I am lacking in human interaction

So, it would appear that M!crosoft W0rd is not happy with my blog post. I would normally compose blog posts in Blogger itself (which is, of course, a way to guarantee that my posts will never get lost), but I am without Internet access in this flat. That explains the funny formatting you may have noticed in the previous posts – they were just cut and pasted from Word via some other programme. No idea what. It wasn’t co-operating when I tried to post today’s offering, and so I was unable to accomplish the task of copying and pasting my favourite blog (for this week) onto my memory stick to read at home later. This means that I will have to be productive and learn some German this evening, instead. Damn.

Thinking about it, you were lucky not to have to read my previous blog post (the one eaten by W0rd), as it started off describing what I was going to eat for dinner, then saying that this really wasn’t an adequate blog topic, and that I could really do with some human interaction. This paragraph was much shorter and only a miniscule amount less funny.

It’s funny, though, because I don’t appear to be making a very good job of responding to my e-mails, and they are interaction with a real person, albeit at a distance. I suppose that I don’t really feel like responding to other people’s questions.

It is lonely here, you know. I don’t speak the language, and don’t know anyone who is helping me to get integrated into any sort of social scene. I missed going to the garden to help out today because I got up late, and figured that people would be unimpressed were I to fail to be punctual, so I made no new friends today. Tomorrow, I shall try out the English-speaking church. It looks like totally not my scene, and could take a long time to get there, but social interaction is social interaction, and it might surprise me...

However, in order to get there, I must ride the bike. The bike is a lovely piece of machinery, which really seems to want to be good. It could teach Marigold the Death Bike a thing or two about being nice to people (although I feel that it would be a mistake to expose it to Marigold’s malign influence). However, it has a few problems. It really likes to select its own gear (although it has been holding steady for a few says now), it is only the forces of good holding the front wheel straight, and it is too big for me. The first two problems would only really be an issue with a bike which wasn’t so anxious to please (go, anthropomorphic personification!), but the third problem has started to hurt my knees. My knees are important to me, and so I shall have to brave the bike shop very soon. Probably on Monday. Argh! If I could speak German, it would be less frightening. I only hope that the shopkeeper speaks English. I think that the place over the road from here is a bike shop which sells a lot of second-hand bikes, and I think that their prices will be reasonable, especially as I particularly do not want a bike which looks good. Here in Münster, bikes are disabled by means of a bike lock, and then abandoned, not attached to anything but themselves. I feel that a bike which looks as though it might be worth actual money might not last long here. There’s no point in paying extra for a more nickable bike. Oh, how I miss Marigold. Apart from her lack of seat (thank you, Louise) and stand, she is exactly what I want. I suppose that her homicidal tendencies are hardly ideal, but she has never actually tried to kill me...


I made a discovery today. Orange-flavoured milkshake does not taste good. Of course, I knew this already, but I decided to try it anyway. Now I know for sure. Please trust me when I say that it is as bad as you might imagine it to be. There really is no need to try it out for yourself. I should have trusted my instincts, but I was thirsty and it was cheap. Never go shopping while you are thirsty! (Although I realise that sometimes it is necessary to go shopping while thirsty in order to buy oneself a drink, and that one might possibly become ill were one to be denied this opportunity to go shopping, should a suitable drinking water tap not be in the vicinity. Under these circumstances, I would argue that it is more useful to go shopping than to refrain therefrom. Which is a word the spellchecker seems to think that I just made up.)


I bought plants, seeds and nectarines at the market today. The plants were basil, parsley, sage and lavender, the seeds were sweet peas and wild flowers (all due to be planted before the end of last month), and the nectarines smell tasty. They will be eaten with yoghurt – this is my new favourite snack. It makes me feel healthy and virtuous, and tastes excellent. Any deficiencies in the nectarine’s flavour can be disguised with honey, which is so much better than sugar because it is more natural. Or something.

Anyway, I now have a little garden on my balcony, and it should smell good. The sweet peas, should they grow big enough, should climb towards the balcony above me, and hopefully won’t cause me to fall to my death while trying to cut a particularly high-up bloom (because that would totally be the fault of the flowers, as opposed to me). The wild flowers may look pretty, should they do the flowering thing. The Lavender will annoy my mother, and the other herbs will smell good and help with my cooking. Which reminds me – I need to get Delia’s parsnip and parmesan bread recipe at some point (the tenuous link being that it involves sage, and is pretty much all I ever used my previous sage plant for). Probably before I have someone to visit me for a meal. Although perhaps I should be feeding them potato soup with potato croutons, followed by mashed potatoes with potato sauce and potatoes on the side, then sweet potato fritters (as in potatoes with sugar on, as opposed to sweet potatoes themselves, which are, in fact, a different species from potatoes and, moreover, are absent from this flat). Perhaps with a potato smoothie. Potato lassi, anyone? I have cheese to go with it now. Anyone?



Tomorrow marks the one-week anniversary of my arrival here in Münster. It’s weird to think that this time last week, I was sitting in my last church service in Taizé. How things change. At Taizé, life goes on, and here, nothing much happens.

I felt, when I arrived, that it was a good idea to cut myself some slack and not worry about getting a job straight away. I felt that one or two weeks would be long enough to get settled in, and then I could start to look. Now I am feeling slightly guilty because I have scarcely made a start with advertising my amazing English skills (about all I have that is marketable at the moment, I think, because pretty much every other job requires some German skills, at least while one is applying for the job), and certainly feel no closer to finding out how one might go about getting a cleaning job. Of course, it could all change tomorrow when I go to church. Or it could not change at all. The latter scenario seems more likely to me, but I am aware that I am a reasonably cynical sort of person. Also realistic, sometimes. Except for that time I really trusted that guy, and it turned out to be a bad idea. That wasn’t cynical at all. So not only am I inconsistently cynical, but I am also not good at arguing my own point, and step in to ruin my own argument. Go me. I don’t think that I have a point any more. Instead, I shall have a shower and go to bed. I shall see what tomorrow brings.

Bike and soap

A little while ago I lent my lovely bike, Claud, to some guy and he killed it.* It was my fault, of course; I had left the derailleur system rather badly adjusted, so when this guy dropped it into bottom gear (something I would never do, which is why I didn't pick up on the problem) the dangly bit that holds the chain in the correct position (sorry - please stop me if my language gets too technical) leapt into the back wheel, mangling the chain, much of the making-it-go-forward system, bending a few spokes and bending the frame. The front fork and wheel, the handlebars, and the saddle are still good, but it was not economically viable to repair, especially given Claud's age (44).

I have been meaning to replace Claud for some time, as my other bike is also not in excellent condition;** generally I prefer my bikes to have two pedals. However I cannot afford a new bike, especially not the sort I would particularly like to own. There is a place in town which recycles bikes and sells them on for much less than a new bike would cost, but that is only open during working hours; I happen to work during working hours.

On Friday I decided to take action: I put an advert in our local swap shop e-mail. This came out on Sunday. Today I had an e-mail from a lady who has just the sort of bike I am looking for, apparently. It is 20 years old, so it has a bit of history,*** and it was once used to cross the Sierra Nevada (is that a thing one can do with the Sierra Nevada? If not, it wasn't used for that, after all). It sounds as though it has a cross-bar which goes across, and so will take my lock without any problems. I am looking forward to collecting it.

Of course, this being a swap shop, I have to give something in return. I shall be giving peas, artichokes, french beans (purple) and radishes from my vegetable patch, and some homemade soap. This was the perfect excuse to make some more soap - I hadn't made any since March, and my supplies of nice soaps I would be happy to give to people I don't know well have diminished, along with my supplies of really gentle soap for my poor, delicate skin.****

I therefore made two soaps from the same batch of oils. I took one lot out early and made an unscented cold process soap, which will be ready within six weeks, and left the rest in to make a lime and lemon scented hot process soap, which will be ready after I cut it tomorrow. I shall give some of that soap away to the bike lady, and I hope to make another batch, too. The other batch can be mostly lavender cold process soap, with some jasmine hot process soap to give away.

I made an infusion of alkanet in olive oil to colour my next batch. Alkanet is dark red, and the infusion will be, too. However, it will probably turn the soap blue, lilac, purple or grey, possibly red; apparently it depends on the pH of the soap. I don't quite know what causes the pH of the soap to vary, or what sort of pH leads to what sort of colour, so I have no idea how it will turn out. It should be interesting, though. It is a natural colouring, so it is therefore entirely safe and lovely and better than the artificial alternative in every way. It adds an element of unpredictability... I shall have to make sure I don't use hemp oil or avocado oil in the soap, as the yellow/green could alter the final colour in a negative way.

That was my idea of a less boring post. Perhaps photos would make it less eye-gougingly dull for the rest of you. I should work on that. Perhaps I shall.


*Note how the bike gets a name but the man does not.

**It was acquired by accident, when I was in the middle of my dissertation. Making it work seemed like impossibly good fun at the time, but less fun after I had submitted. I have now accepted that its destiny is to be fixed by someone else.

***I like bikes to have history. I wonder if this is a self-protection mechanism: I know that I am not getting a new bike, so I come up with an obscure reason why old bikes are better anyway. They are more solidly built. 1988 was a peak year for quality bike production. (Oh, but I did love the 1964 one - much more than I love the 1973 one, which is out to claim as many victims as it can. She was named Marigold the Death Bike by her first owner, and has tried to kill three people. I was recommended to put her on the tip rather than return her to her owner. Instead she languishes in my parents' basement, having the occasional part (saddle post) stolen by my little sister. This was not a popular move. The bike is no longer comfortable to ride. But I digress.)

****Stupid poor, delicate skin. Drives me mad. I am not the sort of person to have allergies and sensitive skin. I am an 'I can do that' sort of person, and I would like 'that' to include eating bread, pasta, cake, sausages and all sorts of other tasty but gluten-containing foods, using scented moisturiser, using biological washing powder and shaving my legs.*****

*****Yes, that's a lovely image, isn't it? You're welcome.