"Damn! I forgot to pack the mackerel!"

Yes, sitting on the coach heading towards Bavaria on 28 December last year, those words really did pass through my mind. I'd forgotten to pack the mackerel.

Now, why on earth would any sane person think about packing tinned fish when going on a half-board holiday (i.e. with breakfast and a three-course dinner included)?

Well, I'll tell you. In the final days of 2004, when all the world added a new word to their vocabulary (tsunami), I found myself in Hong Kong, visiting a former student of mine. Her parents kindly invited me to join them at a large restaurant on New Year's Eve. Looking around, I think I might have been the only non-Chinese person there. But that didn't faze [stören] me as, during my student days in Manchester and Göttingen, I had often found myself in a room full of people whose language I couldn't understand, be it Chinese, Farsi or Arabic.

Anyway, we sat at a large circular table close to an aquarium, behind which was the kitchen. The father got up, walked over to the fish tank, stabbed a finger in the direction of one hapless [unglückselig] fish swimming past and said, "That one."

About three minutes later, the fish was lying on a plate on the table, gutted, filleted and cooked. Amazing.

The father then told me why it is important to always eat fish on New Year's Eve. Apparently, the fish scales represent coins and if you eat fish, it'll be good for your money luck.

Since then, I've always done that. Even if it's just smoked salmon sandwiches or, in Budapest once, a tuna sandwich from the Subway chain.

As soon as I got to the small Bavarian village where the hotel was, I found the nearest shop selling food and bought some tinned fish and it was a good job I did so, too. The hotel didn't intend serving fish on 31 December, and I didn't feel that great either, so I picnicked in my room and made sure I had my mackerel after all since I really could use some money luck this year.

And now you know what to do in 11.5 months' time to ensure you'll be rolling in it in 2027, too: eat fish.

Song lyrics - past and present

Nearly two years ago - March 2024 to be precise - newspapers informed us, the general public, that song lyrics were getting simpler and more repetitive. 

Recently, I listened to a song by a female duo called - ugh - Wet Leg. (What a revolting name.) They had been lauded [gelobt] in a newspaper article, especially for their big hit entitled Chaise Longue. I thought I'd give them a go and see what all the fuss was about.

As I watched the video and listened to the words, my jaw dropped. THIS is supposed to be good?

I grew up listening to a wide variety of music, including songs from the musicals - thanks to Benny Green's music programme on BBC Radio 2 which relied heavily on what is called the "Great American Songbook", with songs written, for example, by Rogers and Hart, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, and George and Ira Gershwin. 

Here are the lyrics to "The Way You Look Tonight", written by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields in 1936:

[Verse 1]
Some day, when I'm awfully low
When the world is cold
I will feel a glow just thinking of you
And the way you look tonight

[Verse 2]
Yes, you're lovely, with your smile so warm
And your cheeks so soft
There is nothing for me, but to love you
And the way you look tonight

[Bridge]
With each word, your tenderness grows
Tearing my fear apart
And that laugh wrinkles your nose
Touches my foolish heart

[Verse 3]
Lovely, never, never change
Keep that breathless charm
Won't you please arrange it? 'Cause I love you
Just the way you look tonight

[Instrumental Break]

[Bridge]
And that laugh that wrinkles your nose
It touches my foolish heart

[Verse 3]
Lovely, don't you ever change
Keep that breathless charm
Won't you please arrange it? 'Cause I love you
A-just the way you look tonight

[Outro]
Mm-mm, mm-mm
Just the way you look tonight

And here is a video clip of Fred Astaire singing the song to Ginger Rodgers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIW_Ah0wg-w&list=RDdIW_Ah0wg-w&start_radio=1

I don't listen to BBC Radio 2 much any more because a lot of the old programmes have gone. However, there is still one that I like to listen to every week and that's "Sounds of the 60s" with Tony Blackburn. I find the music of the 60s to be very diverse and, a lot of the time, fun.

Here are the lyrics to a great-sounding 60s oldie: "Daydream" by The Loving Spoonful from 1966, 30 years after the song above:

[Verse 1]
What a day for a daydream
What a day for a daydreamin' boy
And now I'm lost in a daydream
Dreamin' 'bout my bundle of joy

[Bridge]
And even if time ain't really on my side
It's one of those days for takin' a walk outside
I'm blowin' the day to take a walk in the sun
And fall on my face in somebody's new-mowed lawn

[Verse 2]
I've been havin' a sweet dream
I've been dreamin' since I woke up today
It's starrin' me and my sweet dream
'Cause she's the one makes me feel this way

[Bridge]
And even if time is passin' me by a lot
I couldn't care less about the dues you say I got
Tomorrow, I'll pay the dues for droppin' my load
A pie in the face for bein' a sleepy bull toad

[Bridge]
And you can be sure that if you're feelin' right
A daydream will last along into the night
Tomorrow at breakfast, you may prick up your ears
Or you may be dreamin' for a thousand years

[Verse 1]
What a day for a daydream
Custom-made for a daydreamin' boy
Now I'm lost in a daydream
Dreamin' 'bout my bundle of joy

And this is what it sounds like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpKFmabCjlw&list=RDDpKFmabCjlw&start_radio=1

Fast forward to 2021 and the debut single of what was then just a duo, Wet Leg.

Here are the lyrics to "Chaise Longue":

[Verse 1]
Mummy, daddy, look at me
I went to school and I got a degree
All my friends call it the big D
I went to school and I got the big D
I got the big D
I got the big D
I got the big D
I went to school and I got the big D

[Verse 2]
Is your muffin buttered?
Would you like us to assign someone to butter your muffin?
Excuse me (What?)
Excuse me (What?)
Hey, you, over there
On the chaise longue, in your underwear
What are you doing sitting down?
You should be horizontal now

[Refrain]
On the chaise longue, on the chaise longue
On the chaise longue, all day long, on thе chaise longue
On the chaisе longue, on the chaise longue
On the chaise longue, all day long, on the chaise longue

[Verse 3]
Is your mother worried?
Would you like us to assign someone to worry your mother?
Excuse me? (What?)
Excuse me? (What?)
Hey, you, in the front row
Are you coming backstage after the show?
Because I've got a chaise longue in my dressing room
And a pack of warm beer that we can consume

[Refrain]
On the chaise longue, on the chaise longue
On the chaise longue, all day long, on the chaise longue
On the chaise longue, on the chaise longue
On the chaise longue, all day long, on the chaise longue
On the chaise longue, on the chaise longue
On the chaise longue, all day long, on the chaise longue
On the chaise longue, on the chaise longue
On the chaise longue, all day long, on the chaise longue

And here's the song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zd9jeJk2UHQ&list=RDZd9jeJk2UHQ&start_radio=1

About halfway through, your mind will probably start to feel somewhat numb. Well, mine did and I had to switch off.

You know what? I think the research was right. Songs have, as one article put it, become "simpler, angrier, self-obsessed and more repetitive". And the ratio of non-repeated lines has increased, with, often, one line repeated ad nauseam [bis zum Erbrechen].

It's no wonder I don't bother with most modern music and return again and again to the music of last century.

If you fancy doing the same, here are some music programmes from BBC Radio 2 that you can listen to at your leisure - no need to listen live:

Sounds of the 60s with Tony Blackburn

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006wqlv/episodes/player

Sounds of the 70s with Bob Harris

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00jlwqd/episodes/player

Sounds of the 80s with Gary Davies

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03c936z/episodes/player

And if you're young enough to think the 90s had good music, too, here's Sounds of the 90s with Fearne Cotton

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000gkf5

And for those who like musical theatre, here's Elaine Paige's show:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006wqwz/episodes/player

Enjoy!

And you call this..."progress"?

Way back when, before I ventured to make translation my main source of income, I used to teach English as a foreign language, predominantly in language schools as well as in various firms around town, e.g. at Infineon, KPMG, the local branch of the Bundesbank, and PwC. Among others.

In those days, course books came with cassettes so that students could hear voices and accents other than those of their teacher. Language schools could supply you with the equipment to play cassettes, but going into companies, I took this little gadget with me: the Panasonic mini cassette recorder RQ-L31

You could speed up the recording, slow it down and even record stuff of your own (such as my grandmother going through her photo album and telling the stories behind the pictures).

Then came CDs and everyone (apart from me) looked down at the humble cassette and now, I had to buy a portable CD player, plus a separate loudspeaker and the various cables required, including extension cables as the socket in the wall wasn't always close enough to the desk I was sitting at to teach. Hence, instead of one small gadget, I now had schlepp with me this lot:

Something that looked like this:

This speaker: 

And this:

Plus the cables to connect the speaker to the CD. Just so I could do what the mini cassette player could do. Well, not quite. With a cassette, if the student didn't hear a word, you could just go back a few seconds. On a CD, if you missed something, you have to start the entire track from the beginning.

In this day and age, though, that's not good enough. You now need a laptop that can be used with a digital projector. 

That means one of these things:

To ensure that it works in my evening classes, I need that, plus audio cables, plus a cable that connects to the digital projector and the cable to connect to the power (in case the battery runs out). Plus a nice bag to ensure the thing is suitably protected from bumps etc.

HOWEVER, I recently bought a new laptop and, oh my, what a bad buy (or as the Germans say a "Fehlkauf"). The thing is so slim that it doesn't come with an inbuilt CD player or DVD drive so I needed to buy an external one, like this:

And the sound isn't very strong, so I bought something like this, too:

And, of course, all the relevant cables.

All instead of this one little gadget:

And you call this "progress"?

The UK is a United Kingdom? As if!

What the island or group of islands off the north-east coast of France is called depends on what you include in it.

Great Britain - or in German "Grossbritannien" - is the big island that consists of Scotland, Wales and England.

The United Kingdom - das Vereinige Königreich - is Great Britain PLUS Northern Ireland. 

Thirdly, the British Isles refers to Great Britain, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and all the little islands around those two, including places such as the Northern Isles (e.g. Orkneuy and Shetland), the Inner and Outer Hebrides, the Isle of Man and more than 6,000 (!!!) smaller isles.

But why the sceptic tone in the headline of this piece of writing? Because 'united' is what the so-called United Kingdom isn't. 

Take, for example, the fees charged for studying at university level. I was checking out the prices charged by the Open University the other day. 

If you want to get a Bachelor degree with the Open University and happen to live in England, you will pay, in total, £23,352 for 360 credits spread over 3 to 6 years. Quite a hefty sum, right? Almost as bad as on the Isle of Man or any other foreign country around the world: £24,552.

However, should you happen to live in Scotland, which has a devolved government that thinks that education is important and should be open to all, not just those who can afford it or who don't mind getting into debt, then it costs £7,632. For the entire degree. Just under a third of the price of an undergraduate degree (B.A. or B.Sc.) in England.

It's a similar situation in Wales. Although a tad more: £7,872. And in Northern Ireland, the price is at bargain basement level: £7,440. 

So... when it comes to "united", that's one word you cannot use to describe the UK.

Buy cheap, buy again

That's a phrase that's been around for a long time. Basically, if you buy something cheaply, you can bet that it will soon wear out and you'll have to buy another one. More money.

Terry Pratchett, the fantasy writer whose stories threw light on our everyday lives, even though they were full of witches, trolls, dwarves and wizards, came up with a good description of this theory - that the rich spend less money because they buy more expensive stuff - in his books about the guards of Ankh Morpork called "Men at Arms":

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

There's a nice article here that talks more about that: https://terrypratchett.com/explore-discworld/sam-vimes-boots-theory-of-socio-economic-unfairness/ 

Why do I mention this phrase? Because a couple of weeks ago, I saw an article in The Guardian newspaper praising the clothing range called Heattech from Uniqlo, the Japanese clothing chain. The prices seemed reasonable (about 15 euros for a long-sleeved top, for example). And the products were lauded to the skies. 

Hence, after a walk, I went home via the Uniqlo shop, picking up three articles for around 60 euros in total. 

Reader, they're not very good: I sat on the sofa with all three items of clothing on under my outer wear, freezing and shivering. And they soon became smelly. Well, they would: they're not made of natural materials. Which is why I have returned to the best solution I've found to chilly temperatures: merino wool base layers, the stuff that mountain climbers wear. 

Anything made of merino wool will keep you warm and toasty. It's like the mythical armour made by dwarves in The Lord of the Rings: mithril. It's so strong that not even a spear wielded by a mountain troll can pierce it. No matter how hard the troll tries to skewer you. 

Well, it's the same with merino wool clothing: the cold just can't pierce it. 

However, it's not cheap. A merino wool top I bought from the men's section in a mountain-climbing shop a couple of years ago cost EUR 90. However, after wearing it one winter, I got 270 euros back from my heating bill. (This was before heating became hideously expensive.) Well worth the expenditure, then.

So when the winter sales come in January, see if you can find anything with merino wool in it: underwear, thin tops, long johns, socks or pullovers. Non-scratchy, non-smelly, non-bulky, easy to wash in the waching machine...you'll thank me for it.

You'd rather be injured than seen?

At this time of the year, it gets dark just before 4.30 p.m. That's when the sun sets and, boy, does it get dark fast. Another thing that may strike a foreigner in Germany is just how dark most streets are, especially in residential areas. 

And yet, and yet, it never fails to amaze me that most people here in Germany (I won't say "most Germans", since not everyone here is German, not even the residents), most people here in Germany think that wearing dark clothes, including black anoraks and other winter wear, is a good idea. During the darkest time of the year!!! Why?

As I walk along the pavements, on the alert for any danger, I see vague shadows move in front of me. What are they? Is it a person? More than one person? Are they coming towards me? And so on and so forth. 

If only they would wear something in a contrasting colour. If only they wore brighter colours. Then I could see them more easily and - what is much more important - so could other road users such as cyclists (also often on the pavements with NO lights on whatsoever, or reflective clothing) and drivers of cars, buses and trams.

In a bid to make myself more visible in these dark streets, I went onto Amazon and found these little things:

https://www.amazon.de/-/en/dp/B0DBVN9FRZ?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title&th=1

Do you see how much more visible you suddenly become? You can let these things (6 in a pack!) dangle freely or you can make a loop out of them. No batteries required; they come with cables that allow you to recharge them via a USB port, e.g. on your computer.

And you can switch them on and off as you please. When you first click on the strip, you get a strobe light; the second switch makes the light flash on and off steadily; the third click gives you a steady light (no flashing whatsoever). The fourth click turns it off.

Personally, I've got three looped onto my rucksack: one on either side (dangling from the shoulder straps) and one on the handle at the top of the rucksack. When I switch them on in the evening while walking through the gloomy streets, I look like a Christmas tree, all lit up. 

Wonderful. I'd rather be visible than caught up in an accident. No matter how uncool I might seem.

Cinemagoers versus concertgoers

Last Sunday, I had a pleasant peer group experience: I watched the first part of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (in German, sadly) on a large screen in a local cinema. Seventeen rows, mostly with 25 seats to a row, and the showing was almost all sold out. Imagine people paying 9 euros (and a lot more for "buckets" of popcorn and huge cups of pop) to see a film that was first released in 2001!!

As I sat there and people streamed into the auditorium, I was rather tense. Would the viewing experience be ruined by people talking and using the smartphones all the time, since I find the light of mobile phones in particular to be highly distracting? Every time a light flicks on, I jump as I wonder what danger is coming towards me. I am (usually) aware of my surroundings. As a single woman, you have to be. 

But no. Although two people did consult their smartphones during the film - probably to see how much longer they had to sit still (the extended version of the film lasts 3.5 hours, with no breaks!) - their light was quickly extinguished and the phone put back into jacket pockets. Hurrah!

Earlier this year, in the spring to be precise, I went to a live concert of singers who gave you the "original Rat Pack experience", i.e. singers who imitated Sammy Davis Junior, Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. What a disaster. Although they were asked not to film and to put their phones away for the duration of the concert, many, many people ignored the request. Including a cow siting next to me. And that was after the usher had expressly asked her to refrain from filming. The ignorant bitch seemed to be one of those people who believed that the rules applied to others and not to her. 

The light from all the phones throughout that auditorium was so distracting all the time that I couldn't give the singers my full attention. This was the same kind of experience I had at another concert last December with local singer Tom Gabel. It was impossible to concentrate with lights all around me flickering and people in front of me holding their phones up.

After my most recent concert experience, I decided that, should I ever be tempted to go to a concert again, I'd remind myself of the last two experiences and buy a CD by the singer or group instead and be content with that.

Strange that cinemagoers are better behaved than concertgoers. Not a peep was heard from anyone at the cinema, not a word was said, not a phone call was made or taken, and almost no-one moved - although, the rustling of people behind me putting their hands in their popcorn supplies did remind me of the noise my gerbils used to make when digging around in their cage. But at least that was short-lived and mostly drown out by the bombastic, dramatic music.

I am now looking forward to the second part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy next Sunday!