This summer's fun

If even your husband notices that I haven't blogged in a while, things must be quiet on the blogging front. Well, they're not really because there's this other little blog of mine that did get some attention. But it's true, I've been busy with other stuff. Sometimes I even wonder how I ever managed to produce a post every other day.

So this is what I've been up to:

Knitting. I have 4 projects on my needles, which is unheard of. One is even BIG.

Taking photos. I'm doing the Manual Overdrive e-course, which has kind of finished but I'm still working my way through this new language that manual settings on a DSLR bring with you. I've had a lightbulb moment and have totally changed the way I take photos - technically that is; I still very much take the same kind of photos composition wise, but I'm moving towards having the focus where I want it, the exposure how I want it, and the colours as I see them. I've learned a lot about spot metering and how metering and focus are two entirely different things (who'd have thunk) and that back button focus is my new best friends. There's lots of servo going on because those kids of mine never stand still and evaluative metering will sure please some work colleagues of mine (one of whom is lucky enough to be on the course too). As you can see, nobody can put me in the corner with all those fancy camera terms now! I'm even almost ready to give Lightroom a second chance.

Doing fun stuff with the kids. Making the most of the precious days before Cubling starts school and is institutionalised. I have this strange urge to make sure that she gets to know my version of the world before all is lost and she'll do what the teachers tell her (of course she already does and no, she has no interest in learning how to knit). We have done so much stuff that today I just had to take time out and just relax at home. That was nice.

Buying school uniforms. It's not an easy task if you've never had to wear one yourself.

Dealing with the pitfalls of everyday life. Like a broken washing machine. For anyone reading this who doesn't have kids, it's a MAJOR crisis if your washing machine breaks. I do a wash a day, roughly, and there's stinking cloth nappies in the nappy bucket. I need a washing machine engineer hero.


Work. Not one to be underestimated - it's quietish at the moment but the problem with me is that if work is quiet I come up with stuff that creates more work. Like new programme ideas. I love that kind of stuff and it was totally amazing how one day of not having anything useful to do turned into a creative outburst, while now this needs followed up by the grinding of pulling research together and making a strong case (which I still enjoy very much, just that there's my normal job to do too).

Bumpy Jacket in progress, pattern by Fawn Pea. I did not intentionally try and copy her colour scheme, however it's interesting that 2 out of my 3 projects are in teal.

On the Waverley Pedal Steamer, watching a bungy jumper doing a bungy jump on the Clydebank Titan.

Olympic football in Glasgow - Japan v Spain. I like the Japanese goalie's outfit. How lucky are we, we walked there. And yes, I took this photo, we were really rather close. Snowflake is definitely destined to become a 10 k runner as she was being tough competition running in circles around our living room coffee table. She also quite likes a new discipline which is called sitting on a balloon and falling off it with hysterical laughter.

Don't mention the war

Expat life in the UK is a funny old thing at times. Most of the time I honestly don't think about it. I feel at home here, having lived a considerable part of my adult life in this city. Sometimes I realise how many people in Glasgow aren't actually from Glasgow, but mostly, everyone is "just" a person to me, there's barely much thought spent on where people were born, how they got to live here and why. In fact, this is what I noted very early on just after arriving here in 1997. People would chat to me and the questions "where are you from" or "what brought you here" would sometimes not even come up in conversation, and if they did, it was much later than what I was used to in the other countries I've spent time in.

Things change mightily though when there's yet another football event on. I've found myself in pubs watching footie when England was playing Germany and it felt like I was surrounded by Germans, and initially I was sure that all these Scots around me must have a Germany granny. They didn't. Next match Germany v Albania and nobody turned up. Germany v Scotland - all those German grannies were forgotten big time (even I shouted for Scotland...). Personally, I feel offended if someone supports the German team just because they want England to lose. I'd like people to support a team because they like it, have an affiliation with it, and not because they happen to play the one team everyone hopes will lose.

On the other hand, having watched enough England v Germany fixes on TV, I'm sick to the bone of the references to 1966 and THE WAR. For eff's sake, it's just football and we're not at war right? And if you continue to use vocabulary as if we're fighting a war on the pitch, I'm starting to share those anti-English football team feelings of those around me. For eff's sake, it's just football and we're not at war right?

Or are we? The discourse around the war is actually interestingly different in the UK compared to Germany. Here, it's about winners and losers, about military strategy and remembrance day. In Germany, it's about liberation and the horror that was the Holocaust. I've never seen myself as a member of a country that lost the war. To my generation, and even my parents' generation, the UK, alongside with the US and France, liberated us from evil, suffering, destruction and hunger. If ever there was a war that had to be fought, it was the one against the Nazis. And to me, it was not a war against Germany, and never will be (the Marshall Plan speaks volumes that it wasn't a war against the people of Germany). In fact, I listened avidly to BFBS, my favourite radio station in Germany, my cousin worked for the US army and we all just loved having the Brits and Americans in the country. So much so we didn't actually want them to leave (they were good for the local economy). (note: things were probably a bit different in East Germany but that's not for me to discuss,) As to feeling responsibility for the Holocaust - the only responsibility I ever felt was to put extra effort in ensuring that this would never happen again, regardless of where.

So the discourse around football matches and any discussion of the war that sees England as the winner and Germany as the loser is more than alien to me. It worries me because it assumes that there is animosity still, revenge that is played out on the football pitch. From Germany's side of the fence, there isn't, and that's the big joke - England commentators making a big fuss about nothing, and I'm trapped in between explaining again and again how a match against England is nothing special to me, the German.  That above all, I'm not at war with anyone. Oh, and I find that Faulty Towers sketch probably funnier than any Brit, because it holds the mirror to the British about their obsession with the war, it is oh so clever and hilarious.

At times though I'm not sure if my interpretation of things comes with the mercy of the "Nachgeborenen" the generation born after the horrors. The generation that has the luxury of being able to claim not to have any responsibility for 7 million people murdered, and many more dead due to war, displacement and famine. My whole family was affected by the war and I never knew my grandfathers, my mother stopped her education to help in the home when her father died due to a war injury. It reduced her options in life and cut her education short when she must have been quite talented. Many friends of our family were displaced and suffered hardship after the war, while our neighbour lost her whole family to the gas chambers.

So I can relate to the people who tell me of their losses. The son who never knew his father because the Germans killed him. I know the same story from the other side. But while I blame Hitler and his madness (rather than the Allied Forces), the son, now the age of my own father, blames the Germans for his loss and his mother's suffering. And for all I try to explain, my argument remains shallow, and there's nothing I can offer to bridge this river. In the end, he who suffered a loss, I feel, has the right to explain that loss for himself and make his choice of blame or responsibility. It's not about whose discourse is right or wrong, better or worse, and it's most certainly not my place to change minds, but to respect his views. Even if it means that I'm the German to him.

A football fan is born

I feel like I live in a strange warp of time and activity. My life is so disjointed that it confuses me. Having spent staring at the screen all my working day today, I can't bear to spend any more time than necessary tonight on it.


Yesterday a new football fan was born. Not that I give an awful lot about football, but usually, during the world cup or similar, I kind of get a little bit into it. Not hugely, but I do like to see a nice match and after the last European Championships in Germany, which I witnessed in Cologne, with the whole melange of ethnicities all putting up Germany flags, and an atmosphere of having a party with all your neighbours, I kind of got ever so slightly patriotic and wishing the German team well. And I like to see goals, and they didn't disappoint me in their first match.

So yesterday, we had an interesting set up at home. Mummy, hopeful for a German win, Daddy, hopeful but doubtful for an English win, and both of us competing in jest for Cubling's support. The first rules of football were explained and interestingly she got the concept of yellow cards for foul play pretty straight away, and understood that you should play fair. Cubling was shouting patriotically "Deutschland Deutschland" and cheered wildly for the first two goals (asking "Deutschland now winnen?") while also wanting the red men to win. Maybe the colour was a bit more appealing? I don't think she understood that 90 minutes had to pass, but thought that whoever scores will be the winner. Later on she refused to go to bed because she wanted to see the blue man with the yellow sticker again. I have a feeling she's the only one he's popular with right now (we're talking about the referee here in case you were wondering, the sticker is the yellow card). It was lovely just enjoying the first football game we ever watched as a family with her, patriotism or not. We had fun, and that made even the match destroying ungiven goal kind of ok. I wonder who she will support in future matches, but above all I hope she'll see how relative such identities are.

Four years ago exactly, we watched the world cup in Germany before and after our wedding. Our friends who celebrated our day with us were from all corners of the world, and together we cheered for every conceivable team, often changing allegiance rather frequently in a single match. Because the great thing about football is that it brings people together for a nice party, at least it does so in my experience. Yes, we want our respective team to win, but it's always as much about coming together, enjoying each other's company in front of the big screen and a cool beer. I like that, and as long as we've got this, even if only in miniature in our family and chatting to the neighbours (who supported Germany for all the wrong reasons), it feels good.

Maybe for the next match, there'll be flags to add to the excitement.