surprises.

The café where I worked was called Le Moulin de Skansen, and was slap bang next door to an old, historic and very respected café that was famous for being the starting point of the original Tour de France. Unfortunately I can’t remember its name, but this café shared its kitchen and thus some of its staff with the Moulin de Skansen, and of course it had the same patron.

Dancing in the Streets

We have had one of our town festivals this weekend. The streets were lined with crèperies and sausage stalls, as well as champagne, wine and beer stands. Live bands played music on a huge stage in the marketplace and smaller stages in the side streets, the river was "set alight" when lights, torches and colored smoke and a fabulous firework display was held on Saturday night.

People come from far and wide to join in the fun, dance in the street and watch the fireworks. Our little town thronged on Friday and Saturday night, and I for one danced the nights away! Last night I was still dancing on the marketplace with some friends till after midnight.

I am also happy to report that my piano playing at the concert yesterday also seemed to be a success. About a third of the way through the first piece, I suddenly thought, what am I so nervous about? I can play this! And turned out I could! It was kind of a good trick that has never happened to me before. Usually I am such a bundle of nerves when I have to do something like that, that I automatically insert a few errors.

It is such a relief to have some positive, happy events like this with the background of the terrible e. coli infection from the strain EC O104 (EHEC) that is rampant throughout Germany, but particularly in the north. We really don't know what to eat any more. And there are, in the meantime, more than 2000 people suffering badly, the hospitals are overfilled, resources are becoming scarce. Nobody knows where this has come from - every time a clue is followed, it turns out to lead to nothing. I wish and hope there will be some abatement, soon.

Piano Piano

A couple of months ago, my piano teacher asked me if I would like to take part in the music school's summer concert, playing two pieces on the piano.

I know! Moi. And I know that I've been keeping very quiet about this. The reason is that I've been getting more and more nervous.

At the time, it sounded quite a long way off, and I said I would be delighted.

In the meantime, it is on Saturday! I have never played to an audience before, except for friends at parties. This is a real serious, grown-up do.

I say that, but I'm guessing I will be the only grown-up actually playing. It is the music school, after all, so it is mostly schoolchildren. The other grown-ups will all be in the audience.

I have one friend coming along, and that does give me some confidence, knowing that she will be in the audience. I will be playing Bartok's Rumanian Folkdance No. 4 and Chopin's Nocturne Opus 9 No. 2.

But the  more I practice, the more mistakes I seem to make. It doesn't make any sense! Should be less, surely. Oh dear, I will be quite glad when it is over, I think. I keep remembering when I failed Grade 4 piano at 15, because I had just over-rehearsed and took the exam about 2 months after I should have done. I really hope there isn't a repetition of that.

Cameron’s Lot, or Camelot, and Other Statesmen’s Lots

Ever since I have been able to receive some British TV via my satellite dish, I have been taking a mild interest in British current affairs. I think I can safely say that I have never taken an interest in British current affairs, not even when I lived in Britain and studied politics at university there. Hell, I don’t even take much of an interest in German current affairs and I have been living in Germany for longer than I can even remember. But, now that I can watch current affairs in English, I am taking more of an interest in world politics too – so I am also watching CNN and… no, I’m still not watching the German news, but I am at least reading it.

No Chalky Marks

There is a British ad for Dove deoderant which extols the virtues of one of their USPs - "no chalky marks!". Very impressed, I recently bought a roll.

This morning I pulled on a newly washed sweater straight from the clean linen rack only to find, when I walked past the mirror about 10 minutes later, that the left side was covered in "chalky marks".

I have to say that this sweater is a dark purple and all the other things I've been wearing recently have been light-colored, it being summer. So maybe I had not noticed any "chalky marks" on them.

So what's all that about then.

Expensiquiries

I nearly fell over when I read my last phone bill. I didn't, because I was sitting down, but if I'd been standing up I bet you I would nearly have fallen over.

There was an item for which I was charged nearly 10 Euros. It was about 8 cents short of 10 Euros. That's a lot of money in anybody's currency!

There was also a note from the phone company next to it saying that they take no responsibility for this item and if I wanted to know what it was all about, I needed to call this other number which looked like it also cost a barrowload of money per minute.

I called this other number and after several false starts I finally got through to the right person (phone menu hell, plus heightened tempers (mine) delayed this process somewhat) and I was informed what the famous 10 Euro item was all about - I had been charged nearly 10 Euros for a call to Phone Inquiries!

Yes you read correctly!

I had called Phone Inquiries once for 272 seconds, which is 5 minutes or parts of a minute. Each minute costs... er quite a lot which I can't remember right now, and then you get sales tax (VAT) at 19% on top. Which comes out at nearly 10 Euros.

As I don't tend to discuss the weather, my business, my children or any matters other than the phone number I am looking for when I call Phone Inquiries, I would suggest that it was not me who had called them for 272 seconds, but they who had failed to deliver the goods in less time! Anyway, I shall definitely not be calling them e.v.e.r. again.

Next time it might be cheaper to take out an advert in The Times "Lost and Found" column!

Not Turkish Delight

I am very concerned.

Opposite our house in our little street there is a shop run by a Turkish family. It calls itself supermarket but it's just like a corner shop selling mainly fruit and vegetables, some dairy products and many Turkish specialities. The father runs the shop and the two teenage daughters help him out. They seem to work there mostly in the afternoons and evenings, once school has finished.

The family is very hard-working and polite. Early in the morning you can see the father putting all the fruit and vegetable stands up outside the shop and in the evening he takes them all down again. They used to have a second counter at one of the delicatessens in the town center, but I've noticed that they haven't been there for a while.

Earl Walks Into a Cupcake's Office

A real live earl came to my office last week.

I know! It's all go in Casa Cupcake.

I mean, he didn't just turn up. He called the day before and asked if he could come by and bring me some work. And I knew his name, so I could have figured it out for myself, but I didn't.

It was only after he handed me the stuff he wanted me to work on that I saw his name directly after the word "earl" (and "Earl" was not his first name).

He came in just as I was in the middle of a very irate phone call to someone else, so I was not either looking or sounding my best. And when I got off the phone I got it tangled up in my hair and couldn't get it out, and he made some sympathetic comment about that. And then when I was about to go downstairs to photocopy his papers, I asked him if he would like to come with me, which, I realized afterwards, sounded as if I didn't trust him to sit in my office on his own.

Holy crap! I wonder if it would have been possible to create a more negative impression. However, when he comes back next week to pick up the work I shall make sure I wear my best dress and lots of smiles. I am angling for a dinner date. I'm not quite sure why, and I don't even know if he's single, but it would be fun, I think.

I Wrote Lol So It's OK

Would you ever have thought, many years ago when we used to live in an offline world, that there would be one single word that we would be able to write to convey to other people that the nature of our intentions was harmless, kind, gentle, nice, sweet, even loving and above all non-hostile?

Stop right there and rewind. Why would we even be doing this in writing and not in speech? And did I say one single "word"?

Sometimes I wonder if we used to communicate in the past at all. We seem to do nothing else these days. When we're not busy talking on the phone, we're busy writing via some form of modern communication. In fact many of us seem to prefer the writing to the talking!

And lol, which was not even a word in the first place, has already had a change of  meaning during its short lifetime. If you want to express laughing out loud these days, you need to write LOL!!! And just to make sure the other person got it, you sometimes need to add, I really did lol at that!

Lol beats everything, even the smiley :) :D :-)
As long as you attach lol to the end of your comment, be it on Facebook, Twitter, in an e-mail or in a text message to name a few modern methods of communication, you can basically write what you like. Lol diffuses any possibly hostile, unfriendly or ambiguous situation, renders any rude words harmless and even removes any  serious undertones, making you sound laid back, cool, chilled and totally relaxed.

E-mobility

Once again hot on the acquisition trail, last week I attended another little get-together at a large energy provider. This company was located right in the middle of a city about 60 km away from our city, and that presented the first problem. Upon (final) arrival, after having been stuck in several traffic jams, I was greeted by the parking garage attendant with the words "We haven't been told about the conference!" yelled several times, over and over again, as the explanation for why there were no parking spots left. All this while holding his cigarette at precisely the level of your face behind the steering wheel, so I very quickly closed the window to avoid suffocation or nicotine poisoning. And all this from visiting a provider of green energy!

Fortunately I soon found several parking spots in the garage (one for motorbikes only, two temporarily closed for I'm not sure what reason exactly with one of those lay-flattable sticks in the middle of them and two parking spaces for the disabled) and made my way, quite disgruntled by this time, into the futuristic-looking company building.

Things did vastly improve once I got inside.

Your Bed In The Office

This year, I am hot on the acquisition trail. That means that I am trying to acquire new customers by various different means, one of which is not cold callings.

I've always said I can't do cold callings, and I was right! I'm hopeless at them. It's like, I call up a customer, might even get to the right person, and then I don't know what to say. And I'm thinking all the time, that they're thinking, what are you calling me for? What are you trying to tell me? Who are you, and why in the Sam Hill are you bothering me!

So I figured there must be a better way to do this. Us Cupcakes are good at thinking up schemes, so I thought it was only a matter of time before I woke up one morning and had one in my head. And so it came to pass, in fact.

The Last Yesterday

Today is the last day of my old year. Tomorrow I will be one year older and a whole new year of opportunity and adventure lies ahead.

I like that my birthday is in Spring because it coincides with the start of the new year for nature too. On my birthday it always feels like everything around me is also waking up and casting off the old skin, popping up its wide-awake head and asking, what's new?

Some years are good ones, other years, when you get to the end of them, you say, well glad to be seeing the back of that one! Last year was pretty good for me. I hope for another good one.

Lucky April

I am so lucky to have been born in April! Seems like the weather is always lovely for my birthday. And it always seems to be even better, because the long winter is just behind us and spring has already got off to a usually shaky start.

Have invited friends for dinner on Sunday - that's my actual birthday. Only question now is, which restaurant to eat at? Round one corner is a good French one, round the other corner a good Italian one.

Will decide tomorrow morning.

More Alcohol Please, We're British

I'm always amazed how many people don't seem to understand the words "No thanks, I don't drink alcohol". Actually I've only not been drinking alcohol since last summer, but before that I only drank beer if I drank alcohol at all, and I was always amazed then how many people didn't seem to understand the words "No thanks, I don't drink wine" or "No thanks, I only drink Pils".

The response was usually, "But this is a really good wine" - even from people who knew me quite well and had never see me drink wine in their lives. Or, "Come on, you just have to taste this cocktail. No, you really have to" and before you knew where you were, you had it thrust into your hand or under your nose and were still trying to smile and remain polite before you waved it away or placed it untouched back on the table. People do seem to get very offended by that.

Yesterday I was invited to a brunch with some people I don't know very well and all of a sudden I found a glass of champagne in my hand. "Thanks, but I don't drink alcolhol", said I, to be greeted with the response, "But you have to - it's Thomas' birthday!"

Thomas was at the other end of the table and he'd just purchased a bottle of bubbly and here it was being opened at ten past twelve in the morning.

"Well, I'll just raise my glass, but I won't drink any", I said and everyone looked at me like I was a nut. "But it's only champagne!"

Indeed it is! I think it has about 13.5% alcohol volume! I don't understand why I should be forced to drink an alcohol that I don't like or any alcohol at all if I don't want it. Nobody would dream of trying to make a non-smoker smoke, so what's the deal with drink?

Continuity At The Gym

Continuity is very important to us. We need rituals and rules and continuity to secure and anchor us. Some of us need it more than others. So for example if I find a restaurant or café that I really like, I will go there a lot and usually try to sit at the same table.
Change is all very well in its place and time, and of course especially if it is for the better. Without change we wouldn't have progress. But maybe that's the active side. Passive continuity, perhaps, is more important. Like having continuous peacetime not interrupted by war as a backdrop providing security, which means that on the surface, things can  progress and change for the better.

Queen Scenes (Number Seven)

Queen: “I say Philip, this is simply too ghastly for words.“

Philip: “I’ll say it is! I distinctly remember asking for poached salmon today and so far I’ve been eating asparagus. And the Hollandaise sauce appears to be Béarnaise!”

Queen: “One’s not referring to luncheon, Philip. Harry says he’s been defriended on Facebook.”

Philip: “Absolute poppycock! Are you sure it isn’t someone who wanted to poke him instead and pressed the wrong button?”

Queen: “Apparently one of his followers defriended him without so much as a selective tweet. Appalling behavior!”

Philip: “Well what do you expect me to say, OMG?”

Queen: “OMG has now been incorporated into the new OED, from what one reads.”

Philip: “Hardly distinguishable from it in fact, what with being 3 letters and starting with an O. And I suppose you’re tracking William’s relationship status and are worried that it’s complicated?”

Queen: “Don’t be ridiculous Philip. William doesn’t maintain his relationship status on Facebook. But while one is on the subject, it might not be a bad idea if you maintained yours!”

A Simpler Life

Tomorrow morning our garbage is collected, so everyone puts their garbage bins out on the street the evening before. When I came home from work today I put mine out, and everyone else's was already lined up. The street was so full today that there was almost no room for my bin. Goodness knows where they all came from this week!

This is the collection for the recycling waste. Our garbage is split up into recycling waste and what's called residual waste, which gets collected next week.

Dear Sirs And Dumb-Belles

When I was a kid, my Dad had a little book that must have been published in the US either during World War II or shortly afterwards. It was called "Dear Sirs and Dumb-Belles Lettres" (with that spelling) and it was a very small paperback with a bright yellow cover. Possibly it was printed in this small, softbacked format so that soldiers could carry it around with them.

The book was a collection of letters and excerpts of letters from and to US soldiers during World War II, usually from or to the draft office, the Army or their wives and girlfriends, and it also contained some cartoons. It was very funny. They had chosen all the humorous parts of letters to print.

CaucAsian

One of my Japanese friends once asked me if I could tell the nationality of a European person just by looking at them.
I thought it was an odd question and replied that that would be very difficult. In some cases, of course, you might have a typically-looking Italian person, maybe with dark hair and a slightly more tanned skin, and a typically Nordic person with blond hair and blue eyes. But that would by no means be the rule and it would be very difficult in a line of ten people to get all the nationalities correct.
My Japanese friend told me that in Asia, it was quite easy to tell the nationality of people, and I realized of course that he was right. It seems almost kind of odd to me now that in Europe, this is not really possible.
It is an interesting issue. Is it because the European peoples have interbred more than the Asian peoples, so that now it is really hard to tell them apart?

Tala Svenska

My friend and I decided to do a Swedish evening class.

I know! Like we haven't got enough to do.

Anyway, we missed the first class, which seems to have put us at a major disadvantage. But we have been to the last three classes and I think that now I can safely say I can speak three sentences in Swedish (and they are all quite short and would be useless in an emergency situation).

I must be one DVD short of a box set! I spend all day translating from German to English, and occasionally from English to German, and one day the other week I even translated from French to German. And now I am spending one precious evening a week learning another foreign language!

The teacher has the approach of, the more she speaks just in Swedish, the more knowledge we will kind of just acquire through osmosis, or similar. This has the effect that I, at least, stare blankly at her for a lot of the time, probably with my mouth open. And sometimes I actually laugh because some of the words sound like English with the Swedish chef speaking them.

Honestly, how ignorant is that of me! If I were teaching someone English and they were laughing I might just get up and walk out!

Last night my friend had to formulate a question from some of the pictures in the exercise book and she thought that the picture of a bed (which stood for a hotel) was a picture of an elk. It did look like an elk and other people in the class also thought it was an elk. It came out as a very strange sentence. I laughed so much that I actually cried.

I think, though, it is because the class is so late (from 7:45 p.m. to 9:15 p.m.) that I find it so exhausting. It is a bit of a shame, as it has long been my ambition to learn Swedish.

Boulevard Bear

My son has just arrived with the Sunday issue of the "Bildzeitung", which is the most famous and successful of what we call the "boulevard press" papers (popular press).

He has told me that the paper devotes 2 pages to the issue of Libya, half a page to Japan, and 4 whole pages to the death of Knut the Cute, the polar bear star of Berlin Zoo, who was yesterday found floating in a pool.

Deficit omne quod nasciture.

Queen Scenes (Number Six)

Queen: I say Philip, this is too ghastly. Have you seen my pen?

Philip: Can’t help you old girl. Anyway, I thought you’d given up all that diary nonsense and were writing a blog on the Internet.

Queen: Neither of those assumptions is correct, Philip. Despite that, one is not talking about one’s Conway Stewart, but the plastic blue Bic that one keeps to do The Times crossword.

Philip: Well I’m blowed if I’ve seen a Bic floating about here. Perhaps Harry’s gorn orf with it. Using it to add a couple of his pals to William’s wedding list I shouldn’t wonder! That crossword will just have to wait. At least you won’t have to worry that someone else around here is going to finish it for you!

Queen: While that may well be true Philip, any disturbance in the general rhythm of one’s day causes a nuisance. You might recall, for example, the publican in North Dublin who has exhibited an anti-monarchy sign banning one from his premises. While one was not planning to visit his pub anyway on one’s State visit in May, such controversial action simply leads to unnecessary disruption.

Philip: And it's all absolute poppycock! As if you had intended to go to the §%&$ pub!

Queen: At least not before finishing The Times crossword! Are you sure you haven't seen my pen?

Too Much News

Honestly – seems like you never need to get offline these days. There’s so much going on online that life off it is positively boring. Most evenings I go to the gym for an hour, and even that seems so much more relaxing than pressing the News button on Google, which can keep you glued to the screen for hours!

This is why I’ve spent a lifetime trying to avoid the news. It’s way too much excitement and worry for a Cupcake, and it keeps me awake at night. Last night I was still top fit and tossing and turning at 2 a.m., so I decided to get up and read the news, which I can tell you did nothing to help me at all!

Dignity In Japan

I have so much that I would like to write about the current situation in Japan but I cannot at the moment because I am too emotional. I went to Japan many times, I fell in love with Tokyo and I have many friends there.
But I would like to say that we should all learn a lesson from the Japanese, who are going about their daily business with dignity, calm and order. At the moment it is all I can do not to break down, and I keep myself very busy all day with work, but I can hardly sleep at nights and I constantly cry.
Let us praise the heros who are battling to try and cool the reactors, without thought for themselves. Let us praise all those people who are going about their every day lives with the cool and composure they are known for.
My heart goes out to you Japan and I pray for you.

How Cold My Nose (Tiddley-Pom)

Do you remember that Winnie-the-Pooh "pome" that went something like this (and I quote very loosely):

The more it snows (tiddley-pom)
The more it goes (tiddley-pom)
The more it goes (tiddley-pom)
On snowing


And nobody knows (tiddley-pom)
How cold my toes (tiddley-pom)
How cold my toes (tiddley-pom)
Are growing

This could have been written about me! It is so cold at the moment that all those parts of me that feel as if they have been stuck on to unnecessarily poke out (ears, toes, nose and fingers) just seem to freeze up as soon as I leave the warmth of any building.

Don't mention the word Hat to me. I have tried every kind of Hat, starting with a navy-blue Very English Hat that I purchased in Petticoat Lane, London, and which the authorities at Bangkok Airport managed to squash out of shape in an automatic hand-luggage squashing machine. It took years to unsquash. This Hat is no good in the winter as it does not keep any part of my head or ears warm and also attracts too many stares.

I have bought the navy-blue velour Hat, which covers the top parts of my ears and at least stops heat escaping through my head but is too English Schoolgirl.

I have tried the beret which only makes me look rather peculiar and not at all French.

I have tried the woolly cloche Hat, which, in order to keep my ears warm, needs also to be pulled over my eyes and nose.

I have tried the hood of my coat, which causes people to call me a gnome.

Whatever happened to that perfect of winter Hats, the balaclava? The Hat made slightly unpopular by bank robbers and terrorists, the balaclava, which in my early youth belonged to the staple winter uniform of almost every child seems to have virtually disappeared. Clearly, bank robbers and terrorists are able to purchase them, so where are they getting them from?

Chopin's Opus 69 No. 1

I have been very much enjoying my piano lessons, which I started to take up again a few months ago. I had piano lessons until I was 18, and although I am sure I am not very talented, I really enjoyed them and passed quite a few exams (music grades set by the London music schools). Between the ages of 18 and now, I was just trying to teach myself new pieces and playing the (very) old ones that I used to play when I was at school. I wasn't really progressing so I decided to start lessons again last October.

The lessons are pretty expensive and I take them at the music school in our town. I'm the oldest pupil in the school! I'm even older than most of the teachers! But of course they have helped tremendously. And I have a lot of freedom in what I can learn and play, not like when I was at school and I just had to work for the music exams all year.

Things have been going pretty great with my teacher as well, up until the moment about 3 weeks ago when I said I would like to learn how to play Chopin's "Waltz Opus 69 No. 1". I've been teaching myself Chopin from a book with simplified arrangements of Chopin's music for the last few years. This is a new piece which I hoped that I could learn together with my teacher.

The trouble seems to be that Chopin is very popular, and his works appear as background music in various films, saunas, elevators, even supermarkets. And everyone has their own interpretation. I guess I have heard so many different interpretations of Opus 69 No. 1 that I don't know what it's supposed to really sound like. I try really hard to play it properly, but my teacher - strangely - has almost no patience when I play this piece. She keeps telling me that I have the timing wrong, but (and I don't really understand why this is) for some reason, I really can't understand how she wants me to play it.

It's got to the stage where I'm really nervous about playing it at all! And I'm beginning to think I must be a little stupid not to be able to understand what I should be doing.

Last week my teacher made the comment that as there were not very many notes in this arrangement, it shouldn't be that difficult for me to play it without so much misinterpretation.

That would actually be quite a funny comment if I could see the funny side of this! Clearly, the world of music is not less sarcastic than the world of business.

Vielen gleichfalls

I have to tell you I'm beginning to find it quite confusing how often we have to congratulate and wish people well these days.
It wasn't like this when I was growing up in the 1960's! Back then you got on with your life and you were lucky to get a "Bless you!" when you sneezed!