Past, future - but what about the present?

I have a confession to make: I am a great worrier. No, not 'warrior', like some hulking hunk who's managed to survive an entire series of Game of Thrones or some other bloodthirsty programme, but a person who worries a lot.

Years ago, my past seemed to be stuck on a loop, playing scenes from my childhood, adolescence and the previous years of my adulthood time and time again. Images flashed before my mind's eye, as they are supposed to do when you're on the brink of death. They haunted me. However, I found some weekend seminars on psychology at the local adult education centre and they, along with some private sessions with the woman that led them, helped me put the past (mostly) to rest. (No-one's perfect.)

Now, however, I worry constantly about the future and have been doing so for the last few years, ever since the pandemic started. I am forever making calculations about how much money I might be able to set aside for my old age and how much I might still be able to earn from teaching even when I get the full UK state pension, and what might happen if the exchange rate drops further, and so on and so forth. There are bits of paper with calculations on them scattered throughout the flat - not to mention the endpapers of books that I've used to jot down some figures. The pocket calculator is one of my most-used gadgets.

Yet what will all this worry bring me? Nothing. I've survived so far and I can be pretty certain that I will continue to survive in the future. After all, what do I need? I certainly don't need to keep up with the Joneses; I am no status seeker. What I cherish most is my freedom, such as my freedom to pick and choose the work I want to do. If that means I have to live in a bedsit (what the Germans call a "studio apartment"), then so be it. So long as I have a bed to sleep in (and earplugs), a place to wash myself and cook for myself and space to store my stuff, that's fine.

I have to remind myself of a popular German saying: Unkraut vergeht nicht. I've just checked the translation and LEO.org suggests "bad weeds grow tall". Basically, it's usually said to imply that you're a bad lot and should survive. Rather in the same vein as "only the good die young", implying that you are a right old devil and should live to a ripe old age.

One thing I did a lot of last week was looking for inspirational quotes. I read a lot of quotes by Marcus Aurelius and then widened the search a bit.

This is one quote that I liked best:

Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow; it only saps today of its joy.

How true.

And to finish, here's a nice quote from the Dalai Lama:

If there is no solution to the problem, then don't waste time worrying about it. If there is a solution to the problem, then don't waste time worrying about it.

If only I could put that into practice. I shall try.

Germans and tea: the good, the bad and the incomprehensible

The Germans are famous for coffee and cakes, partaken in the afternoon. My German Oma always served them at 3 p.m. sharp and we always joked that my German Opa was always able to smell the coffee from afar as he always managed to get back from his post-lunch constitutional in good time for a cup of coffee and a slice of home-made slab cake or, as I believe the Americans call it, tray bake.

However, that does not mean to say that the Germans do not drink tea. Here are some points I've observed during my time in the Land of the Sausage (as I like to call Germany).

1. THE GOOD

What never fails to tickle me is the fact that the Germans are much more concerned with the quality of tea than the British, who are supposed to be serious tea drinkers. This German town has slightly more people in it than the whole of North Wales and has at least three tea shops that I can think of off the top of my head. (There may be more, but I don't know every corner of this town.) And yet there isn't one specialist tea shop for loose-leaf tea and accoutrements in all of North Wales. (Not when I last looked, anyway.)

When I tell the Germans that the British make tea with teabags, their faces fall. So disappointed are they. They still believe that the English in particular drink "four o'clock tea". Even in this day and age. 

The Brits make tea so strong you can stand a spoon up in it. Brick-red it has to be. And it's rumoured that what goes into the teabag is what they sweep up from the floor in the tea factory. The good stuff, it seems, is put into bags and sold in Germany: real loose-leaf tea of various blends and single origin teas. One accoutrement that I've only seen in Germany so far is the famous "Teeei" or "tea egg". They're like a perforated egg that you can unscrew, fill with tea, screw together again and thrown in a hot cup of water. Personally, I prefer "tea tongs" - no screwing involved!

2. THE BAD

Well, it's not so much bad as damned annoying.

As I said before, the Germans seem to think that just because you're British, you drink lots of tea - and only tea. Many are surprised when I order coffee and when I tell them that I drink more coffee than tea. And when it comes to presents at Christmas or "Mitbringsel" (little gifts you bring when invited to someone's home), I often get tea. HOWEVER, in the UK, when we say "tea" there is only one option we have in mind: so-called black tea. 

The Germans, however, think that any dried leaves constitutes "tea" and that the Brits will drink that, too. Sure, we have some herbal tea in the UK, but it's drunk by "cranks" or "health-food freaks" - well, that's the reputation such teas had. I hear that younger people are now turning to herbal infusions, but generally we do not normally drink "Christmas tea" or stuff like that. Tea that smells of all sorts of plants and aromas but isn't black. Basically, if you can't add a dash of milk into it, it ain't tea.

I can't tell you how many times I've passed on herbal tea to, say, the local library. Chamomile or peppermint - fine. Anything else... not tea.

3. THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE

So, since the Germans have good-quality tea available, I often order a cup of tea when out and about. My theory is that it's harder to muck up a cup of tea than a cup of coffee. (With coffee, it depends how much coffee they put into the filter and how long the coffee pot has been standing.)

However, when I order a cup or even a pot of tea, I get a cup and saucer, a spoon, milk and sugar and a cup of hot water and a teabag in a small paper case.

WHY????? How can you not pour the hot water straight onto the teabag when the water is boiling? You are supposed to pour freshly boiled water onto the tea. Not pour the water into a cup or pot and then maybe wait a while before taking it to the customer and then making them put the bag into the water themselves. Sure, you might say that if you do that yourself, you can calculate how long it's been brewing, but you can see that yourself from the colour of the water. 

On the whole, however, Germans take tea seriously and the quality is superior to what you get in the UK, so I'll suppose I shall just have to put up with this idiosyncracy. Now..where's the kettle?

The Brits - asleep while the rest of the world is up and doing

I remember reading Bill Bryson's book Notes from a Large Country (known in the US as I'm a Stranger Here Myself), his brief tales of life back in the US with his British wife and two children. He moved his family there so they could have a taste of good ol' American life.

Even he was amazed at life over there in contrast to life in the UK, such as the huge variety of breakfast cereals in the supermarkets. One thing that stunned him was when he made an appointment with a dentist for 6.30 the next day. When he turned up at the dental practice at 6.30 in the evening, everything was dark and it slowly dawned on him that the appointment had been for 6.30 in the morning!!

Americans have to be early birds. Many schools in the US start classes before 8 a.m., which is when school starts in Germany.  However, if you tell people in Germany that school in England and Wales start at 9 a.m. but with class registration and 'assembly' (basically a church service - as mandated by law) first and that classes only start at around 9.30, their jaws drop. 

If you have to sort something official out at the Bürgerbüro (the so-called Citizens' Centre - where you can get things such as passports and ID cards), then you can get an appointment for 7.30 a.m. As is the case in most official places. When I worked for the Housing Benefit department of a local town hall in Wales, I was there for 8 a.m. but the rest of my colleagues (apart from one who clocked in at 8.15 and then went to the cafe across the road until the boss came) only trundled in at 9 a.m. 

What brought this little piece of writing on was the fact that I've just read about an author in an article in The Guardian who stated that her high school in the US started at 7.25 in the morning. And I once again thought that the British are still asleep - or at the very least still in bed or eating their cornflakes - while the rest of the world is already at work or nearly starting classes at school. 

If the Brits still want to be "world-beating" at anything, they're going to have to set their alarm clocks for a much earlier wake-up. It's no wonder so much is not working there.

Quick! Put the Bavarians on The Red List now!

Some of you may have already heard of The Red List of Threatened Species. It's been issued by the International Union for Conservation of Nature since 1964. It's basically an inventory, or list, of the "global conservation status and extinction risk of biological species" (to quote Wikipedia).

Why, therefore, do I believe that the Bavarians should also be included on the list? Well, it's like this. So far, this year has been pretty quiet and August was the quietest month since I started translating. Which means I watched an awful lot of German TV - not live, but in the archives. At one point, I hit upon Die Rosenheim Cops, a police series set in the quaint town of Rosenheim, about an hour's drive from Munich, with a view of craggy mountains in the south.

Having been going for 23 series, it's got over 555 episodes and hundreds of them are to be found on the so-called "Mediathek" (or archive) of the ARD TV channel.

It is my stated aim to eventually be able to understand the Bavarian accent and dialect of some of the characters without having to resort to the subtitles. After a few hundred episodes, I'm slowly getting there.

What is striking, however, is how many of the people involved in each episode - the staff at the police station, the murder victims and anyone capable of being suspected - is described as being single, childless and living alone. Given that there is at least one murder victim an episode and that nearly everyone else isn't reproducing, then surely the Bavarians are soon doomed to die out, to become as extinct as the renowned and once prolific dodo.

We must do something to prevent the death and extinction of the Bavrians, their accent, dialect, gastronomic delights and culture. So, quick, put them on The Red List and let's see what conservation ides we can come up with to save the Bavarians.

What I learnt from stand up paddling

 A few weeks ago, before autumn descended upon us seemingly overnight, I achieved a long-held aim of mine: I tried out stand up paddling.

I booked a lesson at a local lake and cycled over, with a bit of trepidation: I'm not the most physically coordinated of people and have never been good at sports. And, guess what? Of the seven people in my group taking the introductory SUP course, I was the only one to fall into the water. Twice.

However, I came away feeling immensely happy because I learnt a few things from my unfortunate dunking:

1. Unlike mountain lakes in North Wales or Lake Wakatipu in Queensland, the water in this local lake was positively warm. My fear was that I'd fall in and suffer a heart attack from the shock of the icy cold water. (I should stop watching so many crime series - I always think of the worst possible scenario.) But, no, it was like falling into a bathtub.

2. I now know that I can get back onto the board. Although, one does look somewhat reminiscent of a rather ungainly seal, flopping along on one's belly, trying to get to the middle of the board so that one can get into a kneeling position and slowly stand up again.

3. The fear of falling in was one hundred times worse than actually falling in.

Maybe there's a lesson in there somewhere.

"Ghost pictures"

A "ghost picture" (or to use the correct German word, a "Phantombild") is what is called, in the English-speaking world, an "identikit picture" or "photofit picture". Sometimes, such pictures of potential criminals are also called "artist's impression" and, if the image is the result of several eyewitness accounts, then they're called "facial composites".

Why have I raised the topic? Because I've been watching a lot of episodes of Die Rosenheim Cops on the ARD TV channel and witnesses are often asked to go with a police artist to make a "Phantombild". Often, they are so good that they look like photos. I wonder how accurate such images are in real life, though.

In the last century, there used to be a game show on UK TV called The Krypton Factor. One of the tasks the contestants had to do was watch a brief video clip and then identify one of the actors in that film from 9 people lined up in the studio. Now, the contestants knew what was coming and so were extra vigilant, but even they couldn't always identify the correct person.

So how can the people in crime series describe a person they happened to see for a second or two in such detail? I know, I know...it's not real life.

I'm pretty good at recognising people, but terrible at remembering names. I'll be watching some TV programme or film and think, "I've seen him/her before", and then it's off to IMDB to check which other productions I've seen them in. And I'm always right. Basically, I recognise people by their eyes. It's hard to change the eyes, whereas you can always have a "nose job", put make-up on or dye your hair or cut it.

Despite being pretty good at recognising people's faces again, I know that I couldn't describe anyone in enough detail to make an identikit picture - not even my parents. Not even my own face. I couldn't tell you the eye colour of anyone but myself. (Green with a tinge of brown.)

So hats off to those witnesses in Die Rosenheim Cops that are so excellent at describing faces they've only glimpsed for a second.

What do editors in the UK do for their salary?

I read a lot. Crime, comedy, the classics and a lot of non-fiction. Mostly books in English, and some even in German and French. And when it comes to books in English, I'll read books published in the UK and the US. I'll even read the cornflakes box if there's nothing else available.

Now, when my students find out I am from the UK and so speak the British variant of the English language, they often wax lyrical about how much they love the British accent (to which I often ask, "Which one?") and how much they dislike American English. I then often say that if a foreigner heard a Bavarian person speaking, would that mean that all Germans speak the same? It's called "tarring everyone with the same brush". And, no, not all Germans sound as though they come from deepest, darkest Bavaria.

One thing I have noticed, though, about UK and US publications is that I have never, ever, ever found any mistake in a book published in the United States. Sadly, I cannot say the same about books issued in the UK.

Until a few weeks ago, I thought the worst-edited book I had ever had the pleasure of reading was Springtime for Germany: Or How I Learned to Love Lederhosen by Ben Donald. Most of the mistakes in the book were spelling mistakes concerning German words and place names. With the Internet, though, it would have been very easy to check the orthography,

Then earlier this year, I read a book called How to Be Confident by a gym instructor called James Smith. I picked it up for a euro at a Book & Cake sale at the English library and as I am a sucker for self-help books...

Oh, my!! Nearly every sentence contained a grammar or spelling mistake. I couldn't believe it. What was the editor thinking - letting so many mistakes go uncorrected? However, almost at the end of the book, the author admitted that the book probably (probably??) contained a lot of mistakes but that he hoped he had got his message across. Which, to be fair, he had. Okay, at least he acknowledged that he wasn't a great writer.

And then I was recommended two books that deal with legal issues. They were Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? by Michael J. Sandel, an American philosopher and The Critical Legal Pocketbook by various authors in the UK.

I took them with me on holiday. The American book deals with concepts such as 'positive discrimination' and how far these concepts are.  The UK book deals with a much larger variety of legal issues and some of the short articles were very illuminating, such as how to see the legal system from a coloured or female point of view. Like the architecture that surrounds us, the justice system seems to be made by men for men.

But what really shocked me by this British book was the poor spelling and grammar. I started with one article written by a female barrister who didn't belong to the white majority in the UK. A barrister!? How could she qualify to become a barrister without knowing where to place a comma? Did no teacher at school or lecturer at university or even a colleague point out that you don't put a comma between the subject and the verb - no matter how long the subject may be? 

I'm too lazy to get up and get the book again, but she'd write things like this: "The woman down the road who lives at number 43, is nice." Or "Everyone who commits a crime, must be punished." (Those weren't actual sentences of hers... but you get the idea of her writing style.) 

As I read on, I found spelling mistakes such as "naiive" - oh, yes. Even though, if you type the word in Word, it will automatically suggest the correct spelling (which is naïve - but plain naive is also acceptable these days).

Other mistakes included grammar, writing 'intend' rather than 'instead', 'in fat' rather than 'in fact', starting long complicated sentences and then forgetting to write the main sentence, missing words out. And one punctuation mistake after another - sometimes on every second line. Incredible.

At one point, I thought that students had written the articles - after all, a university had published it. But, no, the texts were written by solicitors, barristers and senior academics. It was horrendous.

Due to all these errors, I often had to read a sentence a few times over before I could figure out what was meant. 

And when I couldn't take any more of this horrific British English book, I'd put it down and pick up Sandel's book and, ah, everything was wonderful. Sanity again. Wonderfully expressed ideas, no mistakes whatsoever - and I did look for them. 

Whenever anyone says to me that British English is superior to American English and that the Americans speak 'slang' (their word, not mine), I will tell them about this reading experience. Time permitting.