To beer or not to beer

With Looney’s gracious support, and in spite of Jean’s healthy scepticism, we can now safely assume that ‘Bier’ – by virtue of it being at end of a request to a waiter at your average Oktoberfest - is indeed a verb.

The cat – opportunist swines that cats are – is back after a week’s absence. However, the apple of my eye I have not heard from since he called me at 1700 hours BST yesterday which makes it about 22 hours. He and his friends were heading off into the New Forest to drown their sorrows as to celebrate their last official day at sixth form college. Hope against hope I HOPE that they won’t have drowned in a puddle of beer. Am already planning funeral. I tentatively suggested that instead of finding himself and his head resting on an ant heap this morning he might like to take his tent to overnight. This is where it becomes complicated for a mother’s weary head and heart: ”No, Mama, no point taking the tent. It’ll just get ruined in the mayhem.” As assurances to his physical well-being go I feel like a lemming ready to jump.

U

Update a few minutes after I send above, and before you try to think of how to word your condolences: Apple of my eye just phoned. He staid at a friend’s parents’ mansion at edge of New Forest and enjoyed -  I quote – “a luxurious guest bed room”.  And here I am slumming it and at least two of my hairs gone grey in the last few hours. U

Hanging my head

It’s all the way downhill from here till I have to climb the next mountain.

Have just found an answer of mine to Magpie concerning plants which I wrote when I was temporarily forced off line - have now  no idea where it fits. Then having used the term ‘Arian’ several times – with a somewhat nagging feeling at the back of my mind  and nothing to do with the guilt of my forefathers – once more do I find that English spelling is a joke. Unless you know (in eight cases out of ten) how to spell a word you will be hard pressed to find it in your dictionary. English is fascinating that way. People say German is difficult. It’s complete nonsense: Everything is spelt/spelled how it’s PRONOUNCED,  everything is pronounced as it’s spelled. And as long as you remember that the verb that keeps the listener’s attention is, on the whole, put right at the end of a German sentence you should be able to order a beer: “Bitte ein Bier”.

Some languages employ gender which the English conveniently dispensed with right from the start; and the French naturally confuse the rest of Europe: A German moon is masculine yet when it shines on France it’s female. The sun however is mellow, yellow and feminine up North, but male south of the Swiss border. No wonder Sarkozy and Merckel can’t see eye to eye at the moment (reference Greece – and why are the Germans always expected to spend their hard earned Euros to bail out the rest of Europe?). I can’t even get a measly loan from my bank manager and we are talking pound Sterling  not Euros or Deutschmarks or billions. Yes, Deutschmarks – those were the times. Earned an absolute fortune when I still lived in Duesseldorf. I am not nationalistic but I did wipe a tear when the hardest currency of all was replaced by the Euro. I mainly wiped it because it took my German contingent forever to get used to it: I visit the mother/fatherland and years later everyone still translates currency into that which is history – and not only on the stock market. And then they wonder why I am not tempted back.

Where was I? Spelling. May Hitler forgive me: I have just realised that in a couple of recent posts I misspelt “Arian”. They are still blond and blue eyed (I myself sport dark brown eyes) but a ‘Y’ is rightfully theirs. Thus Aryans. As Magpie said: Soon the blonds will all be dyed anyway.

U

Deja vue

This Thursday morning really takes the pits.

First: Remaining cat has decided to move out — probably on account of suddenly re-emerged flea population (must be the warm weather). Consequently I vaccuum like previously mentioned Dyson possessed, spend a fortune on flea spray, endanger my health by applying the damn stuff all over the house. Then, and since I don’t smoke, I visit a certain blog for a moment of light relief.

Thus disappointment lies (it was like smoking outside when it rains).

However, have now built conclusive and convincing argument that you will get an insight into a person by what they think is funny. Since I have recently gone off large-scale-bitching as it’s too much of an effort I shall only say: GM’s (and by implication Ramana’s) Today’s Special on the menu was lame. Not least because I have yet to find a grown man who cries over a rabbit. And as my son would say to both GM and Ramana: “You are BLONDIST.” Which reminds me: Why is it only ever the FEMALE blonde who is made out to be challenged in the brain department when there are so many male Arians (and Swedes) running around? Try and answer that one – but please be intelligent about it – even if you are of a mousey or any other shade.

U

Upright

Cheerful Monk (aka Jean) asked the useless question of why some animals have tails and others don’t.

It’s been occuping me since she qualified her question as “philosophical” rather than anatomical. Answer: I haven’t got the faintest idea. All I know is that cows and horses need them for practical reasons (to keep the flies away), cats need them as a rudder to fall off a window sill from the sixth floor – unscathed; and obviously dogs need wagging tails to keep their owners happy. Sorry, Jean.  That was anatomical. Even more pressing: Why did that bit at the end of the human spine shrivel, forgotten what it’s called – something starting with c (?). Maybe it helped humans walk on two feet rather than on  four.

All I can say is that I am glad I don’t have a tail – otherwise I would have to walk with it between my legs.

U

Absence makes the heart sing

Sweethearts, I hope you have missed me dreadfully the last four days.

No apologies. Though will admit that I have missed all of you, even the unmentionable ones. In future I shall announce in line with one of my favourite columnists: “U is away” so you can all relax and not think I have abandoned you.

Having caught up with what’s gone on during my absence, frankly, I am LOST. Which is just as well because it saves me bother to comment on various pourings.

Tip of the day: Do not stretch your reader’s attention span. It might snap.

Considering that I have urgent matters to attend to I shall, instead, address whatever I can waste my time on.

Kiss, Kiss – U

Dragging my feet

Sometime back in April (25th -  to be precise) over at Magpie’s blog  we discussed the swimming prowess and restistance of fleas to death by alocohol poisoning. Laboratory animals were mentioned, Magpie showing himself singularly unmoved by the plight of any.  A view which,  no doubt, he shares with many other teachers.

And this is one of the reasons why I love Bike Hike Babe, and I quote her comment:

“I caught a mouse by its foot in a mouse trap. I set him loose.”

At first the statement sounds simple and factual. It isn’t [simple]: Jean-Paul Sartre would have gladly limped to his grave if only he could have come up with something as profound. For the sake of my own thought process (and it won’t work otherwise – so please do not disillusion me, BHB) I assume that BHB (or, more likely, her husband) laid the trap - purposely setting out to fight the cheese robbers. However, like in a Hollywood movie, the mouse (played by Tom Hanks) then did NOT have its neck snapped, merely his foot clamped. Along comes the good fairy (that’s BHB during a full moon) and foils her household’s initial plan. Think about it. Aesop (him of the fables) couldn’t do better.

Somewhere under the wandering stars there will now be a homeless mouse with a bandage walking across an American prairie, supported by a crutch, tears in its eyes remembering that lovely smiling silver haired lady who gave it reprieve. Mice’s attention span being short let’s hope it won’t forget all about her when happening onto the next bit of cheese. That’s where Sartre comes into the equation.

U

Choppy waters

Sweethearts, do you remember this nursery song:

“Row, row, row your boat – gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily – Life is but a dream.”

U

Sticky

I probably don’t come across as the type of person who makes time to bake her own bread. Yet, I do. English pap is rubbish if ever there was one, and expensive too. Not that the expense of a loaf of bread matters to me if only it [the bread] were worth it. It isn’t. If there is one complaint, apart from all the others, that visitors from mainland Europe – where breadmaking is an ART – will make: It’s about the dismal results of your average British bakery. So putting myself out to bake the bake is a form of self-defense.

Except sometimes, like just now, it backfires. I put my dead-foolproof-put-together-in-five-minutes dough onto a shelf in the conservatory (that’s a south-facing wintergarten to most of us) to RISE thus allowing it to double its size. Rise it did. Naturally I forgot all about it. Now the enthusiastically rising dough has spilled itself all over onto some of my paper files temporarily stored on the shelf underneath. Which means that I have just realised the beauty of reaching a certain age: You are past caring. And no one, other than myself and readers of this blog, will ever know how I bodge my life.

The loaf is in the oven.

U

Note to self

Am going to pot – and that’s only in the garden.

Also for anyone considering moving to the UK: Do not trust the BBC’s website’s weather forecast. It’s rubbish. They keep telling you it’s going to rain, then the sun is out all day.  Have it now on good authority (mine) that they are in business with electricity companies making private householders enlarge hole in the ozone layer by employing tumble dryer rather than risking to peg out washing.

U

Smouldering

Ramana, in the wake of your recent observations a quote which blown up, framed and hanging on one of my many walls drew my attention:

“The real danger lies not in what terrorism inflicts, but in what it provokes”. (Martin Amis on the aftermath of 9/11).

U