memory

 At the old workplace, it is early afternoon, go for a cup of coffee before the appointment, it is early and the people all are busy with their other appointments, there is no point in being early.

Coffee at the crazy bean, sit in the sun and let the time pass. His coffee is so good, it drives the heart to thunder, but who cares. The last bitter sour dregs of the hot black coffee are a delight. Have a short conversation wit the man and wander down the stairs to the gate of the reactor.

The pictures have arrived, this is exciting. The woman in charge of preparing the exhibition gets a small cart and we collect the six boxes of pictures from the post office. The reactor has it's own little post office for dealing with the mail and all the parcels.

The woman is in a terrible hurry, appointments have caught up on her and she does not know if she is coming or going. She says that the pictures should be checked, so settle down and open the first box.

The pictures have been very well processed, they are good. Brilliant colours and deep shadows, much the same as they had been on the monitor.

A pleasant surprise.

Further discussions about presentation, and the numbering of the pictures. Ninety six Avery labels with a number on them, compare each print with each draft picture, stick the number on the back. The pictures are not sorted, and they are not numbered either.

After a print is laid face down upon the gritty floor decide to stay and sort and number them all.

A full five and a half hours work, complete with repackaging  and placing into an empty office for the night.

On the way out the security man says "have a nice evening mister sure man" He has a good memory for names, that is unbelievable. 

sock pairing

 the cold leg phenomenon in the early morning, it is happening almost every day. About one hour after getting up the legs start to go cold, starting at the ankles and working on up towards the knees. Really silly. Perhaps exercise in the morning will help.

later on get the big odd socks container and start to sort through them. There are tiny socks that were the son's when he was small. There are ones with holes in them which land in a heap. Nobody really repairs socks any more. They will end up in the municipal container for old clothes where they will be passed on to a recycler who will shred them and sell the fibre to somebody who can use it. To make other things, like paper, for exampele.

sort the socks that are left, find containers of other single socks, sniffle at the all for some are unwashed and that is an easy way to tell.

In the end there are  some clean paired socks, a stack of holy socks and all the socks that failed the snuffle test in pairs in the box for the washing machine. The whole procedure took hours. Rest back on the bed and listen to the wife and the son argue about the best method of tidying up computers.

That is not an argument worth getting involved in.

In the evening, go for a walk that should have been taken in the morning.

Something

 A hug in the park, and that is the end of an afternoon spent with a woman last seen with her three year old daughter.

She tells stories of her daughter, who is now married and lives in Tel Aviv and is nearly thirty. 

Amberg is a small town with a rococo church so beautifully restored it feels like it is new. All  the golden decorations on the church walls, the fat little gilded angels. The people are friendly, say hello on the street. For the sake of old friendship, wear a suit and a new shirt and a tie, and realise that it all went down well when there was not a comment. It was strange to be so formally dressed, but it was pleasant to sit in the cafe and the onlookers wondering.

Nobody wears a suit nowadays, unless they are getting married or something.

Something is not a pleasant option.

clean and fix

 It is early, and the son and the wife have left the house. They are on their way to the doctor, the woman to help with all the difficulties that the son is having. That leaves the house with just one man and a cat, which is great.

There is a problem with the cooker, a gas hob with an electrical oven. It has a loose handle on its glass front, a handle that is not entirely easy to fix. To fix it the door of the cooker must be removed and dismantled.

First of all, spend half an hour finding tools. Downstairs, in the space used as a workshop, there they are. Screwdrivers and pliers, the operation tidying up the mess bears fruits. Two sizes of cross headed screwdrivers, and a pliers. There are no simple slit screws on the oven anywhere. The factory probably used power screwdrivers.

Then study the door. It has splodges of burnt-in fat everywhere on the glass. It is designed as a flap, to open up downwards. The hinges just appear to be poked into slits in the structure, but it is not easy to see wat is holding them. There is a screw a few centimetres above the hinge, maybe that needs to be undone and the the whole flap with its glass window will just be released.

It does not work that way. Replace the screw and tighten it back again before whatever it holds together turns into separate entities. Then look carefully at the hinges. There is a tiny lever made of sheet metal on the top of the hinge, almost invisible.Lift the lever on the right into a vertical position. That looks good, but no idea of how this is supposed to work. Then the one on the left side. This one is stuck, no idea why. Try to lever it up with a screwdriver, wishing for a flathead screwdriver after all. Then, a jerk and the lever is vertical. Now, no idea of how this might work, but lift the door and pull. The whole construction now pulls away from the oven, and now see how much grease and dirt had collected underneath the hinge. Spray some detergent onto the grease and let it soak for a while. Start to take the door apart, four screws to remove the front pane of glass.  Four more screws on the lower part of the door. Then there are two screws holding the loose stainless steel handle. The second sheet of heat resistant glass is held in by bits of metal that need to be bent aside.

The wife and the son return from the doctor, and remark that the door to the oven is gone.

Agree. This is all true.

It is being cleaned and fixed.

insurance

Make a  telephone call, a strange simple number, only four digits. Turn the dial on the old green plastic dial telephone the correct amount of times, always ready to catch the next number as the dial returns. There is silence in the line, and then a ring tone.

The assistant at the practice answers the telephone, explain to her that the pills keeping the prostate gland in control have run out. No problem, she explains, just bring along the EHIC and get a prescription. All charges will be paid by the health insurance, which is good. There is nothing as sane as compulsory health insurance.

Walk through town in the nine o'cklock morning light.  It being Thursday there are mainly elderly people and maintenance craftsmen about. Also, a crew of men in orange safety overalls with an orange dumpster collecting the yellow plastic bags filled with packaging waste.

Go into the practice, say good morning, and push the European Health Insurance Card into the reader on the counter. The woman opens a file and takes out the prescription form, all ready signed by the doctor. Leave the practice, and on the way back up the street stop at the apothecary. Collect the pills, one hundred in a small rectangular box. There is no charge here either, the insurance pays every cent.

And further on, go into the bakery and buy some pretzels and two nut rolls. These have to be paid for, they are as a supplement to the son's and the wife's breakfast.

path

 Follow a respectable couple walking up the path out of the valley in which the town is. Take a picture of the situation, and wonder at the elderly couples taking the air on this Wednesday morning. There are more of them than there usually are, slowly walking, deep in conversation. They wish all that they meet a good morning. Many are holding hands. 

Walk on to the top of the hill,  settle there and think. Rest until the couple has nearly caught up, and then go on to the enclosures where the Rhea birds are kept. Watch one of these big flightless Nandus jump underneat a tree to reach the lower maple leaves. It looks strange, the bird makes a vertical jump, stretching out its long neck to reach the leaves. All of the low hanging branches have been nibbled free of leaves by the birds.

Walk back down again, that is the day's exercise taken care of. It will be necessary to do more. Weight reduction would be a good idea.

tax

 Upon entering the woods it gets dark and the wind rises. The trees start to make rustling sounds as the wind hisses through them. There is not much wind, nothing to worry about, but still, it is a harbinger of bad weather. That and the darkening of the sky. The wood is beautifully gloomy. 

Take the bottom path, and leave the woods by the next gate. There is time now to get the envelopes from the big shop in the main street. The weather is brightening up again, whatever that little meteorological fit was. The big store in the main street has hardly any apparent restrictions in place, of course everyone is wearing a mask. Go to the escalator, there is a signpost there saying where the various departments are to be found.

First floor, stationery and multimedia is written there.

Climb up using the escalator, and take a sharp left, here are drawing instruments of all kinds shapes and colours. Ask a young assistant whether she can tell me where envelopes are to be found. She points over behind the escalator, there is a whole shelf with office equipment on it.

And all kinds of envelopes are there too. Take a package with ten B4 size envelopes and go downstairs.

Stand in line at the cash register, and pay the one Euro for the envelopes. One of the envelopes will be needed to send the receipts and forms to the accountant. 

And that will hopefully be the tax returns for two thousand and twenty dealt with.

Whit

 an hours stroll in the park today.

watch the children play.

families on a walk

Whitsun mon

Stay calm and quiet

There may be more to say later

on this Pentecost Monday.

but there is no wish to write anything today

sorry

Later, look at the sons bicycle in the passageway, test the brakes.

Nothing. Nearly nothing at all. And yet he had spent an hour the day before yesterday trying to fix them. Then he had driven off anyway. Complete with his non braking brakes.

Get a spanner, and adjust them. They are set at the wrong angle, and he did not reset the cable adjusters before adjusting the brake cable lengths. Fiddle about with a spanner and an Allen key until both the front brake and the rear brake can be locked at will.

Later on, tell the son that his brakes work now, just so that he does not put himself over the handlebars on his next journey.

Perhaps he should have asked his father for help the day before yesterday instead of sending him away. The brakes should be safe now.

concentric

 doodling and dawdling and hanging about the cat jumps up on the knees and demands attention

at least she is not asleep like the rest of the family. It is ten in the morning, and leave the house for a walk in the usual partk. It is a grand soft day, as the Irish used to say. Water everywhere, all the leaves shining with the reflection from the sky

It is just hard to keep breath, there seems to be no way to get sufficient oxygen to bind with the lower levels of haemoglobin in the blood. Why there is so little of the stuff nobody seems to be able to say. But after a while there is a warm sensation in the lungs and climbing the steep path is easier.

There is a decrepit shelter up at the top of the path, cigarette buts and emptyy beer bottles and every where  pizza boxes spread by the crows. The crows ransack the dustbins in the evenings when there are few people there. Also, they are busy on Sunday mornings.

There is a puddle, as smooth as a mirror but when a drip falls into it, Then there is a typical concentric wave pattern. Watch this, and try to make a film of it with the mobile 'phone.

nice

 Read the covid warning mounted on the opticians glazed door, a note on masks and distance

four people inside two at the back of the shop having glasses fitted, one with an attendant at the counter,

looking at glasses . Ask the attendant for a refill of the fluid for cleaning the glasses.

She points to the bottle on the wall, the bottle inverted, the bottle fitted with a barman's dispenser for shots of spirits. Hold the small plastic bottle so that it pushes up against the dispenser, watch it fill.

Screw on the lid, say than you, and 

leave the shop.

And take the long road to the park.

Pass the shopping mall, then the entrance to the tunnel, then the Romanian orthodox church, all the way up the Bernlochner way. Follow the  gravel path all the way to the top of the hill.

And sit there, catching the lost breath and watching the water birds and the crows behind the fence

Returning home meet the librarian at the bottom of the hill. He is talking about his pension, and all seems well with him.

That is nice

nut

such evening wet, rain drop and drops on this grey hair, pavement path leads to city supermarket

masked shoppers walk fast, grey-clad people, some in black, to buy provisions for evening meals

Necessity for sustenance is not alone the force that drives the teenage female youths to shop

It must be solely only the wish for pleasant confirmation of the painted peers in patient queue,

discussing the novel flavours of milky drinks in paper cups servetd at the tea shop in the mall.

Wetness on the head dries out, press the button on the bread machine two loaves in a paper bag

Some cheese, half pound of butter and bar of chocolate, nut flavoured, the end of the day

harness

our neighbour , tiny dog on the leash in her hand, dog harnessed, no collar,walks up the street

the dog wearing a jacket decorated, an heraldic cross on its back,the minute animal, tail wags

revolting glnre from beady eyes, the neighbour  woman loves her well dressed  little dog.

Greet them both and the dog does glare like a confused  alcoholic, struggles in its harness.

Later, at the corner, see the dog on the leash dragged backwards, the neighbour not in sight

The dog vanishes around the corner in reverse, all four feet struggling in futile resistance.

Life is hard in a harness on the end of a leash

the car off to its biannual inspection.

 Stop in front of the car repair place, turn off the engine. Keep a distance behind the big black BMW car already standing there, the one with the driver stumping about impatiently. The man is overweight, and is most comfortable walking by swaying his body from side to side, from one foot to another. The shop is still shut, so listen to the eight o'clock news, and by the time that is over the BMW has been taken into the repair shop. Take the papers and the key into the shop, and hand them over to the clerk.

Walk back home, past the home for the fugitives. It is quiet there, perhaps they are all asleep. It is still cool this morning, walking is easy and pleasant.

It is nine in the morning, the son is doing his schoolwork now, and the wife is still asleep. She was up late watching television last night.

waste

This day is a failure in that an icy cold has gripped the legs below the knees today, there is no fighting it and there is no wish to go ahead and to do anything at all.

The wish to do anything is as dead as the proverbial dodo.

So stay relaxed, all day.  Cold legs, and the relief that the major project of the last few weeks has come to an end. Where its successful conclusion must rest in the hands of others. 

So the absence of a specific project has resulted in the body being able to put its own specific woes into the foreground, and leave this person with cold feet and a depression.

Literally speaking, left with a sensation of cold feet.

So let the day go to waste.

quad

The mobile telephone starts to play the morning tune, get up and press the button to turn the music off. On the dumb waiter there are the three pills, one for the prostate and one and a half for the blood pressure. Take the capsule, then the full pill and use the scissors to split the other pill. Swallow the lot and wash it all down with a cup of coffee. And then get dressed.

Put on a warm down vest and go for the walk, as per resolution. It is before eight in the morning, but the resolution must be held, otherwise it will be a matter of lying down and letting the misery of the day rule again.

Take the steep path up the valley slope, and just before the Devil's bridge be overtaken by an older man, running. He is barely out of breath, and yet he looks about sixty eight. Good for him. There is jealousy, and admiration too.

At the top of the hill, watch the birds. There are two crows bathing in the duck pond, busy enjoying a good wash. And the peacock in the distance is trying to impress the peahen.

On the way down the hill meet the first walkers coming in from the town, the last one a lady with two sticks. Think of George Orwell, two legs bad four legs good. The woman gives a pleasant smile and continues clicking her way up the hill as a quadruped.

somebody today

 Start to clear up the workshop today. The sons projects have made an incredible mess, there are bits and pieces of motor scooters and petrol driven bicycles, even parts of a small car distributed everywhere. On every horizontal surface.

There are small heaps of tools in all of the places where work had taken place. 

Start to collate the tools on the top of the tool cabinet for sorting later on. Throw out empty boxes, soon there is a heap of small rubbish on the floor. Push the moped and the scooter into the cleared area, now there is a bit more space. Sort the things on the workbench, so that looks tidier too.

It is hard work, and time consuming. It is a stupid job, but somebody has to do it.

bad morning

 the day is rough at the beginning, even though it looks harmless, there is the short staggering to the bathroom, stroke the cats head not realising that the only reason that she is so friendly is because she is hungry, she may not be being friendly at all.
It was a nice thought to get up and go for a walk, but this is not going to work. The dead immobility of the depression reaches out and puts an end to the practical realisation of such simple ideas. The depression hides too, and says "it's you". Of course it is. Self inflicted pain, just a simulation to gain attention. It is hard to describe and it is easier to attach the own person than to claim an illness, one that will get you sneered at and pitied. The inside confusion not allowing help from those willing to give it, knowing that the problem is so inaccessible that even offers of help cause irritation, pain and anger. It is a personal weakness there is nothing to do but to sit down and read,  later on verbal abuse will be received for letting the poor fat cat go hungry not realising it's calls were for food, the first human greeting is take as being abuse, just roll up and read the book.

Work has finished and now it would be necessary to start to clean up the house, but why start to tidy up others mess, it is just too bad this morning

personal delivery

 finally, now, it is time to give up. The mysteries of the internet will not permit the transfer of a large file over the fifty kilometres to the university. The son explains something about asymmetrical protocols. As a private person the symmetry is facing the wrong way. It takes day to transfer the data. Copy the data onto a portable data stick and resolve to take the car to the institutes. The round trip will take two hours. Going on foot would take twenty-four. The online data stream took longer, counting all the failures.

In Garching, at the institutes, visit the café. The owner and his wife are there, quite depressed. They are not making money.

The institutes are deserted, there are hardly any people. It is a Friday, the day between a holiday and the weekend. Most people have taken the day off.

Have a cup of coffee and chat. Because there are no other visitors, it is possible to talk out of doors, mind the distancing.  It is good to be able to talk to a stranger without a mask.

Finish the coffee, say goodbye, and return home. The matter of the data transfer has been dealt with now.

Dormitio

 today

Father's Day in Germany

It used to be hordes of drunk men on bicycles and in groups in the streets

occupying all the guest houses

Thank you pandemic

not any more

cool

 The lazy man gets up and turns off the alarm clock. Check the news on the computer, that is all well, or absolutely unwell. Palestinians terrorising Israeli populations and the Israeli forces demolishing parts of Gaza in return. In terms of causing loss of life, Israel won.

There is a  appointment with the dentist today, early in the morning, take a shower, shave and make a particular business out of cleaning the teeth. It is not far to the dentist's practice, and despite leaving everything to the last second, it is possible to be on time. A friendly greeting, and a short wait in the waiting room.

Then the move to the room with the chair, sit down, and be told to remove the mask. Then there is the usual business of keeping the mouth open while the dentist works on the teeth.

There is one difference, one novelty. A strange jig is put into the mouth, and then an instrument like the business end of a vacuum cleaner  is inserted. The dentist moves this thing around  in the mouth, a regular clicking sound comes from the behind the seat somewhere. Both the dentist and her assistant are no longer  looking at where their hands are but have their eyes focused on something that could be there where the clicking noise is coming from. It is a strange experience, after fifty years of dentists looking to see where they are drilling.

Afterwards the dentist explains that she has a new system whereby the stump of the tooth is scanned and from the data gathered a new prosthetic tooth can be printed.

She says that this is very cool.

seriously

 Walk in the morning, flee from home. Take a picture of a red spot on a tree trunk.

There is not much going on, on this Monday morning in the park. That is all right, but there is no wish to climb up out of the valley. There will be no teasing the rhea birds today.

Today is a day of low blood pressure, there is no understanding why it is healthy to feel so awful. Later on it will be necessary to take an appointment at the old workplace to discuss the further production of the book for the institute, and the inspection of the pictures for the exhibition. 

There seem to be hundreds, but there are only eighty six of them.

Which seems to be plenty.

Arrive at work later on, punctually.

The other person is twenty minutes late. Maybe things should not be taken so seriously

low pressure

 The doctor suggested a new pill, one that should work to lower the heightened blood pressure. She is a good doctor, and she sees a problem with the high blood pressure. After the visit to the apothecary in the man street to get the prescription go home and take the half pill as prescribed. The other half shoots off and vanishes into a crack in the floorboards. In future, methods will have to be investigated to avoid such waste, perhaps breaking the pills with the fingernails is not the correct way to go about it.

Leave the house for a walk up the hill, through the park. The steep path out of the valley is hardly to be managed,  sit down at the first bench feeling weak. But after a while the effect relaxes, and walk all the way up to the viewing platform at the top of the hill. The weather is sunny here, Sit down on a bench, until the sun can be felt burning on the face. Move on to the enclosure for the rheas, they pick and peck at the fingers, and let their heads be stroked. They are very tame, and have no fear. Their big eyes and long eyelashes are strange, and their long flexible necks are like snakes.

Watch the ducks in the pond. And then walk back down into the town again.

In the early afternoon the car has to be taken to the garage. Leave the car and start to walk back home.

Start to feel weak and dizzy and so sit down. The distance to home is only a few kilometres, this should not be a problem. Sit down on a park bench and rest.

There is a phone call. It is the car repair place, they say that the car will need new brakes, and a spring is broken. This is all very tiresome. There is no help for it though, it will become necessary to walk back, collect the car again, and come back on Wednesday week to have the vehicle repaired. And then it will be ready for inspection.

Later on, back at home, measure the blood pressure again. It has never been so low inside the last year. The pulse is racing and the blood pressure is low. That little half-pill has an effect. No wonder that there is weakness and dizziness. Lie down and rest for a minute, and this turns into half an hours sleep

psycho breakfast

 Walk diagonally across the old market street, heading for the Mareis baker shop. It is open on Sundays, and the idea is to get some bread rolls for breakfast. In the shop there is an alarmingly thin man who is buying a cup of coffee. He seems quite uncoordinated in his actions, he mumbles. It could be that he has an alcohol problem, his appearance and demeanour qualify that supposition.

Wait until he has his coffee and has gone on, steering roughly for the exit to the shop. He sees the glass door all right, and steps aside to exit via the open part of these doors.

Ask the saleswoman for six rolls, she asks whether they should be all the same or mixed. Say that mixed would be fine, and she shows me a basket with six different types of bread roll in it , with grain on the outside, without such extra, brown, and white. Tell her that that would be fine, and get three croissants too.

Pay the bill, accidentally including a token coin from a French car wash that has been in the wallet since last summer. When that confusion has been cleared, take up the two bags and walk back home. This is one advantage of living in the centre of town, all services are nearby, and can be reached on foot.

At home, lay a breakfast table, with some jam and the butter dish and peanut butter and such like. Put three breakfast boards on the table as well. And saucers for coffee cups.

The son is awake, he looks doubtful, then he say that there is a cake in the refrigerator. Tell him that the cake will do nicely this afternoon.

Then, when the coffee is made, the whole threesome of the family sit down to have breakfast. The cat does not really understand, this is a new experience for this creature with a short memory. She dashes about playing with things that are on the floor.

But the son has calmed down, his teenage riotousness is quietened by a mouthful of buttered roll. Or croissant.

bee keeper

 The path downwards is gravelly and steep. Wooden beams have been let into the surface by the gardeners to make steps.

An old man is coming on up these stairs, these stairs along the steep valley in the park. It is the camera collector, greet him by name. And that is the start of an hour long conversation, about cameras and lenses. Talking shop with a collector of cameras, he collects cameras to have them and to love the mechanical finesse of them. They are like jewels, he knows them all.

Stand and talk. It is good to speak to a friendly person, and he explains the difficulties that he is having with his bees, on account of the weather being so cold. He says that it has been the coldest April for the last twenty years. Climate change and global warming are not just about climbing temperatures, the chances are that late summer will be impossibly hot again.

The man is a camera collector and a bee keeper.

And he lives in a house on the top of the hill.

suspicious

 a pensioners day, no!

these are holidays now, and the work that is being done is for the honour of being able to show off the work done during the last twenty years. There are telephone calls, and mail, and even negotiations to be made. And it starts in the morning with the impossible demand to send something quickly. This is impossible because the files are too big. The mail system will not take them, and there is no working sync and share system operating.

This is all three times as much work as it should be.

Take the small battery driven vacuum cleaner out to the car, and try to clear out the dirt and tiny stones caught in the carpets. This does not really work well, the vacuum cleaner is not powerful enough. End up by picking the stones out by hand. Typical pensioner activity on a Friday morning

After two years of owning the vehicle find out how the back seats work, how they retract into the footwell to grant more space in the back of the car. Step into this luggage space and lie down. See that this car would have enough space to sleep in, get up, and get out of the vehicle. There is a man standing on the other side of the road, in front of the police station, watching. He is scratching his head.

Maybe he thinks that this is suspicious behaviour.

Maybe it is.

cleaner

 The bucket is half full of warm water, and there are two spray canisters of detergents, one for windows and the other for general use.

The car needs to be cleaned up a bit inside, nothing has been done for the past two years, it is sordid. And it is starting to rain. Open the door of the car, and start by spraying over the plastic surfaces behind the front window. Then take a rag and soak it in the bucket, wring it out a bit, and wash the stuff off the plastic surface. Be careful to wash all of the surface dust and grime away.

Use the other spray to spray over the window glass, and wipe it clean too, following up with a chamois leather to try to avoid having stripes on the glass later on. There is so much rubbish in the car, collate it all in the corner on the floor by the passenger's seat.

Find the lost pen for the electronic tablet under the passenger seat, it is where the son had lost it. That is one positive aspect to cleaning. Things get found.

Pour the meanwhile filthy dirty water into the gutter, and fill the bucket with the rubbishy bits of paper and things found in the car. Go back home in the pouring rain.

It is cold, too.

top floor

 Leave the house in a storm, it is early afternoon, it was raining and windy. As the town vanishes into the rear view mirror the sun comes out, but it is still windy. The car is difficult to steer in a straight line.

Try to keep a steady speed on the autobahn, but it is difficult, and those citizens who believe in speed are a major danger. A spot swelling into a Mercedes in the rear view mirror, try to ignore it and finish overtaking the big Hungarian truck. The man in the Merc passes, shaking his hand in front of his face as a gesture implying that anyone not going at full speed must be insane.

Let him go on, he is young, and let us hope that he will grow old.

Arriving at work, it is already clear what it is like to be a stranger here. There is no future here. There is just the matter of the pictures to be cleared up and then that will be that. In two months. Otherwise, there is no business here.

The sun is out and the sky is brightening, the clouds all heading at high speed for the horizon. Use the passcard at the gate of the reactor, enter the office building, and go upstairs. To the office of the secretary of the manager, top floor.

One hours driving for a visit that will be over in half an hour.

yellow flower

 Leave the house, black trousers, white shirt, blue jacket and walking shoes. Go for a walk in the park, take the slow path up the hill, do something for the lungs and the heart. Spring is here, all the leaves have their fresh green again, just like last year.

Walk up the path by the devil's bridge, and on, all the way up to the bench at the top. Sit there, panting like a dog, shortness of breath, unfit, lack of exercise. A young woman coming up the path looks and grins. Well, isn't it all right for her.

Get up and walk over to the enclosure, allow the rheas to nibble at the fingers. It is forbidden to feed the birds, because of the fear of attracting wildfowl. Still, they are curious. Their bite does not do any damage, they have hardly any power in their beaks.

Go on up the path, and take a picture of a flower.

A daffodil.

food! Coffee and buttered pretzel

 That liguid gunge prescribed by the medicine man to clear the entrails yetsterday worked, and it worked, and it still works this morning. Feeling strange and week, and hungry, get up, put on clothes, and visit the bathroom more times than can be imagined.

At eleven, start to read the instructions on the package for the second dose of doctor's brew. It is all much the same as the first dose, two packages this time. It tastes revolting, and gets worse as the four little glasses empty. They say it is to be divided into four portions without really giving a reason.

The internet collapses, there are complaints unisono from the wife and the son. The son makes frantic efforts to find the cause, but the cause is probably to be found in the intestines of Kabel Deutschland or Vodafone or some such organisation. At one there is a telephone call and a request to turn up at the practice early, it is a matter of half an hour. Say that this is no problem, and take a shower.

The practice rings up again, and the call is cut off in the middle of a word.

They call again, and ask if it is sure that they may begin half an hour early.

YES!!! Starvation and constant running with the runs leads to a short temper.

At the practice, a friendly greeting and a check of all the papers. Then the request to sit down on the seats in the corridor outside the treatment rooms. Five minutes wait, then a young woman in scrubs directs her new patient to a small cabin, puts a clothes basket on the floor, hands over a pair of most sketchy underpants and gives instructions to undress, put the clothes in the basket, and to put on those underpants. Do all these things, then answer her call, go over to a padded bench. A needle is applied, the doctor comes in and says hello, the nurse says that number two is in

The young lady says good morning, her sense humour getting away with her . A different room, and the inspection is done. The doctor comes in, and says that there was nothing out of the ordinary.

Everything ok.

The nurse says that there is a cup of coffee and a pretzel waiting at the reception, if wanted.

fast two

 Is not eating tiring, or does it help sleep? Sleep long this morning, anyway.

At two in the afternoon hear the wife and the son shouting and screaming at each other. Leave the work be, and go over to the living room to see.

There, turn and start to fuss.

Go back to work, let them be.

Then go out, into the miserable empty streets to look and see if there is a bakery open. They are allowed to do business on Sundays, even on cold and wet Sundays like this one. The usual bakery on the main street is opened, and doing poor business. The display is full, nothing is being sold.

Buy two cakes, one for the son and one for the wife. Walk back home carrying the delicate things carefully, they are made of cream and things.

At home, put each cake onto a small plate and put a spoon beside each one. Then knock on the sons door, and offer him the cake. His eyes light up, and he comes out into the sitting room to eat it. Before starting his feed he calls his mother, so that she may eat hers too, in company. She goes to make a cup of coffee for herself and the son, hear cursing from the kitchen, the coffee machine will not work for a lack of cleaning.

Take the small sieve holder, take out the sieve, clean it thoroughly, rinse out the holder, and reassemble the whole lot. Then put coffee in, tamp it down, and make a cup of coffee for the wife.

Then, make another cup, and take it in to join the two at their cake. The son eats his fast, he is hungry. The wife takes her time, she is hungry too, but she comments on the lack of quality of the cake.

But at least there is a small family gathering with talk and discussion, and no screaming or shouting.

This is the second day of starvation, the coffee must be allowed, tomorrow the doctor will use his instruments to take a look, just as he did ten years ago.

Hopefully with the same result.

starve

the day of work, the first of may, and all day sorting pictures. The son is suffering so badly from his teenage troubles, the demands of society and his quite personal demands at variance.

There was no leaving the house today. 

One of the pictures was labelled as being of a person who died three years before it was taken.

This is not possible, no matter what you may believe.

Search through the whole database for further mistakes, but there are only inconsistencies.

Search all day, and these are two days without food. The doctor wants to do an examination on Monday, and he wants to see nothing but water in the digestive tract.

No shit. Well, certainly none of that.

Oh well, perhaps this will be a help to achieve a temporary weight reduction.