January 11, 2007

In Obedience To Embee

The art of looking busy is really quite something. It really is one of the less celebrated skills in this life: I’m not being offered honorary doctorates in Ivy League universities for my ability to spoof working. Ok. So I admit it: looking busy isn’t brain surgery, but surely it’s worth some small kind of award, only when, of course, one is really good at it. Just a little Palme d’Or or something, I’m not asking for the world.

Don’t get me wrong here now. If I had work to do I would damn well do it. That’s right, I’d DAMN well do it! I don’t know why I added the swearing emphasis; it’s probably brought on by the strain and boredom of pretending to type letters all day. There are only so many times that you can type the same sentence over and over about the length of somebody’s overjet before your colleagues (who actually seem to have something to do) begin to get suspicious. But you can BET YOUR BOTTOM DOLLAR that if I had work I would DAMN WELL DO IT and shame on you for doubting me. I would be so enthusiastic about my work I would do it while leaping and shouting around the office. I would scream jokes at passers-by to keep the office morale up. It would be exciting. But no. Sadly there is nothing to do, and I can physically feel myself rotting away here. I was given a position for which a person is only required approximately two hours a day. The rest of the time is spent on painfully elongated breaks and blog entries typed into letter templates on Microsoft Word. Yes, that’s right. Thanks to my elusively small text choice anyone viewing my screen, even fairly up close, would be TRICKED into thinking I am working. It is this kind of cunning that I feel makes me deserved of a BAFTA. Cough up, readers.

I am afraid to write too much about my New Years trip to Germany, because I know that there are Germany advocates reading this site. But my journeying to the beautiful cities of Korbach, Heidelberg, Heilbronn (less beautiful, but containing the handsomely hospitable Sven) and Rothenberg (where, yes, it is Christmas all year round, and they eat Schneeballen (snowballs) which are not, as the name implies, balls of snow, but rather are strange crumpled balls of pastry covered in marzipan and chocolate and the like) revealed two startling facts to me about Germany:

1. The most revered animal in Germany is the pig. Why is this? No, it is not because the natives like to dress up in pig costumes every March 7th (although they do like to do this); it is because pig is all that they eat. Pork, pork, and then some pork, for breakfast, lunch and dinner. What’s more, it’s seasoned pork, smoked pork, sausaged pork, grilled, fried, baked, eated, and it’s at every meal. For the unseasoned pork eater (if you can stomach the pun) (PUN OVERLOAD! I PUNNED IN MY EXPLANATION OF A PUN!), however, this causes some difficult blockages in the gut region. Actually, with a little reflection, it would appear that perhaps the pig is in fact the most hated of the animals, rather than the most beloved, because after all what is a greater insult to a creature than to smash its head in and eat it up for dinner (and breakfast, and lunch, and supper)? Why I would feel very put out indeed if I were the victim of such outrageous and barbaric behaviour.

2. Germany, surprisingly for a country that has entire months devoted to alcohol, have not gotten the hang of drinking games. We spent two hours on New Year’s Eve playing a “game” that involved shaking some die in a cup and then getting a number. Although my German language skills are not very strong, as far as I could make out this was the extent of the game. No rules or anything. At the point where one found oneself in the awful position of having “lost the game” one was then expected to have a drink (which in my case would have been a swigging of my delicious and reasonably priced Becks beer). Hardcore! Anyway, nobody abided by the rules, or lack thereof, and whoever was “losing” never bothered to take a drink, and thus the silliness of the game was not overridden by drunken hilarity, and to this day I remain bewildered.

But all in all it was a lovely and privileged and, I think, very true experience of German culture, both rural and urban. We got to pretend to not be tourists, by hanging around with our German friends and speaking what little of the language we could – “Entschuldigung, wie komme ich am besten zum Brothel, bitte?” (“Excuse me, how I get to the brothel please?”) and not forgetting the loudly exclaimed “Ich habe Schnee in meine Unterhosen!” (“I have snow in my underpants!”). But everyone in Germany looks like a tourist anyway, what with their big raincoats and national penchant for reading maps. It’s true! We ice skated and watched dubbed television and drank a lot of beer (from pork bottles) with which we ate pork slices. Mmm, pork! I miss all that pork – especially during my morning commute!

So the holiday season (God FORBID I mention Christ’s birth – no really, He did) was the busiest I’ve ever had – hopping from family to family, seeing friends and wasting precious hours in hideous airports, and I must say I did find myself longing for the boring usualness of eating food cooked by somebody else and then watching television until you fall asleep. There was not much of that – it was too pressurised. But now that I am back to work thankfully I can have a good long rest.

neuro-praxis – Your mother would LOVE her