What I Did Last Night

If, after reading this post's title, you are expecting something kinky or at least saucy, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed. Because what I did last night was what I have been doing every 22nd of March for the past few years: throwing a cocktail party.
In 2015, I posted about my party here. That post contains clickable links to the party posts from 2012, 2013 and 2014 - just in case you want to compare pictures and look for what has changed and what has remained the same.

What has remained pretty much the same is the way my living room looks usually:

I had the day off and so plenty of time to do everything that needed doing without even the slightest hint of stress. 
Some cards and a present had already been arriving for the past few days:

The above flowers were delivered around lunch time, sent from one of my sisters-in-law from Yorkshire. My sister helped me do some last-minute shopping - stuff I can't get before, because it has to be fresh - and brought me these flowers in my favourite colours:

The blue flowers are called "Bauernbüble", literally "farmer's boys", because in times gone by farmers here often wore linen working shirts dyed this same shade of blue.

Preparations went smoothly as usual, with only a few phone calls to take. Nowadays, most of the people who can not be there for my birthday will either send cards, emails or text messages; there are only a handful left who will ring.

As usual, most of the party food was going to be made by my Mum and my sister. My only contributions to the buffet, as always set up in the Third Room, were these. By now, it was 5.00 pm - time to change into my brand new dress!

Actually, I had intended to wear heels, but the only shoes I could find matching the silver belt were flat ones. My downstairs neighbours were probably grateful!
You can't really see it in the picture, but the fabric of this dress is very tiny light blue squares on white. Something else you can not see is that I am wearing a silver ring with a light blue stone, and a silver necklace with a light blue stone. Of course (!) I was wearing light blue eye shadow, and a scent called Cuir Blanc (white leather). I really love this new dress and am sure I'll wear it often as soon as it gets warm enough outside.
Maybe the pictures I have nicked from the fashion label's website (comma) give you a better idea.

As every year, once my guests started to arrive, there was no way I could have (or would have) taken any pictures. But rest assured that it was a great evening; there were 18 humans and 1 dog, an amazing pile of presents (all of them great and much appreciated), lots of laughter, plenty to drink and hopefully enough to eat (after all, it was a cocktail party and not a dinner invitation).

Most of my guests had to work today, so the party didn't last quite as long as it would have on a weekend. By 1:00 am, I had finished clearing up what I did not want to leave until the morning. Today, I have another day off and spent the morning putting everything back in order. I did it all at a nice leisurely pace, with enough time to take pictures of my gifts table and the wonderful flowers:  

This blog post will keep reminding me of my wonderful 48th birthday, but I hope the flowers are going to be a reminder for at least a week, too.

At the Bank

This afternoon, I went to the bank to pick up some cash from one of the machines in the foyer. A few people were queuing for the clerks where the foyer leads into the bank's main floor. At the end of the queue was an African woman, rather small, headscarf, mismatched outfit with long skirt and roomy cardigan - instantly recognizable as one of the 1 million refugees that have come to Germany during the year 2015.
She turned round a few times and looked at me and the others  who, like me, were using the cash machines. After one more look at me - I had finished by now and was about to leave - she approached me, a bank card in her outstretched hand, and asked in broken German "Bitte helfen?" ("Please help?").

In a mix of English and German, we established that she wanted to draw cash from her account and didn't know how to operate the machines, and so I showed her what to do.
When the choice of amount to withdraw came up, the smallest sum on the menu was 25 €. She pressed that button, and a message popped up, saying that there weren't enough funds on the account; the maximum amount possible was 20 €.
I told her what the message said, and she nodded and pressed "confirm" in order to get the 20 €. She smiled and nodded some more and repeated "Danke, dankeschön!" a few times. I smiled back and left.

And began to feel uneasy. An inner voice told me to turn round again and give the poor woman some of the cash I had just withdrawn. A second inner voice warned me that I had no idea how she would react - would she be offended, because she had so clearly not been begging for money, only for help with the machine?
I must admit that cowardice won, and I left the building without doing anything more for the woman.

Walking home, I reflected at how different our lives were - certainly not only in terms of money, but probably under every aspect imaginable.

When I had been getting cash from the machine minutes before her, of course I had been offered the same choice of amounts to take out. My decision was only based on my general dislike of carrying much cash around, not on limited funds.
I had been buying stuff in town without thinking much about their price - she most likely had to be very careful with those 20 €, to make them stretch as far as possible.

I am not rich, but I am not poor, either. It is safe to say that I am working middle-class; I have a job that I like and which pays reasonably well. Nearly half of what I earn goes off as taxes and to "the State" in its various functions. I live in my own flat (still largely owned by the bank, of course, but eventually, it will be properly mine). When I feel like it, I can buy myself stuff that I don't really need, simply because I like it. And as for the things I need, such as food, electricity and heating, I can pay for them without having to sacrifice anything else. If I were so inclined, I could travel more than the one Yorkshire holiday I go on every year. Yes, I am comfortably well-off - it hasn't always been so, and I feel very grateful for not living as precariously close to the limits of my personal finances anymore.
So, a 20-€-note would not have hurt me. Would it have hurt her? Proably not. I am a coward sometimes.

Read in 2016 - 7: The Stokesley Secret

For the second time, I've read a book by Charlotte Mary Yonge. The review for the first one, as well as some info about the author, is here.

"The Stokesley Secret" was originally published in 1861; my copy was (you guessed it!) a free ebook from Amazon's Kindle shop.

While it is clearly meant as a children's book, adult readers can enjoy this book all the same - provided they don't mind the sometimes rather strong emphasis on Christian morals that used to rule in the nurseries of most English families during the Victorian era.

In short, the book tells the story of a large family (eight children!) who live in genteel poverty on an estate in Stokesley (a place in England that really exists). The father is a Marine Officer who is only home between assignments, his most recent one having been in the Crimean War. The mother worried herself sick over her husband while he was away, and became so weak that she has to be transferred to London to receive proper medical treatment. It is unsure whether she'll live or die, and the children are left at Stokesley in the care of a nurse (who is portrayed as a very unpleasant character, unduly spoiling the children and always taking sides with the wrong ones) and a governess.

That governess is the principal figure in the story. She is young (only 19!), and her main job is to teach the younger children. The two oldest boys attend classes in the village, but her schoolroom is still very lively with the others.

On top of school lessons, she is also to teach them manners, make sure they are punctual at their meals, say their prayers, go to church every Sunday and do not quarrel too much among themselves.

She does have a level head on her shoulders and can be strict when necessary, but also joins in the fun at playtime, which endears her to the children a great deal. Her "modern London ways" do not go down well with Nurse and some of the other staff at the house, but her main responsibility are the children, and there she succeeds really well...
...until one of the boys allows himself to be led astray by some up-to-no-good boys in the neighbourhood.

A secret plan (hence the title) the children have been hatching goes wrong because of his mischief, and sets the siblings against each other, much to the governess' grief.

Finally, the father returns from London, and is soon able to get to the bottom of things. I can safely say that all ends well; it's not spoiling the book for any of you as I doubt you'll want to read it anyway.

In places, it is overly sweet and moralising, whereas there are some really funny bits, and it makes me believe that the author was able to relate to children (and to how she felt when she was little) rather well. It's not a very long book and kept me nice, old-fashioned company for several train trips to and from work.        

For Every Day or Special Occasions?

It was this post on Monica's blog which gave me the idea for today's post: I'll show you some of the china in my family, and tell you a bit of its history.

Ludwigsburg used to have a porcelain manufactury from 1758 (as by decree of Wuerttemberg's Duke Carl Eugen) until the end of last year. After ups and downs in its more than 250 year history (during which the manufactury was founded anew in 1948 and sold to a Russian investor in 2009), its insolvency and following closure was officially announced in October 2015.

My Mum loves Ludwigsburg china and has a nice collection, displayed in a glass cabinet in my parents' living room. She has kindly taken these pictures for me and given me some detail as to how the various pieces came to her:

Let's begin with the roses: My Mum received the first one as a gift in the 1960s. Back then, the price for one rose at the manufactury was 25 Deutsche Mark, which would be around 12,50 € today. Meanwhile, the price for one rose has increased more than tenfold - when the manufactury still operated, it was at 140 €, and who knows how the price could develop now that they are not being made anymore. 
Also, the newer ones aren't quite as pretty as the old ones; they are smaller and have less petals. Actually, they are made of leftovers from bigger pieces of china. A nice way of using scraps!
Some years ago, my Mum found two more roses at an antiques fair in Ludwigsburg. It was raining heavily that day, and the traders were glad to sell anything at all. The person offering the roses had no idea of their actual value, and my Mum was able to get two for only 30 € - a real bargain. 

The pieces in the upper picture are traditional Ludwigsburg shapes and patterns. My Mum received them as gifts from her mother, one by one over many years. The coffeepot, milk and sugar dishes were painted according to my Mum's wishes, to match her Meissen china, shown in the next photo:

Can you see which flowers on the cups match the coffeepot, milk and sugar dishes?
The collecting of Meissen pieces started around 50 years ago when my Dad's grandmother in northern Germany started to give away her own collection, cup by cup, as gifts for any occasion such as Christmas, my parents' engagement and wedding, and birthdays, until she died.

Meissen and Ludwigsburg are not the only makers of china represented in my Mum's collection. She also has this pretty set of Herend (Hungarian) porcellain:

The blue-white dishes on the festive table in the above picture are Rosenthal, another fvourite of my Mum's. This particular design is called "Romanze in Blau" ("Blue Romance") and was a wedding gift for my parents in 1965.
When my Mum celebrated her "Golden Confirmation", she offered food and decorated the table all in the style of the 1950s, when she was 14 years old at her first confirmation. 

Now to my own china, which I am using every day:

This ivory or cream coloured set with gold rims was quite the thing in the 1940s and 50s! My grandparents bought it, as you did back then with such important purchases, on installments. They were very proud of it, and it was not taken out for everyday use, just on Sundays and special occasions.
Also only on Sundays, silver cutlery and a proper table cloth were used. The rest of the week, it was a waxed cloth on the table, and cutlery with brownish bone handles. 

When my grandmother (Mum's Mum) died in 2001, the house had to be sold and emptied of its contents - accumulated over a lifetime and from many different people who had lived with the core family over the years; lodgers, in-laws and so on.
The beautiful dishes, simple and elegant, as well as the silver cutlery came to me, along with the 1960s coffee table, 1930s sideboards and 1950s armchair I have in my living room.
Of the dishes, I have only 5 large plates and 6 soup plates left, but a large number of cake/dessert plates, coffee cups and other items. Every day when I eat from these dishes, the meal feels like something special. I know there are many modern and stylish sets of dishes and cutlery around, but I am very happy with my old-fashioned "Grandma"-stuff.

Read in 2016 - 6: The Life of Captain Reilly

"The Life of Captain Reilly" by J.T. O'Neil is something between a novel and a work of non-fiction. Actually, it is the real-life account of a day in the life of a pilot who works for a low-cost passenger airline, interspersed with chapters that explain various aspects of flying, less technical but more from an organisational point of view.

The overall tone of this book (of course it was a free ebook in Amazon's kindle shop) is rather cynical, and it makes me wonder why the author has not quit his job a long time ago, when almost everything about it is either hateful or ridiculous. It can't be the money that makes him stick to the job, as he complains about that as well.

Readers gain some insight into what it is like to be on a plane not as a passenger, but as the person responsible for the whole flight. It is interesting to learn about how many different areas and people work together to make it all happen, and what rules exist (and are sometimes bent) in the world of international air traffic.

So far, I've only been really close to an aircraft's pilot when a friend of mine took me on a trip by ultralight plane, as described here.

Of course, that is no comparison to what is involved in flying (and landing) an airbus. But the two types of flight still have some things in common: both need some planning for takeoff, travel and landing, communication with ground control, and some necessary steps after the trip is over.

Where I fully agree with the author is when he has a go at the behaviour of some passengers. There really are inconsiderate people around who think nothing of leaving their seats - and everything within a certain radius - a total mess, or treating cabin crew members as second class human beings.

Allover, this was an interesting (rather short) read, but left something of a sour taste (probably fully intended). What originally attracted me to the book was of course the captain's name being so similar to my own. J.T. O'Neil has written some more books, but I won't download them, not even if they are for free. They just weren't that good, or gripping.

Birthdays, Funerals and more

Sometimes nearly all different aspects of life come together in one day, don't they? This was the case for me yesterday.

Work was the first task of the day, and it was pleasant working from home after I'd been at the office for four full days, with many meetings and lots to do in two very different projects I am working for these days.

Late morning, I went to the post office to get a birthday parcel for my mother-in-law Mary on its way to Yorkshire. In 2012, I posted about putting together a birthday gift for her, too; you can read that post here.
Not having posted about similar parcels in 2013, 2014 and 2015 does not mean I forgot Mary's birthday - it just means I didn't mention it on here. (Contrary to popular belief, I do NOT blog about each and every little detail of my life.)

This year, I have tried once again to include her favourite colours, and decided on this spring-like top I found in one shop, and the jewellery in another. The glass "stones" are called "cat eye", according to the labels, and I hope Mary will like them.
(Yes, the wrapping paper is the same I used in 2012, and I still have plenty left - it's rare that I use this type of paper for gift-wrapping.) 

After my quick nip into town I had another hour or so at my desk before I left the house again, this time to attend a requiem for a friend's father who had died on the 1st of March. I have known my friend Inge for 38 years, ever since we started "big school" together in 1978. 
In November 2014, her mother died. I attended the funeral and shall never forget the look of utter bewilderment and helpless grief on her father's face. That old man (he was in his 80s) sitting by the open grave, tears streaming down his face with him not making the slightest attempt to wipe them away... Even now, just thinking and writing about it, I am getting a little tearful.
Inge's parents were about 10 years older than my own. Her father missed his wife very much and I like to think that, whatever we believe, they are reunited now.

This requiem was the first I ever attended, and I was puzzled by a lot of what was going on. Everybody else seemed to know exactly what they were doing - getting up, sitting down, answering the priest either speaking or singing the right words at the right time. I've never been Catholic, and throughout my life have attended less than a handful of Catholic services/masses, so I didn't have a clue and was more an observer than participant.

It was also the first time I've been inside that particular church. It is the very same church I have mentioned here, less than 2 minutes to walk from my house.

The church is a modern building; I've never liked its looks from the outside. For me, the concrete bell tower has the aesthetics of a 1970s parking garage. Inside, it doesn't get much better; although I usually am all for empty walls and large clutter-free spaces, this minimalist approach takes away the warmth I expect in what is supposed to be the house of God.
Don't get me wrong - I do see the point in focusing less on the material and more on the spiritual world when it comes to churches. It is just not my personal taste, that's all.
(All photos taken from the official homepage of this community.) 

After the requiem, I was freezing and hungry. Inge and her family went on to the cemetery where the funeral service and laying to rest was taking place. I went home and had a mug of steaming hot vegetable broth to warm up.

I worked some more and then, late afternoon, went to the gym. Only then did I feel really warm again!
Back home, I put in another hour of work, until one of my friends came to pick me up. We'd been invited to her sister's for dinner and enjoyed her great lasagne, red wine to match, delicious ice cream for dessert and a fun board game that I had brought along.
It was nearly 1:00 am until I was home, and switched the lights off just before 2:00.

A long and varied day it had been. Inge and I soon want to meet for a good comforting chat among friends. She and her brother are very close, and I hope they can be of comfort to each other during this difficult time.    

First of March

How much I like the first day of a month has been mentioned on my blog a few times already. This morning, though, I was certainly not hoping to wake up to Winter Wonderland:

I took this picture about half an hour ago... It has been (or at least felt!) colder the past few days than all winter. Well, it is not spring yet, not really! Flowers, birdsong, sunshine - that's what I am longing for, not snow. But of course I'll just have to take it as it comes, and although it sounds like I am whining like some spoilt brat, I am determined not to let this influence my usually good mood too much. It is going to be a long day at the office anyway, so I am not missing out on anything.

In contrast, look at this picture from November:

That day was so warm I kept my (very light) jacket off for most of the afternoon, and I wouldn't have been too cold in short sleeves.

Keep warm, whereever you are, and appreciate the sunshine if you have some in your area!