Friday 4 December 2020
Advent calender
Wednesday 2 December 2020
Birds and blossoms
Tuesday 1 December 2020
"Rest You Merry" by Charlotte MacLeod
Chapter 1
"PETER SHANDY, YOU'RE IMPOSSIBLE!", sputtered his best friend's wife. "How do you expect me to run the Illumination if everybody doesn't cooperate?"
"I'm sure you'll do a masterful job as always, Jemima. Isn't that Hannah Cadwall across the way ringing your doorbell?"
With a finesse born of much practice, Professor Shandy backed Mrs. Ames off his front step and shut the door. This was the seventy-third time in eighteen years she'd nagged him about decorating his house. He'd kept count. Shandy had a passion for counting. He would have counted the spots on an attacking leopard, and he was beginning to think a leopard might be a welcome change.
Every yuletide season since he'd come to teach at Balaclava Agricultural College, he'd been besieged by Jemima and her cohorts. Their plaint was ever the same:
"We have a tradition to maintain."
(.....................................................................................) ....something snapped. (...)
On the morning of December 22 two men drove up to the brick house in a large truck. The professor met them at the door.
"Did you bring everything, gentlemen?"
"The whole works. Boy, you folks up here sure take Christmas to heart!"
"We have a tradition to maintain", said Shandy.
"You may as well start on the spruce trees."
All morning the workmen toiled. Expressions of amazed delight appeared on the faces of neighbors and students. As the day wore on and the men kept at it, the amazement remained but the delight faded.
It was dark before the men got through. Peter Shandy walked them out to the truck. He was wearing his overcoat, hat, and galoshes, and carrying a valise.
"Everything in good order, gentlemen? Lights timed to flash on and off at six-second intervals?" Amplifiers turned up to full volume? Steel-cased switch boxes provided with sturdy locks? Very well, then, lets's flip the power and be off. I'm going to impose on you for a lift to Boston, if I may. I have an urgent appointment there."
Every year I read this very funny Christmas-detective novel (it appeared in 1978 - if I'd count the way Professor Shandy does that would be....?...times...)
The photo above I took yesterday evening - in Berlin they start their Illumination tradition too!
(I have typed the whole text by hand - hope there are no typos)
Monday 30 November 2020
Contact Restrictions of a Special Sort
Sunday 29 November 2020
How to Stay Supple Through Pre-Christmas Season
29th November --- Got this funny drawing per WhatsApp. (Query: Why? Is it tongue in cheek - or just funny? Muse on humour as a funny thing...)
Translation (utterly superfluous for Yoga-afficionados): Die Tanne = the fir; Der Braten = the roast; Die Waage = the scales; Die Kerze = the candle.
Take out my appointment book and write: "Cancel Fitness-Studio", though I would love to be there, being unsporting since February. Before work-out with weight 3 times a week. Now my muscles try to impersonate a jellyfish (Memo to myself: Try not to overdramatise - at least I do around 10.000 steps a day. With FFP2 as an extra-weight).
So: Happy Supple First Sunday in Advent!
Saturday 28 November 2020
Let There be Light - but not too much, please.
I said to him: "First we'll have to have a test-run in the bedroom" - thinking of my beautiful net curtain and KNOWING that I spoke of them before - but of course he grasped the chance for a wicked manly laugh.
So: he is an all-round talent and helps me with those things I myself do not dare to tackle - which are not many, but I my rooms are about 4m high and there is no one around to pick me up IF... I learned - late in life, but better now than never - to require help if I need it. (Memory to myself: The art is to have the insight that I need it - I am still a bit megalomanic).
But a very high ladder intimidates me.
It was the third time he moved up to change the chandelier bulbs - they were still too glaring, they bit into the eyes - 18 bulbs gave me the brightness I missed before - but their intensity was too much...
Now it is better, but still not good - so a moment ago I ordered via Amazon chandelier bulbs that I can dim. I did not know that they exist - I mean those you can work with a remote control - because before I had looked at the fine stucco on the ceiling and thought: I do not want a cable above!
Ha - now I am wiser - and he likes to come - even if it means to climb the ladder the forth time.
Friday 27 November 2020
Finger exercises 2: Eating at Home
26th November --- Wonderful lunch with my friend Francine. Wednesday "in normal times" is the day we meet at a restaurant - often at the excellent and very reasonable priced Japanese restaurant "Ishin" (sporting the secret charme of a disinfected third class waiting room), and on special occasions we book a table ("YES - for only two persons...Yes.. and please in the rear of the restaurant, we don't want to sit in that draught of the entrance door") "Colette" of Tim Raue: a celebrity cook who makes it possible for ordinary mortals to pay his bill by offering "business-lunch". (Business-lunch exists on an exceptional broad scale in Berlin).
Cannot suppress the feeling of sadness that so many restaurants will be forced to close forever now - so very, very unfair, because they did so much to keep us safe - bought expensive air cleaners, put distance between the tables thus reducing the number of (paying) guests to half, the waiters, almost fainting, had to wear masks all day long, collected lists with names and address of the guests (among them an astonishingly plenty of Smiths and Joneses), and, and, and - yet nothing helped.
Yes, government will support them - they talk about an 'anticipated payment' of 10.000 Euro - but that is the crux: politicians talk and promise, while administration is busy to create application forms in an even more cryptic language.
Well, we mustn't forget: the legal profession has to live too.
And, as the proprietor of more than one posh restaurant in Berlin yesterday on TV said: 10.000 Euro will be just enough to pay his 80 employees for one (!) day.
Yesterday, when Angela Merkel gave us new orders how to live till Christmas and New Year, I saw on TV Tim Mälzer (another famous German cook, the forename Tim must be a guarantee for gourmet success ) - he resembles a bear, and that fine figure of a man, always an optimist and a doer - struggled to gain his composure, chin quavering, eyes filling with tears - he left the discussion forum for a break - men still don't cry -- though we all did cry with him.
Well, Francine and I, accepting the inevitable of restaurants closed, rushed instead to Butter-Lindner at the Wittenberg Platz - an exquisite delicatessen - because we wanted to celebrate the now so rare occasion when we can meet each other.
Then back to my apartment - I give it three stars: very good ambience, lovely food. No draught.
We dined and then chatted till 7 o'clock pm (meeting at 13:15).
Not to be able to hug each other when we parted is absolutely sad.