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!

The headlines of The Economist

When my students ask me to recommend some good reading material, The Economist is one of the few publications that I recommend. As I tell them, the hardest part of the journal to understand are the headlines, as more or less every single one of them incorporates a pun.

Here is something that caught my eye today:

Pilsendämmerung   (as opposed to Götterdämmerung)

Helles for other people  (instead of "L'enfer - c'est les autres" - hell is other people. As Satre once said)

A nation loses its taste for its most heavenly tipple,

Germany is losing its taste for beer—at least the boozy kind

• The Economist (EU)
• 9 Aug 2025

SUMMON THE idea of the German at play, and chances are you see a rosycheeked Lederhosen- or Dirndl- clad youngster bearing half a dozen overflowing steins of beer. Never mind that—as the rest of Germany will hasten to remind you—you have taken Bavaria as a synecdoche for the entire country. The real problem with this image is that Germans are losing their taste for the tipple that once defined them.

On August 1st Germany’s statistical office announced that in the first half of 2025, six-month beer sales had fallen below 4bn litres for the first time since it began counting in 1993. In 2005 the median German quaffed 112 litres of the stuff. The figure is now less than 90. Germany remains the sixth-biggest beer market in the world. But whereas Germans once downed more than anyone bar the insatiable Czechs, they are now eighth in the per-person league table. Worse, the decline is gathering pace. “Panic” has gripped some breweries, says Gerrit Blümelhuber, a consultant.

Some of the culprits are familiar: Germany is ageing, and younger folk are less keen on booze. Some blame cost, though that seems hard to square with the €15 ($17.40) Kisten (crates) of Paulaner on supermarket shelves. Struggles in hotels and restaurants point to a broader hospitality problem. And yet the decline in wine-drinking is much gentler. “There is a noticeable thirst for beer in Germany,” says Volker Kuhl, CEO of the C&A Veltins brewery, but “no desire for a third or fourth glass”.

If there is a glimmer in the glass it is the booming non-alcoholic sector, which now accounts for almost one-tenth of beer brewed in Germany (though it is excluded from official statistics). Rare is the Biergarten without an alkoholfrei offer; last year Munich saw its first devoted solely to boozeless brews. Germany’s sometimes-staid Braumeister are trying new techniques like using wild yeasts that do not ferment all the sugar in the brewing process. But Germany’s storied purity law, which limits what can be marketed as beer, is not always an invitation to innovate, warns Markus Raupach of the German Beer Academy.

Even in the brightest forecasts, non-alcoholic beer cannot possibly compensate for the decline in the boozy sort. Nor can exports, which are dwindling even more quickly than domestic sales and now face Donald Trump’s tariffs. Nearly 100 German breweries have closed in the past five years; more will surely follow. A sobering thought.

Lucky to be alive today

This morning, before continuing to do battle with a text that someone else had 'translated' by putting each sentence into DeepL and pasting whatever came out of it into the English text, I went for a walk around the large park 100 metres from my front door.

On the way back, I was walking on the footpath along a hedge and was approaching the corner where I would then turn left. Shortly before getting to the corner, a monstrosity shot round it: a large container with a pre-pubescent girl sitting in it and behind it, a woman on the bicycle, presumably her mother, pedalling very fast. I took another step or two forward and then the father, in another monstrosity, with yet another child, shot round the corner, only very narrowly missing me. Another step, and I'd have been killed.

I screamed at the father, "Sind Sie verrückt? Sind Sie verrückt?" ("Are you mad? Are you mad?"). No reaction. The bastard (no other word for such an arrogant moron)...the bastard didn't slow down. He didn't look back. He couldn't even condescend to throw an "Tschuldigung" ("Scuse me") over his shoulder.

And then, with the realisation of how close I had come to death - I am not exaggerating - my knees turned to jelly, I started to feel dizzy and I was suddenly close to tears. 

How can these bastards on a bicycle - with children in their care!! - be so bloody careless about other people's safety? Both parents cut the corner so sharply that they came very close to the hedge themselves. Don't these bastards think that there might be someone round the corner? If I'd been older and in ill health, I might have died from a heart attack anyway.

Sometimes, I think we should have the right to carry guns. To rid the world of these dangerous bastards. How society can allow them to have control over their own children beats me. 

A rousing quotation

I'm very fond of quotations to give me guidance in life. One of my favourites is from John F. Kennedy, the US president assassinated on 22 November 1963. In his inaugural speech [Antrittsrede], among other things, he said this: "Ask not what your country can do for you...ask what you can do for your country."

I often think of this rousing [mitreißend] quotation when I think that "someone should do something about that". Whatever "that" might be.

Back in 2013, when my walking group was at risk of falling apart because three of the regular walking guides had other priorities, I kept saying: "Someone has to do something. Someone has to do something!!"

And then I remembered John F. Kennedy's quote, as mentioned above. And I realised that I can't expect other people to do what I wouldn't be willing to do myself, so I tentatively [zaghaft] started to offer some walks around this town. Later, I added walks around Wuppertal, Solingen and Remscheid, as I got bolder and more familiar with the countryside.

Why am I mentioning this quotation? It's because after more than 50 years, an opportunity for people to meet up has come to an end as no-one wanted the responsibility of making tea and coffee and putting some cups out. The last person to organise this meet-up, an Italian woman, had done so for around 6 years. She always asked for some help, for someone to arrive 30 minutes earlier to help her set out the teacups. Only one woman regularly did so once a month.

Everyone else liked to come to drink tea and coffee, eat biscuits, and chat, but no-one wanted to do anything to continue the "institution" that had been in existence for more than half a century. Shame on them.

It's the same with my walking group. When I regularly offered walks, some fellow walker would frequently sidle up to me [sich an mich heranschleichen] and tell me of a great walk they knew. When I said that they could lead the walk themselves, they would gasp and look at me in horror and say, "Aber ich bin berufstätig!" ("I work!") And I wondered what they thought I did all day. In those days, there was a lot more translation work around. And I wasn't the only walking guide who was still working.

More than 300 people get the details of each month's walks, which means that if everyone led one walk a week, then each person would only need to lead a walk every 6 years. Scarcely anyone is willing to do so, but lots of them want to enjoy the walks. 

Well, I believe that, these days, fewer and fewer people are willing to put themselves out [sich jds wegen wegen Umstände machen]. A great shame. 

As another quotation says: If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. 

So, if you want a friendlier, more communal society, you have to be willing to get out there and to help bring people together.