Before living in Germany we lived in England. Most recently in a small village in Staffordshire with fields just a stones throw away, and before that on the edge of a small town very close to Cannock Chase. We lived closer to the countryside than we do now, here in Kettwig, which although very quaint and just on the river is still more a town with bits of the countryside encroaching. Which makes it odd that there's more wildlife here in the middle of the residential area where we live than ever we encountered back in England. Maybe it's because the density of inhabitants is greater in Blighty, maybe there's more wild stuff here on the continent, I'm quite sure it's nothing to do with me becoming more observant!
In Abbots Bromley the wildest creatures we had to put up with were the squirrels that liked to bury acorns in our lawn or the odd deer risking life and limb trying to cross a country lane. But here? Here there's way more.
We have squirrels, of course, but these are the cute red ones, because the big grey American fiends haven't made it onto the continent yet, although it's possible that they have but it's just that there's something bigger than them here that likes a bit of grey squirrel for dinner. There are deer too, I've seen them while I've been out with the dog, now that's a thing of beauty (seeing a deer in the early morning mist, not the dog, clearly). Herons and woodpeckers along by the river are fun to watch/listen to. But it's the rodenty** creatures we seem to have in adundance.
It started with cute little field mice, running along the outside of the house, driving the dog scatty as he tried to find where they'd disappeared to.
It's cold outside now, far too cold for the field mice to play outside so they've relocated and Simon isn't happy. They're in the garage, don't know how they got in, just know that we need to get rid of them. Si bought a plug in electronic noise thingy that is supposed to emit a sound they don't like (and no, it doesn't miaow) but as I've seen the cheeky chaps since it was installed it clearly doesn't work. Yesterday the antimouse action stepped up a gear and I bought two mouse traps and got the tame teenager to earn his keep by setting them up and giving him responsibility for checking and emptying them.
We've had rats too (dog not so keen to chase them) I saw them the other side of the garden fence, running under the neighbours' laurel bushes, then the cheeky buggers climbed up our fence and jumped onto the bird table and ate the bird food. After consultation with the neighbours the ratman was called in and poison traps put down, haven't seen the buggers since.
We also have Martens along our road. I knew about them, having read scare stories online about what they can do to your car, and a friend who has moved to a house with lots of mature trees overlooking the road has been informed by her neighbour that the martens living in the trees have got into her engine and chewed through various cables rendering the car undriveable***. My neighbour spotted martens hanging about in front of our houses and we have certainly witnessed one vanishing up into the engine compartment of a car further along the road (they curl up on the cooling engine) - I'm so glad my car can go in the garage, I don't think field mice are as reknowned for damaging car cables as martens are!
* great book to read to children but the most rubbish film ever apart from ''No Country for Old Men", which was another film that left me feeling I'd lost valuable time from my life.
** have just googled one of said critters and discovered that despite it's love of nibbling it isn't a rodent - apparently to be a rodent you have to have specialised teeth that grow continuously (there's more to the definition obviously, but I wont bore you)
*** I have a feeling that the neighbour was trying hard to apportion blame for insurance claim purposes.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Sunday Snaps 96
January 15th and the snowdrops are out, and the bulbs are pushing through and the birds are singing for mates...nature is screwed.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
The Wizard of Oz
It's never easy having to step into someone shoes is it? No matter how big or trivial the situation, you are always conscious that someone has set the bench mark that you will be measured against and there is damn all you can do about it apart from trying your best.
As I blogged last month, Ian, our expat quiz master, abandoned us and returned to England (or at least Yorkshire) leaving in his stead, Chris to take on the challenge of concocting a perfect quota of quiz questions once a month. 25 questions that should be the right combination of huh? and ah! and uh? and YES! They can't be too hard (because we'd get too demoralised and not want to play again - yes, we are that fickle) and yet can't be too easy (because Lesley doesn't want to have to give everyone a prize) but also the demographic of the group is so varied and so variable, one month there might be 8 people, another 28, aged from 28 to 58 and coming from pretty much every continent in the world - the only common determinator is the language and even the English spoken is diverse, at times American English can be as different from British English as Dutch is from German and let's not get started on those for whom English is a second language despite the fact that they speak it fluently.
There was a faint whiff of grease paint in the air at Lulus last night and Chris was very keen to get the show on the road, I doubt it was first night nerves or stage fright seeing as his day job is being tenor opera singer, I think he just wanted to get going and put his mark on the quiz.
The quiz was the same 'bingo' format as usual but Chris had added a special Antipodean twist, a joker, whichever team got closest to the right answer for the joker question would win the right to play the joker during the answers and request the question number that they wanted next, so allowing them to complete a row and possibly win (the answers are read out in a random order, you see*). The joker question was;
- how many churches were burnt down during the Great Fire of London?
We** had no idea, I stopped doing history at school as soon as possible, Jason wanted to go low, I wanted to go high so we compromised with the number he plucked out of thin air, 111. And we won the joker because we were closest to the answer of 87 (which is the random number that Sing wanted us to put...)
And onto the quiz itself, here are a few of the questions that we had to puzzle over;
1. What is the oldest alcolholic drink?
2. What is a chukka?
3. Rose Tyler and Sara Jane Smith wer companions to whom?
4. On which continent are there the fewest inhabitants?
5. Which came first the photograph or the bicycle?
6. What do the letters 'C+M+B' represent when written above a doorway in chalk?
7. In which civilization is L greater than XL?
A great mix of questions, made even better by the fact that we were the first team to get a row (thanks to having a Joker to play) and we were one of the four teams to get the top score of 19/25 - failed the tie break question though;
What year was the founding of the Spanish Inquisition?
We plucked a number out of the air, none of us having a clue and 1623 was way out of the ballpark, the actual answer is 1480.
I think Chris can be quite satisfied with last night, the quiz was a great succes, with at least seven teams playing (some of whom were Germans, who hadn't got a clue what they were agreeing to at the beginning) and I for one will definitely be back for more next month, although I shall have to find a new team as my co-conspirators are taking off for a month on Friday. Maybe I can play with Emma***?
Answers:
1. Beer, which we put and then crossed out as Jason deemed brewing too complex a process to have been the first, we went with cider.
2. This was a multiple choice question and we had a,b,c & d to choose from, I didn't hear the other options, because having read Jilly Cooper's 'Polo' and being a keen reader of OK & Hello**** (when I can get my hands on them) I wrote down 'polo' before he'd got as far as 'c) a period of play in the game of polo.
3. The whole bar collectively went "huh?" and we all stared about vacantly, Chris read the question again and I had a lightbulb moment. Doctor Who of course! Smug doesn't even come close to describing that feeling!
4. In this particular round everything began with 'A', Antartica.
5. Jason wanted to put bicycle, but I can smell a trick question a mile off (or at least last night I could) so I wrote down photogrpah, a good job I had control of the pen.
6. After living in Germany for four years I know this because I've asked about it, it's the three kings - Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar.
7. I recognised this as Latin numerals but it was Jason who pointed out that in Latin L is greater than XL, I can just about remember that X=10 & C=100...
* it makes sense when you're there and playing along, honest.
** our team last night was me, Jason & Sing.
*** Emma always wins, but was unable to attend last night - shall have to remember to thank her husband for arranging to be away so that she couldn't come out to play!
**** all my guilty secrets are coming out.
As I blogged last month, Ian, our expat quiz master, abandoned us and returned to England (or at least Yorkshire) leaving in his stead, Chris to take on the challenge of concocting a perfect quota of quiz questions once a month. 25 questions that should be the right combination of huh? and ah! and uh? and YES! They can't be too hard (because we'd get too demoralised and not want to play again - yes, we are that fickle) and yet can't be too easy (because Lesley doesn't want to have to give everyone a prize) but also the demographic of the group is so varied and so variable, one month there might be 8 people, another 28, aged from 28 to 58 and coming from pretty much every continent in the world - the only common determinator is the language and even the English spoken is diverse, at times American English can be as different from British English as Dutch is from German and let's not get started on those for whom English is a second language despite the fact that they speak it fluently.
There was a faint whiff of grease paint in the air at Lulus last night and Chris was very keen to get the show on the road, I doubt it was first night nerves or stage fright seeing as his day job is being tenor opera singer, I think he just wanted to get going and put his mark on the quiz.
The quiz was the same 'bingo' format as usual but Chris had added a special Antipodean twist, a joker, whichever team got closest to the right answer for the joker question would win the right to play the joker during the answers and request the question number that they wanted next, so allowing them to complete a row and possibly win (the answers are read out in a random order, you see*). The joker question was;
- how many churches were burnt down during the Great Fire of London?
We** had no idea, I stopped doing history at school as soon as possible, Jason wanted to go low, I wanted to go high so we compromised with the number he plucked out of thin air, 111. And we won the joker because we were closest to the answer of 87 (which is the random number that Sing wanted us to put...)
And onto the quiz itself, here are a few of the questions that we had to puzzle over;
1. What is the oldest alcolholic drink?
2. What is a chukka?
3. Rose Tyler and Sara Jane Smith wer companions to whom?
4. On which continent are there the fewest inhabitants?
5. Which came first the photograph or the bicycle?
6. What do the letters 'C+M+B' represent when written above a doorway in chalk?
7. In which civilization is L greater than XL?
A great mix of questions, made even better by the fact that we were the first team to get a row (thanks to having a Joker to play) and we were one of the four teams to get the top score of 19/25 - failed the tie break question though;
What year was the founding of the Spanish Inquisition?
We plucked a number out of the air, none of us having a clue and 1623 was way out of the ballpark, the actual answer is 1480.
I think Chris can be quite satisfied with last night, the quiz was a great succes, with at least seven teams playing (some of whom were Germans, who hadn't got a clue what they were agreeing to at the beginning) and I for one will definitely be back for more next month, although I shall have to find a new team as my co-conspirators are taking off for a month on Friday. Maybe I can play with Emma***?
Answers:
1. Beer, which we put and then crossed out as Jason deemed brewing too complex a process to have been the first, we went with cider.
2. This was a multiple choice question and we had a,b,c & d to choose from, I didn't hear the other options, because having read Jilly Cooper's 'Polo' and being a keen reader of OK & Hello**** (when I can get my hands on them) I wrote down 'polo' before he'd got as far as 'c) a period of play in the game of polo.
3. The whole bar collectively went "huh?" and we all stared about vacantly, Chris read the question again and I had a lightbulb moment. Doctor Who of course! Smug doesn't even come close to describing that feeling!
4. In this particular round everything began with 'A', Antartica.
5. Jason wanted to put bicycle, but I can smell a trick question a mile off (or at least last night I could) so I wrote down photogrpah, a good job I had control of the pen.
6. After living in Germany for four years I know this because I've asked about it, it's the three kings - Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar.
7. I recognised this as Latin numerals but it was Jason who pointed out that in Latin L is greater than XL, I can just about remember that X=10 & C=100...
* it makes sense when you're there and playing along, honest.
** our team last night was me, Jason & Sing.
*** Emma always wins, but was unable to attend last night - shall have to remember to thank her husband for arranging to be away so that she couldn't come out to play!
**** all my guilty secrets are coming out.
Monday, January 9, 2012
And the Winner is....
drum roll please....
The Word of the Year 2011* is
after much debate and deliberation***
Stresstest.
Please note, this is 'Stresstest' - all one word, not 'stress test' the way the rest of the world would have it, and the stress (ho ho) will be on the second syllable, not the first where one would think it should be - these Germans are quite, quite bonkers sometimes.
So who else was in the running for first place? There was 'hebeln', which is a new verb that seems to mean to crank or lever something - a word much used over the last 12 months due to the ongoing crisis in the financial sector and the rescue of the euro countries, and there was 'Arabellion' which only made it to 3rd place, and reflected the need for a generic term for the numerous revolutions and political upheavals in the Arab and North African countries, the Germans do love to adopt new words, just because there are fewer words in the German language than in the English, they cannot be beaten by the English.
Stresstest was chosen because not only were banks tested for their resilience, the railway station project Stuttgart 21 came under pressure as did the green-red state government of Baden-Württemberg and German nuclear power plants were also subjected to stress tests.
The top 10 looks like this (if you're interested):
1. Stresstest
2. hebeln
3. Arabellion
4. Merkozy
5. Fukushima
6. Burnout
7. guttenbergen
8. Killersprossen
9. Ab jetzt wird geliefert
10. Wir sind die 99%
We have to wait another week or so before the 'unwort' of the year is revealed, I can't wait, the anticipation might be too much, if you're lucky I'll forget all about it, the killersprossen**** might get me before then or maybe I'll get burnout, though as always I will try my hardest not to guttenbergen*****!
* according to the jury of the GfdS**
** Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache (society for German language)
*** I'm assuming the jury took a long time to make a decision, afterall it is a very serious decision, not to be taken lightly and as Germans take everything seriously this would have been a doubley serious decision making process surely.
**** back in the 'summer' we never had there were too many cases of people ending up in hospital seriously ill after possibly having eaten beansprouts, I don't think it was the beansprouts that did for them but I'm blowed if I can remember now what it was actually traced back to. I think at one point all fruit and veg was suspect so we ate cake.
***** Guttenberg was the very silly German politician who got caught copy and pasting in his doctoral thesis, oops, hence the new verb, to guttenberg = to plagiarise.
The Word of the Year 2011* is
after much debate and deliberation***
Stresstest.
Please note, this is 'Stresstest' - all one word, not 'stress test' the way the rest of the world would have it, and the stress (ho ho) will be on the second syllable, not the first where one would think it should be - these Germans are quite, quite bonkers sometimes.
So who else was in the running for first place? There was 'hebeln', which is a new verb that seems to mean to crank or lever something - a word much used over the last 12 months due to the ongoing crisis in the financial sector and the rescue of the euro countries, and there was 'Arabellion' which only made it to 3rd place, and reflected the need for a generic term for the numerous revolutions and political upheavals in the Arab and North African countries, the Germans do love to adopt new words, just because there are fewer words in the German language than in the English, they cannot be beaten by the English.
Stresstest was chosen because not only were banks tested for their resilience, the railway station project Stuttgart 21 came under pressure as did the green-red state government of Baden-Württemberg and German nuclear power plants were also subjected to stress tests.
The top 10 looks like this (if you're interested):
1. Stresstest
2. hebeln
3. Arabellion
4. Merkozy
5. Fukushima
6. Burnout
7. guttenbergen
8. Killersprossen
9. Ab jetzt wird geliefert
10. Wir sind die 99%
We have to wait another week or so before the 'unwort' of the year is revealed, I can't wait, the anticipation might be too much, if you're lucky I'll forget all about it, the killersprossen**** might get me before then or maybe I'll get burnout, though as always I will try my hardest not to guttenbergen*****!
* according to the jury of the GfdS**
** Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache (society for German language)
*** I'm assuming the jury took a long time to make a decision, afterall it is a very serious decision, not to be taken lightly and as Germans take everything seriously this would have been a doubley serious decision making process surely.
**** back in the 'summer' we never had there were too many cases of people ending up in hospital seriously ill after possibly having eaten beansprouts, I don't think it was the beansprouts that did for them but I'm blowed if I can remember now what it was actually traced back to. I think at one point all fruit and veg was suspect so we ate cake.
***** Guttenberg was the very silly German politician who got caught copy and pasting in his doctoral thesis, oops, hence the new verb, to guttenberg = to plagiarise.
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