A Bavarian Farmhouse

Of the many ways to end up with a Bavarian Farmhouse, one of them would be to win this week's lottery of 10 million Euros. I am not holding my breath. The other way would be to sell a reasonable number of novels on Kindle. On a similar literary note, I am preparing SkinUp as a Kindle title, but I haven't finished the formatting yet. SkinUp is a sort of Gothic mystery. If there is an easy way to convert a novel into an Epub, I haven't found it yet and I simply hand code the thing all the way through. I need to get the cover image created soon but I have no clear idea what it should look like or just how Gothic I want it to be

Ever since we got a dodgy washing machine from Amazon we haven't really bought anything that big. Not that it was the fault of Amazon but their crap delivery men. But since then we tend to look at things in shops and then check them out on amazon. The best deal gets our money. In almost every case it is amazon.

I'm not locked in here with you. You're locked in here with me . noui consilia et ueteres quaecumque monetis amici, 'pone seram, cohibe'. sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes, qui nunc lasciuae furta puellae hac mercede silent? crimen commune tacetur. prospicit hoc prudens et a illis incipit uxor. " I am aware of whatever councils you old friends warn, i.e. "throw the bolt and lock her in.” But who is going to guard the guards themselves, who now keep silent the lapses of the loose girl - paid off in the same coin? The common crime keeps its silence. A prudent wife looks ahead and starts (her infidelities) with them." It has been a long time coming but, someone eventually pulled the Watchmen movie from production hell: Way back in 1992 I read the original graphic novel for the very first time and it became emblematic of the period in much the same way as the movie Aliens was a marker for the 80's. I was bored one week and I decided that it would be ni...

All Power to the Soviets! Massed Plumbers on Home Front! Mario Brothers arrive in a full offensive line-up! Power tools to the fore! Mario, Luigi, Yoshi, Koopa and Tom of Finland arrived early in the morning with a complete set of pipes, elbow joints, radiators and huge power tools. Tom and Luigi proceeded to cut giant mouse holes in the walls and Mario and Yoshi manhandled copper piping, soldering elbow joints as they went. Tool-Handling Luigi and Yoshi power-bored holes in the wall for the radiator mounts and Dagobert Toadsworth himself appeared and agreed, after a sound ear-bashing with a large acorn from The Squirrel, to demands that the living-room radiator should be sensibly fitted beneath the west window. Tom of Finland demonstrated his superb-tool handling with a direct bore chisel through solid concrete with double (post 1947 German Economic Miracle) R-bar steel. By the end of the working day (6 pm and it was a Friday!) they had completed almost 40% of the required work! R...

Power on - Power - off - Power On Sonic to the rescue! Today the electricians quietly turned off the power and said it was only going to be off for half an hour. 5 hours later having zapped all the circuit breakers, Sonic the Hedgehog, Dagobert's genius 12 year-old electrician turned up at the apartment and helpfully pointed out that the circuit breakers had clicked. Then his mum shouted on him for his tea. There is of course no point in expecting a report of further activity here today because normally things get f*@ked up in the afternoon, just before the 'workmen' leave. So MS Project entry for today would be 2:30 Activity: Screw everything up. Resources: Sparkies - 2 Screwdriver - 1 Time: couple minutes So in the absence of anything happening here's a picture of the Combined Heating and Power Unit in the cellar - and no, it's not working yet either. The Cult of King Rolf On an entirely different subject - we were in Hugendubel (a famous bookshop chain) and I spo...

Saturday : Ikeaday already Almost a hive of activity. Workers have entered the building! The electricians are in the old cellar (diagonally opposite the blue paper bin in the photograph) doing whatever Sparkies do with Combined Heating & Power systems. The are probably making sure the grid credit meter is working first. After that they will think about providing us with heating. Dagobert appeared with the man who does either the painting or the woodwork (or possibly both) and I had to politely ask him to talk quietly as The Squirrel was hibernating (night-shift). The next time I looked out, the kitchen and bathroom doors were gone - to be stripped, honed, sanded, repainted and possibly have working handles fitted. A complex project so I hope the company own either Microsoft Project , an open source alternative or a laddie with a pencil and notepad. Yesterday was so quiet that The Squirrel suggested that I should take some photographs of the decant apartment's kitchen. We...

Friday Nothing is happening . We are now almost professionally qualified microwave-combi cooks. Basmati Rice Recipe: 1 standard cup Basmati rice. 2 cups of water just off the boil. pinch of salt. couple of strips of bacon (optional). place rice in a microwave bowl with a lid that allows steam to vent. Add the water, salt and bacon. Microwave on full power for three minutes leave to stand for five minutes Strain Serve. The back lawn is tidy. It is getting colder. Thursday Mrs Toadsworth called to say they were having difficulty procuring craftsmen and that the architect had run off to America to get married. The back lawn is tidy. It is getting colder Wednesday Nothing happened. Tom was downstairs all night hammering his head against the wall. Dagobert left a tiny fan heater at the door on Tuesday night. Available from MediaMarkt for 9.95 euros The back lawn is tidy. It is getting colder.

Tuesday. Nothing is happening today. Nothing at all. No Dagobert No Mario No Luigi No Tom of Finland and no Yoshi So here is a picture of the "Office". It is presently serving as base camp and galley. Note the essential coffee machine and Microwave Combi.

Saturday (ikeaday) I'm sure it was barely more than 7 °C last night and as usual it was warmer outside. Today the thermometer reads 15 °C but it feels pretty cold in the living room. 7:30 Dagobert timidly buzzed the doorbell, but so lightly and for such a short time that I decided to ignore it. About ten minutes later he re-appeared with Tom of Finland, the concrete man and someone else. One of them obviously had sufficient strength to press the doorbell to the acceptable civilised human standard. I answered everyone with a "Guten Morgen," to which Herr Toadsworth almost managed a cheerful (for him) grunt. They retrieved the Hilti Power Chisel and subsequently dissappeared downstairs conducting an ad hoc works conference on the way. Tom came back about fifteen minutes later and resume chiselling parts of the kitchen and bathroom into chunks that would have whetted the appetite of that Frenchman who used to eat entire bicycles. The Lions daughter (who is a sort of project...

TGI Friday 7:30 am. The man that does the concrete turned up as bright as a button and finished off all the holes with their second coat of R-Bar and concrete. Almost as soon as he was finished and another member of the Dagobert Demolition team appeared with a Hilti Power Chisel that was worthy of Tom of Finland (NSF!) and he proceeded to cut the bath and the bathroom doorway to very small chunks. By the afternoon the bath was gone, the door was gone and so was the false ceiling. Not only that but the new door frame (or ceiling frame possibly, we shall have to see!) was already waiting to be fitted. Clearly Toadsworth is at the top of his game now, cos that pace of development has accelerated - perhaps it is a neurological process similar to that of the Brontosaurus powering up the second brain in it's ass. Even the painters were back downstairs in the Lions Den, slapping up wallpaper like a team of Heinzelmännschen on crystal meth. A skip even appeared outside the apartment bu...

Builders working like Trojans this evening 17:33 and some of the builders are still here. There repairing the holes cut during the last few days with reinforced concrete now that the drains and pipes have been installed. The base for the shower and the heating pipes are already in the offices waited with baited breath for their installation. 4:30 am Dagobert knocks on the living room door and when I answer, he says he thought he was downstairs(?) Good Riddance to old Rubbish 13:20 pm Mario appeared and quickly removed the old gas heater. Seeing the back of this piece of junk is a joy to behold. We now have a great deal more room in both the office (Buro) and the living room (Wohnzimmer). We should be able to get a bookcase in the space. The place was built in 1907 and managed to survive the Allied bombing (possibly with the exception off the roof which looks post-war) so one suspects the gas heating system has been here since at least 1947. The speed of refurbishment appears to be gat...

Dagobert Cometh . Temperature 15°C 8:25 am A delivery man rings the door buzzer looking for Mario. I suggest he might be upstairs in the old Lion's Den. 8:30 Dagobert Toadsworth appears, rings the door bell and runs away. This children's game is known as " Rap, Tap, Ginger " ( though goodness knows why) or " Monkey come down the close " (which is more informative) in Scotland . It has a Bavarian analogue but I shall have to enquire of this from The Squirrel when she finishes work. I call "Guten Morgen" as his polished antique dome disappears down the stair well. He mutters a sentence possibly containing the word 'Stadt' and Leiht but this would make no sense at all unless 'City Lends' is a new show on BWR for the confused elderly. The temperature this morning is 15 C in the front room with the main pc on. Perhaps I should fire up the server later this evening to keep the room habitable. 10: 00 am. I take the dirty dishes downstair...

We've had the builders in. Well we are in the middle of having the builders in. That's in the middle (possibly) of the whole project and at the start of having the builders in. The builders were supposed to begin at the start of August- at exactly the moment we were off on holiday. However, contrary to the popular stereo-type project management is more often observed in South Germany by it's absence. I am not sure why this is, I suspect it is the side affect of another anthropological phenomenon I have commented on before - the reluctance of any individual to take responsibility and to make an independent decision. Any way by the time the workers arrived at our apartment chaos had reigned for over three weeks. Currently we are encamped in the living room with only the bedroom as the one other room that is habitable by humans and cats. The office is stripped and we are using it as a temporary food station with the microwave, the coffee machine and the kettle. The fridge is i...

Snowboarding on the Nebelhorn We were on the Nebelhorn at the weekend and quite an impressive sight it is. Since you have to pay 31 Euros for the day ticket it meant it was a great opportunity to practice riding the stupid tow system. I have been reluctant to practice on the tow, because everytime you fall off you waste a credit. However since the Nebelhorn ticket covers all the chairlifts, gondolas and tows, this was the perfect opportunity to practice. It was also the perfect opportunity to watch worse tow riders than me fall off! I went up with Suse and managed to achieve seven tow rides without incident! Look Ma! No Hands More Pix

Leaning on a lampost at the centre of the universe Well it would be reasonably difficult to resist the temptation especially in a place like Brandenburg Gate ( Brandenburger Tor) where the Berliners, on November 9th 1989, seemed to follow Ronald Reagan's advice and tore down the wall. It has changed immensely since I watched those events live on televison and leaves one with the sensation that you have seen the Forum of present day Rome - the parliament building is just around the corner behind me in this photograph.( It is almost directly behind our dear friend Peter, who can be seen smoking possibly his 20th cigarette that morning in order to counter the high doses of vitamin C he swears keep him chipper. ) Well done Günter Schabowski who surely deserves some sort of award from The School of The Cock-Up Theory of History- he was the DDR minister who having just arrived back from a long holiday, lacked sufficient information about what the party line was on the checkpoints and ...

Dreaming of Snoqualmie Falls I was thinking about the tv series Twin Peaks the other day and just considering how difficult I find it to watch these days. I have the first two seasons on DVD and although I have started watching them, I never seem to find the time to complete that activity - despite the multi- faceted reasons I might profess to have, including Major Hammond searching for the Stargate and not to mention Dr Trey McDonald investigating the strange murder of Laura Palmer. Not that I ever have difficulty couch potatoing my way through other collections including Band of Brothers every Easter and the complete series of ER up to season 8 - after Mark Greene died it had descended too far into soap opera for me. Of course the strange thing about Twin Peaks is that it always reminds of two of my best friends from the 90's Dee Conroy and Emma Burt, I can't really remember a time when Fraser Dickson and me didn't spend at least one evening of the week drinking with the...

The Siemens Dishwasher model number SE24E236EU We ordered this machine from Amazon.de because we buy a lot from Amazon, an awful lot. It was a complete disaster. Firstly, We were promised a delivery period of up to ten days - this is just another way of saying not less than ten days. Then we called the customer service to tell them we had a holiday from the 9th day and they told us not to worry, the delivery company would be given our mobile number and they would call us. Off we went to Berlin for a week during which time we mysteriously received no phone call.... A dead machine Number? What number? When we returned, the delivery company were kind enough to have left us a card letting us know that they tried to deliver the machine on the 11th day and the 13th day. When we called, they knew nothing of a phone call or a number to call. However they could delivery it the next day before 1pm. Legged It The next day ten minutes before one, two scruffy delivery men who seemed unus...

The Siemens Dishwasher model number SE24E236EU I guess this industrial looking bash may appeal to some who admire spartan simplicity in their dishwasher but I am not one of those.

Prad in Süd Tirol Thanks to that marvellous German educational institution -The Excursionen Woche- when students go on trips apparently, we spent the first week of May in the small town of Prad, which is just 50 km outside Merano (called Meran in German). To get there we had to drive through miles of road tunnels and then over the Reschenpass a journey that is quite spectacular with peaks rising in the Ortlergebiet to a height of over 3800 metres which rather overshadows my local hill, Dumyat , back in Stirling which manages to tower over Forth Valley at 418 metres. We stayed in a fantastic little campsite called Sägemühle which still has an old mill although I have no idea whether it was operational. I did mention to Susi that it would make a great restaurant although I guess from the number of properties that are simply wasting away, the local economy might not be able to sustain a restaurant. It is always important to avoid applying a UK business model to the things you see in this...

The Scottish Elections My daughter, being the child of a Stirling CLP secretary, is not ignorant of the voting system in Scotland. However this morning she told me that the ballot paper was so complicated she thinks that she voted for the Labour Scottish MP but got the whole council section wrong and probably spoilt her paper. Along with 99,000 others says the BBC. And she only voted Labour out of loyalty to her father (Stirling Constituency Labour party Secretary 1987. I expect a plaque.) She wanted to vote for the Scottish Socialist Party who promised to reduce the council tax In future, always vote for lower taxes I told her. Even if that means Tommy Sheridan or his pals. So go to the top of the class, Jack. Great idea to have elections on the same day. Oh, and if the SNP kick your ass, that will probably have the same effect on Scottish Labour as Mrs Thatcher had on UK Labour after 18 years. Filtered out all of the dead wood and left behind only the lean, fit and competitive. So......