Fathers' Day, Election Day, Mothers' Day, VE Day...

...I am in a daze...daze...DAYS...DAZE....get it? (Why is it that when you make a joke like that your kids roll their eyes and say..."hmm, another one of daddy's pathetic jokes.." ?) By the way before anyone out there panics, it was only Fathers' Day in Germany...or perhaps only Bavaria for all I know...they always have it on Ascension Day which was last Thursday.
The standard Bavarian Fathers' Day is:
Get a group of fathers together - say 10 or so - go out into the countryside/mountains...walk, hike, bike, cycle, climb to an inn where you can drink beer and become rumbustious...then walk, hike, bike, cycle, climb, crawl home to abandoned family and go to bed.

Mine was a little different...I ended up slouched on the couch watching the DVD of Live Aid...we did venture out only to be ambushed by a rainstorm which had been lying in wait for us disguised as a sunny spell. It caught us just far enough away from home that we had to say things like, "oh, I love walking in the rain..." instead of saying, "oh bugger, I hate walking in the rain" and skedaddling back to the DVD.

Election Day in England was a disappointment...not so much the result as the lack of tension. England is too small for tension and excitement about the election I suppose. On the BBC just after the voting booths had closed they had an exit poll which said that Labour would win with a reduced majority of 66 seats. And they were dead right!! We could have saved all the pissing about counting votes and so on...

Mothers' Day was on Sunday and in Bavaria is a day to stay off the roads. Dutiful sons and daughters turn up at their mothers' doorsteps, bundle the poor dears into the back of their Mercedes, BMWs...and whisk them off to have coffee and cake in cafés next to lakes or up mountains. A couple of hours later they dump them back home again and whizz off till the next duty call has to be made.

VE Day just saw an excess of pseudo-lead being shot around the inside of our tele. Everywhere you zapped there were war films and people getting blasted by machine gun bullets...wouldn't you just love to be an extra in one of those films...falling off a roof...jumping out of a window...staggering over the sand bags holding your ketchup-stained stomach...

Anyway a large sigh of relief can now be breathed as we get back to days instead of Days (daze..get it? Oh never mind)