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So here it is, the end of the first decade of the 21st century (or, if you are a pedant, the end of the penultimate year of the first decade), and as I write this, the first fireworks are being let off in preparation for the big show at midnight.
That, though, is as nothing compared with the awful racket we had to endure a few hours ago. It’s a tradition hereabouts for brass bands to wander about town playing out the old year in a medly of favourite tunes. Playing brass instruments in sometimes freezing conditions is a challenge in itself, but what makes it even more “interesting” (if that’s the right word) is that, according to tradition, most of their stops are at the local pubs where, also according to tradition, they are rewarded for their musical entertainment (or whatever you want to call it) with a little drinkie.
I’ll leave it up to you to imagine the noise made by a brass band playing in the cold after eight or ten stops for refreshment.
This morning, my wife wistfully said she’d love to know what was in the jam we were spreading on our bread. It’s a home-made jam in an unlabelled jar, an indeterminate orange-yellow colour that definitely includes peach, but some other things as well. Neither of us can remember what, but I have an excuse: I didn’t make it.
We have quite a lot of jars like this still in the cellar. Some of them probably don’t even contain jam: until you open the jar, plum jam looks very much like plum chutney, which adds a certain “Russian roulette” dimension to breakfast.
My wife doesn’t believe in labelling anything, and that includes the stuff she squeezes into the freezer. And like most women, she’ll freeze anything left over, just in case. Peas and broccoli are usually easy to identify, but a few things defy identification until thawed and (usually) cooked.
This one fact explains why, a few nights ago, the red cabbage we had for dinner was revealed, on being served, as beetroot. That wasn’t so bad, but we have had in the past some rather more regrattable incidents, such as the goulash which was actually gravy, and — my wife’s finest hour to date, her pièce de résistance — the oddly pale minced meat used to make spaghetti bolognese and subsequently identified as sage and onion stuffing.
My wife, undeterred, still won’t label anything. Or seldom: she does label a few things when the mood takes her, but with cryptic signs so baffling, they’d flummox Dan Brown. I haven’t yet plucked up the courage to find out what’s in the half-dozen jars with “Ch” scrawled on their lids in indelible ink.
Seriously, I really should blog more. This is just ridiculous. I keep telling myself I have better things to do, which is true, but that’s not the point. I really should blog more.
Among some of things you have missed because I wasn’t blogging about them, in no particular order:
- I have a new computer, which took about a week to set up and has something wrong with it. Of course. It’s not a biggie, but I refuse all the same to take it back and get a new one, on the grounds that after a week of setting this one up, I don’t feel like spending another week setting up a different computer only to find it sucks for a different, and more urgent, reason, such as taking a dislike to my external hard drive.
- Our trip to the Netherlands went fine, thanks. Oh, you didn’t know we were in the Netherlands? Here’s the video record of our visit.
- YouTube outed me as one of their PowerPosters, which basically means I get to escalate bug reports. It’s almost as fun as it sounds.
- My wife broke the toilet. But we’re not talking about that.
- In case you’re ever thinking of visiting Koblenz and are a connoisseur of great architecture, I suggest you first poke your eyes out with a corkscrew. It’s less painful that way, trust me.
- My wife won a prize for a contest she forgot she’d ever entered. We’re not talking about that, either.
- I’ve had some very entertaining run-ins with far-right extremists who think Europe is about to be islamified. What’s entertaining about it is being able to point them to some actual facts and figures and watch them backpedal.
- My wife baked some pastries about which we are not talking.
So there you have it: You are now pretty much up to speed with the most important things going on in my life right now. I wonder how much longer I can keep this blogging mularky up?
I don’t quite know exactly where this came from, but it was good to think about where I am at right now.
Last weekend, I was in Hamburg, after a good friend of mine offered me the chance to become a godfather. Of course, it wasn’t until I showed up at the church with a violin case that I realised my mistake, but we laughed it off and I managed to dispose of the horse’s head without anyone noticing.
For someone like me, who hasn’t had much experience with babies, the experience was a daunting one, especially when a small, bald, dribbling, toothless person was thrust into my arms and I realised that this was both my past and, very possibly, my future. While I am still of sound mind, I should like to apologise in advance to the staff at whatever nursing home I end up bald, dribbling and toothless in.
Of course, like most babies, my new godson didn’t care much about my own plans for a pleasant evening, but for his part, he’t just had a very large meal. After a lot of squirming around, he finally grabbed hold of my best shirt and stuffed a fistful of it into his mouth.
This, I rapidly discovered, was a cynical ploy. The warm, wet sensation spreading from exactly that point signalled the fact that dinner had broken off its trek through the child’s digestive tract and returned to the outside world via the end not swathed in absorbant materials manufactured to the highest standards of hygiene. There is, I feel, an obvious gap in the market here.
The genius of this exercise lay in the fact that nobody else could actually see anything, which meant that I had a devil of a time persuading him that little JD (as I shall call him) had done more than just cough slightly. Once convinced, they were at least gracious enough to remove the child from my person, revealing a fair amount of stringy goo.
Of course, right after that, JD decided he wanted seconds, which leads me to suspect that the whole thing was planned from beginning to end. For some reason, nobody believes me.
Anyway, since I never did get any of that on film, here’s a consolation: an educational video. Yay!