"Now this is a very simple process. You enter your card details, the one click method is a little dangerous, you tend to forget you're spending money and..."
"Don't care! Next!"
"Okay, we go to the Kindle Store and there's a huge collection. The Twelve Days of Kindle sale is on so if you have a look..."
"Don't care! Free books!"
"Ah, alright, now we'll go to the classics section, most of which are free because copyright has ex..."
"Don't care! Next!"
"Well, here we go, which ones would you..."
"ALL THE BOOKS!!"
...
"All of them?"
Such is the scene in a quiet living room in Northern Ireland where a cheery red kettle boils for tea, plump leather sofas with patchwork cushions recline about the place and a real wood burner chuckles sleepily in the fireplace. Not my house, just thought I'd get you in the mood...
No, it is the abode of a dear friend who is generously loaning the wifi particles I so lack in the back of beyond. The only way we would recieve any decent signal would be to strap the satellite dish to the back of a ewe (lady sheep) and so be able to chase her out of cloud cover every few minutes.
I've been back in God's own country for a week now and my time here is slowly drawing to a close. The sharper readers amoung you will note the date and hypothesise that I cannot by all reasonable standards still be in Norn Iron. You'd be right, but I am using "a juxtaposed allusion as a narrative hook." It's a literary technique, see? According to those serial magazines where you write your own novel in 12 easy-to-assemble parts! Or maybe I'm confusing that with Build your own Spitfire, which would explain why my protagonist was shot down over wartime France and is right now faced with the agonising decision of burning his lover's faithful letters to her brave soldier for heat.
What to tell you about mes vacances de Noel? Well, apart from the family being well; news of births, deaths and marriages (hatches, matches and dispatches) and thon' wee skitter from down the road went and left the boyfriend one night fer he must have been bad to her and so she goes down to our Saoirse's and doesn't he then appear at 3 in the morning off his face and start hammering the windys shouting for her? Have ye ever seen the like? chez Devlin has a brand new 42 inch flat screen TV. I apologise to the Sassenach readers amoung ye (that's you, Englishmen) who may have just experienced the literal equivalent of a screen jump. We Northern Irish are trained from the cradle to never be able to loose the thread of events, even though the teller may ramble, and it is this exact practice which encourages me to wax lyrical. But I must curb my anecdotal urges. The TV.
Our wise and venerable father has saved for two years for this TV and after greeting the apple of his eye (that's me) home from lands unknown stands proudly by his acquisition, smiling the proud smile of an African hunter home from the veldts with a couple of elephant tusks. I make appropriate impressed noises. It is not bloody difficult, the thing is glorious; we watched the fireworks over the Thames on't on New Years Eve before singing Auld Lang Sang with our party hats tilted at a humorous angle. The vibrations set off car alarms in Aberystwyth.
I am at a loss to why he wants a ma-hoo-sive telly anyway, unless, sure, its for the Gaelic football. We can watch Down giftwrap, ribbon and give the entire f**king game to Cork in the last fifteen minutes in stunning HD. Apologias, All Ireland 2010 Final bitterness there.
Apart from the beautiful commentating as only those inspired by that true son of Ireland Mícheál O'Muircheartaigh can achieve (Ah, he's hungry for it, he could have gone for the point and been safe but no, no, no, the captain has gone for a goal, glory and the life everlasting) there's not much for my father on the idiot box.
The most stunning moment it has offered thus far was a David Attenborough documentary which offered us the information; "They move through the water gracefully, for the flamingos must dance to attract a mate." To which my father with impeccable timing offered "Well now thats not so different from the Square Peg!/Cindies!/Fontana de Oro!(delete as appropriate)"
Actually Mr Attenborough, that silver fox, was responsible for the second which my father named March of the Undergraduates as all of us pottering Corpus in groups, unfamiliar robes billowing and cobbles forcing us to totter to the photo reminded him of that lovely documentary.
Speaking of Cambridge and academics and extrapolating a possible future career from that mess, I've been applying to vac schemes, two weeks of paid work experience in a solicitors office in London. Well I say apply. I mean I went back to remind myself of my grades, started panicking and breathing into a brown paper bag, kicked a kitten, wondered how one would go about hacking into the academic records, curled into a foetal position and wept for about fifteen minutes, watched Richard Pryor to cheer self up then decided to apply to every fucking scheme I could lay my hands on. Five stages of grief in under an hour, any more and I get bored with the stress and go play outside.
So we went on a magical journey. I strolled through Freshfields where I plucked a Norton Rose while listening to Bird and Bird song. It was a lovely Jones Day so I took a Clifford Chance on going to the Beachcroft. I wasn't Allen and Overly in Lovells with the DLA Piper playing there so decided to come back Linklaters and then I realised that sorry Olswang, you have my love babes but there's no way you'll fit into the narrative without an extra -k and PG13 rating at least.
So that's where I've been for the past month, gibbering uselessly at screens and trying to answer questions like "Name your proudest achievement" without typing "Making Hugh Hefner blush." I now know Terry Pratchett is my ideal dinner guest, that cuban Juan Carlos flat hunter extraordinaire is a more seemly funny story than that one with the banana, the nun and the billionaire with the questionable punchline and that I am a dynamic person with the drive to succeed, a great team player with bucketloads of own initiative and I may not know how to excel in a law exam but gosh darnit I write a great cover letter.
So that was the weeks that was and now I find myself back in Spain, busier than a honeybee but not an African killer bee but possessed of a beautifully positive attitude which nontheless begins to crack like a peanut between an elephants molars (I'm sorry for all the safari imagery, it must have been Sir David) under the strain of dealing with the Spanish way of life. More on our bank, the police, the government and damnWehrmacht while we're at it invading our bank account, the rudeness of Spaniards and regression to childhood when A Cautionary Tale returns or when life slowly comes back to my fingertips numb from too many 250 word limits on me as a valuable corporate asset. C'est l'ironie.
xo
Tuesday 31 January 2012
Wednesday 11 January 2012
Aileen's Adventures in Deutschland Part 2; Cream coloured houses and crisp apple strudel, church bells and sleighbells and schnitzel with noodles
Blearily waking up in a hostel dorm room in Frankfurt, with frost curling on the windows, is neither the best of times nor the worst of times to have Julie Andrews dancing round trilling "My Favourite Things" incessantly in your head, especially not now you want to correct the damn dame and yourself by reminding both that schnitzel is served with fried potatoes and The Sound of Music is set in Austria and has nothing to do with Germany apart from the N-word.
Speaking of schnitzel, that restaurant and its Apfelwei that sneaks up on you like an n-word raid, what a night. Visions of Fritz ringing the last orders bell only to toast the entire patronage with a poem in honour of that appley substance dance like sugar plums (or Julie Andrews) in my head. We understood little enough but by that second jug we were ready to toast an invasion of England and certainly any word that sounded vaguely like "pissed"
There was no time to nurse a hangover however, and less still to wave a cheery "Guten Tag!" to Wolfgang in the morning queue for Rice Crispies. He swayed a little bit more alrmingly which I took as a sign of his deep affection and respect.
Then we wandered into an industrial meat freezer. I'm (partly) joking, we just stepped into the street and the blood froze in our veins. This strange occurence is the only reason I can think of for the sheer proliferation of sex shops, peep shows, Girls! Girls! Girls! and temples of sin and vice that greeted us when we went to look for a hastily remembered birthday card (greeting read "May the new year be a husky aufwind" Go not to Google Translate for council for it will say both yes and no) This street of iniquity 'twas clearly provided to warm the blood and stimulate circulation. How thoughtful of the Germans. Kaiserstrausse, for the more degenerate readers who have been trying to piece together clues on the whereabouts of my location in order to -ah- avoid such a place...Incidentally Occupy Franfurt has its headquarters down that direction, we accidentally occupied for a full 30 seconds. Fight the power and so on.
All aboard the Ebbelwei Express! Yet more apple wine was to be on offer on a tram that looked like it had been coloured in with Crayola by a small child with a big sugar intake. We hopped aboard, had wine, had pretzels, had unparalleled views of Frankfurt but we did not have a seat. We stood at the back, swigged from tall necked bottles and lamented our loss.
But we never lament for very long; because that glorious tram brought us to our first sight of the Christmas Markets! The word magical is actually very rarely used since the Church banned everything from shruken heads to Harry Potter and the new wave atheists went mad about particles but I take the liberty of using it here in its modern form. That Romerburg Square was absolutely fucking magical.
There were stalls everywhere, they were all red and green and gold and filled full of the lovely sort of trinkets very small children want to put in their mouths for some reason, older children want to play with and the ever-children are terrified of knocking over with their handbags. There were gingerbread house lining the plaza and a gold and silver carousel was playing music so sweet and true to life that we were all annoyed the advertised Italian choir had started without us.
We found a specially constructed Honighauschen (Honey House) which had been just finished with freshly sawn pine. There were honey candles we saw being made, honey liquer we tasted and tasted and tasted and honey preserves we fell upon like ravenous Pooh Bears.
Food and drink; mulled wine (Gluhwein) and roasted chestnuts, crepes and schnitzel, bratwursts pork and beef both strung up and prepared over an actual roaring charcoal fire, swung on a huge black iron skillet. Actually the sheer number of sausages had me wondering why the Carry On crew never appeared in Germany. The possibility for innuendo would have made Kenneth Williams weep for joy.
The stars were brillig in the slithy tove as we walked back that evening, past the riverbank, the unwashed occupiers, the dens of sin and escaped Wolfgang and we had Idstein to look forward to.
Idstein. Before we went Idstein was my screensaver. Idstein looked the sort of place you'd set a high budget medieval epic as the small idyllic village the fated hero-to-be wanders out of as a lowly cowherd. At least that's what it looked like on Google images. Like Google translate, same LOTR quote applies. Fecking useless piece of shite. We got off the train in Newry bus depot.
This is a signal for Norn Irish readers to provide a "Yeeeeoooo" which loosely translated means "Ah, a place that I recognise and in the context must mean Idstein wasn't particularly horrific, just grey and depressingly normal and smelled slightly of wet pavement and lonliness." We're economical with language in NI.
Yes, Idstein failed spectacularly to get it up, and while it was a pretty little place with many photo opportunities, we made our excuses and left without leaving a phone number.
But this meant we got to go back to the Christmas markets and the most funnest part of the whole trip! Secret Santa or Wichteln in Germany. This involved a count down and then much hilarity as we dived into the markets and tried simultaneously to see where each of us were going so we didn't go the same way and trying not to be seen ourselves. And so we had fifteen minutes to wander round the lights, the fir trees, the incense smoke curling from small ceramic gnome's pipes and the cut coloured glass and beechwood wind chimes to find our presents.
And there I think I must leave you, with visions of us dressed up warm in coats and wooly scarves, running round the smells of cinnamon and aniseed and in and out of the glow of the bratwurst stall's flames and the twinkling fairy lights. There was more, but it involves ending up in Irish bars yet again, tawdry games of Spin-the-Bottle and dragging ourselves onto a half six Ryanair flight and since I'm now Aileen - more Vacation Scheme applications than sense - Devlin one would hate to think the HR department of a major City law firm was snooping around my tales of debauchery. But more on that, both tales and applications, anon
xo
Speaking of schnitzel, that restaurant and its Apfelwei that sneaks up on you like an n-word raid, what a night. Visions of Fritz ringing the last orders bell only to toast the entire patronage with a poem in honour of that appley substance dance like sugar plums (or Julie Andrews) in my head. We understood little enough but by that second jug we were ready to toast an invasion of England and certainly any word that sounded vaguely like "pissed"
There was no time to nurse a hangover however, and less still to wave a cheery "Guten Tag!" to Wolfgang in the morning queue for Rice Crispies. He swayed a little bit more alrmingly which I took as a sign of his deep affection and respect.
Then we wandered into an industrial meat freezer. I'm (partly) joking, we just stepped into the street and the blood froze in our veins. This strange occurence is the only reason I can think of for the sheer proliferation of sex shops, peep shows, Girls! Girls! Girls! and temples of sin and vice that greeted us when we went to look for a hastily remembered birthday card (greeting read "May the new year be a husky aufwind" Go not to Google Translate for council for it will say both yes and no) This street of iniquity 'twas clearly provided to warm the blood and stimulate circulation. How thoughtful of the Germans. Kaiserstrausse, for the more degenerate readers who have been trying to piece together clues on the whereabouts of my location in order to -ah- avoid such a place...Incidentally Occupy Franfurt has its headquarters down that direction, we accidentally occupied for a full 30 seconds. Fight the power and so on.
All aboard the Ebbelwei Express! Yet more apple wine was to be on offer on a tram that looked like it had been coloured in with Crayola by a small child with a big sugar intake. We hopped aboard, had wine, had pretzels, had unparalleled views of Frankfurt but we did not have a seat. We stood at the back, swigged from tall necked bottles and lamented our loss.
But we never lament for very long; because that glorious tram brought us to our first sight of the Christmas Markets! The word magical is actually very rarely used since the Church banned everything from shruken heads to Harry Potter and the new wave atheists went mad about particles but I take the liberty of using it here in its modern form. That Romerburg Square was absolutely fucking magical.
There were stalls everywhere, they were all red and green and gold and filled full of the lovely sort of trinkets very small children want to put in their mouths for some reason, older children want to play with and the ever-children are terrified of knocking over with their handbags. There were gingerbread house lining the plaza and a gold and silver carousel was playing music so sweet and true to life that we were all annoyed the advertised Italian choir had started without us.
We found a specially constructed Honighauschen (Honey House) which had been just finished with freshly sawn pine. There were honey candles we saw being made, honey liquer we tasted and tasted and tasted and honey preserves we fell upon like ravenous Pooh Bears.
Food and drink; mulled wine (Gluhwein) and roasted chestnuts, crepes and schnitzel, bratwursts pork and beef both strung up and prepared over an actual roaring charcoal fire, swung on a huge black iron skillet. Actually the sheer number of sausages had me wondering why the Carry On crew never appeared in Germany. The possibility for innuendo would have made Kenneth Williams weep for joy.
The stars were brillig in the slithy tove as we walked back that evening, past the riverbank, the unwashed occupiers, the dens of sin and escaped Wolfgang and we had Idstein to look forward to.
Idstein. Before we went Idstein was my screensaver. Idstein looked the sort of place you'd set a high budget medieval epic as the small idyllic village the fated hero-to-be wanders out of as a lowly cowherd. At least that's what it looked like on Google images. Like Google translate, same LOTR quote applies. Fecking useless piece of shite. We got off the train in Newry bus depot.
This is a signal for Norn Irish readers to provide a "Yeeeeoooo" which loosely translated means "Ah, a place that I recognise and in the context must mean Idstein wasn't particularly horrific, just grey and depressingly normal and smelled slightly of wet pavement and lonliness." We're economical with language in NI.
Yes, Idstein failed spectacularly to get it up, and while it was a pretty little place with many photo opportunities, we made our excuses and left without leaving a phone number.
But this meant we got to go back to the Christmas markets and the most funnest part of the whole trip! Secret Santa or Wichteln in Germany. This involved a count down and then much hilarity as we dived into the markets and tried simultaneously to see where each of us were going so we didn't go the same way and trying not to be seen ourselves. And so we had fifteen minutes to wander round the lights, the fir trees, the incense smoke curling from small ceramic gnome's pipes and the cut coloured glass and beechwood wind chimes to find our presents.
And there I think I must leave you, with visions of us dressed up warm in coats and wooly scarves, running round the smells of cinnamon and aniseed and in and out of the glow of the bratwurst stall's flames and the twinkling fairy lights. There was more, but it involves ending up in Irish bars yet again, tawdry games of Spin-the-Bottle and dragging ourselves onto a half six Ryanair flight and since I'm now Aileen - more Vacation Scheme applications than sense - Devlin one would hate to think the HR department of a major City law firm was snooping around my tales of debauchery. But more on that, both tales and applications, anon
xo
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