Kettwigers*

Wherever you live there are...characters, be they old or young, there are always people that the rest of the community "twitches" about, just because they don't seem to fit in with the rest of the crowd.

Kettwig isn't big and isn't small either, large enough to have two primary schools and two seconary schools, two (and a half) petrol stations, more bakeries than I can think of and at least seven "super"markets.  

The perfect goldfish bowl.

The first person who springs to mind to a guy known as "the walker".  A well kept gentleman who is in his 60's (I think.  I'm not German, I don't like to stare)  he always has on a pale (creamy coloured) trench coat and light coloured trousers.  He seems to spend his days walking around, I come across him many times when I'm out with the dog.  The first time Logan met him he approached him as he does all strangers, with the singular thought "I wonder if they'll be my friend, maybe they have food"**.  But Logan hadn't gotten with two feet of him when he (the dog) veered away, spooked.  The guy had done nothing, but there's something peculiar about the way he walks, he's clearly injured one leg many years ago and it kicks out from the knee with each step.

Then there's the cat lady.  About five minutes walk from us is a fancy, Michellin starred restaurant, it has a waist high wall running around its gardens next to the pavement.  Every day (and possibly more than once a day) this little old (70's surely) biddy comes along with a plastic supermarket bag and sets out bowls of food for local cats along this wall.  What makes it even more bizarre is that she wears her hair contained in a big net, it looks like a white conical beehive do.

Another unusual lady is someone I see often at the bakery in the supermarket, sitting having coffee and cake (I presume, I don't like to look too close in case she catches my eye and starts to chat - been there, done that, never again)  Jas has met her several times at the swimming pool when she was told off for splashing her and getting her wet.  Nothing so unusual about this woman I can hear you thinking, until I tell you that she always, always wears big white sunglasses (think Elton John) with palm trees on the sides of them.  Always, even in the pool.

Jas has just started a new school, so now she gets to experience first hand all the teachers that her big brother has been telling us about for the past four years, more specifically a certain arts teacher.  These new students have now met the teacher who infamously turned up to lessons once dressed as a bee and said she was going to jump out of the window and fly away.

The final Kettwig character I shall introduce you to is normally seen in our favourite bar, Lulu.  Another eldery gentleman, he's probably lovely when sober, but we only ever seem to meet him when he's three sheets to the wind.  He will approach a group of women, all happily chatting away, engrossed in their girly conversation and start talking to the closest one to him, trying his damnedest to chat them up.  Fortunately, Lesley the owner is very good at reeling him in and getting him back to the other end of the bar, although last week when we were there he kept sneaking back.

I have no doubt that the Kettwigers all gossip about us "foreigners", although they don't seem to manage to tell us all apart, we're always being confused for one another.

*  I really, really wanted to title this "Kettwig Crazies" or "Kettwig Krazies", but although it sounds good to the ear, it looks nasty written down and also, in retrospect, it's not very P.C.
**  He's a golden retriever, bascially a stomach with legs.