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.