Bob Geldof was right....

... about several things, although I can only really think of two - the Band Aid record and not liking Mondays.

The reluctant housewife is becoming even more so the longer she remains unemployed. Try as she might, she cannot gain satisfaction from picking bits of cereal off the carpet or cleaning bathrooms. Spicing up her life means, these days, thinking about buying a new laundry basket as she is so sick of the old one, or maybe vacuuming the house with her eyes shut (she doubts that anyone would notice). Or writing in the third person as opposed to the first. Quirky, huh?

Blogging about the delights of Bavaria is hard when a permanent layer of freezing fog prevents you from seeing anything (apart from people flying their eagles and stuff like that). The good neighbours, the NNs, are rarely to be seen, which is a shame as they are a jolly good source of amusement value. (One is sure, though, that they will be omnipresent from April to November, thus compensating for their current elusiveness.) The only time Herr NN pokes his little nose out of the door is when it starts snowing. First he checks through the window. You can see him monitoring the situation hourly. When he deems the snow deep enough, he brings out his snow-blower and makes a horrendous noise for a couple of hours. The rest of the time he stays in the warm, watching his orchids growing and drinking beer.

The reluctant housewife has procrastinated long enough for this morning. Time to go and attack those fruit loops.

Let's go fly a kite

You might think that nothing would shock me anymore around here. The saying still waters run deep could have been designed for Bovinia, where the apparent tranquil exterior masks a myriad of strange goings-on, both inside and out. Firstly I can testify to the fact that the wine industry is thriving here. A short trip to the bottle bank this morning confirmed that not only CG and I are relying on a bottle or two of something to stave off the freezing boredom of winter. And as for outside - how about people who take their pet eagle out for a quick fly before dark? Yes, it's true. I was picking my way along an icy road when I saw what appeared to be a person flying a kite, or at least trying to get the kite up in the air; you know, that way you have to kind of throw it upwards until it finds an air current and takes off. It wasn't much of a kite, I thought to myself, rather dark and shabby and flopping about a bit. When it did eventually take off, though, I realised that it was none other than an extremely large bird of prey, which circled around a bit, dive-bombed once or twice, then flew back to its owner, who was swinging some piece of dead animal on a rope. I tried not to stare too much as there was a scary little man, clearly an accomplice of the eagle person, standing by a rusty VW polo smoking a cigarette. He glared as I ran past, as if defying me to so much as raise an eyebrow at something that, for most of us anyway if you don't live in a falconry, was quite unusual. I couldn't help but notice that there was no cage of any kind in the car - presumably the eagle sat on the back seat or flapped about in the boot.

Fun though it would have been to watch the pair of them wrangle their pet into the car I proceeded onwards, as the sun had already gone behind the mountains and the streetlights were coming on. The last thing I wanted to was to get mixed up in some sort of pre-prandial brawl on my way past the Alpenhof pub. It is a well-known fact that some people here start their daily Jägermeister consumption just after breakfast. They are, therefore, spoiling for a fight by six p.m.

Kestrels and Brownies - cryptic or what?

Yesterday I saw a kestrel killing and carrying off a blackbird. Nature is brutal, is it not?

But that is not what I wanted to write at all. No, I merely wanted to say that tomorrow is Hedda's ninth birthday, and I feeling strangely calm and collected, considering we've got nine girls coming to stay the night. I think I know why. Hedda, whose middle name is usually high-maintenance, has decided she doesn't want a novelty party cake, i.e. something that requires work. Only a tray of brownies with ice cream. In a positive flush of efficiency I have already baked these (not the ice cream, obviously), bought 3 kilos of oven chips and 36 mini pizzas. The showpiece will be our totally kitsch cocktail fountain (with colour-changing lights), which I shall fill with apple juice.

PS: My standards must be slipping. I just went to Aldi wearing my tracksuit bottoms and no earrings.

Slippery slopes and icy patches

I've given up reporting on snow, how deep it is, how slushy/icy/white/grey it is, how nice the mountains look. You can pretty much assume that, unless I wax lyrical about wonderfully unseasonal hairdryer weather, it is snowy, cold and boring. I am not unproud of the fact that I get out there almost every day and pound the streets, regardless of their condition. In fact, I would say that I have become quite adept at not falling over (apart from this morning when I nearly broke my leg running down a hill and am therefore about to buy some winter running shoes with spikes on). However, there are still places where I have to be terribly careful not to fall over backwards. Now normally, when out running, I see nobody at all. The occasional dogwalker or horserider, or a man having a sneaky pee behind a barn - he was so freaked out when I ran up behind him and coughed loudly - but apart from that noone is out there braving the elements in a lunatic way EXCEPT those old, weatherbeaten farmer types, who never seem short of something to do. And it is always when I am negotiating a horribly icy patch that I find one of them watching me, leaning on his shovel/scythe/pitchfork/other longhandled farming tool, only his eyes moving in an otherwise impassive face. Inwardly I pray that I will not choose this moment to fall over, because I know that they won't respond with a chirpy Bavarian equivalent of 'enjoy your trip, come back next fall'; rather, they will regard me in silence as I pick myself up and dust the snow and horse manure off my backside and lumber off, red in the face if I wasn't already. So far God has been kind. I might have wobbled a bit, but I've remained upright. When I get my icebug shoes, though, you won't see me for slush. I'll be past those farmers before they've even raised their heads from their respective muck heaps.

Momentous decisions

I can't think why I haven't told anyone this yet. On New Year's Eve, I decided - almost rashly but with great conviction - that I will donate my body to medical research when I'm dead (I thought about doing it while alive, but I've heard it hurts a bit). Reason being, I'll probably be in Germany when I die - a safe assumption right now, anyway. And in Germany, if you choose to be cremated, your nearest and dearest don't get the souvenir urn to put on their mantelpiece or take up Mt Snowdon to throw your remains to the mountain winds. The urn is buried in the cemetery here. I don't think you can even touch it. I clearly remember how I felt as we, the ones left behind, attended the burial of my father-in-law's urn. A spotty youth wearing white sports socks (I don't know why, but this struck me as particularly offensive) walked ahead of us with ostentatious ceremony, holding the hanging urn out in front of him with his skinny arm. He had a post-nasal drip. The hole in the ground resembled one you might dig to plant a small tree. Everyone was silent and awkward and uncomfortable. It makes me shudder just writing about it.

Since then I have often said that I would like to be cremated in England, and CG or whoever - Gaia perhaps - would be free to choose from my many beloved beauty spots as to where they'd scatter me. However, it costs a bomb to fly a body back to its home country, and I am not sure that EasyJet or Ryanair do it. If they do, there's bound to be an unaffordable surcharge. So it would be the urn in the hole for me. Theoretically. But no more! I shall make some medical students happy and save thousands of euros in funeral costs at the same time. All I request is one of those naff benches with a plaque on it, and someone with a good sense of humour - I delegate my brother this task - can dream up a suitable epitaph. And occasionally come along and wipe off the bird droppings.

The Titanic Obsession

Titus has been obsessed with the Titanic since the beginning of December. He's seen the movie, he's read the book (or at least had it read to him)... no detail is too small or uninteresting. We've done character analyses on Captain Smith, and social analyses on the class differences, raising questions as to the injustice of the rich people's better chances of survival. Time and again, we have questioned the idiocy of neither having enough lifeboats on board, nor being able to lower them into the ocean when fully laden. The obsession even extends to the private lives of the main protagonists of the film, namely Kate Winslet and Leonardo di Caprio. Titus believes that if they had got married in real life, Kate "wouldn't have wasted time with her two ex-husbands" and that Leo "would have been married by now, and not be waiting for his girlfriend to say yes". (He may have a point, but I doubt they would be interested.) We know, now, that the Titanic had four funnels, only three of which were functional. We know what the three classes had for dinner. And we speculate endlessly on what became of Rose (Kate Winslet's character) and how she managed to live so long. And why she insisted on bringing her goldfish to the research ship.

Usually Titus' obsessions fade after a couple of weeks and are replaced by a new one. Not this time. This morning, on the way to kindergarten, I was coerced into a quick roleplay, where he was the captain of RMS Carpathia (again, sorry if you already know, but if not - this was the ship that came to the Titanic's rescue) and I was various sad, cold, wet passengers who had just been hauled out of the lifeboats. The captain was trying to make a list of all the survivors' names. It was quite a challenge even for my imagination, which is, to say the least, vivid. Perhaps it didn't help that we were struggling along in a blizzard.

I will get a brief period of respite this afternoon, as his friend Joseph is coming to play. Try as he might, Titus cannot get anyone else of his age to be interested in a ship that sunk 99 years ago.

You will eat this... because we say so!!!!

Sorry - there was no internet yesterday (why????) but it seems to be back today. All a big mystery. Anyway, you didn't miss much. I have nothing of amusement or other value to report. Only, perhaps, an update on the sinister tiger glove puppet at Titus' kindergarten. Standing watching the kids frolicking in the snow yesterday lunchtime, I found myself next to the fierce and devout teacher. She said nothing, I said nothing. But then an inner voice told me it was now or never. Could you please explain this tiger puppet game to me, I asked. She launched into a detailed explanation. When she was done I asked what the tiger had against rice cakes. The ensuing discussion was so ridiculous and impossible to translate that I present you here with a mere synopsis: whoever the people in charge of nutrition are, at whatever the place, wherever it might be (presumably in Bavaria), they have decreed that the right and proper mid-morning snack must be a sandwich of wholemeal bread, the darker the better, with crusts, and, even more better, seeds or nuts. The filling of the sandwich is irrelevant. I know, because I checked. Teacher offered me a flyer about nutritional information, which I declined, feeling I had been patronised enough. So much for it being a free country. Do you think they'd mind if I put nutella in the sandwich?

The Breakfast Inspection

Can this be true? Titus' normal 'second breakfast' (in Germany, people don't believe that kids can make it through the morning without a hefty snack - when I was at school, we got a bottle of luke-warm milk!) consists - or at least did consist - of four rice cakes, sandwiched together with cottage cheese. On the day in question, he also had some slices of red pepper in a little tupperware box. His glum face when I picked him up told me that something was afoot. Yes, a glove puppet tiger, aka the hand of his fierce and devout kindergarten teacher, had carried out an inspection on the second breakfasts that morning, allocating points (2 maximum) for the healthiest. Titus got a grudging half a point. I have to admit that I couldn't blog about this straight away because I was seething. How can a snack be healthier than that? Maybe I have missed the point, because Titus told me the only boy to get 2 points was someone with a ham, cheese and butter sandwich. Nevertheless, I decided to tackle fierce and devout teacher about this yesterday. I rehearsed umpteen scenarios in my head beforehand. (I seem to do this a lot these days.) But when the time came, Titus put a restraining hand on my leg and whispered, please don't do it now Mummy. There was terror in his eyes. I relented. And today we had the rice cakes for breakfast at home and took a big fat sandwich to kindergarten instead. When in Rome...

Throngs of Bavarians in national dress....

... were what I was confronted with this evening at a New Year's reception in Garmisch. CG cajoled me into coming along - that is to say, he practically kidnapped me (I was going to wimp out). It was one of those German-American Let's All Be Friends things... no, I am not familiar with them either, but they're probably a good idea. So off we went, leaving Hedda and Titus in the 'capable' hands of Gaia. In other words, when she's not online, she's a jewel.

We arrived at the Congress Hall and I swapped my nice brown coat for a garish orange ticket. My thoughts of quiet perimeter-mingling with a glass of warm sparkling wine in my hand disappeared instantly when I saw the obligatory queue to meet the mayor. To be honest, I've spent shorter times waiting for a box office hit at the local cinema back in Blighty. (In those halcyon days before you knew you could catch it on DVD and it probably wasn't going to be that good anyway.) Elderly ladies in dirndls and their male counterparts formed the majority of the crowd. I even spotted a monk. Anyway, a half hour soon passed, at least after we'd pushed in behind some Swiss people, and we shook hands with the powers-that-be and made our way to the pleb seats in the auditorium. I'll gloss over the actual programme, which had half the audience asleep within ten minutes, but was considerably livened up by the exceptional brass band on the stage. The best bit of the whole show was when the conductor, on his way to his rostrum, knocked over a huge vase of most unseasonal blooms. A few kind people in the front row handed back some token ferns and a rose, all that could be salvaged really. He was visibly perturbed by his faux-pas, not least because his whole band burst out laughing, but recovered fairly well. I detected a distinct quiver of his stick, however - not normal unless you're in the early stages of Parkinson's disease.

I could go on and on but you'd be bored. Brief summary of what this evening taught me: Bavaria has its own anthem and people actually sing it; if you are Bavarian and wearing the funny felt hat with feathers and badges you don't have to remove it inside a building; the older people are, the more aggressive they are around any kind of buffet; monks drink wine too (white - all the more surprising); the town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen is desperate to win the bid for the 2018 Winter Olympics. Oh, and it is true that the best cubicle to pick in a public toilet is indeed the first. I read this recently, having always avoided it, and have since tested the theory at every opportunity. I can confirm that none of the last 8 'first cubicles' sampled by me have stunk or had skidmarks. And just to be sure, this evening, I pretended to prink at the mirror whilst secretly observing women entering the toilet area of the restroom. Sure enough, not one opted for the first cubicle.

Never say I don't impart useful information in this blog. Anyone tried the haemorrhoid cream on their under-eye area yet?

Mother knows best - hopefully

That great fount of wisdom and knowledge, in other words my mother, gave me an interesting beauty tip on Saturday. Admittedly, had it been April 1, I'd have laughed knowingly (she's a sucker for practical jokes) and dismissed said tip, but it's January and she was deadly serious. We were chatting away about insomnia and its side effects, namely dark circles under the eyes. Apparently, if my mother and her colleagues in the good old NHS are to be believed, the magic remedy for this is - wait for it - haemorrhoid cream. Yes, really! In Britain it's called Anusol - I can't see the link myself - but I only had suppositories thereof (an unopened packet, I hasten to add), so the only alternative was the Belgian variety (also unopened) lurking in our medicine cabinet, as I would rather boil my head than go to a German chemist and ask for some. And surely they (haemorrhoids) don't differ between European countries? A pile is a pile, at the end of the day? The bottom line is that they itch and bleed and people don't talk about them, unless they are over eighty and are sitting in a doctor's waiting room. Or at a bus stop.

Anyway, I digress. Mother assured me that all the top models swear by this remedy, which is enough for me. I have just applied a light smear under each eye. Apart from a slight tingling (beginning of allergic reaction?) I can't notice anything untoward. But are the dark circles gone? I have only Titus here to ask and he's inherited his father's tactic of only telling me what I want to hear. Perhaps it takes a few days for the 'treatment' to work. Does anyone out there have any experience with this? Am I the only person in the world NOT to have known about this until last weekend? Please feel free to enlighten me.

The Beautiful Game

If you hail from the Sceptred Isle, you will know that this is how we describe the wonderful sport of football. Or at least, how some people describe it. Its charms had been largely lost on me until today, when my son Titus played his first tournament and scored a winning goal. I couldn't hold back the tears of pride from streaming down my face. Luckily, he couldn't see me. He is too young to be embarrassed by displays of maternal emotion, but he may well have been distracted, thinking I had lost my purse, stubbed my toe or dropped my last piece of chewing gum inadvertently down the toilet. His team did not win overall, but also didn't come last, which was a relief, as Titus is a terrible loser. Secretly I understand this, for who actually likes losing? And what is all this guff about the winning not mattering, only the participation? Of course we play to win. Still, I had to prime him beforehand not to get upset in the face of defeat. The only English football player to achieve notoriety - and the wrong sort at that - for blubbing on the pitch was the late Paul Gascoigne. I say late for, although he is still limping around in rehab somewhere, he is merely a shadow of his former self. Poor Gazza.

So Titus, the new soccer hero of Bovinia (at least in the 6 year old age group) is now the proud owner of a fake gold medal and is busy trying to persuade us that he doesn't need to play in any more tournaments, as it was 'too much hard work and far too loud'. Maybe he'll like working in a library or a mortuary when he grows up.

I must look older than I am

How I wish I could say that the other way round, but it seems this is not the case. Sigh. There's a woman here in Bovinia - I'm not even going to give her a name, as I am still deciding if she is worthy of being a regular part of my blog (you'll see why in a minute) - anyway, it takes no Sherlock Holmes to deduce that she must be at least 6 years older than me. And she looks it - ha. Maybe I sound bitter, but I have good reason. Several times this personage has, in the course of conversations with yours jadedly, referred to people "of our age". The first time I thought, wow - are you really that young? The second time I scrutinised her more closely. The third time I scrutinised myself closely in the mirror afterwards. Call me petty, but I have only got another eight and half months of being in my thirties and I don't need being lumped with a forty-five year old before my time. Anyway, diplomat that I am (when called for), I haven't reacted, but I've been planning scenarios in my head where I challenge her on this. An example reply would be, so what is "our age", exactly? Or, how old do you think I am? (Rejected, as she would probably say 45, then I'd feel like slapping her or crying or both, and that would be the end of a beautiful acquaintance). Better still, so how old are you then? Followed up by, oh, well I don't suppose 6 years is that much of a difference!! Miaow.

Deep, deep sigh. I will never use any of these replies. I'll keep schtumm as I always do, then go home and simmer with resentment for the rest of the day, or week, or month. Luckily I have CG as my ever-faithful, adoring, reassuring sounding board - you don't look any older than the day I met you, darling! (Thanks, babe.) He'll probably still be buying me mini-skirts when I'm 87. He also knows it is more than his life's worth to behave otherwise.

The Birthday Card

Hedda has been invited to a birthday sleepover this coming Friday. This has caused much jubilation as it is the first time she's received such an invitation since we've been here. She opted to design and write her own card, and I was about to put it in the envelope when I decided to fondly read her message. Thank goodness I did! This is what she'd written:

Dear Marie,

I hope you like the presents and that you don't already have them. They were really cheap.

Your friend, Hedda.

Blind Date

I've had enough of running on my own, particularly now that I have decided to train for a second marathon at the beginning of June. Out there all alone in howling gales and sideways rain, slush up to my knees, slipping around on ice... it's all fun but I really need some company. Therefore I have arranged a kind of running blind date with a guy down the road. OK, it isn't a date as such - but it feels strange having a rendezvous with a man I've never met. I do know, however, that he is at least twenty years my senior. There are some photos of him on the internet and he looks like one of those types who has been doing some kind of sport since before he could walk. Wiry, with a weatherbeaten face and a shock of light grey hair in a military cut. Reliable. A man of few words. A harsh disciplinarian who only lightens up after a litre of Weissbier.* He is the leader of a running club and by all accounts is one of the fittest people this side of the Alps. If he can't get me into shape, then who can? I tried to get CG to come with me (safety in numbers), but he demurred. The running guy - I don't know what his name is, but I'll surely develop a pseudonym for him before too long - wants to meet to do 15 km on Saturday morning at 10, on the dot (I quote). As if I would dare be late!

*I'll let you know if he turns out to be a lenient chatterbox who breeds fluffy yellow canaries and drinks white wine spritzers.

An extra shower

I wonder if this has ever happened to you. This morning I forced myself out for a run in the dank mist, the first time in 6 days. On returning I jumped into a hot shower and put on clean clothes (as is customary in such situations). It struck me then that the bathroom was looking a bit dirty, so I grabbed my bottle of Mr Muscle and a pink sponge cloth and started wiping down surfaces. The shower was the worst of all; in fact, I had to stand inside it to clean the metal bits properly. And guess what happened? I scrubbed too hard and in doing so unleashed 50 litres of cold water - at least that's what it felt like - all over my newly dried and dressed self. Spluttering expletives, I squelched away to get another set of clothes. It was a high price to pay to have the shower clean again. Only Max the cat was around to witness my apoplexy, and he just gave me one of his disparaging 'if you ain't offering food I don't give a damn' looks. Pah.

Monday morning at 5 a.m.

I think the song is actually called Wednesday morning at 5 a.m. But who cares? It is very, very early in the morning here in Bovinia. I have given up trying to go back to sleep. It is bucketing down with rain outside. In one hour my family will be awake and the whole machine of school, work, kindergarten and everything that this entails will crank into action. Imagine the pistons moving really slowly on a giant steam locomotive. You think it will never get started, but then momentum is gathered and off it puffs. So it will be here, too.

Titus is starting a skiing course today. I only hope it isn't rained off. On Saturday we bought him a ski helmet, which he proceeded to wear for the whole afternoon as we ambled round a beautiful town called Bad Tölz. This was a welcome decision as it meant nobody had to carry it, but we did attract a few curious glances, I have to admit. We must have looked like really, really neurotic parents as we stood at the playground watching our helmeted son cavorting around with - I want to say gay abandon, but I'm not sure one can use that expression any more??

I'll leave you with a last impression from my weekend. Saturday afternoon, on the way home, we stop at the ATM for Uncle T to get some cash. On the wall outside a lady is sitting, picking at the sole of her hiking boot with a stick in a futile attempt to remove some kind of turd (presumably dog). She and I exchanged glances. Hers rueful and resigned, mine sympathetic. A very old lady was waiting for her in the car. We drove off. She was still scraping away, shoulders bowed, as I looked out of the rear window.

Every cloud has a silver lining

... or so they say. I do apologise for my positively suicidally gloomy post yesterday. I hope you were able to function normally after reading it. It's ok for me - I let off steam on here, feel immediately unburdened, chuckle to myself as I click on 'publish' and go to have a cup of coffee. True, yesterday was rather grey and uneventful (apart from consigning our Christmas tree to the compost heap), but the flip side of it all was that I didn't leave the house once, not even to put something in the bins or throw crumbs on the lawn or feel if it was raining/snowing/sleeting. I stayed inside the whole day, reading an amazing book*, which I have now finished. Of course I leaped up to do bits of housework in between. CG is still on holiday though, so I have been lazy over the last two weeks. Am going to get a dreadful shock when he goes back to work on Monday! Who is going to make me cups of tea and load the washing machine and tell me to put my feet up??

*The Kindest Thing, by Cath Staincliffe. Finished Jilly Cooper the day before yesterday - finally.

Adios, Christmas tree

Unadorned pine trees growing in their natural environment are beautiful. Decorated, illuminated Christmas trees in a house are beautiful. But a stripped naked, dried out tree on January 6th is plain depressing. We took it upon ourselves to pack away all the Christmas ornaments by lunchtime today, but at 3 p.m we are still at it. Not because we have that many; it is just that we detest the task as it truly symbolises the end of Christmas. It is dreary weather, three more months of winter await, our teenager with chronic sulkitis got back yesterday from a week away and the mood here is quite downcast.

Lucky, then, that jolly Uncle T arrives tomorrow for his first visit to us in Bovinia. He is bravely flying into Innsbruck - up till now, all our visitors have come from Munich. Either way, the train connection takes a while, so he will have ample opportunity to lap up his new surroundings and exchange his air of urban chic for rustic charm.

Must go, I just heard the sound of a bauble shattering into smithereens on the marble floor.

The Taj Mahal

I have to admit that, if I were of Indian descent and were looking for a suitable place to start up a restaurant, Garmisch-Partenkirchen would not be the place that immediately sprang to mind. In fact, I think I'd leave Bavaria out of the equation altogether. Not so, however, for the good proprietors of the originally named Taj Mahal, our chosen lunch venue to celebrate CG's birthday yesterday.

CG and I, both big curry fans, or should I say big fans of curry, are always on the lookout for an Indian-style restaurant in mainland Europe that lives up to the likes of those one can experience in London. To this day, we have never found one. The Taj Mahal looked promising online, though, and we had high hopes as we ensconced ourselves at a table next to a tapestry of Buddha with an elephant's nose. But the dour service let the place down. And the fact that the onion bhaji could have been a portion of onion rings from Burger King, save the fact that the batter was a little more spicy. Worst of all, what we really, really hate in a restaurant is when we place our order, and the waiter in question responds with, are you really sure you can manage all that?? To which we reply, yes. And then sit there indignantly - after all, he is the one sporting the beer belly. And then they bring the stuff and out of pure stubbornness you feel compelled to devour the lot, just to prove your point, and feel nauseous for the rest of the day. So it was at the Taj Mahal.

After giving them an over-sized tip and a forced friendly auf Wiedersehen, we set off into the city centre to stock up on winter clothing. Sad to say, Hedda's snow trousers are already in tatters - she has a penchant for lying in the snow and kind of rubbing her legs around - we nabbed the last pair at H&M. Titus insisted that we buy a Spiderman hat which was two sizes too small, but we gave in like the weak, modern parents that we are. He has spent the last day pulling it down over his ears repeatedly. CG did have a wonderful birthday, however, and - much more amazingly - LOVED all his presents. Wow! I have finally hit the jackpot and made my husband happy on his birthday. It only took 12 years. But where do I go from here?

Is Max possessed?

Max the cat, having behaved relatively normally over the Christmas period, has developed a nervous tic. Either that, or he is possessed by some evil feline spirit. It may just be attention seeking, because he will appear perfectly fine, snoozing on 'his' red sofa, until I go along and try to reclaim my patch (which I do very kindly and gently, without disrupting him in any way). Then his back leg will start to twitch up and down, and he erupts into a cacophony of strange miaows that don't seem to signify physical discomfort, rather a mental disorder of some kind (that's all we need - an insane cat). Even putting a hand within 30 cm of him evokes this violent and - quite honestly - freakish reaction. CG, who is not renowned for his love of cats, gets concerned by these attacks and asks Max what is wrong. The cat sticks his head forward, pupils dilated (think Puss in Boots from Shrek, and I realise that is not the first time I have referred to the film series; I must be more intellectual than I thought), tongue slightly out. You may wonder why we don't rush him to a vet. Firstly, I would feel really silly explaining all this in German to a German vet, based on my previous record of making a fool of myself in this country. Secondly, the attacks rarely last longer than ten minutes and all the rest of the time he displays absolutely no symptoms. So I can only deduce that he has the rare qualities of a cat medium. Somewhere, out there in feline purgatory, there's a Felix or an Albert or a Pussywillow or whoever, trying to contact their mortal friends. When I have finished all the things I vowed I would do this January (namely the tasks that accumulated during 2010) I will see about interpreting cat messages from beyond the grave. Don't hold your breath though. You know I am an arch-procrastinator.

Back in the saddle again!

That's how it feels after three or four days away from my blog. When I woke this morning, my fingers were twitching in anticipation of typing my first post this new year. It is day three and Bovinia is bathed in brilliant sunshine, which is all the more wonderful after four days of thick, freezing fog.

Yesterday, three boys dressed up in king costumes, one with his face painted brown, appeared at our door, as is the custom here. Their task is to recite something religious and write the date in chalk on people's front doors, in return for which they collect money for a good cause. CG and I knew they would be coming so we were waiting with our 5 euros, eager for a bit of entertainment, which we got, as two out of three kings forgot their lines completely, went red in the face (although you couldn't really tell under the brown facepaint) and just stood mouthing helplessly until they were prompted by a lady standing out of sight in our garage. Her voice made me jump. Then another offstage person - not a king, but enrobed and kind of regal looking - swung that thing with incense burning in it - I wish I knew what it's called but am sure you know what I mean - and wrapped the whole thing up with a blessing. We were vociferous in our praise, particularly CG, who is always extra-hearty in such situations.

A last word for today - the title I chose for this post was partially inspired by my rather slow progress through Jilly Cooper's new 'blockbuster'. I have read all the others and thus felt obliged to purchase and read this one. It's called 'Jump' and it is so, so boring. There are hardly any naughty scenes, which were formerly the sole reason for reading her books; just pages of blurb about racehorses, porn stars and gay tree surgeons. Furthermore, she has quite clearly based the wimpy heroine on herself, which is completely egocentric. Sorry Jilly. I'll plough through to the end and put you on the shelf where you belong.