Ranting and Raving, fottuto!

It is very early in the morning. And very, very stormy.
I hear the ceaseless screeching of rakes outside: two men in orange are trying to catch the autumnal leaves - and we have a lot of them in (very) green Berlin.
"Hohoho!" cries the wind, preparing for Christmas. He thinks it very funny (sorry - as always I take "it" personally), he blows forcefully into the little heap of yellow leaves one man had - screech! screech! - scraped together. "Hohoho! Catch me if you can!"
They can't. But they try on and on.
Why do I tell you this?
Well...

At the moment, I'm deeply annoyed with my teaching book for learning Italian.
(Did you know that the Italian word "noioso" means "boring"? See it in 'annoyed'???)
It is NOT that la bella lingua bores me. Oh no.
I am a diligent pupil.
I take notes - every day! - when I do my compiti (every day!), my (volontary) homework.
Friday: 8:30 - 10:30:15.
Saturday: 9:30 - 11:00
Sunday: 8 30 - 9:15 (+ 15 minutes)
And so on, and so on...
Till now I had two (rather expensive) semester-classes by the Istituto Italiano di Cultura Berlino. I paid for the third - it started when I went for a week to Rome.
BUT there I got a sort of shock - what I understood I had known before I entered the first classe.
My textbook calls itself proudly "Chiaro!" meaning: "Clear" - hahaha.
I thought. Pondered. Decided - in absolute clearness - to repeat the second class.
Decided not to blame me (I am a quick me-blamer, but also a quick learner, even at my age :-)
Decided to blame that daft textbook, written by absolute nutters. Greedy nutters (in this aspect they are very "Chiaro". I got that insight when I bought the extra "Neue Power-Grammatik", the extra "Neue Übungsbuch", the extra "Power Wortschatz" and the extra "Große Übungsgrammatik" - all by Hueber-Verlag, all at least 15 Euro or more -- and learned by myself - it all became a little bit more "chiaro").
In classe, the main aim is to speak. From the very first day. That is fine with me, though I loathe exercises that ask: "Guess what this might mean. Write it down. Then: discuss it with your neighbour. Then we will snigger at you: hahaha - you got the plural WRONG! (Of course we didn't tell you anything about the plural - we thought: even singular might overexert your little brain - that's why we also don't tell you l'articolo neither, hahaha. Yes, you are right: it is VERY important, l'articolo - without knowing it grammar is like skiing on thinnest ice - you look like a mangling fool, haha - what, by the way, you are, in our opinion..)
If you think that I exaggerate - what do you think of these (true!!!) first vocables in Lesson 7 (mind: we didn't learn many words to help us in ordinary life - la vita quotidina:
lo sci estivo = summer ski (haha: I even don't do it in winter!)
la buca = here (how I hate that, here means: ONLY here, normally something else, haha): hole
l'alpinismo = mountaineering (OK - when I visit son&DIL in Allgäu, I will look up to them and cry: "Attenzione! Mountaineer carefully, please" - while, at the same time, rummaging desperately through my brain, I look for the word "hear" ("sentire/ascoltare" - thank you, deit.dic.cce).
l'equitazione = equestrian sports. (Good for England, I know, but before knowing that I want to be able to say "bevanda" - drink).
il parapendo = also a very valuable word - if I, one day in the future, want to start paragliding. Who knows? I might! (Really!) While I will abstain from "la pesca sportiva", sport fishing, definitely.
But: if I do my summer ski and fall into a hole, maybe I'll do sport fishing there, hoping a paraglider comes and rescues me...
Silly, silly, silly! 
I think one has to learn grammar (they think they overextert us with that, too), vocabulary, reading and writing. And of course start to speak.
For that they also gave us CDs - I would like to include a passage here, but I will protect your ears, the howling wind is enough rumore: the speaker tries to IMPRESS us poor pupils

, by speaking as quick as he can, so quick that he absorbs part of the words.
Mind: I have been in Rome, and yes: they speak very quick, BUT not as quick as the speaker on our CD, hahaha...
See why I howl with the wind?
Seee why I screech???

How to Stay Slim on a Full English Breakfast

Dear You, 
what do you think: will this title allure masses to my blog and thus raise my Stats?
My waist survived not only many Full English Breakfasts, but also a lot of tests of hoppy, fruity craft beers and loads of fish and chips too.
The secret? The godsent antidote?
That was our friend Mark Hanna. May I quote:

"Mark Hanna is co-author of our cruise cookbook, Greens and Grains on the Deep Blue Sea, and head chef for Holistic Holiday at Sea (...). Mark began his education in macrobiotics in 1978, and started cooking throughout North America at macrobiotic centers and summer camps, yoga retreats, Buddhist retreats, and natural food restaurants and cafés. During that time, he developed a creative approach to the normally austere macrobiotic cuisine. In addition to serving as the head chef on Holistic Holiday at Sea cruises, Mark travels throughout the world, cooking for events of all sizes."

Mark cooked for hundreds of people on cruises, so our narrowboat's tiny kitchen (which here looks tall - a well-known phenomen to all those who ever booked a hotel-room) - was no problem for him at all.

He was helped by Christian, who had learned from Mark to cook the macrobiotic way - and their dishes were so utterly delicious that we all - all the men & I - never missed meat or cream or whatsoever then.
We lived on a 2:1 - diet: 2 parts full English, one part macrobiotic.
So I think The Secret is alternation:
Matti sat in a fish and chips restaurant with a plate filled with half of the allowed fishing quota of the North Sea - in batter - saying: "This is what I call a correct portion!" - but then, another day, we all enjoyed our greens and miso and tofu (dressed up as meat. That is one thing I cannot understand about vegans: why do they try to form deceiving sausages, shrimps or burgers from tofu? Why not just call it 'honest tofu'?)
Well - I'm no vegan. Though I almost (!) became one when in Beamish I met this utterly friendly pig -

He leaned over the garden gate in quite an elegant way, swaggering a little bit on his tiny feet, blinking blue eyes under blonde eyelashes benevolently and trying to make friends with us - an effort which toppled him almost over that garden gate...
Back to diet-secrets: you can get away in life with quite a lot, I think - as long as you a) enjoy it with all your heart (and stomach); b) know your own limit c) enjoy change and d) do it in style.
Style for fish & chips you see on the first photo of this post - taken in Beamish, the exciting open-air museum.
At the end of a long walk through pictorial English history (and a side trip into the sweet shop)

I entered the museal fish and chip restaurant - on my own, my friends sat outside on the green, testing another fruity hop brew.
Inside a young lad asked what he could give me, and I said: "Nothing , thank you - I just want to look at your wonderful Art Deco fish and chip machine."
"Oh, but you MUST try them!" he cried out, "I'll bring you some for free!"
A deep voice from an elderly colleague came out of a corner "THAT  you have to accept - THAT he is not doing for everyone, love!" 
So I tested them - wonderful!
And we started to talk shop, about those fascinating Art Deco machines, and the very crisp chips:
"They remind me of some chips I got in Hastings", I said, "and their secret was the special fat they used... let me think: lard, it was." 
"Yes yes, he cried, "that's what I use here too!!!"  
So: choose quality. Don't overdo it. And enjoy.

PS: Next post I'll try to start from the beginning of our narrowboat trip :-)

Breakfast at Tiffany's

Dear You, 
inspired by Rosemary's blog "Where Five Valleys Meet" http://wherefivevalleysmeet.blogspot.de/2015/10/return-to-rousham.html  and the first of her gorgeous photographs I 'republish' a little story from my garden blog "Britta's Gardening in High Heels". (The next post will be on the narrowboat).


Breakfast at Tiffany’s


I sit in our garden in Hildesheim with a cup of tea and enjoy the sparkle and twinkle on the silky threads of the spiderwebs, glistening against the sunlight. When the air moves, silver and gold flash up.
Horizontal nets are spanned in the big box ball standing beside the rose arch, looking like miniature versions of the Olympic stadium in Munich. 
Delicate silver gossamer, elfine trampolines. 
They are better visible than the golden spider-webs that hang between the rose-twigs. 
When in the morning hundreds of dew drops hang inside them, drawing the spider threads down like heavy jewellery and throwing out sparks in the sun, they could jauntily take part in any contest of jewellers.
Yes: Today I’m having Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
For that breakfast the spider is waiting, too, though for her a less sparkling day would promise more booty. 
“Nothing is so finely spun/ it will come up into the sunlight” wrote Theodor Fontane in “Under the Pear Tree”. 
But sometimes The Good needs a lot of time to triumph, and before the victims have discovered the gossamer it is too late for some of them: the sticky threads attach themselves around delicate wings, and by attempting to flee in panic they only entangle themselves deeper, till finally the Master of the Web puts an end to it all.
“Then we have to grab the last relic of resource, then we ask for the word “Existence”, I hear from the terrace of my neighbour, the philosopher, who apparently is dictating an essay, just as I indulge in profound reflections upon Elusiveness and Beauty. 
The spider and I are eavesdropping - mesmerized.
“ We can turn towards the entities, die Wesenheiten, the things that ARE”, he continues, and the spider hopefully picks up knife and fork, “but then we have a problem.” 
Confused the spider drops its cutlery, because till now it didn’t have one.
“How do we ascertain wether the entities are real or not?”
This, my good man, the spider giggles, is very easy indeed. And bites into that, what still Is - but will have Been very soon.
“The nature of Being”, “the Concrete”, “the Abstract”, all these words flutter airily past my ears, lightweight as spider threads. 
A little bit sticks, but you cannot grasp it… 

Do not block!

Dear You, 
I must have got that wrong.
Saw this 'Writing on the Wall' on our narrow boat trip, when we travelled for one week on the Leeds & Liverpool Canal, and then drove with a van up to Newcastle, Durham and Edinburgh.
"Do not block" - today. when I sifted the 1235 photos from our lovely, lovely tour I saw my mistake:
error - so I am allowed to blog on!
I am also very thankful to Susan who writes the blog "Southern Fascination" - she shook me up by a recent comment, asking: "So, Dear Britta, has the traveler made it home? You are missed."
That touched me. I thought of an well-known Zen-story, where a learned man travelled a long way to meet a Zen-priest, to learn even more about Zen. You know what follows: the monk pours tea into the cup of the guest, and pours and pours. "But can't you see that the cup is overflowing!" cries out the guest. "I know", answers the monk, "so is your mind - you have to empty it first to be able to receive more."
And boy: my mind was overflowing with impressions. The chip card of my camera was more carefree - almost 3000 photos it filed without grumbling - having accompanied me
- two weeks through England & Scotland
- followed by a wonderful week with friends in the Imperial Spa Bansin at the Baltic Sea, and then
- in an impressive week at Rome, together with husband.
So: my cup was more than full. Full with the lovliest Darjeeling, to stay in the picture, but nevertheless: overflowing.

But you know me: I never am quiet for long, and I am a roly-poly doll (no, I didn't gain weight - though the many "FullEnglish breakfasts" tried their best,

as tried the many, many pubs with their special craft beers - our navigator Matti is a specialist for these arty beers, and finds always the right smashing pubs:

and then a London friend, an editor of a big newspaper, joined us (among other lovely people) - and he was a beer expert too; he had written a blog on craft beer with a title like "Through the Year with 365 different craft beers" -- well, and then imagine me (if I drink beer at all, on a hot summer day, it must be a wheat beer):
I will be remembered as the Little Red Rooster - oh no, sorry, I was the only little hen of that party, who always chirped "Only half a pint, please", while the male world bravely tested the hoppy, fruity goods,
But we tested the spirits of culture too -- and enjoyed a lovely landscape (and astonishing good weather), we made music, and visited really impressing cities -
and I promise: I will show you a glimpse of that - pint by pint bit by bit in my next post.
And I will try to dive deeply into your blogs again - of course with better results than the poor guy who one early foggy morning fell into the canal just in front of our narrow boat - nothing happened to him, the canal was shallow, but police and ambulance came nevertheless and helped him - though we had already given him a blanket and the very British panacea, the universal remedy:
a mug of strong, sweet hot tea.

Harris said, however, that the river...

...would suit him to a "T."  (Jerome K. Jerome)

Well - it did in 2013 on our last narrowboat trip, though as in 2013 husband will stay in Berlin and guard our flat: he doesn't feel comfy in a narrowboat, being 1.98m tall.
For compensation we will both travel to Rome later.
Now I'm looking forward to our next narrowboat trip - different crew (not all artists this time) and different route. We will add a week with a car, visiting Durham, Leeds and Edinburgh.
(About the date of the new trip I will speak when I am back - I don't want to invite people from the Wild Wood).

“Here today, up and off to somewhere else tomorrow! Travel, change, interest, excitement! The whole world before you, and a horizon that's always changing!” (Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows)

I just HAVE to show you this:

Poem - Handed on a Silver Platter

I love the drawings of the Fifties, and sometimes, when I find a book on the fleamarket, I buy it - not because of its (sometimes quite silly) content, but because of the little sketches - so light, so happy, so carefree.
Of course I should add an illustration here and now - but I am to lazy at the moment to pick up my camera.
So I'll try to translate a little bit of a text from Anton Schnack (an author rightly forgotten by now; drawings by Max Schwinger) It is called "Flirt mit dem Alltag - Flirt with Everyday Life", which leads us through the year.
In August I found this sentence for the travelling gardener, which made me wonder:

"Also forgo on early apples and early pears voluntarily: they will be picked unfailingly by free-roaming lads."

Written in 1956.
Well: in the last decades I didn't see any lads nicking apples, or plums, or cherries.
Must have gone out of style.
Maybe it is the fault of the so-called helicopter-parents, hovering over their only child, driving it to violin- and Chinese-lessons - no time to roam through the neighbourhood.
Or fault of the supermarket - everything is there on the shelf.
I remember my astonishment when we still lived on our little island in Hildesheim that people didn't even take home plastic bags of already picked apples that somebody had kindly put in front of her garden gate. Maybe nobody knows how to make an apple pie anymore? Or doesn't care, being bone-idle, as Onslow in Keeping-up Appearances would say?
Well - if no lads had wanted any apples or pears ever, we would never have gotten Theodor Fontane's beautiful and wise poem, written in 1889 and still read today (if this doesn't impress you, maybe this will: "In 2007, the original manuscript of the poem was sold for 130.000 EUR at an auction at Berlin.):

Herr von Ribbeck auf Ribbeck im Havelland  (rough translation by me)

Herr von Ribbeck auf Ribbeck in Havelland: 
a pear tree in his garden stood, 
and when the time of golden autumn came, 
and the pears shone far and wide, 
then, when the clock chimed from the tower at noon, crammed  
the von Ribbeck both his pockets full, 
and when in his pattens came up a lad, 
he cried out: "Lad, do you want a pear?" (this is in dialect, can't translate that) 
And came a girl, he called "Little dear, 
come over, I have a pear!" 

(...)

Well - after his death his stingy son greedily protected the pears - but the old von Ribben ("von" means lower gentry)

but the old one, already anticipating, 
and full of distrust against his own son, 
he knew exactly, what he did then, 
when begging for a pear in his grave, 
(...)

You guess it: after three years a pear tree grows from the grave - serving pears for free.
Oh - come to think of it: a lot of things have changed from 1889:

- children prefer pineapples to apples 

- dialect is often extinguished 

- wooden pattens aren't worn anymore - they are replaced by plastic clogs 

- and if old von Ribbeck had offered his pears to little boys or girls, the stern members of child protective services would have cast more than one suspicious look at him. 

PS: the silver-plated fruit basket I found on a fleamarket too.

 

Smile!

Dear You, 
see: one must 'only' have the idea to change something ordinary into something that makes us smile. (I photographed this street barrier in Hamburg).
Which leads me to barriers we build ourselves within and which might stop us from smiling. To be specific: I looked for the reason why I didn't write that many posts in July.
The answer surprised me: I felt overwhelmed!
I really wanted to tell you about the gorgeous trip to New York with my daughter-in-love, and our meeting with a wonderful blogger there, staying overnight with her in the breathtaking surroundings of the Hudson-River. I haven't told you about all that (or shown any of the more than 600 photographs) - partly because I'm too lazy at this hot time of the year - yes, Berlin is boiling, and I don't complain! - partly because I am still travelling the world (haha: world - this time to Hamburg and Munich - LOVELY!).
Well, and as you all know by now: ths wayward Daoist tries very much to "live in the moment" - which often conflicts with another person in me, the diligent chronicler.
But it is way too hot to fight... even with myself - can't see my Jungian shadow because the sun seems to stand right above me... (is this a good metaphor/ picture? Too lazy to think about it).
Can you imagine: I even didn't learn any Italian the last weeks, acciderba!
Know what?
I just don't care. (Knowing myself I know that I will start again with Love in a Cold Climate).
Eventually.
So: I'll prepare a nice breakfast and sit on our balcony - it is still early, the air is mild and the birds look reproachfully at me (they don't dare to sip water from the birth bath on the little table).
Please don't join in! (Looking reproachfully, I mean).

"It must have been difficult to leave".

Dear You,
"It must have been difficult to leave", you wrote in your comment, dear Emma.
And it was.
Not that difficult on an emotional basis (I will come back - so I am pragmatic), but on the everyday level: while on arrival I had been picked up by car at the airport of Heraklion, I had to cross the whole island on my own when leaving.
The flight started around 11 o'clock in the morning - "And don't believe that busses will be punctual in Crete!" a Lady in a Berlin travel agency uttered pessimisically.
But they were punctual! (More than our S-Bahn in Berlin at the moment, where one strike haunts the other).
But of course it would have been a stressful undertaking, so I arrived one day before leaving. First I took a taxi, than from Ierapetri a bus - which was very crowded, though nobody carried a chicken or a goat, which wouldn't have surprised me. It took hours, but those were amusing, because I could talk with a French Lady.
Husband had booked me a lovely hotel room in Heraklion - yes, now I indulged in luxury without a bad conscience - and I gratefully accepted to become even upgraded to a room with a balcony overlooking the harbour.

In the evening I strolled about the old harbour,  

and visited the Fortress of the Sea - a tower that was built in Hellenistic times, than rebuilt in the 7th or 8th century, and was called after the Venetian Conquest Castellum Communis - after a large earthquake in 1523 it was decided to replace it with the existing fortress.  

All day it had been a bit rainy, first time ever, and the sea and the sky painted wonderful pictures. 

...the last one almost a Dutch painting... 

From Crete with Love

Dear You, 
NO - it wasn't us - if you scrutinise the graffito you will see that someone did it in 2013, so: "Proved to be innocent". 

Yesterday I went to a lovely party and came back this morning at 2 o'clock, so I'm still a bit tired, but as fresh as a daisy, having followed Queen Mum's example - sticking to G&T. 
So I hope you will be sympathetic about me doing my school work in a somewhat slack way... 

Showing you pictures of my stay in Crete.
Look, Mise: see my pink little rucksack on my bed? A torch of luxury in a rural though wonderful surrounding.

The little cottages my Italian friend bought are under preservation of sites of historic interest - I felt a bit like a damsel (but not in distress - not even in the last week, when I lived there all on my own, I had no fear. Somewhere were neighbours... :-) - and the one green snake I met on a walk was quicker moving away than I.

But no WiFi, but beautiful nature - this whole part, Aspros Potamos, is proud of staying as much as Walden Pond as possible. (Of course Walden Pond is my interpretation).
But you might know me by now (a bit): even in the deepest wilderness this woman - The Lady of the house speaking - is Keepingup Appearances (hint: look at the tea bag):

One has to walk 1 km through olive olive groves to come to the village of Makrygialos, and the sea.
I had a special place in a wonderful Gelateria, with homemade icecreams - but as I confounded the strict regulations about the permissible maximum weight for the flight luggage and mine, most of the times I took only a cappuccino. On the other side of the sea is Africa.

And the people were so very, very friendly! Even though I confessed being German...(the only grumpy person was a manager in a bank, but we laughed about him and enjoyed the cherries a man had brought with him and shared with all of us).
Weather: end of May/ start of June: utterly marvelous! Lots of sun, and in the second week the water was warm too.
In that (solitary) week I met a lovely couple from Herfordshire, a Godsend, and we did and laughed a lot together, They even walked me back at night half of the way through the olive groves.
Though I already had started to become a courageous woman anyhow:

here you see me after a ride to the monastry of Kapsas, where a Flamish translator took me (you saw the lovely stone pattern in my last blogpost).
Imagine: the last time I sat on a motorcycle behind my Dad I was five years old! Now I felt like Albertine from the film "Zazie dans le Metro" (and I told you, my Dad's name is Albert)
To drive the long winded road along the coast on a scooter was an adventurous treat!!

And yes, I will be back in Crete - maybe in September (but then my friends are waiting for me to join another narrowboat trip, different route), so maybe I will be back next year in early summer.

A Plunge into Monks' Work

Dear You, 
I'm back from my utterly gorgeous holidays. First almost two weeks in New York, then almost two weeks in Crete.
I will tell you soon about it, I have many adventures to sing about, and many photos to show.
But since I'm back I felt somehow overwhelmed when I thought of all that I want to talk about, and refrained. Kept my mouth shut (very unusual for me).
Then I looked at the photograph of the frontyard in Kapsa's Monastry on Crete - and found the answer to the "Why?" for my reluctance to write.
It seems like work to me - and (real) work I have enough at the moment.
As always I need more patience. 
So I will start and put one little stone after the other onto the ground - not all at once.
"Monnik-werk" - "monk's work" this kind of floor is called, a Flamish translator on Crete told me.
And if one is very diligent, something beautiful might become of it.
So I'll start - otherwise I'll might stare at my heaps of beautiful little stones - and keep silent forever, overawed.

"... 's on the Road Again", lalala

Dear You, 

I'm so sorry: I really had no time - neither to write, nor to read your blogs or to comment.

"Like it or not we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty, but they are also more open to the creative energy of men than any other time in history."

Robert Kennedy said it in his speech in Cape Town in June 1966.
Please wish me creative energy.
I'm about to leave on Monday, together with my lovely daughter-in-love (yes, yes, I know the right expression - but I prefer this beautiful phrase coined by Susan).
Imagine: We'll go to New York!!!! (Only for a week, but nevertheless)
(Husband in Berlin and her husband - my lovely son - in Munich) will house-sit, while we are having fun.
And then, back again, after a very short pause I'll visit Crete for two weeks.

See my long-known photograph above, which I took years ago in the Victoria and Albert Museum?
It became a sort of emblem for me - and I love it!

Atonement and Acknowledgement to Mise

In her last blog Mise complained about not getting enough acknowledgement.
:-)     :-)      :-)    (Of course I would prefer little hand-painted periwinkles as on my Royal Doulton to these gross smileys, but on my computer there aren't that many left). In our modern and hectic life I learned that it is a fault not to use emoticons - nobody seems to  understand a little irony, especially the British people sadly lack it, though in former times it was one of their most famous literary virtues. (To be on the safe side:
:-)    :-)     :-)

The Irish people have kept their sense of humour. Especially Mise. See for yourself:

http://prettyfarwest.blogspot.de/2015/04/insufficiently-acknowledged.html

Oh, I got it a bit wrong: acknowledgement she gets, for her academic publications, but not elaborated and magniloquent enough, with far too few adjectives, on the whole far too tight-lipped - "insufficient" in one word.
Maybe you read my post "The Admirer" a few weeks ago - which I sent into the nirvana of blogland for some reasons I will not discuss here, where I spoke about my newly invented profession of "admirer" (well, after that I had some of them in my tows... they reminded me of Major Wilton-Smythe or Violet's husband Bruce. The Major has a way of conducting himself when in my presence that I do not always find helpful to me in my role as hostess. It is difficult to maintain one's dignity, which is so much part of my candlelight suppers, if one is continually being referred to as 'my little minx'.) 

Oh yes, it is a fact: nowadays people are praised far too little!
In my old blog "You are witty and pretty" (why did I ever give it up? http://www.youarewittyandpretty.blogspot.de/) I had a sort of column were I acknowledged my followers/bloggers from "The Bouquet residence - The  lady of the house speaking".
After that I became lazy with praise.

So I will make atonements here and praise Mise:

I love your blog - I should write "I LOVE your blog", because it always makes me laugh out loud, or at least smile.
Your writing style is as superb as that of the Provincial Lady (whom we both admire), it is not only about keeping up appearances, but also deeply profound.
As soon as your memoir or autobiography is on the market, Mise, I will buy it and put it into my book section: "Improving the Mind".
I mean "it would be entirely wrong of me to limit your social and cultural horizont by letting you know what I read and appreciate. However, since you have asked, I will admit that my favourite authoress is Dame Barbara Cartland. The fact that she has been honoured by Her Majesty to whom she has also been a kind of step-aunt-in-law, has nothing to do with the acceptability of her books, of course. But they are innocent, life-affirming and entirely without any untoward biological detail. And short. 
Other aristrocratic authors are less reliable. Ever since I once read something about Lord Byron, which I do not need to repeat here, I have been wary of members of the nobility who write. Sir Winston Churchill is a safe bet, of course. I have a picture of him on my dining room wall. His books were rather long, but entirely safe to lend, even to one's grandmother. 
Art is a different matter." 
To this delicate topic, might I refer to: http://prettyfarwest.blogspot.de/2015/04/a-cautionary-note-for-all-artists-on.html ) ?

Mise, I'm waiting for your memoirs or autobiography - "let us in on some of your more precious secrets, so that we too will learn how to become the focus of our neighbourhood, and to be considered as central to our own social whirl."
I'm absolutely sure: Your book (served in floral endpapers - I hope you choose PINK flowers!) will be "broadening the mind" - and our smile!
And when the numbers of your sold books soar up to the millions, which they will in a second, I will invite you to one of my famous candlelight suppers, given: "for all those who delight in sophisticated conversation in spotless surroundings with the best crockery and cutlery"

Rumpelstiltskin (in My Garden! - Ground Elder)

Today I feel like the greedy king in the fairy tale of Rumpelstiltskin.
You remember: the miller, to make that already lovely maid even more attractive, bragged to the king that his daughter could spin straw to gold, and then the poor girl sits in one of the King's big chambers, filled with straw, and can make it only with Rumpelstiltskin's help. But as in most fairy tales once is not enough: three time's the greedy king lusts for more, and each time the amount of straw she has to spin becomes more and more...
And why do I feel like this?
Well, today is the first time of this year that Julia came, Julia who helps me to pretend that it is Me who is in charge of my garden - being the king of the castle, so to speak.
Last year we put up a brave fight against the green weedy members of the occupying forces on the long gravel walks, so I think Julia is now sophisticated enough to become consecrated into the secrets of battling ground elder, which has as many names as rhizomes: bishopswort, ashweed, goatweed, pigweed, English masterwort, herb gerard, and, and, end! - lets do the only sensible thing that gardeners all over the world do when talking to a foreign friend: they use the Latin word, Aegopodium podagraria, and everything is clear.    
In the mind - not in the garden beds.
On the gravel walk it is almost impossible to make a mistake, but that is a place which ground elder seldom chooses - no, it prefers the herbaceous perennials, penetrates them lovingly by crocheting its rhizomes deeply into their roots. (It is not for nothing that you speak of garden beds).
That, like a strong spouse, provides it with the best possible protection you can think of.
First I tell Julia that she has to be gentle and careful with the perennials.
Then I show her the other plants that have to be spared - they are almost invisible among the gay green entanglement of bishopweed's leaves, wearing their magic hood on the silver-green lancet-shaped leaves of the faded snowdrops; the dark green spiky leaves with the white stripe in the middle of faded crocuses; the just now unfolding lime green powdered leaves of the auriculas; the pale pink waxen shoots of the bleeding hearts - they all must be lovingly protected from damage, while eliminating bishopsweed thoroughly.
Julia does her job very well, and she tells me that she almost enjoys weeding ground elder.
I share her feelings: when I do it, especially after a light warm summer rain that areates the soil, I sometimes fall into a kind of trance - I am hooked in more than one way, become cunning, hoe into the earth and triumph when I succeed in catching a particularly long string of a sub terrestrial rhizome.
At night after such a weeding orgy it can happen that I lie in my bed, my back hurting like hell, and behind my closed lids I see rows and rows of tiny dark red heads, helmets of an unending army of bishopsweed; I see the Chinese Terracotta Warriors and I feel as deadly exhausted as Qin Shi Huang Di. 
There are little triumphs, reminding me that nothing in life is only good or bad: if you have The Knack and neither pull too firmly nor too meekly, you might catch 50 centimetres or more of the rhizome, and tearing it up you gloat with pride and call yourself a Master of the 5. DAN and wrap your Godan around your hurting hips and Julia calls you RHENSHI.
Dream on... -  in the end there is always only ONE winner - and that's not I...
Cut ground elder's rhizome with your spade accidentally, and it will behave like Rumpelstiltskin, who out of fury ripped himself in two parts at the end.
See? SEE, gentle reader and knowing gardener, where the author is leading you to? Yes: as a connoisseur you see the Learnean Hydra, raising her nine ugly heads and be sure: you'll always come to the one that is immortal and thus indestructible, and your labour will start again, my dear Hercules.
And why am I feeling like the king in Rumpelstiltskin?
Well: Julia cheerfully worked two-amd-a-half hours in one flowerbed.
But then, when this task is done, and the new day dawns, a glance at the bed behind the rose trellis will reveal another chamber, twice as big, filled with the double portion of straw -- err, no -- a bigger bed, filled with ground elder....    

Rituals and Targets

Dear You, 
thank you for your kind wishes! I am myself again, and happy about that.
The good thing about growing older is, that by now one knows oneself a little bit better - and I do not only know my reactions (and the time they will approximately take to heal - and if I forget I can browse through my more than 150 diaries) but also some measures I can take (or: continue) to find my balance again.
One of these wonderful stabilising tools are rituals.
"It's vital to establish some rituals - automatic but decisive patterns of behavior - at the beginning of the creative process, when you are most at peril of turning back, chickening out, giving up, or going the wrong way",
writes Twyla Tharp in her interesting book "The Creative Habit".
Every morning I light a little candle on my table, and have tiny fresh flowers for the whee little buddha, and I thank the Tao for being alive. A little bowl on the windowsill reminds me to see my day as a beggar's-bowl: wide open, but without knowing (or expecting) what the day will put into it. (And to clear my mind of too many thoughts and concepts, so that - as in the Zen story - "new tea can be filled in that cup without making it overflow by too much tea that's already in it.")

                                 I once told you that I do not only eat a rich breakfast, every day, come what may (porridge with wheatgerm on it and blueberries, a boiled egg every day, half a grapefruit and a little bowl of cottage cheese and a mug of strong tea - yes, with sugar - and then a big French bowl of hot milk with an espresso in it) - but that I also greet the day - summer, winter, every day: I step on our balcony (which is large and protected by the glass front behind me and 2 walls beside me, and the floor of the balcony above, and I sip my tea, greet Berlin's skyline silently and then look at my flowers, and feed the birds (in summer only with water). I write in my diary, and then I do my version (more correct: my dear friend Stephen Russell's) version of very quick Tai Chi (that takes about 18 minutes) - and than I hop into the bathroom.
Where I remain a while, because an exact Amy Winehouse eyeliner takes it's time :-)
Then I'm ready for the day.
Yes - I am a lark,  meaning I get up very early.
The only other ritual in the day is much later a meditation (and one of the three sports: weight-lifting, yoga or walking).
If I still feel under the weather, I try to come into contact with nature or beauty:

- that's why I have subscriptions for museums and the Botanic Garden and photo-galleries.
I draw (wonderful to bring my mind to rest).
Reading poetry, and then getting into touch with my own creativity works also:

I meet people - and talk with them - sometimes with mere strangers who tell me often very interesting things. To satisfy my "wanderlust" in a normal week, I often go by train to a spot I do not know (I have Knut, but I prefer trains to cars when I go on my own).
Sometimes I keep my mouth shut for a while - very invigorating too (for those around me, and myself)...
And the discipline of learning Italian is sometimes like a wonderful "girdle for the brain" - though I might whine and wail that I have forgotten all I learned three days before, and that I will never get fluent in it - I see my plodding progress - and plod on.
And of course - beside my work - there are wonderful people to thank and think of - and letters or mails to send, blogs to read or to write.
You see: I won't get lost in Alice's Pool of Tears.

I mean: that would ruin my Amy Winehouse-eyeliner -- than I would have to start drawing it again....
Oh no - I feel better this way, quite centred again.

PS: Before you ask - the dog does not belong to me, I saw it and quickly took a photo.

"...she had wasted all this time being beautiful."

"She did not like her name. It was a mean, small name, with a kind of facetious twist, she thought, about its end like the upward curve of a pugdog's tail. There it was, however. There was no doing anything with it. Wilkins she was and Wilkins she would remain; and though her husband encouraged her to give it on all occasions as Mrs. Mellersh-Wilkins she only did that when he was within earshot, for she thought Mellersh made Wilkins worse, emphasising it in the way Chatsworth on the gate-posts of a villa emphasises the villa. 
   When first he suggested she should add Mellersh she had objected for the above reason, and after a pause - Mellersh was much too prudent to speak except after a pause, during which he presumably was taking a careful mental copy of his coming observation - he said, much displeased, 'But I am not a villa,' and looked at her as he looks who hopes, for perhaps the hundredth time, that he may not have married a fool. " 

You will have recognized it, Dear You: a quote from my annual read of "The Enchanted April" by Elizabeth von Arnim - and of course, though it is quite lovely too, you see at a glance why the film they made of it (and which I watch every year too) cannot transport a quarter of the wit of this novel.
Elizabeth von Arnim was a writer who wrote lots and lots of books - which, at their best, were as entertaining as enlightening (she wrote trash too).

I love all the characters: Mrs. Lotty Wilkins who often "sees" something which later really comes true (we share this virtue); Mrs. Rose Arbuthnot - with the face of a sad madonna - is a bit far from me, as is Mr. Briggs, but the old cranky Mrs. Fisher is wonderful. Till she comes to San Salvatore, she prefers to live in the past.

"Carlyle had had scowled on her; Matthew Arnold had held her on his knee; Tennyson had sonorously rallied her on the length of her pig-tail. (...) 
Indeed, she seemed to think that they also were widows, for on enquiring who the fourth lady was to be, and being told it was a Lady Caroline Dester, she said, 'Is she a widow too?' And on their explaining that she was not, because she had not yet been married, observed with abstracted amiability, 'All in good times.' 
(...) 'Did you know Keats?`eagerly interrupted Mrs. Wilkins. 
Mrs. Fisher, after a pause, said with sub-acid reserve that she had been quite unacquainted with both Keats and Shakespeare. 

But (of course) Lady Caroline Dester is the one I'm most fond of!
She is tired of social life and of men, who all want to possess her, grab her.

(...) she had wasted all this time being beautiful. Presently she wouldn't be beautiful, and then? (...) to become inconspicious, to fade, to grow shabby and dim, would probably be most painful. And once she began, what years and years of it there would be! Imagine (...) having most of one's life at the wrong end. Imagine being old for two or three times as long as being young. Stupid, stupid. Everything was stupid. 
(...) If nobody at San Salvatore had ever heard of her, if for a whole month she could shed herself, get right away from everything connected with herself, be allowed really to forget the clinging and the clogging and all the noise, why, perhaps she might make something of herself after all. She might really think; really clear up her mind; really come to some conclusion. 

 Of course they'll all do - I see it!

"Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz?"

Today I have been - for the first time in my life - at a stockholders' meeting. Because: I found a new motto for 2015 in an interview with Juliette Greco, who explained something extraordinary she did by saying: "I don't want to die stupid". 
Nor do I.
So - normally abhorring and avoiding any meeting in my agency if ever I can find an excuse - I accepted my invitation by Daimler for their stockholders' meeting - in Berlin, served on a silver tablet, so to speak.
In the S-Bahn (parking places are rare) I looked around and spotted a couple that looked as if they were going to attend that meeting.
I was right. They were - and they looked like it.
I looked very posh, too, but as ever a bit - different - with black Lagerfeld half-finger kid-leather gloves (very sexy), a wonderful slim rasberry-red jackett, a huge black patent leather bag that Kate Moss had promoted, black denim jeans, and a lot of eye-make-up, as ever. (Come to think of it: THAT , Dating Agencies, is a market to chase potential husbands, much more promising than the macramé courses at adult education centers. Though sorry to say: most of those evidently rich blokes were not the type I prefer - I have a faible for - well: different men. And: I am happily married. AND earn my own money - such a luck).
(Feel forced by a rather previous incident to add a footnote: please: I don't want to have to despatch this post into oblivion too, just because one follower or another doesn't see my winking eye, so:
:-)  :-) :-)  = smiley, smiley, smiley!  
When I went into the big assembly hall, I had the feeling that thus might look the hall of Scientology - I mean: as I think it might look, I've never been there.
Big, big screens on the wall. Very uplifting music. Very beautiful people (in the film, not in the assembly hall - beside of me, of course, and a few young men who might be students of economics, and a few young girls who had to lead people to their seats. Having worked in my student days as translator on fairs and exhibitions, I know how much your face hurts in the evening because of the permanent smile one has to put on (and the hands of old man off), and I learned one very important thing: Never wear new shoes when you are working on a fair - they will kill you...)
In front of the huge screens sat tiny little men (the supervisory board).
7, I counted, but one of those little men was a woman, but I could not identify which... Later, when people - we were always addressed  as "owners" - were allowed to put questions, a female professor asked: "Why is only one women in your supervisory bord? Our aim is to have at least 50% women there". Though I agree with more women being there, I found "at least" a bit disturbing - and very optimistic. And girls, you have to prepare for a hard, tough fight to get there: when I heard what those board members earn in one year - I realized: "I'm in the wrrrong profession". This insight comes a bit late, but maybe they are searching for a woman to fulfill their "Frauenquote".  I will volunteer. And promise to attend to every meeting :-)
Till they ask me: I take the liberty to walk away after half the meeting (oh yes, I had a nice snack, and: oh yes, I voted).
Their new cars: absolutely beautiful. Never owned a Merc myself. (But a beautiful Lancia Beta 2000).
Humming:  Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz. Prefering Janis Joplin, but could only find this:

PS: Oh... I lost by accident all the interesting pictures I took today of the stockholder meeting - all the beautiful cars - from my smartphone - vanished into haze...

Ss-ss--Summertime Blues...

Dear You, 

AGAIN!!! It happened AGAIN! I didn't grasp it - the change to summertime! Though I had your interesting English mnemonic  - "spring" and "fall" in mind.
Yesterday I even got a bit angry thinking (in advance) of it; being an early riser I thought: "Then it will be even earlier when I wake up". To my surprise it wasn't. Hahaha.
My little error in reasoning is why I didn't warn Husband, who had booked a berth in a sleeping car to go to Munich in the night from Saturday to Sunday. (He left from Hildesheim, I was sitting in my haziness in Berlin). But - being a man - it was all clear to him and he left in due time, without any channelling by me :-)
This morning (almost in a hurry - because it was - surprise! - one hour later than expected - but then: it was Sunday) I thought of former times, very far back, once upon a time, when due to the change to summertime I arrived to leave at Heidelberg station in wrong time. Errrgg sorry, shamefully I have to correct: "Twice upon a time..." And did I learn from it? Oh no, not I...
It is the same as with directions, but there I am not alone: my friend Anne - and many women I know - each time walk to the left when we stand in front of a station and our map pretends to direct us to the right. (I even invented a map for women - I mean: if I hold the man-made map upside down, it works... But then came Google-map, so I am still not rich).
Oh - Yes: I am able to learn very complicated words in Italian, as "frigorifero" or "abbassamento in chiave" (sometimes I even suspect that this 'abbassamento in chiave' might be the reason why I can't grasp the right direction) - but maybe, I think, the very reason for my summertime-change-blackout is that I am just utterly unconvinced that summertime change is necessary or helpful... and then I get stubborn... which is so utterly idiotic...(come to think of it: as is that change to summertime).
Alas! you know me, dear friend: I always make the best of it...
So I congratulate myself on being ...
... timeless...

(Though utterly punctual, I have to add - when I have adjusted my watch...)

Eulogy For A Tree

Since we came to live in Berlin, it was there: the tree in the backyard. 

Morning and evening, 

winter, spring, summer and autumn. 

Yesterday I heard the chainsaw screaming in the backyard. Of course Robert Frost's lines sprang into my mind, but nobody listened when I howled "Out, Out!" -

"The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard

And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood, (...)

I'm not overly sentimental (I hope), and the renter will have had her reasons (two big branches had broken down over the years).

But I will miss it - it was the nicest sight the backyard had to offer.

"Half she pulled him, half he sank yieldingly..."

(Being always quite shocked by the translation Google offers for our Blog texts, I will try to give you a - hopefully - better version done by myself. Assuming that you are not that deeply interested in Berlin's city views and history, I shorten my German post a bit).
"Half she pulled him, half he surrendered..." (as I put it) is a quote from Johann Wolfgang v. Goethe's poem "The Fisherman" - maybe you like Karl Friedrich Curschmann's (18005 - 1841) version better: "half pulled by her and half sinking himself," he translated.  
If you look at Ernst Herter's bronze sculpture - the title is "A Rare Catch" and it was created in 1896. it stands at a little pond bank in Viktoria Park in Berlin-Kreuzberg. . .you see that in his case it might be vice & versa. (I might even call it "Partners in Grime" :-) , because the mermaid and the fisher look both lewed).
So many German poems and short stories deal with mermaids, and all the other inhabitants of water and sea. I also love Oscar Wilde's story "The Fisherman and His Soul" - where the poor infatuated young fisherman tries to get rid of his soul to be able to live with the mermaid. And of course Frederick Leighton's beautiful picture, or Arnold Böcklin's.
There are a lot of interpretations of what the mermaid might be a symbol for - very famous is Carl Gustav Jung's "Archetype" with the devouring part of mother&woman - I would like to discuss it, but two day's ago was "International Woman's Day", and so I follow Hyacinth Bucket's (pronounce: "Bouquet") advice: "Leave it, leave it, leave it..."
The mermaid, not having a soul, is the eternal seductress; brilliantly depicted in Gottfried Keller's poem "Sea Fairy Tale" (again roughly translated by me):

(...) and kissed him the Red from his lips.
Three days she had diverted herself,
On the fourth she let the dead body
Glide out of her arms.
Then she shot up to the sunny light
And looked over to the shore;
With purple she made up her white face
And sang while drawing closer to the shore.

Not the nicest way to see women. (I might even be tempted to talk about Jung's "Shadow" now).
And not a good foundation for love... but to make a sacrifice of one's soul is also not a good option. To open up the heart: YES - let him/her in. To warm the other with one's love: YES. But don't take away the air to breathe, or the water to swim in, the elements which the other person needs to exist (but you don't, and might not even understand) - they should be accepted. How many people sacrifice their friends, their originalities, their aims when the lover just whistles once... One shouldn't: otherness is (and remains) tempting.
Otherwise it might happen that our dear prince of poets, J. W. v. Goethe, hits the nail right on the head again with another line of his poem: "and never was seen again." He speaks of the poor sinking fisherman - but we might take it as a metaphor for one partner devouring the other, wanting the sacrifice of his soul - and I know quite a lot of pairs where just that has happened.

At the Bottom of the Treacle Well...

Dear You,
Yesterday I made a few finger-exercises, wrote a blog post, then went to bed without publishing it - a good idea, as I saw when reading it again in the cool morning light (yes, it was early).
At the moment the morning air often has a very refreshing and cooling effect on my ideas or worries or projects I developed at night.
Normally I sleep through. Not at the moment, though I tried to follow all those well-meant tips from health-gurus for getting the sleep you NEED: the word alone makes me fret - can't sleep worrying about the amounts of sleep I NEED - yes, scientists explored it for the umpteenth time at a university in *** - though to read their simplistic stats MIGHT make me sleepy and drowsy, - better than a cup of Horlicks + the added bonus of Barbara Pym. (I like her - don't misunderstand me - but I find her very soothing too...)
There is a lot of dry humour in her novels - but maybe not everone will see it - as Tom wrote in a comment on my comment on innuendo (my sort of) - he said that maybe Google can't understand it (or were it the English men? Can't remember - but no:  that can't be, as extensive field research by Dear Me showed in clear results: they Do understand. So he must have meant Google).
Being quite chirpy at night, I feel like Lewis Carroll's Dormouse in daytime. Maybe I'm a victim of "spring fever" - is that the medical term - or is it "springtime lethargy"? (Too lethargic to look it up).  Lethargy, I feel, is right here, cuddling me in his soft grips - though spring is still nearing. The air changes: some soft notes lure and purr under the crispy cold in the morning, and the singing of our alpha blackbird is getting even more combating and challenging.
Well - I think I shall publish my blogpost quickly. Now. Otherwise - if I sleep about it over night, the cooling effect of the fresh morning air tomorrow will nipp my Darling Buds of May again.
Well: we only have March. Might go to a Mad Tea-Party. Visit the March Hare.
"You might just as well say," added the Dormouse, who seemed to be talking in his sleep, "that 'I breathe when I sleep' is the same thing as 'I sleep when I breathe'!" 
"It is the same thing with you," said the Hatter, and here the conversation dropped (...) 

PS: "You shouldn't make personal remarks," Alice said with some severity: "it is very rude."
Right she is...