Dave!

While Dad was visiting Ted today, I had a surprise visitor in the shape of Dave. And not only was he shaped like Dave, he actually was Dave! He turned up in his big truck thing that isn’t really a truck, bringing with him an enormous black cloud. The sky had been white all day and the moment he arrived, it turned black and suddenly threw it down with rain. Would’ve preferred snow, but beggars can’t be choosers and neither, it seems, can I.

Being an old man, Dave turned down my offer of Pepsi and went for tea instead (ah, those were the days when he and John existed solely on Coca Cola and the thrill of lowering the suspension on their cars). The tea-making was a team effort, with me switching the kettle on and directing Dave around the kitchen, offering him green or blue milk and then watching him do all the work. I’m such a good hostess.

We had a good natter while the old man drank his tea, catching up on life and complaining about work. Nothing specific about work really, just the fact that we have to do it. If we ran a company together, I don’t think much would get done. But its website would be lovely. As we talked, it became apparent that far too much time has passed far too quickly in our lives. I was rummaging around for a photo from the summer ball to show Dave and discovered that that particular ball took place in 1999. That’s like a whole other century, dude. Back then I was still wearing the glasses that were too small for me and I was quite possibly beginning to cultivate my cerebral abscess. Now, I have contact lenses and am content with merely hatching a 1cm kidney stone.

While he was here, Dave was also witness to my stationery fetish. Kippertie’s accountants had sent us a big expensive, useless diary each. They were in three separate padded jiffy bags – the sort that make my heart pound. Not only was I able to remove the sellotape that bound the three together without ripping them, I was also able to peel off the address and postage labels on the top one without damaging it. Despite Dave willing them to tear. At least Lauren’s Dave wasn’t here. He would doubtless have been much peskier.

Supermegaoberaffengeil

Forgive me, but surely I can’t be the only one amused by the headline “Naomi Campbell scuffles with her maid”. I want a maid. I also want a scuffle.

I had a scuffle with Sooze once. In year 12 or 13 in the form room. There was a bit of rubbish paper lying about and I wanted to read it, but she decided that I shouldn’t be allowed to and we ended up having a strange wrangle on the floor. I seem to remember being upside down at one point. I’m sure it looked very elegant.

Speaking of La Sooze, we’re going to Bluewater sometime this week. I was offered Thursday or Friday – I’d like to go on Thursday, but I’m not sure I ever got round to replying to Suzy’s text message to tell her that. I think I started it when I was watching Holby City, but when I next looked at the phone screen, it was back at the first screen, although I don’t remember sending anything. I think I’ll either speak to her tomorrow, or wait until Thursday lunchtime and ring her in a huff, demanding to know where the hell she is.

The Germans (yes, all of them) have been voting on their favourite word (BBC News). As someone who seems to hang out with Germans, Austrians and a number of dictionaries, this news item was rather interesting to me and I set about trying to think of my favourite word. Lauren likes “arschkalt” and indeed just the simple use of “Arsch” (yes children, it means “arse”) as a prefix to make something negative pleases her. I’m rather amused by the words people invent when they like something, like “supermegaoberaffengeil” – things must be good when they’re “monkey cool”. And “geil” itself is amusing as it means “cool”, but used to mean “randy”. So I had to have a bit of a chuckle when someone’s aunt announced herself as his “geilste Tante”. Coolest, or … what else is there? Suzy likes screeching “doch” (“on the contrary”) at me when she disagrees. But that might just be so she can spit on me as she says it.

I have an interesting Austrian twang when I speak German as I have picked up so much of my vocabulary from Hubert, either in his interviews or in his songs. I was reading something simple in German to Sooze the other day and read “bald” as “boid” without batting an eyelid. Mrs Utting would either be ashamed or confused. It can be bad at times to have learned stuff from lyrics written in dialect though – I end up knowing the Austrian to English, but not the German. For ages I knew that “fia di” was “for you”, but I didn’t know whether the High German was “fÃ¼r dich” or “fÃ¼r dir” (it’s the former), so I stuck with the Austrian pronunciation and spelling. *shakes fist half-heartedly in the direction of Salzburg*

“Unterwegs” – that’s quite a good one. It can be a bastard to translate depending on its use, but when you’re in a German frame of mind it’s quite nice. And all those boring Germans who voted for “Liebe” as their favourite word are just dull. Can I go to Mauritius now?

Gone and bought me some rocks

I just tried to push my glasses up. I’m not wearing them. In fact, I’ve had my lenses for months now, so it’s about time I stopped this wild grappling in the air. I still attempt to hold them out of the way when I rub my eyes, so if you ever see me rubbing one eye, with the other eye framed by my hand, that’s what I’m doing.

My little pond in the gravel garden is now finished. We went to the garden centre and bought some rocks this morning. They’re all contained in big wire baskets and you can bet your bottom dollar that the ones on top are of no interest, while those several feet down look incredibly alluring. When I first made the pond many years ago, I made Dad pretty much empty one of these baskets in my quest for appropriate rocks. This time I was a little more content with what was only a third of the way down – and I only managed to smash one of my fingers between two rocks, so things went pretty smoothly.

After lunch I arranged the new stones in and around the pond and finished it off with gravel and the pebbles I’d saved from before. I’ll add a photo of it tomorrow when the dust in the water has settled. And when it’s not actually pitch black outside. In any case, it looks rather good and I’m sure the birds will enjoy emptying the water out of it in the wild baths we see them having from time to time. Although sometimes, like today, we only see the evidence. We returned from the garden centre to find splashes all around the half-renovated pond, as well as drenched stones around the top of the waterfall on the main pond. Lots of ponds we have.

Looks like there’ll be no rest for the wicked tomorrow either. Sooze wants me to go for a walk with her in her neck of the woods. But before then, I shall be enjoying “Arlington Road” on TV tonight, and may even imbibe a little Mars drink if I’m feeling particularly decadent/greedy.