Home, Home on the Range

Hello Readers!
After a surprisingly disaster-free journey, I find myself back in the bosom of my family. Yesterday I returned home from a trip to the nearest town to the sight of my second-youngest brother's bottom bared as target practice for a toy gun that fires soft darts. Youngest brother and three teenagers of the gangly&pimply variety (standard issue, in other words) were taking turns to aim at the lillywhite bum-cheeks of William Gingerbread with a child's gun. There was much guffawing as the darts flew in every direction but his posterior, and a squabble ensued about whose turn it was, who'd had it the longest, who saw it first etc. If you have five brothers, as I do, you tend to pretty blase about such shenanigans (though I must admit that I'm fighting a desire to wash my eyeballs with industrial-strength cleaner, but this will pass.)

The Gingerbread Homestead is an old stone house in the middle of nowhere. It looks quite idyllic, even on a dull and foggy day like today.

The grid at the front is a cattle grid. It's a pit with bars across it to stop cows from running down my parents' lane. Cows and bullocks are not particularly smart but they shy away from cattle grids. (Although the occasional bullock actually leapt over the cattle grid and took a trot down around the garden, trampling my father's daffodils.) However, frogs and hedgehogs do not have very good depth perception and often ended up trapped down the cattle grid. Naturally, we children felt compelled to "rescue" them. Many's an afternoon I spent on my stomach by the cattle grid with a pair of super-strength gardening gloves, trying to coax a sulky hedgehog through the bars. It's not easy: hedgehogs, as one may have heard, don't take kindly to human help.

Aside from that, we don't have an awful lot to offer in the way of entertainment. In fact, the highlight of the neighbourhood is The Big Tree. It is - brace yourselves - a big tree. This is it, in all its glory (plus a passing tractor pulling a foul-smelling slurry spreader. A romantic pastoral scene, indeed.)

The Big Tree

Such is our lack of local landmarks that a visit to the Gingerbreads inevitably includes a walk to The Big Tree. We walk down the road, look at the tree, turn around and come back. Exciting stuff. Well, actually, it is if you're small, because a walk to The Big Tree also involves checking out the progress of the crops in the fields, any passing farm machinery, status check of the grazing herds of cows and bullocks, looking for blackberries, dandelions and any other seasonal fruit or flora, culminating in a 365 degree inspection of The Big Tree itself. When my husband first visited my family, my little brothers were much littler. Naturally, they were dying to bring him out on the roller-coaster ride that is a trip to The Big Tree. Off we went, Robbie, Wilmie and Jimmy Gingerbread in tow. With much fanfare we presented to him The Big Tree in all its glory. 

He looked it up and down and said, "Oh, I see. It really is just a tree. From all the fuss, I thought that was just, like, a code name for something else. Something more ... spectacular. But it's actually just ... a Big Tree."

Duh, my little brothers' faces clearly said. He's not the brightest, is he?

Unmitigated Disasters - or How I Nearly Won An Oscar

I just to start by saying that when I was at university, I took a course in film studies. I watched films with A Message, with Symbolism. With subtitles. And sometimes all three at once! And not only did I do well in the course, I was actually top of the class. So be gentle when you judge me.

My little cinematic treat is a nice disaster film. The more preposterous the better. And I've amassed a rather impressive collection of disaster movies - and what is more impressive is the fact that I have not paid more than €4 for a single one! (Although, on second thoughts, that mightn't be very impressive at all.) If you ever wanted to pop over to the Gingerbread House for an evening of movies-slash-crafting, you could practically choose your catastrophe and I'd not only have a film about it, but could offer you a couple of disasters you've never even considered. Yes, sirree: forget your standard run-of-the-mill disasters like tornadoes, floods and volcanic explosions, I can also offer you films about global warming-induced climate change, unwieldy asteroids entering the earth's atmosphere, alien invasions, zombie viruses, abandoned ships inhabited by bloodthirsty demons and - my favourite - genetically-altered mutant super sharks that not only possess razor-sharp analytical skills but also the ability to open doors!

As you know, I've already had a go at writing romance novels, but for a long time I also toyed with the idea of becoming a screenwriter. Using my excellent diagnostic skills - not unlike those of a mutant super-shark - I had compiled a list of surprising similarities that these movies share. Voilà! (or as I'm seeing on a frighteningly regular basis in cyberspace: Waalaah!)

• The Male Lead
  ... is an Expert in Something. Something that regular punters like you and me vaguely know exists, but we're not exactly sure what it is and are too embarrassed to admit it. So when Male Lead marches into his lab/lecture hall (because he's inevitably a scientist or a professor) and says that his area of specialisation is Geothermal Genetic Astronomy, or some such random collection of sciencey words, you nod and say, "Oho! Geothermal Genetic Astronomy! I've always wanted to study that myself!"
  Or maybe not. (Suspend disbelief, readers.)
  Anyway, more unbelievable than his makey-uppy sciencey title is his physique: the filmmakers would have you believe that this man is a veritable lab-rat, yet when the time comes for him to strip off his shirt - and trust me, this time will come - observant viewers will note fantastic muscle tone, an even tan and a waxed chest. Astonishing.

• The Female Lead
  ... is either (a) his ex-wife, who divorced him because he was married to his job but she secretly still loves him or (b) an uptight executive in a too-tight business suit, who will come to love him, despite their witty sparring for the first half of the film. She's in a position of power - an astronaut, aide to the president, the USA's first army generalette - but she's actually looking for a man to save her. (Because, like, we all are.) When she removes her ugly glasses and shakes her hair loose, you'll discover that she's a stunner. With fantastic muscle tone, an even tan and, probably, a waxed chest. (But we don't get to see that.)

But that's not all - you need a bevvy of sidekicks! A good Hollywood film has at least half-a-dozen of these and they get picked off, one by one, during the course of the film. I'll just give you the four most important. You can add more yourself as you please.

• An Expendable Fat Person.
  As someone who veers more towards the Squishy side of the scale myself, I take umbrage at the fact that the chubby co-star always gets killed first. (And have you ever noticed that when the asteroid/alien ship/burning lava suddenly plops down in the middle of downtown Spokane, there's always a close-up of a rotund person tucking into a mountain of fast food, just seconds before they're hit by volcanic rock or the tailgate of a UFO? True fact.)

• A Silly Woman, Usually Blond.
  She might be the female lead's assistant. She gets killed next. She's attractive, but not terribly attractive. Likable enough to make the ridiculous circumstances of her death somewhat saddening. (She's on the phone to her kindergarten-age child when the giant squid pops up out of a drain and eats her. "Eeeeeek!" "Mommy? I yuv you, where are you? Mommeeeeee!" etc.)

• Person From A Minority.
  In recent years Hollywood has had to cover a lot of bases in order not to offend anyone (except, it would seem, The Squishy.) As a result, they try fall over themselves in a fit of abject tokenism. Ideally you might have a person of some colour other than white (Black. Latino/Hispanic. Asian. Indian. Irish - I think this is because we're not strictly white, but more pink with freckles. I haven't figured the demographics out on this one, but apparently we fall in this category, too.) This person should also be a minority religion (Jewish. Buddhist. Rastafarian) and/or have a disability (Blind. Deaf. In a wheelchair) and/or some sort of special ability (The Best Software Programmer on Earth. Ace Navigator. Advanced Memory.) Play around with this one. Some combinations work (Blind Hispanic Buddhist who can hack the FBI's super computer) and some don't (Deaf Vietnamese Scientologist who can bend spoons with the power of his mind.) This person will get killed next (but not too early in the film, or you'll offend someone.)

• And Morgan Freeman. I'm not sure why, but Mr Freeman (or lesser thespian copies of Mr Freeman) pops up a lot in disaster films. I think he and his ilk lend a certain gravitas to the genre. If someone told you that we had but hours to live because an asteroid the size of Texas was rocketing its way towards earth or a pack of mutant sharks were swimming up the Hudson River to eat the population of NewYork, you would guffaw in mirth. But if Morgan Freeman announces our imminent destruction in his gravelly tones, you tend to believe him. He is an asset to any disaster film.

Then you just need a disaster. That's where I'm stumped. I'm normally a creative person, but this one has really slowed me down. I can't think of a disaster that hasn't already been covered. I thought I was on to something good last year when I remembered that what scares people most is not aliens, zombie viruses, asteroids or super volcanoes. It's not tornadoes, biblical floods or - strangely enough - attacks by door-opening mutant sharks. It's actually...

... public speaking! Yes, apparently the thoughts of standing behind a microphone in front of a room full of strangers frightens the living daylights of the average Joe Soap. So I sharpened my HB pencils and grabbed a brand-new notebook and set about writing the film that would change disaster films as we know them. But I struggled, readers, I struggled. I admit, I was already desperately trying to come up with a scenario that would involve scaring the bejabbers out of the human race with the power of rhetoric, when I sadly discovered that there was a disaster film in the making that exploits that very fear - my very idea! The cheek! And to add insult to injury, last weekend I watched the Oscars and was very displeased to see that the idea they pinched from me had not only done well, but had been a cinematic triumph. Snort!

Therefore I would like to call upon all of my loyal readers to boycott the film The King's Speech because a film about the horrors of public speaking was my idea and - footstomp - I had it first. Take note, Colin Firth, you are struck off my Christmas card list!

Harsh words, but I think it's justified, don't you?

_________________________________________

One of the reasons why I've dipped into my litany of disasters is because I'm going home to Mammy and Daddy Gingerbread for a week tomorrow. As you know, we missed brother Johnny Gingerbread's wedding last year because of the darned Icelandic volcano and spent Christmas in Germany thanks to a blizzard. I'm trying to prepare myself for the next disaster - forewarned is forearmed and all that. So fingers crossed that the next post you read from me will be from the Gingerbread Homestead, on Daddy Gingerbread's new laptop in his chair by the fire:

Miles of Tiles

Gingerbread Mammy phoned me on Sunday to give me a run-down on all the action in our town. This is often like the Births, Deaths and Marriages section of a major newspaper, except that there is often an indepth genealogical footnote to each entry ("Lisa Kenny had a baby by C-Section. That's Lisa Kenny from the Dry Cleaners, her mammy worked in the Winkle's newsagency at the weekend - remember the blondie-haired woman with the funny eye who used to sell the Cadbury's Creme Eggs after Easter Sunday mass? Her grandda had the greyhounds and we used to see him walking them down by the railway every morning on the way to school?" etc.
I have no idea who any of these people are.)
She also keeps me up to date on my father's antics - he has a new laptop. He had another laptop that was (helpless pause), well, it was pretty good and then there was a new laptop on the market that could (helpless pause) - do other things that the first one couldn't so they exchanged it for this new one which can do (helpless pause) other things. She thinks.
"But it's an Apple," she adds. "By the way, you haven't posted on your blog recently, missy."
"I know," I say. "But I've loads of photos of the blankets I've been working on, so I'm going to put them up later on."
Miffed pause.
"Ah, we're not very interested in crochet," she says. "We prefer the other kind of posts."
I suspect my parents are primarily interested in posts in which they play the starring role. And with this introduction, I hope I have kept them happy for tonight.

Now, on to the crochet.
This is what I'm up to now:

 
The pattern for this afghan - provisionally entitled the Tiles Afghan (because they look like ... well, tiles) - is being tested by half-a-dozen dynamic crocheters that I have locked up in a top-secret facility, guarded by FBI agents and a pack of vicious dogs. While they are checking the pattern for incidences of my (in)famous numerical fuzziness, I've been trying the pattern out in different ways. This is a baby blanket in cream and denim blue, which I call the Dutch Tiles Afghan - because the pattern looks like Delft tiles.

Mrs Gingerbread vs The Customs Office (1:0)

RAoK stands for Random Act of Kindness - and it is, as the name suggests, simply a nice deed that you do for a random stranger, with no other intention or purpose other than to squirt some goodness into the universe. This week I was the recipient of a RAoK from Shelley in California. She sent me Big American Yarn in gorgeous colours, as well as crochet hooks and Kool Aid, jelly beans ... and, best of all, a lovely letter. That's right - a real letter, a handwritten letter, a funny and interesting letter that we read in the car and then re-read at home. It was like Christmas Day again  (but better because my Christmas Day this year mainly revolved around disinfecting the toilet after my stomach-flued husband had had his evil way with it.) It was such a lovely and kind gesture, I was really touched - I just can't tell you how it brightened my day ... my whole week, in fact.

Yesterday afternoon, Mr Gingerbread and I set off to Battle With The German Customs Office because my parcel had been - shock, horror! - impounded. The cheek! This meant we had to drive out to an industrial estate where the customs office (an eerily quiet building full of people sitting at desks behind glass windows, staring at their hands or computer screens) is located. Many German bureaucrats have the amazing ability to make you feel guilty without you having done anything wrong. It's a marvellous piece of psychological manipulation, especially for obsessively law-abiding citizens like myself. I'm slowly beginning to suspect that this skill is part of their training course - they might even have final exams in Glaring 101, How to Narrow Your Eyes Evilly and Snorting in Disbelief: Masterclass. ("Once again, Heinz, but with feeling! I want to to inject even more incredulity into that snort! Sneer, if you can! That's right! Excellent!") Whereas in other countries you are assumed innocent till proven guilty, some German bureaucrats like to simply presume you're guilty and they have you do the work of proving your innocence.

When I went entered the parcel office, the three officials were slouched at their desk, glued to their computer screens. I handed over the notification and one of them s-l-o-w-l-y went off to get the box. He dumped it on the counter and handed me a scissors.
"Please open it!" he barked.
So I did. I unpacked the Kool Aid ("Look, Kool Aid!" I said to him. Not impressed) and the crochet hooks ("Wow, crochet hooks!" Still no flicker.) And the jelly beans. ("Oooh, jelly beans! Would you like one?" Narrowed eyes.) And the yarn - then his beady little bureaucratic eyes lit up. He picked one up and gave it a squeeze to make sure there was nothing inside.
"Is there any medication in the box?" he said hopefully. "Foodstuffs? Meat? Dairy products?"
I tipped it over so he could look inside. Nothing.
But he wasn't finished yet: we had a little argy-bargy about the price of the yarn, but he finally accepted that the German government was not going to turn a profit in 2011 on the basis of the customs fees on my meagre and inadvertent yarn-smuggling activity. Clearly disappointed that his day had not been livened up by the discovery of a kilo of cocaine hidden in Red Heart Super Saver, I was allowed to take my present home.

Where I unpacked it on the coffee table, took a quick photo in the last ten minutes of bright light, then left my goodies there so I could admire my present all evening. Look at my pyramid of yarn: isn't it just lovely? I can't wait to rip the labels off (carefully) and get started on something really cool.

I Am Colour Starved

I like this pattern, I really do. It lets me do all kinds of weird and wonderful things with colours. This is the tester-blanket for a pattern I'll write up as soon as possible. I started off in another colour subset, but I need a model blanket for the pattern picture. So I decided to use ALL my colours (and we all know that I don't shy away from colour. Nom, nom.) I have enough blankets to cover almost every shabby chair and sofa in the Gingerbread House (= no mean feat, let me tell you) so this one is going to be a present ... maybe for my youngest niece, a toddler who seems to enjoy dancing around in little more than her mother's half-finished crochet blankets.

Gnomic Advice

 

Okay, it has nothing to do with real gnomes but I do love a pun.

Good morning, folks! It's time for a dose of Stuff-You-Already-Know-But-Here-It-Is-Again. Today's topic is relationship advice. I like to think that in a parallel universe I am writing self-help books based on my paltry 2-year marital success or, indeed, hosting an afternoon talkshow in which I state the obvious but disguise it as a profound psychological insight, but in this world I get to torture you instead.
Cackle, cackle. (See my previous post. I'm practising for my twilight years.)
__________________________________________________

THE GINGERBREAD LADY'S GNOMIC ADVICE

Category: Relationships

Subcategory: Housework

Gem of Wisdom: If it bothers you, it's your problem

1st Amendment:  If it bothers you, it's your chore

__________________________________________________
Fini.

Wow. Knocked your socks off, didn't I? Well, like many people in the throes of a relationship - to man, woman or beast: this advice applies to all - you might have a somewhat different approach to cleaning than your other half or halves (thirds? quarters?). Cleanliness might be next to godliness for you, but it might be next to, say, the cornflakes for your partner. In our case, neither of us is enamoured of housework and very often cleaning the Gingerbread House becomes a very dusty game of collision-course 'chicken': who can hold out the longest? I don't think I need to tell you that my husband has beaten me at Let's Ignore The Dreck about 5980 times since we moved into our home. Up until now I've been annoyed by it: why doesn't he vacuum the floor when the dust has taken on tumbleweed proportions? Why doesn't he scrub the bathtub when the white enamel turns grey ? Why am I the only person who knows where the rubbish sacks are kept or why we have a bottle of Cif under the sink? I mean, he'll good-naturedly (and thoroughly) clean anything I ask him to. But I have to ask him to and I kept expecting that to change.

But today I gave up. That's it: I gave up.

Let's go back in time a bit:
When we moved into our house, we had no cooker. So we bought one and then went looking for a nice gas hob for our new/second-hand kitchen. We stood in the display kitchen at IKEA and admired various cookers on display. I wanted a simple, 4-plate hob with an easy-clean surface. Mr G. wanted a five-plate megacool gas hob with a wok plate in the middle. ("Wok! Phwoarh!") He stood at the display unit and played with the pieces, his hairy face alight with joy. Disturbingly, he was making a lot of whooshing noises, like something going up in flames ("Brrrrooooooosssshhhhh!") as he twiddled the knobs.
"Let's get this one," he said decisively.
"No," I said, "Let's not. Look at all of those bits - they all have to be taken apart and cleaned. It's massive, it'll be a pain in the bum to scrub that every week."
"Pssshaw!" he said, "Tusssshhh!" and all kinds of other don't-be-silly noises. "I'll clean it! I don't mind!"
And he did.
Once. A few days after we bought it.
Since then, I've been the only person who minds that the shiny stainless-steel surface is covered in a sticky goo of over-boiled pasta paste or dried-in coconut milk. I mind so I clean it. It bothers me so it becomes my chore.

Now, I knew this going into this relationship almost a decade ago. I did, I swear. But I didn't want to accept it. Today, as I stood at the cooker with my sexy yellow rubber gloves on and the citrus smell of oven cleaner wafting about my person, Mr G. strode by, on his way to plaster a wall on the ground floor of the house.
"Cleaning the cooker, eh?" he said jovially.
"Indeed I am," I answered, scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing rock-hard spinach off the steel. The hob had acquired a patina of dried-in food that you couldn't help but see.
"I didn't even realise it was dirty," he said airily and picked up his plaster bucket.
So I give up. I accept it, I finally accept it: when it comes to housework, I'll just do it myself it if it bothers me. Or ask him to do it if having to do it myself bothers me. But there is NO POINT getting annoyed because he hasn't done it without me pointing it out.
The End

P.S. Mr Gingerbread voluntarily plastered walls today. This piece of advice does not seem to apply to DIY. But that's the subject of another post.

Tupperscare

You might have gathered that I'm slightly ... odd. No, that's not true: I'm probably very normal but I like odd. And odd likes me. I am what my mother terms a "nut magnet" (not least because it takes a nutty person to know a nutty person. And she would know. If I am nuts, it's not off the ground that I licked it.) The following will illustrate this. I am not exaggerating, just recording for posterity the type of person that like to shoot the breeze with your very own Gingerbread Lady.

I was in my favourite shop today, the 99c Store. It's a wonderland of oddness, so I normally feel very at home there, browsing through the piles of all-in-one onion choppers, wooden hearts left over from Valentine's Day and battery-operated staplers. Today I espied a stack of nifty clear plastic boxes, not unlike the one in the photo above, but this box was see-through. As I was examining them and wondering what you could store in them (yarn? Yarn! No, too small. Oh, well.) I heard a voice at my shoulder: "Excuse me, what are they?"
I turned to see an elderly man - no, I turned to see an old man beside me. He was almost doubled over with a hunchback, and he had a shopping basket full of knickknacks in his gnarled hand. He must have been in his mid-eighties. At least. Being a Friend of the Elderly, I showed him the box and demonstrated how you could open and close the lid.
"Handy, isn't it?" I said.
"It is," he replied. "Could you give me three of them, young lady?"
So I took three down off the shelf and placed them carefully in his basket. And went on with my shopping.

Ten minutes later we both ended up at the cash desk. I studied the trinkets on display while he placed the items in his basket on the desk.
"These boxes are wonderful," said the lady at the cash desk in a conversational tone. "They're very practical."
The old man peeped up at her. "They are," he said, "They're perfect for my collection of chopped-off fingers!"
Yes. Read that again.
The lady's jaw dropped open. The old man cackled - yes, cackled - and she looked at me desperately. I bit my lip and shrugged.
"They're the perfect size to store fingers in," he continued, "And you can see them because the boxes are transparent. Cackle, cackle."
The lady at the cash desk looked at me, bewildered. And visibly gulped.
"I'm only joking," said the old man.
And then he turned to peep up at me mischievously.
"Or am I? Cackle, cackle."
At this point the lady was clearly unnerved. She packed his stuff into a plastic bag and pushed it across the desk to him, making sure their fingers did not touch. He slowly wrapped his hands around the handles and shuffled off. Grinning.

"I hope he was joking," she whispered to me (it was taking him ages to make his way to the door of the shop: shuffle, shuffle, stop. Shuffle, shuffle, stop.) "Should I call the police?"
Given that our would-be digit-collector could barely get his own fingers around the door handle much less around a knife or similar chopping implement, and given the decidedly naughty twinkle in his eyes, I reassured her that he probably was joking.
"Nuts," she said, tapping the side of her head. "Every now and again we get a complete nutcase in here!"
Readers, I couldn't help but feel that it was somehow my fault. They flock to me. But at the same time part of me was hoping that I'm feisty enough to scare the bejabbers out of salesladies for the laugh when I'm an octogenarian crippled with arthritis.
Cackle, cackle.

Phew! OWOH - done!

 And the winner is ...
Cobblestone Creations! Hurray!

The One World, One Heart giveaway has just come to an end and I've finished my door-prize just in time. In order to give the winner a choice, I decided to make two blankets in two different colourways -

The lollipop blanket on the right quickly got out of hand. Before I knew it, the colours were running riot. It's bright - yes, it is - and a little bit rambunctious. I really don't know what happened there. Have you ever had the feeling that your project has had the upper hand on you?

Conversational Gambits

"... and we have to teach them conversational gambits!" my boss said enthusiastically.
And I tuned in again.
I was in the middle of a long conference about changes to the oral exams at our school. Students learning English have to hold a twenty-minute conversation about various topics, and we were discussing the various skills that they had to learn and practise - among others, conversational gambits.

Gambits. Gambits. While the rest of my colleagues nodded enthusiastically and made notes, I rolled the word around in my mouth: conversational gambits. I love words. I especially love words that are used so infrequently that hearing them again is like discovering a forgotten €10 in your jeans pocket. Gambit: delicious!

If that weren't weird enough, sometimes I re-assign words to people I think they describe. Thus, one of my husband's friends is called Gambit in my head. Gambit is one of his best friends: a tall, loud, blond guy who is both incredibly endearing and dreadfully irritating at the same time. One of his most annoying habits is ... well, his conversational gambits. À propos nothing, he throws a mystifying and cryptic segue into a running conversation, effectively killing communication, as we all momentarily stop to gape at him - and that's his cue to hijack the discussion with a long monologue about a subject of his choice. For example:

Me:  ... and that's why it'll be interesting to see how things pan out in Egypt, don't you think?
Friend #1:  Yes. Although I must admit that I didn't realise that things were so politically instabile in the country. That did surprise me.
Friend #2:   You're right. I mean, Kate and Tim were in Egypt on holiday in December and they said -
Gambit: I bet Steve Jobs didn't think realise that turning up the brightness on the iPad would reconnect to the network!
(Astonished silence.)
Friend #1:  Sorry, Gambit? Steve Jobs? iPads?
Gambit: Interesting that you should mention iPads, Friend # 1, - I just happened to buy one yesterday! Look, look at this - see, you can open this file ...
Friend #2 (weakly): ... and Tim said that the Egyptian government ...
Gambit (louder): AND THEN, YOU TOUCH THE SCREEN LIKE THIS AND IT ...
(Friend #2 shuts up.)

Mr Gingerbread has the patience of a saint, I swear, and good-naturedly plays along when Gambit throws one of his conversation killers into the mix. I, on the other hand, drive poor Gambit nuts. My tactic is to note his contribution and swiftly steer the conversation back to the topic we're all discussing. After nearly a decade, I'm very, very good at it:

Friend #2:   You're right. I mean, Kate and Tim were in Egypt on holiday in December and they said ...
Gambit: I bet Steve Jobs didn't think realise that turning up the brightness on the iPad would reconnect to the network!
Me: That must have surprised Steve, I'm sure. Anyway, I'm sure it'll have a devastating effect on the tourist industry. No doubt a lot of sectors are already feeling the effects of the unrest.

Gambit: See, some people say that there's a glitch in the iPad and adjusting the brightness reconnects the internet.

Me: Apparently all of Eygpt was without internet access for a couple of days. I wonder why? 

Gambit: I wonder if you can buy iPads in Cairo?

Me: As far as I can tell, many of the city's shops have been forced to close till things settle down. What did Tim and Kate say about their holiday in Egypt, Friend #2?

And so on.

It's cruel, yes it is, but the alternative is to be locked into a one-man conversation about a toy of his choice or a topic only he knows anything about. The rest of the conversationalists hang around hopefully, waiting for him to take a breath, so we can jump back in and get the discussion back on track. Our little Battle of the Segues adds an extra frisson of excitement to conversations: who's going to win, me or Gambit? What are we going to talk about, the latest Christopher Nolan film or Gambit's new hard-disk drive? Will we all discuss our weekend plans or listen to a lecture about Windows 7? And I do it sweetly and gently, kind of a cross between a conversational ninja and a chitchat geisha: Release date for the iPhone 5? Pow! The future of USB cables? Bang! How to progress to level 93 in an obscure mass multi-player online game that involves wizards, potions and magic boots? Ka-pow!

I am the queen of conversational gambits!

The Heart of the Matter

Ugh, Valentine's Day. Apparently he's the patron saint of lovers, but I'm beginning to suspect that he's the patron saint of florists, chocolatiers and card companies. When I first moved to Germany in the middle of the 1990s, both St. Valentine's Day and Hallowe'en were practically unknown and viewed with suspicion as nasty, Anglo-Saxon, madey-uppy kinds of holidays that had no place in the German tradition. And to a certain extent they were right. Germans got along perfectly well without either of them - German children managed to survive childhood without the opportunity to trick or treat, and I'm more than certain that the vast majority of people who are made to feel inadequate about their singledom in the midst of this heart-and-candy cornucopia would manage quite nicely without it, too. But in the past decade, both holidays have become increasingly common and particularly the latter has been snapped up with gusto by chocolate / card / flower / trashy knick-knack companies that see an opportunity to make a few bucks.

Nonetheless - and this is the inherent evil of Valentine's Day - one wakes up hopefully on the morning of this Unholyday and checks for chocolates ... just in case. And, inevitably, my snooping for pralines (which, I must confess, would put a truffle pig to shame) ends in vain. Why does this surprise me? I don't know - but it does. Every year. Valentine's Day has that effect on people: there's a chance that chocolate might be involved and it's impossible not to get your hopes up. But, really, I should know better: Mr Gingerbread used to get very het-up about St. Valentine's Day: he used it as an excuse to launch into a rant with all kinds of -isms. Its basis is in commercialism! cultural imperialism! globalisation! (not strictly an -ism, but it's a main thread of his rant.) And, essentially, he is protesting against all of these evils by ... wait for it! You're going to be surprised by the extent of his political activism! ... by ... yes, wait for it ... doing nothing! There - that surprised you, didn't it?

Nowadays, he's mellowed. I still didn't get chocolates today but, thankfully, I was also spared the rant. When I pointed out that today was Valentine's Day, he puckered his lips, plunger-style, and leaned in for a smacker. The extent of our romantic interplay was me beating him off as he dived on me with big, moist, fishy lips for a "Valentine's Day kiss" (never have three words sounded so ominous. Shudder.) But true love is not dead in the Gingerbread Household: I made him a cup of tea and gave him three of the remaining five chocolate chip cookies (and if you knew us, you would understand why this is a big deal) and he let me sleep for ten minutes longer this morning (again, see comment in parenthesis above). In Gingerbread terms, these are tokens of unbridled passion, so I really shouldn't fuss.

Now I'm off to check the cupboard with cereals and dry goods. Maybe he hid my chocolates in there.
Maybe.

Back to Normal

The day after I posted about the One World, One Heart giveaway, I woke up and put water on for a cup of coffee. While I was waiting for the water to boil, I just checked my blog ... and almost keeled over when I saw that overnight I'd had fifty comments. Good grief, I thought. I'd expected a couple of dozen, but the present count is well over a hundred. The thing is, I promised to visit other people's blogs in return - and I have. And it's been fascinating, very much like having a poke around someone's living room and looking at all their precious things. I've commented on some, not on others because although everyone's work is really lovely, I know that my twisted luck would decree that I win something that I have no use for ... and I'd prefer objects to end up with the people who will appreciate them most.

In any case, after a couple of sessions of intense blog-hopping, I've had to return to my crocheting or, quite frankly, I'll get nothing done. This is one thing I'm working on... the colours aren't right, but the pattern is. It's simple, it works. And in the right colours, it will make a very nice afghan.

 

Mr Gingerbread has been watching me make these and is quite fascinated by the process. Truth be told, so am I, because it says a lot about the way the brain works and how we translate mental images into something physical. This is not a complex pattern, but intricate things like doilies are: I mean, imagine translating a mental image of a lace doily into an actual piece of work ... and then (gulp) writing the pattern down. Although not a doily fan, I take my hat off to the clever women (and occasional man) who design them.

One World, One Heart - Giveaway

Lisa from A Whimsical Bohemian takes on a gargantuan task every year - this year for the fifth year in a row. She organises the One World, One Heart campaign, which is basically a compilation of participants that want to invite people over to their blog for a little look around ... and offer them the chance to win a "door prize" if they leave a message. Emily at The Nest did it last year and she's got a cute but cheeky-faced little doll as her door prize this year, so I thought I'd join in.

Because spring is coming and pregnant women are everyone (before you ask: I'm not. No baby cookies in the Gingerbread family), I decided to make a Kitties-in-a-Row baby blanket. Like this:

So if you know someone who'll be experiencing the Mirkel of Birt sometime soon, this might be a nice little pressie for her (and him, indirectly.) But I'm going to make this one ... in a mystery colour combination. What do you think? How about ...

Girly pinks

Lollipop colours

Lilacs

Blues

This blanket will measure approximated 65 x 80 cm and it will be made of baby-friendly, fling-in-the-washing-machine acrylic (those of you traumatised by tales of scratchy American acrylic can rest assured that this German stuff is very nice and soft). Ours is a smoke and pet-free home and my hands are always sparkly clean. February 17th is the closing date and you will be informed within 3 days of this date if you have won.

So if you are new to this blog, do have a little poke around. I'm The Gingerbread Lady, by the way, and I'm an Irishwoman living in Germany with my German husband. I educate The Youth of Bavaria to varying levels of success. When not pounding my protegées with the vagaries of English grammar, I do all kinds of crafty stuff - mostly involving yarn - and blog on a regular basis about my nearest and dearest, who are now afraid to tell me anything for fear it will end up in cyberspace - bwoahahahhaaa! (= evil laugh)

So do leave a comment and feel free to make your favourite colour combination known :-) Just remember to be contactable through your own blog (which I will visit. Yesirree. I'll swing by to have a look atcha) so I can contact you if you win. Hurray!

P.s. Oh my goodness. I've just spent an evening reading - literally - 34 different blogs (yes, I'm coming to see you if you leave a comment - and I have so many more to see ) and my mind is boggling at the collective creativity. But how am I going to get my crocheting done???

Kanadian Kool Aid

Kind Cori from Edmonton sent me some blue and green Kool Aid yesterday. I was sitting at the table when it arrived, planning my housework.
Perhaps I exaggerate: I was drinking a cup of tea, looking around at the state of the place and thinking, "Look at the state of this place!" In other words, I was in the Critical Housework Planning Phase. But I couldn't just ignore such a thoughtful gift, now, could I? No, I couldn't, so I did a little dyeing instead.

The red is a bit of a mistake. I had about 100g wool and I didn't want to spread the colours too thin because I wanted to keep the green and blue as vivid as possible. As a result, I added red and ended up with a kind of lollipop-coloured yarn, the kind of lollipops your parents forbade you to eat because the artificial colours put you on a sugar high. Brilliant!

Missing In Action

Maybe it's the time of year. Perhaps it has to do with something meteorological - air pressure or a warm wind from the Alps. It could be age, old age setting in. Or I'm quite possibly just losing my mind.

Let me explain: I'm quite stressed at the minute. I have a lot of exams to correct. My mind is full of small, fiddly details like the names of students I have to talk to or get grades from, or colleagues I have to ask about something, or things I have to get or do at home. Dozens of things - dozens and dozens of random bits of information. As a result, I'm increasingly finding myself somewhere without a clue what I'm doing there. For example, in front of an open fridge, staring at a packet of butter and an unopened bag of tortellini.
"Why am I looking in the fridge?" I wonder. "Am I hungry? Am I thirsty? No?"
And I close the fridge again and return to my work-room. Only to remember about half an hour later that I had wanted to take a frozen chicken out of the fridge to defrost. Minutes later, I'm in front of the fridge again with a bottle of Coke in my hand, wondering why I came downstairs to get a soda when I don't even like the stuff.

The next day we have toast for dinner.

Recently, I found myself in the photocopy room at work, blankly staring at a colleague.
"I came in here for something," she said. "I wonder what?"
"I'm having the same problem," I said.
We stared helplessly at one another till the gentle whirring of the machines reminded us - we'd come to photocopy. That's why we were standing in the photocopier room with sheets of paper in our hands.
"Sometimes I think I'm losing it," said my colleague. She looked at me blankly again. "How many copies am I making, I wonder?"
I couldn't help her. I was too busy staring at the photocopier console wondering what day it was.

Worst of all is the fact that my husband is not much better. I can't rely on his razor-sharp mind to keep me on track because when it comes to remembering everyday details, his mind is as sharp as a blunt butter-knife. He's as bad as I am - or worse. Yesterday morning when the alarm rang, I told him I was going to pop out to the baker because we had no bread for breakfast.
"Really?" he said. "I thought we had some bread left."
"No," I said, "We had that last night. What do you want from the baker?"
"Mmmm, I'd like - "
And there was silence. Readers, he'd fallen back asleep ... in the middle of the sentence!

We're in our mid-thirties. It's only going to get worse. I'll have to start carrying around a little notebook so I can write my goal on it before I leave a room: Get hammer from toolbox to fix the nail that's sticking out on my desk. If I don't do this, I'll return with a handful of screws and a spirit level. I might even have to step over my sleeping husband on the way. I now have a startling vision of us Gingerbreads as senior citizens: me walking in circles in the kitchen, him falling asleep between verb and object.

Please enjoy me while I'm still lucid, readers.

Socks Are Not The Boss Of Me

When Gingerbread Mammy was a young 'un, she was - apparently - a champion sock knitter. This is the legend she perpetuated all through our childhood: "You should have seen me turn a heel! I turned the best heels in the class!" Apparently, she churned out socks at the speed of light but although we saw her produce the occasional scarf or baby sweater, we never got to see the Mythical Socks. Readers, this is the challenge Gingerbread Mammy and Gingerbread Lady are going to undertake when I get home in spring: she is going to teach me how to knit socks.

In advance of this great mother-daughter bonding session (which will probably be gatecrashed by my other sisters, first to mock and then to sulk because they're not being taught to knit socks and then to mock again because you can buy a 5 pack of socks for €2.99 at Primark), I have taken to the needles myself - I'm kind of like Rocky in training for the big fight. Yesterday evening I tackled double pointed needles again.

First off, for the crafters amongst you, let me just say that I tried the Magic Loop method and knitting with 2 circulars. They seemed awfully fussy: lots of dangly wires and pulling and yanking. Besides, many years ago I saw a woman at a doctor's surgery knitting with DPNs and she did it so neatly and daintly that I fell in love. I became determined to learned. I tried, and I tried, and then I tried again. Each time ended in a blue cloud of cussing: starting off with DPNs is like playing cat's cradle with an evil steel octopus. Those needles are very poky and if you don't keep an eye on them, they'll entangle themselves in the yarn, your hair and - most bizarrely - the lace of your bra (through two layers of clothes!!)

But yesterday I got beyond the starting horrors and managed about two inches:

 Now, I know you're all very kind people, so you'll rush to reassure me that it's not too bad for my first attempt. In fact, it's dreadful. In a couple of places I purled instead of knitted and vice versa. My stitches are wobbly and when you turn it inside out, you'll see that I even managed to drop a stitch twenty rows back and I didn't notice:

But I showed those knitting needles who's boss! = Me! And I have about a dozen minor puncture wounds to prove it, but they're not the boss of me! So, being the glutton for punishment that I am, I'm going to rip back and start again - and I'll keep at it till I can produce a piece of ribbing that actually does not look like something the cat dragged in.

Ripple Hat

Footstomp!
After my triumph with my Twenties Hat, where the image that was in my head more or less translated exactly into reality, I had a sad failure yesterday. This:

See, I was walking to work on Friday when I passed a girl unlocking her bike. She had a crochet hat - a snugly-fitting, beanie-style hat that had a ripple pattern, starting with a five or six-pointed star shape. I paused momentarily to gawp but she was already hopping on her bike - and she was gone.

"Darn it!" I thought. "I wanted to have a good look at her hat!"
I'm not really sure about the etiquette of hat-hijacking: "Oi! You on the bike! 'Scuse me, can I borrow your headgear so I can figure out how to make it?" seems the most direct, but possibly also the most disconcerting approach. Never mind, I thought, I'll probably never see her again.

But I did! She sped past me about two hours later and this time I had my arm raised to flag her down and ask her about her beanie - but she was too fast. So I had a look in the Ravelry pattern database for something similar but to no avail. All that remained was to make one of my own. This is the first attempt:



















And I'm afraid it looks a tad like a tea-cosy. Or, at the very least, it doesn't look like hers.
Epic sadface :-(
And back to the drawing board.

Dear Spammers II

Dear Members of the German Medical Profession,

It is with great concern that I have noted a rapid increase in the number of emails from female doctors - alone today I have received correspondence from Dr. Hannelore Schmidt, Dr. Renate Mueller, Dr. Iris Kirkegard and Dr. Melanie Ludwig, each offering me the possibility to satisfy my girlfriend in bed. This is disturbing on many levels, dear medics. Allow me to elucidate:

First of all, from a feminist point of view, I wonder if the glass ceiling is so entrenched in the German medical profession that these poor women are forced to leave the practice of healing and scratch a living peddling pharmaceuticals on the Internet. Shame on you, you sexist boars!

Secondly, these emails shake my faith in the medical training afforded by universities in this country. It is very nice of these ladies to be concerned about the ability of my genitals to remain upright for hours at a time, but I would like to note that my particular private bits do not possess the ability to point upwards because they do not dangle to begin with. I believe the first class at medical school probably covers the basic anatomical differences between the sexes, but obviously Dr. Schmidt et al were too busy playing Tetris on their iPhones during that particular lecture. The fact that I don't possess the necessary bits to effectively utilise these pills may have to do with the fact that I am female, - which in turn may also be divined from my name: The Gingerbread Lady. Shocker, eh? Though I am aware that in this day and age this doesn't necessarily need to be a hint, in my case it is. 

Thirdly, my girlfriends have their own beds to go to, thank you very much. I imagine that even if I were to lure them over on the pretext of a sleepover, my trying any shenanigans would end up being a very unexpected and deeply disturbing experience for us all - including their and my husbands.

In all, I would request that you ask your colleagues to discontinue sending me offers of potency drugs. It is very kind of them, to be sure, but I do not need them at present, nor do I see myself needing them in the foreseeable future. However, should I experience unexpected growth in the nether regions, I will contact you post haste.

Best regards,

The Gingerbread LADY

Colour Palette

My sister-in-law got engaged at Christmas, so I thought I'd make them a Moorish Mosaic Afghan. I haven't seen their new apartment yet, I just know that she has a dark red sofa so I chose a dark red as the main colour:

Now all I have to do is find a colour palette. If it were for me, I'd throw half-a-dozen skeins of yarn into one of my hundred craft baskets and off I'd go ... but it's rather difficult to try and second-guess someone else's taste. So I just kept mixing and matching colours:

The whole process was watched sceptically by Mr Gingerbread, who was putting up a lamp while I was doing it. He was dragged over to give his opinion, which he did unwillingly. ("I can't imagine what the blanket is going to look like based on just five colours!" "Just tell me if your sister will like these five colours!" "I don't know! This is very stressful! Leave me alone!") He finally picked the first group of colours and skipped off happily, thinking he'd been let off the hook. Haha! Little does he know that I've found five more colours that also might work, so he has to go through the whole process again tomorrow.

My Celtic Peeps

As you probably know by now, I come from Ireland. Not the romantic, rolling-hills-and wee-small-walls part in the west of Ireland, but rather the flat bit in the east called Kildare, best suited to growing crops and, um, racehorses. In our part of Ireland we do not speak the with the kind of accent that garners the usual plethora of admiring adjectives from foreigners: our accent is not "melodious", "musical" or "lilting". Goodness, no - at a pinch it could be described as "flat". In fact, to make matters worse, a decade abroad educating Germany's Youth has even polished off the worst excesses of my accent: I no longer differentiate between you singular and plural (whereas in Ireland we do: you and ye, yiz or youse, depending on where youse come from), I now use the Present Perfect (I've just combed my hair) instead of our luvverly Irish Past-Present Continuous (I'm after combing my hair) and - shriek! - I can pronounce my th. In fact, I was once introduced to a little brother's friends as
"- the one who lives in Germany, you know, the one who talks posh," ("Poshly," I corrected automatically. My siblings really hate me.)

But over here in Germany, I have discovered a curious thing: I can recognise a Celt at fifty paces. Be they Scottish, Welsh or Irish, I know we probably share DNA before they even open their mouths. I work in a multicultural environment, yet the Welsh, Scots and Irish still gravitate towards one another. What is it, I wonder, apart from a shared compulsion to sing at every public gathering? That, and the persistent desire to dress inadequately in inclement weather (I mean, come on: kilts. Really? Wearing a skirt with no underwear on a windy day - i.e. 360 out of 365 - in the mountains of northern Europe? Oh, please!)

Aside from everything else, I can speak normally (or spake narmal, as we'd say in Kildare) when I'm with my fellow Celts. I can start sentences with "Yerra ..." and no one bats an eyelid. In fact, I can utter complete sentences that consist of nothing but "Yerra ... " and they are seen as significant philosophical contributions to the discourse:
"And that was the point when I told him never to darken my door again! The rat!"
"Yerra..." (shrugs).
That says it all.

This is one of the reasons why I volunteered to do some of the telephone enquiries about our school's proposed trip to Scotland. I get to talk to ladies in offices in Scotland and chitchat about the weather whilst noting down ferry timetables and group discounts for students. It's very relaxing - after a day of speaking German, I get to chat with my fellow Celts. I can unleash my repressed Irish accent and let it all hang out.
Or so I thought.
Just last week I had a lovely chat with a lady called Betty near John o'Groats. I wanted to know how long the ferry to Orkney would take.
"Howarya," I said (= standard form of address in Kildare), "My name is Gingerbread Lady and I'm phoning youse from Germany because we're after planning a school trip to Scotland and, yerra, sure and amn't I just finalising the details." (Well, not quite - but you get the idea.)
Betty trilled in delight - more so when I told her that there were fifty of us. She tapped away on her computer and gave the sailing times and the price and we chatted about how dreadful the winter was and I was so happy to be able to talk to this lovely little old lady (or aul wan, as we'd say in Kildare). After a couple of minutes of small-talk, I thanked her and said I'd send an email to confirm.
"Wail," she said, "It's bin vairrry nice talkin to yui."
"Yerra, thanks a million Betty for all your help," I said, "Sure and aren't you a star?"
She paused and then said in a confidential voice:
"And I rrrreally must say: yuir English is vairy, vairy guid!"
Readers, I was momentarily stunned: she didn't know I was Irish! And then devastated: she didn't know I was Irish! And then complimented: my English is vairy, vairy guid! So I bit my lip and, not wanting to embarrass her, thanked her kindly and hung up.

Have I been here that long? I wondered. Am I beginning to sound like a German? Am I losing my accent - and my identity? Will this mean that I, too, will start wearing thermal underwear in winter and develop a yearning for The Nature? Who am I? What am I?
I can only imagine that later that day, Betty and the other girls were hanging around the water cooler or coffee maker or haggis dispenser, or whatever it is one has in Scottish offices, and she probably told them about me:
"I had a phonecall today from a lovely wee Gairman girrl - and aparrt from the fact that she had a vairy odd accent, her English was actually vairy guid!"
Thanks a bloody million for the identity crisis, Betty. I hope you choke on your shortbread.

Photo courtesy of www.acobox.com

The Boy Who Yelped "Wolf!"

I regularly post about my husband. I regularly feel bad about posting about my husband, but he doesn't seem to mind. Now and again, I wonder if his idiosyncracies are just that: his idiosyncracies - or whether I've hit upon something peculiar to the adult male. The latter is something I often wonder about because many of his little quirks are shared by my father ... so I've either got a bad case of the Freudians, or these oddities may be shared by a larger group as a whole.

That's why it's good to have female friends, a kind of little self-help group, if you will. Last weekend I picked up my friend Miss P for a walk and found her almost spitting with temper.
"I. Would. Love. To. Slap. Him. Sometimes," she said, enunciating icily in her rage. "I heard a flipping shriek from the kitchen and when I ran in to help him, I found that he'd just knocked over a cup. I thought he was dead!"
Aha. So she'd fallen victim to The Yelp, I noted with pleasure. My father does it, my husband does it and now I know that Miss P's boyfriend does it. Interesting!

What's The Yelp?
Imagine, please, that you're engrossed in something important or delicate: you're correcting grammar exams, chopping garlic or re-attaching the 'end call' button to your ancient phone. Suddenly, your other half gives a blood-curdling yell: "Gnaaaaaaaggggghhhhhhhhh!"
Silence.
"What's wrong?" you shout.
More silence.
"What's wrong?" you shout again - but you're met with a deathly silence.
So you toss aside your exams, garlic and/or mobile phone and sprint into the next room, expecting to find your beloved in a heap on the floor, a severed limb protruding from the dishwasher, a pool of blood congealing next to him.
"What happened?" you wheeze. "What happened?"
And your partner-slash-spouse looks at you with big, blank eyes and says: "What? What do you mean?"
"You screamed!" you cry. "I heard you scream!"
"Did I really?" he says, bemused. "I don't remember that."
"You did! I heard you! You said: Gnaaaaaaaggggghhhhhhhhh!"
He shrugs. "Oh, that. Yeah. I couldn't get the olive jar open. So we're having pickles instead."
We.
Are.
Having.
Pickles.
Instead.
Eyes narrow and you think about the satisfaction of whipping the pickles out of his hands and sticking one up each nostril. But you don't. You return to whatever delicate matter you tossed away to run to your sweetheart's side in his moment of need. And you bite your fist.
Pickles.

"You say this was the murder weapon? Why, that's ... gruesome!"

Moments later, your ears are assaulted by a heart-rending moan. "Oh, nooooooo! Gneerggggghhhhhhhh!"
"What's wrong? What happened?"
"Aaaaahhhhhh! Friiiiinnnnnnnkkkkkkkkkk!"
Silence.
"What's WRONG?"
Silence.
I shriek: "What HAPPENED?"
He pops his head around the door, annoyed. "For crying out loud! I just dropped a tomato! Don't be such a drama queen!"
"One of these days," I warn, "you're really going to scream in pain and I won't come running. I'll just blithely ignore you and leave you extricate yourself from the innards of the vacuum cleaner or the drum of the washing machine. Then you'll be sorry!"

He shrugs, unconcerned. And why would he be? He knows that this is an empty threat on my part. We both do. As the old saying goes: Fool me once, shame on you - but fool me twice, shame on me. Or, in this case: Fool me 5,297 times, shame on me.

Dear Spammers

To:      princeofnigeria@hotmail.com

From:    Me, The Gingerbread Lady

Subject: The millions of dollars you wish to hide in my bank account

Dear Prince of Nigeria,

Well, hello there back to you, my friend! I was absolutely gobsmacked to find your email in my inbox this morning because I was not aware that I could count royalty among my peeps. Imagine my joy when I read your opening words: Greetings to you, my friend! My friend! That, and the fact that you have chosen to conduct state business via a Hotmail account, shows that you are truly a man of the people.

Yes, I was devastated to hear that there had been a coup in Nigeria. Truth be told, I didn't even know you had a monarchy, labouring as I was under the misconception that Nigeria was actually a republic! I'm very happy to hear that all of your family got out alive, although I imagine you must have been dreadfully inconvenienced by all of the marauding riff-raff with their machetes and whatnot. And at this time as well: goodness knows, you're probably up to your ears in preparations for Kate and William's wedding in April. I bet you were looking forward to catching up on all the goss' from the world's other royal families: sharing a bon mot with the Emperor of Japan, and eyeing up the pretty Princesses of Sweden before sitting down to a fine English banquet. Instead, you will be a persona non grata, a Displaced Royal Person - if you even receive your wedding invitation at all. No doubt it's already winging its way to the Royal Palace in Abuja as we speak ... only to fall into the grubby paws of one of the nasties who deposed you. The injustice of it all!

But let me not beat about the bush, my friend. Of course you can deposit $20 million in my bank account. No problem whatsoever! But it sounds like you have enough on your plate right now, what with the revolution and all the rest, so why don't you just send me your bank account details as well as a notarized power of attorney slip, and I'll just help myself to whatever's lying around? I can divide it up between my piggy bank and my post office savings book, so no one will ever know it's there. And furthermore, as a sign of my trustworthiness, I will only accept a 10% holding fee, instead of the 20% you so generously offered.

See - I feel like we're almost family! So please send me all the documentation as soon as possible, including a copy of your passport, your credit card and social security card numbers. Thanks awfully, your Highness.

Love to your parents, the King and Queen, 

The Gingerbread Lady xxx

Germans and The Nature

Our little river has burst its banks

Today was a beautiful day - like the first day of Spring. Unfortunately, because it's only January, this means we get a spring-like day dangled in front of our noses and then it will be yanked away viciously with the onset of another month of ice and blizzards. But for today we enjoyed it. I went for a walk and took some photos - a rather difficult task, given the tumult of bodies on the woodland pathways and in the parks. I sighed: I have never quite understood the Germans' fascination with The Nature.

As most of you know, I grew up in the depths of rural Ireland. To be more precise, I grew up in a draughty old stone farmhouse in the middle of nowhere - we don't have an address, we just have the name of the square acre our house is planted on and the name of the nearest town. For kicks and laughs, we walked down to the end of the country road to The Big Tree - which was, as the name suggests, a Big Tree. If we were feeling particularly wild, we walked in the opposite direction to the Water Pump, which was - brace yourself - an old-fashioned water pump at a local crossroads. How we didn't spontaneously combust with excitement during our teenage years is beyond me.

A cloudless blue sky

The thing is, Ireland isn't particularly densely populated so The Nature - as the Germans quaintly call it - is everywhere. If you turn your back for a minute, The Nature is liable to hop up and poke your eye out. Here in Germany, it's not so much the case - people have to actively seek The Nature out. And that they do: they're always walking to somewhere or from somewhere (they call it 'wandern' but don't mix that up with the snail's pace stroll of the English wandering: this is wandern, with hiking boots and the ski pole-thingies that have become really fashionable in the past few years as Germany's senior citizens have discovered Nordic walking. Nordic walking - this is for the benefit of my Irish readers - is basically skiing without the skis. You march around, huffing and puffing, with ski poles. Apparently you walk faster? or more energetically? or something.) Unlike Irish people, who usually go for a walk to digest a meal or get to a place where they'll get their next meal, Germans walk for The Nature. They walk and look, and look and walk. And when they get wherever they want to get to, The Nature is viewed thoroughly - then they hitch up their ski poles, lace their hiking boots a bit tighter and walk back.



This puzzled me for years because I couldn't quite understand why one would have to torture oneself with a walk up a steep mountain path, only to look at other mountains, before walking back down. This was a bone of great contention between me and my ex-boyfriend, one we eventually overcame when I learned to give him the camera to take photos of the view on the top of the mountain, while I sat at a picnic bench in the shade and read my book. It never helped that I was always inappropriately dressed: I don't have hiking boots or khaki pants with lots of pockets or, God forbid, shorts. My sartorial inadequacies, combined with my startlingly white skin and red hair, meant that I stood out immediately as an Islander amongst all the sallow-skinned Continentals, (who were general dressed like Indiana Jones, funnily enough.)

The bizarre thing is that no matter where I have been in the world - and I've been in some weird places - there are always a couple of German tourists there as well. Decked out in wool socks, sturdy boots, sensible shorts, coloured sunglasses and funny headgear, they survey the mountain range (check! been there!), inside of a volcano (check! been there!), seven hills of Rome (check! been there!), Atlantic Ocean from an Irish clifftop (check! - oh, what's the use) and complain bitterly if it does not meet their expectations.

Very often, I see a fellow Irish person (usually male): they're usually incorrectly dressed for the elements and look slightly bewildered. When I ask them what they're doing there, they mumble something about "getting on a plane to Sydney with their mate Dekko..." and "... meeting three Italian girls in Brisbane ..." and "... taking a fishing boat to Jakarta..." and "... ending up here. Where am I anyway?" Turn your back for half a minute and they'll strike up a friendship with a local, marry his daughter and within two months, they'll have opened MacGinty's Irish Pub on the slopes of Mount Bromo, Indonesia's premier volcanic tourist attraction. Return in a year, and the pub will be full of inadequately-clothed Irish people who got lost between Java and Bali, while droves of Germans hike past the window, their eyes focused on The Nature.