(Britta)'s On The Road Again

  

Dear You, 

I haven't use the photo above (which I took years ago at V&A) for a long time, and you know why. 

But now, despite the lockdown-lethargy, I am in the middle of an adventure. 

At the beginning of 2021 I decided that I do not like to feel remote-controlled. 

So, after having not seen the triplets since February 2020 (!) I acted: I had luck to rent an apartment in the village where Son, my Daughter-in-love and the triplets live. To be precise: it was my DiL who told me that the apartment was there to be rented, one street away from their house. 

I thought: "OK - at least it is far enough away that one has to put on a jacket to visit each other".  I don't want to intrude into a family - though welcomed and hopefully able to really help with three vivid little girls, no longer the babies I saw last year but little children who run around, start to speak - and love to lie on the ground and "read" a book. 

I rented without having seen the apartment except on photos - (though Son went and looked at it once). 

I keep my huge apartment in Berlin - by now I know myself: I am a city-girl. 

I could buy the whole kitchen including all machines; and a good-looking big wardrobe in the bedroom. Yet the van the caretaker and his son filled today with the sofa, the bicycle, ten moving boxes and a lot of other things is full - tomorrow I will manage to climb inside, and then we three drive to Bavaria. 

Hurray! 

The janitor and his son are part-time knights - living in medieval tents, being able to fight with real swords, and hunt with real bow and arrow, so I see it as a sort of crusade: 

Time to fight the dragon Corona, time to move again. 

Wish me luck - and forgive me if you do not get comments at the moment: for some time I will have no Internet, though after five days quarantine I will try to get a connection to you in the house of Son&DiL. 

On my smartphone I can see your comments (and will find out, how I can read your blogs too). 

So: Toodle pip! 

DELIGHT Two: SHOPPING in small towns and villages

 

photo by Britta Hügel 

No travels to little towns and villages at the (long) moment, AND the shops are closed everywhere in Germany. 

The only living person a lot of people nowadays see at all is the Amazon delivery man. Or the postman - which makes me think of the time when little shops in villages were also the post office... 

But I agree with Mr. J.B.Priestly: shopping in small towns and villages is fun and a delight. 

"We begin (to shop) as small children clutching our pennies and staring over the counter in a sweet agony of indecision." 

Oh yes: I remember Mr. Meissner, the chemist's, just over the street - you could go there with 1 Pfennig (!) in your little hand and he would take down an enormous tin can, open it (ahh - that heavenly smell!) - and took out one heaped teaspoon of black sharp salty rhombic salmis - mmmmhhhh! 

"We who begin to buy only when we are at the mercy of our instinctive drives do not want a whole floor of neckties or saucepans, with lifts to take us to cushions or tobacco. It is when shaving brushes and cheese, toffee and potato peelers, liver pills and socks, are heaped together that we go berserk, shopping like mad." 

Every time I see the scene in the village shop when watching "Saving Grace" with Brenda Blethyn, where the two elderly ladies, having drunk a very special tea, hide behind the counter, pop up with big goggle eyes that pop out of the spectacles from the joke items - I have to laugh out loud, every time! (Well, you could put me beside an old-fashioned laughing bag and I would roll around with laughter 😂) 

What do you think about shopping in little villages - or do those kinds of old-fashioned shops still exist in your area?

PS: As Tasker and Joanne asked ... here I will try to explain what "Salmis" are. One picture says more than hundred words - though in this case I doubt it. 

See why: 

"Ah, liquorice!" you might say. 

Yes and no. They add something that sounds horrible: sal ammoniac - which gives a sharp tang and taste (liquorice is more sweet, salmis are WHOW! Salty-sharp). 

People in northern countries love them and have many varieties: the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden - and the region where I come from, Bremen in Northern Germany - countries that are more cold. 

It drives up your blood pressure - maybe this is why we Northerners love it (though I searched for it in Edinburgh in vain.) 

I cannot say more to it - you have to taste it. For a lot of people ONCE is enough forever - the others I would call dangerously addicted  :-)    (you can buy it in every chemist's shop...) 

DELIGHT One: Fountains

 

The last days I was a bit "under the weather", although the sun came out and I got some (personal) very good news. (I will tell you another time). 

So I did what I always do when I feel sort of blue: I looked into my bookcases and took out "Delight" by J.B.Priestly. It was first published in 1949. 

" FOUNTAINS. I doubt if I ever saw one, even the smallest, without some tingling of delight. (...) The richest memory I have of the Bradford Exhibition of my boyhood, (...) is of the Fairy Fountain, which changed colour to the waltzes of the Blue Hungarian Band, and was straight out of the Arabian Night." 

Priestly complains that there are only few fountains in Great Britain: 

"We hunger for them and are not fed." He asks for letters to The Times and even for demonstrations to get them. 

"Their cost is trifling compared to so many idiotic things we are given and do not want. Our towns are crammed with all manner of rubbish that no people in their senses ever asked for, yet where are the fountains?" 

The fountain on the photograph I took at the Victoria Luise Platz, a few steps from my home. The man who designed in 1902 the whole quarter, Mr. Haberland, insisted on many "Schmuckplätze" - Ornamental Places? - where you will find every time a fountain - in always diverging design. 

When they start to sparkle after winter, you know: now it is really spring.   

Query: What do you think about the delight of fountains? Are there fountains where you live, or nearby - and/or do you remember a very special one? 

Haircutters and Political Mutants

 

Hahaha: the BZ (= Berlin Newspaper) is sort of equivalent of The Sun. Gossip and "sensations" - like our infamous BILD Zeitung, horror, but often amusing headers. 

Here they title: 

                   "Berlin Hairdresser continues cutting during Lockdown. 

                     Policemen among his customers! 

                    Appointments via Dating-App!"

In Germany the haircutters are not allowed to work during lockdown - so you see many lopsided self-cut fringes, striking white streaks amid the parting of deep black hair etc. 

The Germans are very angry to see many of our politicians mysteriously immaculately coiffed - although they should look like this by now: 

1: "Open the hair salons! 

2: More and more mutations in Germany!"

(If you know some of these politicians, but not the mutants, here they are: first our Minister of Health, Jens Spahn, third chancellor Merkel, last Bavarian governor Söder) 

Creativity in January

 

photo Britta Hügel 

Snow can be fun! 

Photo Britta Hügel 

                         Then I didn't trust my eyes: such a beauty! With a veritable camellia! 

photo Britta Hügel 

photo Britta Hügel 

...he even put another real camellia on the box border:

photo Britta Hügel

... but I enjoy the simplicity of the "Bauhaus"-version too

 

photo Britta Hügel 

PS: It is a bit unnerving to put "photo Britta Hügel" every time by the side of a photo (and I do not even know if it protects against photo-thieving). I have forgotten what I formerly knew: how to put a copyright-sign into the photo. 

And it isn't vanity: I wouldn't be so prim if I hadn't found one photo of mine (a really beautiful peacock-photo) on a Russian website - and it WAS mine, I can prove that. It just annoyed me. 

What do you do to protect your copyright? 

(The copyright for the term "Bauhaus-version" for these snowmen belongs to Klaus W., a friend of mine)

The Beatles - Help!

I am happy to welcome my 60th follower: TheMerryNeedle! 

And I do have a question: 

is there an easy way to find out whether a follower writes a blog too, or is (hopefully) just enjoying to read mine? I cannot find out how to do that in the new version of Blogger. 

Joanne Noragon helped me to insert a follower's blog - as for instance follower number 59, Tasker Dunham - into my blogroll here on the right. Thank you again, Joanne! 

So I hope: We can work it Out! 

I wish you a beautiful Sunday! 

Tea, Coffee or ...?

 

The "old" pretender, my "retro" coffee machine went kaputt. 

I mightn't have noticed for weeks - I am not a heavy coffee drinker (till I was 50 I didn't drink any coffee at all - it was too bitter for my child-like taste). I still prefer strong tea. 

Now I drink at the most 2 cups per day. (My neighbour told me about her awful headache- she was, her words, on "coffee-withdrawal" -- later I found out that she drinks two strong cups per day - tja).  

Often I prepare my cup with the Nespresso machine - not good for the environment, I know, and I suspect not good for the body either, with those aluminium capsules... But a coffe machine is not good at preparing one cup - and I tried it with a porcelain filter: not very convincing either. 

The Flying Dutchman drinks coffee like a fish. That's why I used the machine. He is highly amused that I call her my "Russell & Hobbs" - well-knowing that I must say "Russell Hobbs" - but I don't care, I do it my way 😋. And Amazon came very handy in these days of closed shops: next day I had a new "Russell & Hobbs" - though a different design - fake "retro" is out - and that is not a big loss, I think.

And that coffee smells delicious - on Sundays I add a little oriental trick: I add a slightly crushed pod of cardamom - the Arabs put one into the nozzle of the coffeepot. 

Smells like heaven... Add a lump of sugar and a little bit of cream and there you are - in heaven.