I've "fallen off the wagon" - but it's not what you think

 Normally, the phrase "to fall off the wagon" means that you have started drinking after successfully giving it up for a while.

Well, a few days ago, I decided to buy chewing gum again. I had given it up more than a decade ago because chewing gum caused my fillings and crowns to come loose and repairing them cost money.

However, since my problems with staying asleep now has a name (sleep maintenance insomnia) and the cause of that is stress and one way to reduce stress is to chew gum....I caved in and bought some Wrigley's spearmint gum again.

I now chew the cud like a cow again, but I believe it has relieved some tension, so that's a good thing.

And fortunately, the packet sizes seem to be a lot smaller than they were in the 70s. Does anyone remember this advert:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndS5_0MKWkM

I suffer from OCD - and it's not what you think

I have various hobbies and one of them is 'making things'. This broad category also embraces cross-stitching. I make cards, pictures and tablecloths using this technique.

"Oh," people exclaim, "that must be very relaxing for you."

Relaxing?! Are you kidding??

As I said in the headline, I suffer, really suffer, from OCD: obsessive cross-stitch disorder.

When I start something, I want to finish it as soon as possible, which means I spend all my free, waking hours on it - to the exclusion of everything else. 

Sure, I do any translation work that comes my way and I manage to send out invoices at the end of the month, but housework, keeping fit, going out, reading, meeting people...all such activities fall by the wayside. It is horrendous. 

Hour after hour, I sit and stitch. I forget to drink; I barely move - even if I'm in an uncomfortable position. And all over my home, little bits of embroidery yarn show up as I just let the bits that I cut off fall onto the floor or onto my clothes and you can then estimate how far from the table where I'm doing the work you are by how densely spread the bits of yarn on the floor are.

Last year, I sent my aunts in Berlin a tablecloth each for Easter.

When I went to visit them in January this year, I saw that one aunt still had the tablecloth on her dining table. I returned home determined that they should have more, so I found two designs for the summer and spent at least two months working on them in my free time. 

One summer design:

And the other:

Two evenings ago, I finally managed to finish the two tablecloths for autumn for them. Hundreds of hours again. And, as work has been rather sparse this year, this means I could start work on them at 8 in the morning and carry on until 10 at night. Thank heavens for primewire.mx. Without all the series I've watched through that website, I would not have been so well entertained.

This is one design for the autumn:

And this is the other:

If you want to buy a kit yourself, here is the website:

https://www.junghanswolle.de/sticken/tischwaesche?sortierung=favoriten&seite=2

But now I feel free! No more cross-stitch projects are on the horizon. I am free! Free! Woohoo! 

Now, there are just a few small blankets I want to crochet for Christmas presents this year....

Now I know why pensioners say they never have time

As I have little work right now, I took today off. Freier Freitag - as I call it. Free Friday.

All I had on my agenda today was a hair appointment at 11 and a visit to a cemetery in a nearby town. Easy, right? Lots of free time. A nice relaxing day.

I polished up a brief translation (a questionnaire) and sent it off by 9 a.m., made a social phone call and set off for my hair appointment at 10. Only back home some time after 12.30, lunch and off to the nearby town.

After waiting for the train for 20 minutes and wondering if there was any information as to why it was 5 minutes late, I did discover that the train I needed wasn't running and that there was a replacement bus service. Off I went in search of the relevant bus stop. Another 10-minute wait and, instead of an 8-minute train ride, a longer bus ride.

When I got to the station, the bus I needed drove off as I was getting off the bus I that had brought me there. Another 10-minute wait. 

After I'd finished tidying up an old friend's grave for about 20 minutes, I saw that the bus stop in front of the cemetery had been moved and I didn't know where to, so I walked back to the station. As I was waiting for the replacement bus service to take me back into town, the waiting time grew from 3 minutes to 8 minutes.

By the time I had got back home, the round trip had taken me 3 hours - instead of the usual 1 hour and 30 or 40 minutes. I was knackered.

All day to do two little things. Consider what one achieves at work in 8 hours: e-mails read and responded to, filing, translation, editing, paying invoices, writing invoices, chasing up unpaid invoices, research, queries... And as I work from home, I can add domestic chores to that list.

And yet all I did today on my day off was have a haircut and tend to a grave. And it took me all the working day. It's no wonder that the pensioners' mantra is "I don't know how I managed to fit in work - I'm on the go all day".

I never thought I would ever do that!

I like plants. My balcony is four metres long and is full of at least 20 species of plants. I admire the infinite variety of plants, which is why I even fill in the bare patch of ground around the tree in front of this building's front door. 

Over the years, I've planted all sorts of flowers in the street. In the last two years, I've gone for kalanchoe as it can cope well with the heat. 

However, despite my great love of plants, there has always been one kind that I have loathed: begonias. 

In the summer, the Germans are very fond of these kinds of begonias and plant them out everywhere, not just in gardens but in parks, too:

Personally, I cannot stand them. Firstly, the colour annoys me as does their appearance. There's also a red variety:

Don't they look untidy?

However, last Saturday, in a desperate attempt to bring more colour and variety to the small patch of soil in the street, I actually dared to buy some white begonias as I thought I could at least tolerate them:

Never before did I think that I would ever, ever, ever buy a begonia - never mind three!. Wonders can still happen in this world.

Why won't anyone steal the bike?

 I don't understand it. Bikes are stolen all the time, but not this one.

About a month ago, before I planted some kalanchoe out into the street, a men's bicycle was dumped on the ground next to the tree. No bike chain. A broken bike.

After a few days, I used one of its pedals to prop it up on the curbstone next to the street, and it's been there ever since. No-one has taken it. 

Okay, so the bike is broken, but surely it's worth something as scrap metal, so why won't anyone take it? Whenever there is a bulky rubbish collection and people put their junk on the street, anything that is made of metal is the first to go.

Why won't anyone take this bike? I don't understand it.

No plants = no dog pooh??

When I leave this building, the first thing I see is a lime tree (Linden). It stands in a good-sized bit of land. Behind the tree, near the street, there are evergreen shrubs. In front of the tree, there are no bushes or shrubs. 

Over the last few years, I've tried to make it a green space: I've planted lots of flowers out there. When I wake early in the morning - say 5 a.m. - I often go up and down two flights of stairs with a bucket and watering can (5 litres of water in each) and water the thirsty plants.

What I cannot understand is why people throw litter onto them. Loads of cigarette butts, bottles, wrappers - they all land in between the flowers and grass. 

And don't get me started with dog pooh. I sometimes look out of the window and I often see dog owners letting their dogs trample over the flowers and do their business there. If the dog poohed on the pavement, they would pick it up. But poohing on flowers - no problem. Let it stay there.

As I mentioned before, there are shrubs in the street and twice a year - in May and October - the town gardening department comes by with strimmers and trims everything. The first man who came by in mid-May recognised the flowers I had planted and let them stand and just cut the grass around them. The second man who came a week or two later didn't and so every flower was cut right down to the ground. 

For weeks now, the ground in front of the tree looks as though it's been subjected to napalm or Agent Orange. Talk about a 'scorched earth' policy.

And the weird thing is...no dog pooh. None. Not even litter!

I don't get it. Flowers and greenery - let the dogs pooh on them. Cover it with litter with gay abandon. Bare, arid earth - no pooh and no litter.

Nevertheless, I can't stand the sight of bare earth, so early on Sunday morning I did a bit of 'guerrilla gardening' (or undercover gardening) and planted some flowers out in the street again: five kalanchoe from a local flower shop and two flowers from my balcony that keep self-seeding. After today's temperatures of over 30 C, I'll have to get up super early tomorrow to water them again.

I wonder how much dog pooh and litter I'll find.

What airport chaos?

On Sunday 19 June, I flew from Germany to Palma de Mallorca. For the first time in my life, I checked in online and printed off my boarding card the evening before departure. A little while after that, I received an e-mail stating that I could hand in my suitcase between 6 and 8 p.m. that very evening. Given that I had bought a 9 euro ticket for the month, I thought, "Why not?" I therefore took a bus to the airport and found that the queue was long. 

In the end, I stood in line for an hour before I handed in my suitcase. As I said to the woman at the counter, though, "If you think this is chaos, you've not seen Manchester Airport in pre-pandemic times." She looked a bit startled and then informed me that I should allow two to two-and-a-half hours for the security check tomorrow.

Duly warned, I arrived at the airport the next morning with plenty of time to spare. I joined a queue at the security area at 7.36 a.m. and was through at...7.46 a.m. And that included an officer pulling my rucksack to one side and taking out a pencil case (I had intended to do some sketching) and then testing the artist's eraser that I had. Admittedly, it does look a bit strange: rather like putty.

That means, however, that it took me a lot less time to go through security at the airport than in previous times. And Manchester Airport....I remember flying back to Germany with my youngest cousin at Easter 2017 and we didn't move from the spot for over 30 minutes. Only two security officers were on duty. It was horrendous. And the check-in at Manchester returning at Easter 2019 was chaotic and horrible. I got shouted at by a member of staff, who didn't apologise for her bad behaviour at all. One Dutch woman said it was the most confusing airport she had been to; an English man said it was the worst airport in the world.

When I arrived at Palma Airport, by the time I had walked a few kilometres to get to the luggage carousel (the airport is HUGE), the luggage was already coming out.

On the way back, I bought a ticket in 10 minutes. Handed in my luggage and got a boarding card in 2 minutes and went through security in 2 minutes, too. I then had 5 hours to kill.

All that worrying...and all for nothing in the end. The media can really whip up people's emotions.