Entries from March 2008

March 31, 2008

Banging on about the war

One of the things that always annoys me about my fellow Brits is that they will keep banging on about the second world war. Any football international between England and Germany brings wartime references out in the tabloids. Several interviewers who talked to me recently about Planet Germany brought up questions about the second world [...]

March 30, 2008

All grown up and ready to move house!

The kittens are all growing up now… and it’s utter, total mayhem in our house. Wherever you try to step….wherever you try to sit down, there’s a kitten there already. By the time you’re reading this post I’ll probably have broken my neck.

Even something as simple as putting a box on the floor with old [...]

March 24, 2008

Snowy Easter

What has happened to our weather? Christmas was so mild… and then all of a sudden at Easter… this!

Our farmhouse was just starting to look Spring-like with all the daffodils… and suddenly we’re covered in a dusting of unexpected snow.

March 24, 2008

Chocolate sculptures for Easter

It was a wonderful chocolatey Easter.
“Mum? And just what is the speckled hen meant to imply? Huh?”

Boy struggles to extract chocolate sculpture from box without being photographed…

A chocolate kitten for a cat-fan…

…but who got the biggest?

Dad’s egg turns out to have a surprise filling… wahey!

March 18, 2008

Would you recognise yourself described in a tabloid?

This is a new experience for me…. what with all the PR around Planet Germany, I’m used to the language of book reviews and Amazon blurb. But all of a sudden, I’ve started being written up in the popularist press.
Great PR! I’m really pleased of course.
But will I ever get used to the way I’m [...]

March 16, 2008

Getting ready for Easter in Germany

I have two confessions to make.
First, I am addicted to flea markets. I love them… I spend every other weekend rummaging around other people’s cast-offs looking for wonderful treasures that I can pick up for a couple of Euros. And my house is full of them. Ignorant Philistines (most of whom I am related to) [...]

March 10, 2008

Two reasons why Germans need to learn English…and one reason never to teach your children German

If Germans don’t learn English…. one day it’ll come back to bite them. (Okay - the first example comes from Holland… but it still applies).

…and , why you should never let your children learn German…

March 9, 2008

International rivalries

Of course the eternal struggle for national dominance isn’t just restricted to Birgit and myself. It isn’t even just a German-British thing. It seems like everybody wants to get one up on the Germans.
Take the Dutch, for example.
Living, as I do, in the border area of Germany and the Netherlands, it’s impossible to ignore the [...]

March 6, 2008

Meet the Katzenbabies!

Our cat Sooty gave birth to five beautiful kittens four weeks ago.
For anyone who hasn’t had this experience… I thought I’d tell the story of a month in kittens.
When they’re first born they look like this - sort of blind mouse-creatures with claws and whiskers.

By three weeks of full-fat mother’s milk, they’re more like fat [...]

March 5, 2008

Tap wars

It’s nearly a week now since Birgit and I had our little international altercation on the merits of Teutonic versus Anglo-Saxon plumbing.
Of course in the meantime we’ve talked about some of Birgit’s other favourite topics. Like how the British are entirely responsible for global warming, world poverty and losing socks in the washing machine. How [...]