AWOL

I'm away for the weekend, visiting my very good friend Alison in Fradley (near Lichfield)

It will be a proper girlie weekend, I'm leaving the children in the care of their father (which means that when I eventually return home my house will look like a bombsite, the dirty clothes basket will be full to overflowing, ditto the ironing pile, the dog wont have had a decent walk since Thursday and the fridge and the cupboards will be bare...) so that Al and I can get pedicures, go to the cinema, maybe get a curry, drink some cocktails and indulge in a little retail therapy.

Bliss.

The children aren't amused. They don't understand why I'm going without them and depriving them of the opportunity to see their friends - Katie, Christopher and Rachel (Alison's children) so I told them why -

1. because I'm going friday to monday and you'd miss 2 days of school,
2. it'd cost more to take you as well
3. it's a girlie weekend, we don't want to have to worry about entertaining 5 kids, we want to entertain ourselves!

I know they'll make me pay for it later, but hey, every silver lining has a cloud!

3D or not 3D?

Have you caught the 3D craze yet?

Are you being swept along by all the hype, happy to pay the £3 extra to watch a film whilst wearing silly glasses?

I'm with Mark Kermode on this one (in fact I have a great deal of respect for Mr Kermode, after all a film critic who can wnthuse about High School Musical 3, because it does what is says on the can, must surely be very confident of his own self) Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo are on 5 Live every Friday afternoon witha podcast here, I find them essential listening, despite the fact that living wher I do in Germany means that films in original language are hard to come by, yes there is usually more than one film per week available but all the same, and it's not even as if the films in German are just with German subtitles, oh no, they love a bit of dubbing here, most of them have no idea what Johnny Depp or George Clooney actually sound like!

This last year has seen a 3D films taking off, first with Avatar and now there's Alice in Wonderland, How to Train your Dragon, Clash of the Titans and so on. It is the latest thing. But is it all just hype? One cynical viewpoint is that is hinders the pirating market as well as allowing the companies involved to hike up the ticket costs.

I have to confess to be slightly biased about the whole 2D/3D discussion, because I can't see 3D. I have no depth perception due to an eye operation when I was about 3 to correct a nasty squinty eye, so now although my eyes look cosmetically fine, they don't work as a pair, which is how you get to see in 3D. It doesn't usually bother me, although I remember it freaking out the person controlling the eye tests when I tried to join the police after university, they simply couldn't understand how I couldn't see what they could and apparently depth perception in very important for the driving of fast cars (well, maybe more for the driving of fast cars 'safely', as I have lots of fun on the autobahns here) When we were in New York (did I say Iwouldn't mention that ever again? Oops) we went to the Sony Wonder Lab or whatever it was called (it was tipping down with rain and it was free) we visited the shop at the end where they had lots of Sony's newest gadgets including a gigantinormous flat screen TV screen that was 3D - you had to wear nasty NHS stylee glasses and everything, Simon and the kids loved it, they sat there entranced, flinching as cars shot off the screen towards them, I tried it, swapped glasses with all 3 of them and still couldn't get my head to work. I stropped off upstairs to Starbux to sulk nad wait until they got kicked off the couch. Clearly they're not going to be allowed on of those TV's, even if we could justify the HUGE cost.

Jas absolutely lurves the Jonas Brothers - pure Disney cheese, anyway, I got her the JB 3D concert experience, and the DVD came with 4 pairs of 3D specs as well as an extra 2D copy of the DVD (thank god) she really enjoyed the DVD but when I watched it it all appeared not only to be in black and white but also not 3D - crap huh? According to Jas it is in colour & 3D, but ot for me, damn, at least I'll be the only one not ducking when things appear to fly out of the screen!

Simon and Ben saw Avatar at the cinema when it was released last year, but were only able to see it in 2D, can you imagine the chances of getting to see a film in 3D and in its original language?! Zero. They were impressed enough with the CGI effects and didn't feel short changed by not having seen it in 3D (I was similarly impressed when we watched the video this weekend) and the reports I've heard of other films follow that line, great film, don't bother with paying extra for the 3D...

Personally I'm praying that 3D films don't take off, or that they ensure there is always a 2D option to watch, what's the point of paying extra for something you can't see?

Spargelzeit

I think asparagus is something people either like or loathe (a bit like marmite maybe?).

In the UK people view asparagus as just another veggie we can subject to death by boiling.

But in Germany? Of course, they take it seriously, very seriously.

Spargelzeit* is officially upon us now, the supermarkets and the veggie shops are all full of it, the cookshops will be full of the special implements you need to more thoroughly enjoy your asparagus and every restaurant has its own 'spargelmenu' - if ever there was a time for me to stay home and cook it's now, between the April and the end of June, certainly don't want to accept a dinner invitation to a friends and get a plate of hollandaise doused white roots....bleurgh!

According to my German teacher spargel, and whether you've had your first of the season is the hot topic this week, you see the spargel season officially opened this weekend (it's late this year (there have been apologies in the local rag 'n everything) on account of the extra cold winter) and everyone is indulging themselves, apart from me & mine that is, shall be keeping well away from the nasty anaemic sticks (they prefer the white, never seen sunlight, vampiric asparagus here) Even though the price per kilo is more than twice what is was last year (7euro as compared to last year's 3, shock, horror, gasp - inflation eh?!) that won't stop them, although apparently this spargel fest is a relatively new thing, the German's weren't always so obsessed with it, I wonder why they suddenly decided to champion it, I mean I can kind of understand the English obsession with strawberries around Wimbledon, what's not to love about strawberries, but asparagus? It's woody and tastes only of whatever you've smothered it in, whether it's green or white...roll on July!


*= asparagus time

Dib, dib, dib

Yesterday was the first bbq of the year (thanks Sam and Rebecca for the excellent hospitality and the endless flow of wine which means this blog is going to take much reading through to correct the equally endless typos from from nerveless fingers).

We'd been promised highs of 29C if you believed Google (which I didn't, choosing instead to take the average of the the 3 (or is it 4?) weather websites which I consult, thinking that 22C seemed OK to me) but it was a beautiful April, early summer, warm day, not blasting heat, but warm enough to sit out and chat without shivering and needing to ask if you can borrow a cardi!

We were 1; adults only just outnumbering the kids, & 2 dogs (both of whom had been thoroughly walked around the woods so that they wouldn't act like hoodlums from the off, by yours truly)

What can be better than a Sunday afternoon spent in the company of friends with whom you can banter and pass abuse (as the English do so well) with the alcohol flowing and the food in plentiful supply)? I'll tell you what - a Saturday afternoon which would mean we wouldn't have the Monday morning hanging over us and so could linger, amongst friends and wine until we're being bitten to pieces by the midges and the mozzies and the kids are falling asleep...ho hum, it's the 1st of hopefully many bbq's of summer '10!

With 4-5 hours worth of alcohol flow there's going to be a lot of banter;
- there was the pole dancing story, at an engineering exhibition no less, go figure
- too many cricketing & footballing stories by far - they would stop when they realised that Rebecca & my eyes were glazing over
- the new knife throwing thing that seems to be taking over from the softair craze, joy
- the volcanic ash keeping Ian from his home for 3 weeks and just how long the grass would be when he finally makes it back to Leeds next weekend
- how the thrill of being driven around the Nuerburgring by a pro driver compares to a helicopter ride around the bottom of Manhattan
- how the customer of a customer was bought out of his wedding at Alton Towers by David Beckham (or was it Victoria's influence?) wanting to take over the hotel there for his son's birthday party, for £200,000
- and how one of our nephews refers to his willy as his 'dibber', which caused a large amount of confusion when his grandfather was getting him to help plant sunflower seeds and telling him how you used your dibber to make a hole in the ground to put the seed into...I dread to think what's going to happen when he joins the cub scouts and learns to 'dib, dib, dib'...snigger