bad hair day

I suspect I left the hair dye on a bit too long...... waiting for it to dry properly to see how loud it is

Little Sylvia

She always preferred to be called Sylvie, as her mother had been. She was my father's cousin, they grew up together, and I was fortunate enough to spend time with both of them and to hear some of the stories from their childhood.

The chance to hear more of those stories, and to feel connected with my father by talking about him with his closest living relative closed when her God took her home last night. It was quick, and unexpected, and I hope she felt neither fear nor pain. I think she is 75, as my father would have been, and an inspiration to everyone as a caring, interested and lovely lady with a truly wicked sense of humour and unstoppable sense of fun.

I am glad we went to the island in May, although we didn't see each other often, I will miss her terribly. My loss is insignificant in comparison to the pain her husband and children must be feeling. God grant her, and them, peace.

Notatall Slobbering

I'm confused. I think it's because I'm in some unpronounceable town in Germany, OK, Nettetal-Lobberich near Munchengladbach, which I always thought was a made up name from Scotland The What, and outside an eclectic collection of alcohol.

I may copy this to the blog since tomorrow will be hellish as today was.

Boy boss is a total nightmare as a driver.

I'm obviously overrun with pheromones at the moment and keep finding men flirting with me ( the weird tall Dr Who type in Schickeria tonight was a bit scary).
Fortunately I had an honour guard of 3 colleagues, all of whom would have been foxing hopeless if he had got out of hand

Child from Kodak sweet-talked the bar landlady into giving him the Johnny Walker logo glass so he could give it to me. He did offer to pay for it but her missing English and our hopeless German made that a bit tricky.

This was 'our' bar, the only place open at 11pm last night after flight delays due to fog and terrifying drive through thick fog in a brand new 9kilometres on the clock Galaxy. Boy boss couldn't cope with parking despite parking proximity alarms but wouldn't let anyone else do it either. The hotelier eventually came out and moved his own car to give him a double space to aim at

A long cold walk through deserted foggy streets finally led us to the only place that seemed to be open, where they rustled up a plate of chips and ham & cheese baguettes which made us more nearly human

No place here takes any of our cash or credit cards so we have now cleared out all available euros and are not sure if the hotel bills can be covered tomorrow.

Please pay the ransom if they keep me hostage. That weirdo in the bar might fetch up again.

Tired. Probably more drunk than I think after a quiet scotch & coke after work, several beers, Jagermeister, more beer, free shot of fruit vodka and a couple of JWreds. Ah. And the scotch & coke I'm having now.

The upshot of all this is that I won't be back in Blighty till midnight on Thur ; plotting to play poker with my beloved infant on Friday and/or see Sid - and Mark doesn't have to cook dinner because CollAnne are supposed to be feeding us on Sat.

Lost Weekend

lounged yesterday. The shorts were wheeled in for a couple of hours before a BBQ that was cancelled so they were here all afternoon.

We watched (most of) Mary Poppins, found cheeseburgers in the freezer which dealt with their dinner, my son paid for our dinner from the takeaway, with top-up chips for the shorts, and I got into building Cosmopolitans which caused me to go to bed very early.

This morning has been a series of discoveries. Since I have no recollection of doing any of it, some house elf or Mac Nac Feegles have been in and dealt with domestic duties. Like.... finished loading the dishwasher before switching it on; switching off my computer, opening the curtains, switching off the lights, and washing up the fragile crystal martini glass I was drinking from. Twitter input seems fairly innoccuous, but the 'not fair' quote and link was from dim and distant, not last night. Maybe Chronos is getting freudian on me

I'm glad I gave a bodyswerve to everything I could/should have done this weekend as I feel totally relaxed now. Apologies to everyone I should have visited or contacted.


mmm, catchup:
I cried mercy on going to Germany last week and so had only the Holland trip to deal with. The Kodak guys were there too, improving the social aspects by telling evil after-dinner jokes when the boy had gone to bed and fencing work conversations. The high spot of evening entertainments was fishing fifty euro out of my wallet to offer the boy boss when he said he would jump in the lake we were standing next to if anyone offered 50euro. He welshed.

The plane took off at the time it should have been landing at Heathrow, trashing what might have been half an evening at home, getting there on Wednesday took forever since the later flight misses the direct trains to Den Bosch and I had to hang around in Utrecht for a connection. For someone who says she hasn't been anywhere, I seem to have been to far too many places. Unfortunately, lots of these are for work and don't involve any touristing. Last time I was there I saw a sign for an Hieronymus Bosch museum and it turns out he was born there, but the museum only has copies of his paintings.