Where was I?

I'm sorry. I couldn't blog again until I won at Civilisation. I managed it last night, as Hammurabi of the Babylonians, on victory points. It was a massive anticlimax as I'd been aiming for a space station. Ah well.

Well I shall make up for it by starting a little competition. The first person to tell me where these photos were taken, wins. Wins what? I hear you cry eagerly. Just wins. One of you is bound to be competitive enough.

Ay ay ay, tengo un examen....

Por favor, desean mi suerte por mi examen de Español mañana, si, es verdad, es mañana por la mañana.

Tengo que tener exito, porque quiero aprender el flamenco....

Happy New Year 2008!

I'm off for a week or so. Maybe I'll tell you about it when I get back. Maybe not. In the meantime, a little Mornington Crescent, I think.

Here's the map. Heathrow Terminal 4, I think.

Merry Christmas

In every office, firm and service, finance officers are currently spitting about how much they hate the end of year.

I recovered Arthur (yes, she has survived) from the garage late yesterday. It was touch and go there, as the Italian transport strike kept her new bonnet on the roads for three or four days longer than it should have been. She's lost her black rubber front bumper as the whole of her front end was resprayed, and she's developed a throaty rumble when idling in neutral, but she seems ready for tomorrow's run. I've bought the presents, scored two kilos of Leonidas chocolates, assorted Continental yummies, and a large sausage for my mother. Bridport dresses up at New Year's Eve and apparently she wants to hide the Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies in it. Make of that what you will. Me, I'm steeling myself to perhaps take part in the West Bay Wallow, a charity Boxing Day dip off East Beach that I've never yet quite managed to steel myself to undertake. Last one in's .... quite sensible really....

Have a good one. I'll check in again before New Year.

Heidelberg

On Friday afternoon, we motored to Heidelberg, where we stayed at the Goldener Hecht just opposite the old bridge. I've wanted to go to Heidelberg since I was 10, when my history teacher, Mrs Langmaid, told me it was the most beautiful town in Germany. It certainly is gorgeous, made of a red stone with a partly ruined schloss lowering above the city like a Moghul fort. It contains the largest barrel I have ever seen of which they seem inordinately proud, but much more interesting was the German Apothecary Museum, housed in one of the habitable sections. It was an excellent exhibition and had a good section for children where they could smell and look at simples and mixes of herbs and spices with medicinal properties. Another feature of a visit to the schloss is that you take the Heidelberger Bergbahn, and if you follow it up to the top of the Königstuhl you will discover that there is actually a Heidelberger Bergbahn Staff Song, the lyrics of which can be seen in a small museum at the top, but which unfortunately we did not hear performed.

What we DID hear performed was a production of La Bohème at the theatre. It seems that Heidelberg is a bit of a permanent Fringe venue, and a young company had put on a technically faultless production of this much-loved opera. What threw me a bit was the staging. In the first act, Colline entered dressed as a giant chicken, and Schaunard stripped to his boxers and began sticking 5€ notes to his chest with his own spit. At this point we knew we were in for something different.

In the second act, the street market was transformed to the madness of Christmas shopping, with extras rushing about the scene dropping Gucci and Prada shopping bags. Parpignol the toy seller, bearing a great resemblance to the child catcher of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, handed out Kalashnikovs and Berettas, and the children pulled on balaclavas and pretended to be terrorists. At the end of the act, instead of approaching soldiers, the shoppers returned, but as zombies. Act three. Mimi looks for Rodolfo at a nightclub filled with giant orange balls. Everyone is in fancy dress and badly hungover. Act four. Schaunard and Colline turn up in the worst outfits I have ever seen, and this is Germany we are talking about. All I can say is that I'll certainly remember this production of La Boheme. And from what we could tell from the pamphlets readily available around the city, fringe arts are available all year round. Go and see, do.

Baden-Baden

As you know I've been doing a bit of travelling. On Thursday last we drove to Baden-Baden. It's awfully chic, isn't it! We stayed in the utterly luxurious Hotel Belle Epoque, but what I really want to point out to you is the restaurant at which we had dinner, the Stahlbad. Like many German hostelries it is proud of its family-run nature, and Mama, who from what I understand is about 130, is still in the kitchen every day ensuring that guests will have the very best. It was a fabulous dinner but it was outshined by the welcome and character of the Schwank/Monch family who run the restaurant. Go and visit them, they're delightful.

Baden-Baden is of course a spa town, and on Friday morning we wandered around the old town, eyeing the excellent shopping and the picturesque streets. The waters were taken at the Trinkhaus, and found to be pleasantly warm, heavily mineral and somewhat salty. I certainly felt it go through me.

I failed to find a piece of Black Forest gateau. It doesn't seem to be available anywhere near the Black Forest. I'm beginning to wonder whether British marketing people haven't made it all up.

Strasbourg taxis

Strasbourg taxis are, in general, excellent. There is always an exception that proves the rule.

I had my hair done yesterday for a party, and ordered a taxi back to the hotel to keep the spiky fluffy effect from falling. No, sadly no photos.

The taxi driver pulled over at the hotel, and said, "Six euros please". The meter read 4.50€.
I said "But the meter reads 4.50€".
"In Strasbourg there is a minimum taxi fee of six euros, and if you don't like it you can walk".
"Where is it written in your cab that there is a minimum fee of six euros?"
"It's there in the back, but never mind that because you owe me six euros and I'd like you to pay and let me get on with the next client". He seemed to be having a very strong reaction to a reasonable request for confirmation, and I couldn't work out why.
I said, "I've no objection to paying the fee if it is indeed the fee. I would just like to know where I stand contractually, so that we can both see that we are having a fair transaction"
I looked around the back of the cab and found a transparent tariff sticker on the window. I started to read it. The cabbie became increasingly agitated. And it wasn't surprising. The minimum fee as per the sticker was stated at five euros and sixty cents.

He had tried to scam me for the paltry sum of forty cents.

I was so amused at this I paid him the six euros, waited while he grumpily and reluctantly made change, gritting his teeth and counting out every coin in as small a denomination as he could possibly find to get back at me. And then, when he'd gathered them all together, I tipped him his own forty cents change back and bade him good day.

LOVED Provence

I'm back. It was fabulous, and of course exhausting. No, we did not dance on Le Pont D'Avignon, nor did we record ourselves singing the song on a DVD to take home with us. But we saw Salins du Midi's salt pans at Aigues-Mortes, the Roman theatre at Orange, the Roman arena at Nimes, a very well-appointed museum of modern art at Bagnols-sur-Cèze, and a mad mad Provençal print cloth shop in Aix-en-Provence which I had vowed to bring my mother to when I saw it in 2005. I bought so much cloth for tablecloths that I had to mail it to myself. I'm hoping Scouse Doris will help me sew them all.

Good times: listening to the England vs. Tonga match with my father on his tiny transistor radio 1930s stylee, eating fabulous prawns with aioli sauce, rich stew made from a fighting bull calf with saffron rice, fabulous.

I'd tell you more, but I'm sorry, the rugby's on, Ireland versus Argentina, and it promises to be a humdinger. And may I say, the best of Irish luck to a fellow home nation. Wager, anyone? I thought not.

Tomorrow I will be taking a train to....

I am going to meet my parents and spend a week chauffering them around Provence. Parents are for spoiling, while you can.

Alea iacta est again

From the finance point of view I could not have asked for a better interview. They asked me questions I could answer from my daily work. After my particularly thrilling exposé of the procedure for recovering funds from people who owe us money, which seemed to be received with every evidence of interest by the panel, if it had been appropriate to get up and run a little lap of honour around the interview room, whilst carrying a European flag and humming the Ode to Joy, and then slam dunk my coffee cup into the dustbin, I would have done so.

However I have muffed the Spanish a little. I was very nervous. I managed to blurt out that I can read it perfectly and I am attending the appropriate courses. I think they were satisfied that by next year I'll be able to work in it. I hope so anyway.

They said they thought they could confirm to me that I will get one of the countries I have asked for (yay!) but that they are running late with the interviews and so don't expect to be able to tell me which one until December (poot.)

I'm hoping I'll lose weight from nerves caused by the suspense, but it's probably more likely I shall take to chocolate to palliate the insecurity. This means I will blow outwards like a hot air balloon being inflated for air baptism rides at a provincial agricultural show. Teenage mothers will point me out in the street to their air-raid-siren offspring as a dreadful example of what happens to People With Ambition.

I can't influence it any further, but it ain't over until the fat lady sings.

HELP!

My interview for Delegation has been set for 20th July.

I now have 10 days to learn how to talk intelligently about financing procedures in countries being encouraged towards regional integration processes, the reduction of vulnerability to natural disasters, the reduction in economic inequalities, through several budgetary mechanisms ranging from budgetary support to development projects, in Spanish as well as ye olde English and French, for at least half an hour.

I may have bitten off more than I can chew.

Excuse me, I have to go and swot.

Heads down over the books

Scouse Doris and I are both slaving away over hot paper. The Mistress of Chocolate has a significant exam to take in the coming weeks and must hone her skills to their utmost. I, on the other hand, may soon be expected to justify at interview why I want to go and work in the five countries I named earlier. You'll note, Mutley, that Burkina Faso is not one of them, but actually if it was offered I might not say no. It's landlocked and poor but there are richer seaside places much worse than Burkina Faso, such as, just an example off the top of my head, Gaza.

No, if I'm going to be shot dead, I'd rather it was because my work was having an effect and perhaps unsettling entrenched interests, as I have been warned several of my colleagues have met their nemesis, rather than by some random, stray, ricocheting, paramilitary bullet. Of course one can always be stabbed to death by a random burglar, but to be honest I nearly got run over on a pedestrian crossing ten years ago here in Belgium on rue Joseph II by the now outgoing Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt at the wheel of his ministerial BMW, so there's danger everywhere really.


Caption: "Right flustered she was, George, bosom heaving, scurrying across like a startled hedgehog!"

Clustrmap

Having lost it when we all had to migrate to the Google account, I found my Clustrmap again (see side bar, or click on link for big version) and it's lovely to see you're all still there. Those of you who are new, please do introduce yourselves. I've picked up some readers in India, probably courtesy of Prufrock, and someone probably very puzzled in China, is that Chongqing or Chengdu? Aside from the USA Cruise Girls, sashay ladies! there must be R. Sherman, John B., and the Problem Child Bride. Costa Rica or Nicaragua? Guyana, hi there Guyana Gyal. Iceland. Japan - Kyoto? Hello all my fellow Europeans, I love you all dahlinks but you are too numerous to mention and mentioned numerously anyway. Dubai and Riyadh. Amman or Tel Aviv? Lima, Santiago and Montevideo or Buenos Aires, and something in the middle, is that San Luis? Jo'burg or Pretoria. Bangkok. Dhaka. Kuala Lumpur - that's Edina Monsoon. Manila, of which all I know is envelopes and Imelda Marcos's shoe collection. Edmonton, Saint John's, and Churchill, Canada, one of whom is Dawn. Is that Hawaii? Aloha Hawaii.

But nobody seems to be reading me from the Congo. Ahem, Mr Gorilla Bananas. You are Busted, Sah. You're actually frontline reporting from a cosy simian lovenest in an airing cupboard in Ipswich, aren't you! What do you have to say for yourself, you charlatan of an anthropoid?

Eurovision heats

I'll tell you all about Stoke tomorrow. Or over the weekend. Suffice to say I had a fantastic time, very inspiring, and I was sorry to leave.

In the meantime, Poland should hang their heads for their Eurovision entry. For shame, Poland, for shame.

Embarrassment ahoy

You won't hear from me for a couple of days. I am going to a certain English city by the name of St*ke-*n-Tr*nt for May 9th, to speak to 250 university students and a school. Apparently they'd like to know why we celebrate the 9th of May in Brussels, and what the European Commission is, and what the EU does in the way of external/development/humanitarian aid. Yeah, right. I bet they've been waiting for this day all sixteen-seventeen years of their lives.

I've never addressed 25 people, much less 250. I have to admit to having no idea whether I can do this or not.

On the bright side, if I make a COMPLETE fool of myself, no-one will ever know.

Alea iacta est

I sent my application for Delegation today. The final shortlist featured

Managua, Nicaragua (twice)
Bogota, Colombia
Delhi, India
Jakarta, Indonesia
Suva, Fiji

I clicked the 'send' button and within about 10 minutes got a case of the shakes. I have to say I also felt completely euphoric. It was the wierdest combination of fear and thrill...

Now there'll be a couple of interviews or so over the next three months, and then in September we'll all be told where we're going. I'll keep you posted... as to where I'll be posted...