The British art of Queing

Our local paper published a rather funny explanation and set of observations on the noble art of queing as refined and practiced by the British. It is a rather amusing observation of the the British people and goes into the niceties of waiting your turn, keeping the correct distance between yourself and the next in line and so on.

The writer of the article suggests that the British get very touchy when foreigners fail to observe the nicieties or attempt to 'jump the queue.' The article explains how it is vitally important to keep just enough space between you and the next person to avoid being asked 'Is this the end of the queue?' Of course, it also suggests that the British find everyone else's approach to queing incomprehensible. Here I will confess that attending a communion service can be an alarming experience in most churches as, at the invitation, the entire congregation rises and heads for the point of distribution where something of a scrum can develop! To anyone used to the strictly ordered Church of England, 'stand in line and wait your turn at the rail' approach it can seem disorderly.

British queues are something of a joke everwhere and one story is told of a queue forming simply to see why everyone else was queing. Nothing gets the British sense of fair play going faster than to be stood waiting in a queue only to have someone sail past to the head of the line - and get away with it. Blue-rinsed grandmothers have been known to make threats with their brollies at the mere hint of such a flagrant breach of 'fair play!'

It has to be said though, that queing does mean that everyone gets served, everyone gets a fair opportunity and though we all mumble about the delay and having to wait our turn, we all do it.

"It's the only fair way to do things, don'cha know!"

House church

Today we had a very different kind of Eucharist. The service was held in our Pfarrer's garden and not in the church. It was a Family Eucharist and pretty well attended as we gathered in blazing sunshine under a couple of large gazebo-style tents and our priest in the centre with a small table as his altar under a large umbrella. We had all been asked to bring along a salad or a dessert and Mausi had created a rice salad to a South African recipe (Can't think why she thought that might be fun...) as the Eucharist was to be followed by a barbeque lunch.

The service ran its normal pattern except that, at the sermon, Pfarrer Klaus handed out bottles of 'Bubble Fun' to everyone and then encouraged us to make bubbles with them. Which we did. His sermon then used the imagery of the fragility of the bubble and its beauty as it changes hue to talk about faith and the things that strengthen it or weaken it. A good sermon, one the kids particularly enjoyed. I was surprised at the distribution of the elements to be asked to administer the Chalice and had to do a quick check to make sure I had the words of administration right! These German tenses and gender specific articles of speech are a nightmare for someone learning the language. "The Body of Christ" is easy, it becomes "Der Leib Christi," but "The Blood of Christ" becomes "Das Blut Christi" as 'blood"'is neuter gender while 'body' is masculine ...

I managed to get it right though after a moment's panic as I tried to remember the gender of 'Blut' and it was a wonderful experience to once again be called to minister in this way.

The lunch which followed is one of the nicest experiences I have enjoyed here. We met and talked to a number of new people, the kids had fun in the garden, the adults talked 'shop' or just got to know each other better. This is a nice community, one which has a lot of communal activity during the week as well as the Sunday service. Tomorrow evening I am invited to join the men's 'Sport' group in playing Pool, a game I have never played, but, hey, I'm willing to give it a whirl. I'm told we have nine pin bowling as well to look forward to...

And the German is improving slowly. This might just help speed it along...

Busy days....

Our cellar beckoned today. It has needed some sorting out and we have some new shelving to install so, hot day, cool cellar, the job got tackled. The cellar here is a useful room. It houses our washing machine, freezer and storage for tools, grocery stocks and some of the extra furniture you always need on occasion, but at other times need to keep stored.

The end result is that we now have our new shelves in place, we've identified a lot of stuff we don't need to keep and our cellar is looking good. Now we have to source the wineracks we want so we can store our wine properly. You can't live in one of the world's best wine producing regions and not have some wine in the cellar!

At least the temperatures are now dropping to more comfortable levels. We finished the day with dinner in the gazebo - baked tuna with mashed potato and veg on the side. And a good bottle of Pinotage to wash it down...

Day in Limburg

Mausi and I attended court today, for the morning anyway. We wanted to hear the statement to be made by the son of an accused man in a murder trial Mausi has had a small part in. As we suspected, the son owned up to the fact that he had helped his father destroy the bodies, but not to being involved in the killings. He also admitted that they had then gone to a considerable effort to rearrange the scene of the killings and disposal to change the layout and conceal some blood spatter.

This was very much what Mausi suspected all along, but the police investigation left rather a lot of things unexamined and it is now too late to correct this. Never mind, so much has emerged now that the outcome is undoubted, the accused will make a statement at a date to be decided and I suspect there is now some fairly hectic plea bargaining going on.

The victims were brothers who were apparently involved in some fairly illegal activities with the son of the accused and were also taking a cut of his 'profits' from farming canabis. Apparently they were demanding a bigger share when the father killed them. All this came out when the mother of the deceased more or less admitted being involved in the demands for a bigger share. I find it amazing, still, that there are people who embark on illegal and criminal activity, enjoy the profits (The sums of money being mentioned here would have paid off my mortgage in Tewkesbury, bought me a brand new car and left me with a comfortably large bank balance...) and are offended when they fall out with their 'partners' and pay the price.

What was even more astonshing was that fact that one of the deceased was described as the accused's son's 'best friend.' It doesn't seem to have worried him unduly to burn his fried's body and the friend's brother to unrecognisable ash which he then admits scattering into a stream...

It was relief there after to have a great lunch in a local Thai restuarant and then take the afternoon to explore the ancient "Alt-stadt" of Limburg ad its beautifully restored and very ancient Dom Church. As soon as I can figure out how to download my pictures from my phone (I forgot to take a camera) I will post some.

Madam at home...

Madam Paddy Cat - her name was originally Paddy Paws - has settled into her new home very nicely. This morning she inspected all the hiding places for the field mice, checked the water in the bird baths, visited the gazebo and finally decided to do the 'garden ornament' pose. Considering her age, now a month or so one side or the other of 20 years, she isn't doing too badly.

But all the excitement of checking the mouseholes obviously wore her out, because she next opted to take up residence on the sofa in my study and finds it very comnfortable, thank you.



The 'meow' informs me that I may continue now, my typing isn't disturbing her...

A walk in the woods

The rain of the last few days has abated a little and Mausi and I took a short walk in the woods. The walk was enlivened by the activity of several pairs of Red Kites who gave an aerobatic display that was as beautiful as it was evidently effortless for these superb flyers. They glide and soar with a minimum of wing effort while other, smaller, birds flutter and dart.

Watching these magnificent birds as they hunted in the fields bordering the trees was a great bonus to a lovely walk. Sadly though we couldn't get any photos of them, the distance just too great and their speed just too high for the camerawe had with us. We did manage to capture some of the magnificent cloud formations as they lent interest, and the occasional sprinkling, to our walk.

The fields are lush, the horses muching happily on the grass, the field mice are thriving and the creatures that feed on them are also doing well. Temperatures are down for the moment though predicted to rise at the weekend. All in all we seem to be sliding slowly toward a pleasant autumn and a cool if not a cold winter.

Just as the garden starts to look great!

A wet and rainy garden

We've just had a visit in the garden from a Green Woodpecker. Bold as brass, he came right onto the patio and examined our furniture carefully, thankfully not drilling any holes! Considering that the weather is a bit miserable - very wet and quite windy - he'd presumably decided to look for easier food to get at than he can generally find in the trees currently being blown about in the wind.

Fortunately for the bird, Madam Paddy Cat is a little put off by the wet, though she insists on checking whether we have turned off the rain yet at regular intervals. She still hasn't caught any mice yet, though she is harrassing them in their hiding places at present. She did give us some amusement the other night when she was startled by the resident hedgehog. She retreated inside and now carefully checks to see whether he's lurking before venturing into that section of the flower beds.

The weather does rather suggest that summer is now at an end and autumn gathering its forces. Several of our trees and shrubs have taken on their autumn hues so I expect others will soon follow suit. The grass, however, is growing like fury.