Tales from my handbag

As if New Year’s Eve isn’t depressing enough, I went to see The White Ribbon at my local art-house cinema. It was all part and parcel of my Germanisation process; I thought I might pick up a few handy phrases to sprinkle into my conversations with my house-guest, Herman the German - but all I got was a lot of talk about cabbages, dead sparrows and a very oblique reference to teenage masturbation which, let’s face it, doesn’t pop up in  a lot of conversations. Stylewise, the film was a bit like the 60s horror,  Village of the Damned, (you can see the original trailer on Youtube) but with better hair. Everyone was miserable (especially the dead sparrow)  but then I suppose if you went to bed with your hands tied down to stop you fiddling with yourself, you might be a tad moody of a morning.

…I was washing my dusters. Christmas makes me go a bit mental on the cleaning front. I’ve been down on my hands and knees washing my skirting boards and have even tackled that oft neglected rear of tap blind spot with a sprinkling of bicarbonate of soda and a squirt of lemon. Came up a treat. Carrying on the Biblical theme, I have also taken on the role of Good Samaritan, walking my neighbour’s dog, pulling another neighbour’s curtains twice daily to confuse burglars and even feeding the poor little sparrows with my left-over cheesy pasta bake. I am now quite au fait with dog shit and after a week of rather challenging curtain duties, have pinpointed the exact amount of ‘yank’ required to avoid pulling them off the rail completely. As to the sparrows, well, there aren’t any but I did get two really ugly crows fighting over a floret of broccoli.