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This is an excerpt from my unpublished novel "The Mummy and Daddy Christmas Present Fund".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