This Past Month…
In other news, yes, I have been quiet. What have I been up to? Mainly nothing. Nothing at all. Or undemanding fun stuff: reading (MJH’s Climbers and Things that Never Happen, some plays by Feydeau, Mr Golightly’s Holiday…) and watching DVDs (24 Hour Party People is excellent, and I find myself wanting to watch all the commentaries and extra features; I also tracked down Oscar winners Winged Flight and Spirited Away, of course my kids don’t appreciate either of them; Pollock was slightly disappointing; The Incredibles absolutely… incredible).
Anyway, other than all that, I went to Germany. It was quite a while ago now, about 3 weeks back; I was with a group of Woodcraft Folk leaders, visiting our twin organisation Die Rote Falken in Sheffield’s twin town of Bochum: the two organisations have a long history, with two visits a year at present (one each way), and I somehow found myself elected as Secretary of WEBS (Woodcraft Exchanges Bochum-Sheffield), the organisation which runs the trips.
I had an absolutely brilliant time, even though Bochum (and in particular Wattenscheid, the suburb where we stayed) is nothing to write home about. The people hosting us were so friendly and welcoming; I was put up by Andy, who became a close friend despite the language barrier (although I was surprised that by the end of the five-day trip I had remembered most of my O-Level [failed] German, and could communicate pretty well with everyone, even if I couldn’t understand their replies to me; I knew I had really made it when I started to make puns in German, which came more and more freely to me by the end of the trip). Andy and I spent a couple of excellent nights down at De Stille, his local bar. The first time we stayed there from 8pm until 7am, I managed to avoid getting too stonkingly drunk despite 11 hours of non-stop Alt drinking. German bars are so much more sensible than English ones: no paying when you get your drink, just another line drawn around the edge of your beer mat. It means no worrying over buying rounds, or about keeping up with everyone else’s drinking, just keep going at your own rate and your glass will be replenished as soon as you finish. It also means that you can roughly estimate how pissed somebody’s likely to be by glancing at the lines around the outside of their beer mat. Oh, and drink is so much cheaper than here: after my 11-hour drinkathon I’d managed to run up a princely bill of less than €15 (although admittedly I was bought a couple of drinks, and I think the barmaid Sandra slipped me the odd freebie).
OK, gotta go now. I’ll try and dash some more thoughts down later, as I’d like to at least mention the show we got to see this weekend, Bloody Mess by Forced Entertainment.