I wanted to illustrate not quite a ruckus by showing a rugby ruck. Now my husband (who is the rugby expert in our family) tells me that this is not even a ruck.
Therefore I present: Half a ruckus. A ruc.
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Tag: #Fandango
Mountain Goat
I’ve mentioned or shown our “social running group”, the Hash House Harriers, before on this blog. One of the things that I really enjoy is the wide age range we have between us. Many kennels allow children but even kennels that are adult only (by choice or by accident) have runners in their twenties and thirties. There are no age limitations. By now, I’m sorry to say, we belong to the so-called old farts and there seem to be quite a lot of us. The oldest active hasher (i.e. one that goes on trails and doesn’t just sit around and wait for the runners to return) is Skinhead (his hash moniker). He doesn’t run anymore but walks the trails. Last autumn we were were at a place in the mountains of the Southern Black Forest, very steep trails, up and down. He kept walking with the vanguard, usually as the frontrunner -walker, easily outpacing much younger folk. He was 89 then and we are looking forward to seeing him as soon as the weather gets a bit warmer.
PS: We don’t just run (walk) together. We also party well together.
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Don’t Tread on Them
The “Stolpersteine” or “stumbling stones” are a project of the artist Gunter Demnig. They are brass covered cobblestones on pavements outside houses were Germans of Jewish descent used to live. Other persecuted groups are commemorated in this way as well. They are inscribed with their names, their dates of birth and short information what happened to them. This particular family of Luise and Jakob Stern who I found in Rüsselsheim had the parents emigrating to South Africa, where the father died before the end of the war. Their daughter Irva was murdered in Auschwitz.
More than 75,000 stones have been laid in Germany, more in neighbouring countries where the Nazi terror regime was present.
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Different Times, Different Place
It might have been an easier time when police and public were more affable in their dealings with each other. It might also be due to the region – the people of the Rhineland are known for their jovial demeanour.
These are two sculptures (2 of 6, distributed in the centre of Koblenz) in honour of historic local characters, here market-woman Ringelstein and Constable Otto. They stand next to each other, Otto is taking down a complaint by Mistress Ringelstein.
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Proof of a Little Folly
I’ve just come home from the post office. Two months ago I ordered a little trinket (a stand for my glasses). Nothing major. I realised it was coming from overseas because it was supposed to take a couple of weeks to arrive. No biggy. The couple of weeks stretched to a couple of months but as I didn’t really need the watchamacallit – no biggy. Then we weren’t home when the parcel, or rather parcelet, arrived and the mailman left a card. It took me a full week to collect it – because I had to go to a different post office I normally go to, one which has opening hours which don’t correspond with my working hours, and to top it all there is a huge building site with roads torn up and strange one-way streets for the duration.
Anyway, I collected it today. And nobody told me before that I had to pay customs on the item. 1.68 € (not much overall but on a purchase price of 9.00 € …). Anyway, that was customs. Add to that 6.00 € “delivery flat-rate”, which I’ve never had to pay before.
So now I have a receipt for a silly purchase which taught me the lesson of not ordering something like that ever again.
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