Nobody hurt

Yesterday I had a little explosion in my kitchen.
Before that I saw that the light in the fridge was extinct (as you might know the light in the fridge is a symbol for the last sign of hope in a cold world :-). and I mused about the deeper meaning of that.
But even more I worried (very deep down I'm a realist) about the freezer compartments of the fridge...
Then I saw that the red key of the plugbar looked - somehow, don't ask me why - strange.
As Paul in "Yellow Submarine" I thought: 'I'm a borne button-presser' -  and pressed.
A 10 centimeter darting flame sprang up - (well: might have been 7 cm, or even 5) - and I sprang back, without thinking - while the plugbar playfully threw the red button-cap after me...
All's well that ends well: I bought a new plugbar - the caretaker's son was happy to earn a few quid for pushing the fridge so that we could plug in the new plugbar - and now he (this fridge is definitely male) hums again.
(W)Hole-istic.
Sounds like "Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow" by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds to me.

Orphaned: Rose Aphrodite

See? Evidently I have a problem with two things: writing a short post, and writing more often.
(The second is a form of politeness: I fear that I might bore you stiff).
But you are grown-ups and  know if you want to read or not. So from now on I will scatter little notes between 'real' posts.
Today a rose strayed to me; Rose aphrodite. Sometimes someone in our house, with a balcony but lacking the heart of a gardener, not wanting to feel like a murderer, impatiently maroons a rose (or other plants) in our Hinterhof (a back yard). This one survived winter in a small pot. The photos in the Internet show a glorious rose.
I adopted her, of course, fed her, and dream with her of summer.

Waiting For - no, not Godot - but: The Berlinale 2016

Dear You, 

at the moment you could see me with "Thermacare provides patented heat relief for back, hip...and  so on"; a nice hot cherry pit pillow on my stomach and one under my feet, after a deep warm-up of an infrarot lamp on my forehead and a nice, hot tea inside me.
"Oh, poor you - are you sick?" you might ask me caringly.
No, not yet.
But I feel like an icicle because I did something I would not have done for myself.
I promised an acquaitance (she stood herself in another queue in another part of Berlin) to go and manage to grab two Berlinale tickets for us. Easy-peasy, I thought - I will be there on time, at 9 o'clock in the morning (as my acquaintance had told me), and presto!
Hupp- haff, or: hahaha.
When I arrived I wondered, why very young people sat there - in a very long queue - on little camping chairs. Oh boy, was I naive!
The selling started at 10 - to arrive at 9 was only lax prudence, because The Initiated (most of the others in front of me), had arrived at 6 or 7 o'clock. In the morning! Only to get cinema tickets!!!
I would never... but well: I promised...and being Prussian, I stay to my word of honour. Ever.
So I stood.
2 long hours in the cold.
The young woman, sponsered by Audi, kindly served a non-alcoholic glogg - thank you, thank you!
Not being excessively shy, I had long conversations with two women in the queue, one a judge, the other a barrister  - for one I bought a third ticket - because you are only allowed to buy two... and only three days in advance - really: you have to be very pernickety to read and understand the very difficult order-management for the Berlinale! (Make things rare, and people will buy).
Thank God it didn't rain. Nor snow.
Should not complain: I even managed to get those two tickets (not taken for grantedness - often tickets are sold-out after 10 minutes!)
For one evening George Clooney is announced - well: you could serve him on a silver platter to me, with a little ribbon around him: I will never stand there again for two hours!
Promised. 

Starfish politics

I was always fascinated by this little story by an unknown author which I found in an anthology of Celia Haddon.

An old man walking the beach at dawn noticed a young man ahead of him picking up starfish and flinging them into the sea. Catching up with the youth he asked what he was doing. 
'The starfish will die if they are still on the beach when the sun roasts them with its mid-morning heat,' came the answer. 
'But the beach goes on for miles, and there are millions of starfish,' countered the old man. 'How can your effort make any difference?' 
The young man looked at the starfish in his hand and then threw it to safety in the waves. 
'It makes a difference to this one', he said. 

That is a good answer, I think (regardless of whether it is biological truth or not).
So many people want to save the whole world. They have big words of scorn for what is going on.
And then they are not even able to keep peace in blogland, mistrusting and misunderstanding almost deliberately to find a cause of 'not getting involved'.
I am not a dreamer - I don't think that the world is all harmony - it never was.
I believe in helping a bit - and if many do that, the world will become a bit better.
Not perfect - but better.

London in 1927 & 2013

Dear You, 
I just found this - in an article from the Londonist - and share it with you - so beautiful!
They restored a film made by Claude Friese-Greene.
Have to see London very soon...
(Query: can you be homesick when you weren't born there?)

Lost for words... (almost)

Today I read in BBC News that a Darlington head teacher has asked parents to 'wash and get dressed'. 
She
 "made the appeal after she noticed more and more adults wearing pyjamas at the school gates as well as at meetings and assemblies." 

and:

"Ms Chisholm said the final straw came when parents wore pyjamas to the Christmas show and to recent parents' evenings." 

She even has to explain herself:

""I'm not trying to tell people what to do with their lives, but I just think having a really good role model first thing in the morning, getting yourself up, getting yourself dressed, ready for business, out to school is a really good example to set." 

I am aghast.
Can you imagine how it must be for those children to go with their parents in pyjamas to a Christmas Show?

Cheers!

Dear You, 
the funny thing is, that since almost 3 months I don't drink any alcoholic beverages - (except one glass of champagne at my birthday and a few more on New Year's Eve).
No, I haven't become a teetotaller - it is just that at the moment I don't like to.
Now one of Lennart and Alina's wonderful birthday presents was a cocktail shaker and all other equipments that an amateur barkeeper needs. And the re-issued German cult book by Charles Schumann - yes, yes, he is the beautiful model for Baldessarini -'Separates the men from the boys' - "Schumann's Bar". (His bar in Munich was opened in 1982 - a time where in Europe it was difficult to find a classic Bar.)
When I visit L&A, I always look at their chic trolley-table from the Fifties, filled with bottles.
Wonderful - I want to have it! - but then I thought of the effect of films with Humphrey Bogart or Myrna Loy - these actors drink like a fish, and the audience is parched and longs for a cigarette, (though one had given up that vice more than twenty years ago).
I have no fears for L&A, because they always manage to survive the 40 days of Lent not tempted.
Now these days I was invited to the Botschaft des Königreichs der Niederlande, created by Rem Koolhaas and Ellen van Loon - a beautiful modern building!

I was also invited into one private apartment. And there I saw it: in the typical male furnishing stood a white glass cabinet - with wonderful old Scotch(es) and other whisky - splendid! A real eye-catcher!
And so I determined to change our parlours a bit to the Yang-side, give it a slightly more male touch. Away, away with those ultra-thin little porcelain cups - in stamped Mr. Laphroaig, Mr. Glenmorangie, Mr. Tanqueray & Co.
Looks very good - and till now they haven't seduced me.
Though: cocktail names like "Ward Eight", "Knockout Cocktail" or "Hurricane" make me a bit mistrustful (not to speak of 'Fallen Angel', 'Zombie' or 'Kamikaze') - when I start to shake I will begin genteel with Claridge, work up (or down - as you see it) to 'Bronx Medium', until I dare to touch the 'Dirty White Mother'.
Cheers! 

Gratitude

Dear You, 
I thought for a while before chosing this photo to illustrate "gratitude".
It shows that being grateful is like being a mirror: you notice what is around you, you reflect it - and don't take it just for granted. (Well - the image is a bit wobbly...)
Which we often do instead of being thankful.
When we feel down we sometimes narrow our vision and become unfair: we see only the half-empty glass, only 'poor-little-me'.
Actually I wanted to show here a video with the song of Ralph Mctell, "Streets of London" - but both versions on youtube were - so I think - exploiting and preying on private misfortune, so I choose another video instead, which even as a child I thought of as "pure envy" - the contrary of gratefulness: Peter Sarstedt's song "Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)?" Our 'captain' on the narrowboat on the Leeds-Liverpool-Canal, Matti, a musician, could perform it very well - the highlight was the little bitter laugh - ahahaha - in between. But hear yourself - what is the singer accusing the girl of? That she got what they both(!) aimed for - "with burning ambition"?
I hate it when people claim "I can look into your head" - (though nowadays, with all those people shouting their thoughts into their cellphone, we almost can - for a moment).

Back to gratitude: yes,  I write (almost every day) into a Gratitude Journal. I do it in the morning (being a morning person) and recall the blessings of the day before. At least five items.
I always find more.
Sometimes very trivial things - "first little violet opened her eyes - thanks she survived the hard winter!" (I am on good footing with it - so I am allowed to say "her") - or very important things.
The small things predominate - but that is just the trick, the charm: by being able to see that so much beauty and good surrounds you in everyday life one recognises that one must be a very dull person not to notice it.
A French proverb says:
                                          "Gratitude is the heart's memory." 
                                                                                                         So it is.

A Toothless Tiger In My Cabinet

This morning I read Gwil's poem "That Fruit May Grow Upon Your Trees" on http://poet-in-residence.blogspot.de/. So I took a photo of the little Kumquat on my windowsill - I admire its strength: 10 bulging little fruits, and still 9 to come. 

In the warmer season it is on the balcony - otherwise you might be overpowered by the scent of neroli. 

This morning I woke up incredibly late (for my schedule): 8 o'clock - can't remember that in the last ten years I ever managed to wake up that late. 

And what did I do with my exuberant energy? 

I polished the old silver fruit basket, the silver candle holder (five arms), and a beautiful little blue enamel bowl on a silver foot. 

Ah, and not to forget the little Lady Pistol from the French armourer 'Le Page à Paris' (official armourer of the Dukes of Orléans)  - founded at the beginning of the 18th century.

Don't fear,  I used up my energy in polishing - and: it has a pyrite lock (a bit broken), the cock is artfully recessed into the walnut and ebony wood and needs a whole lock to come out. 

It is just a very beautiful useless antique - and that is good, as I love peace.  

And oranges. 

(...that come all the way from China...)

What to Do With Heaps of Diaries?

Dear You, 

I started diary writing when I was almost twelve years old. I wrote a lot, and draw for a long time: family life, friends, and school were important (the drawings a bit pale): 

Here you see me with my (then) best friend Atie:

and little misfortunes as The Curious Incident of the Dog, who mistook our sledge for a tree were described meticulously in word and picture:

Atie and I wanted to stay together for all our life, thus I, then 13, was willing to marry her brother, so we would be relatives, Michael was five years older than I and allowed to drive the Merc of his father - here you see an interested young man with a tall, but very young girl:

Sorry to say that my family did a lot to sabotage my plans. Long walking tours (with my little sister),

Lots of sport:

And then Atie's father was called to Karlsruhe to become a Federal Public Prosecutor, so we wrote each other volumes of letters (with drawings, of course).
I wrote (almost) all my life. So: the question is what to do with all those diaries? Of course I will keep the childhood diaries - and the many ones that I wrote (with lots of quotations) during the time when our son lived at home.
But the others? Even now I still write. And as you see: I have always the intention to "Make it short!", but...  By now there are over 150 diaries. I will think quite a while what I will do with them.
I still remember that I was utterly downcast when my family told me that my great grandmother Anne-Marie von Kroge had written some diaries and that one had fulfilled her last will and put them with her into her coffin. (In my case I would need a mausoleum...)

As I promised, Rachel

A few days ago I told Rachel, who had published some of her drawings on a wall of her house that it reminded me of a wallpaper I had seen in Kensington Palace.
I had to look through some photos... (glad: the visual brain still works - I took the photograph in 2013 - thought: I do a lot to avoid learning Italian -just kidding, will start in a few minutes, diligently).
This part I absolutely love:

The Brand New Testament

Dear You, 
I started this year with fine resolutions, and so I packed many, many photos (2011 - 2014) onto a HDD - to make my computer run quicker. Well - and now I would have to search for a while to find a picture of the "Zoo-Palast" as illustration for 'cinema'. ..
Berlin is snowed in - or do you say: under?  We have two-figure minus Celsius degrees - together with what the BILD-Zeitung (the German equivalent of the SUN) calls "the Russian whip" - ice-cold wind, that makes us all grab our scarves after 10 minutes walk and put them in front of our faces - water running from our eyes... One feels a deep desire to hibernate. And on the radio they tell people who live in villages outside to start two (2!!) hours earlier to get here...
Why I go outside at all?
Well, I had a beautiful birthday present: a cinema card that allows me to visit 12 cinemas (some of them with 4 different cinema halls - and very good films) as often as I want for a whole year!
Yours Truly is in Heaven!
(Guess what I saw today?)