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Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Separable verbs suck


Tree wrapped

We now seem to spend Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights in front of the TV – with the fire going - watching DVDs. We are plodding through 24 and are on series 6. The show is so silly it makes me cross – but it is addictive.

As a consequence of this DVD addiction we are using lots of wood in the fire so I sallied forth to Bauhaus to get some more. They train the sales assistants at Bauhaus by getting them up and dawn, taking them for a cross country run in the nude – and then flogging them with wet tree branches. Then – without breakfast – they are sent into stores to help the eager clients. Anyone rash enough to ask for assistance deserves what they get.

There is a big hairy brute with tattoos in the gardening section and I take great care to avoid him as he looks like a killer to me and is usually carrying a blunt object.

There was no wood at Bauhaus – NO wood. All the big piles of compressed sawdust and Sushi Rolls were gone. There was not a single packet of wood remaining. The area had been cleaned out and swept clean. Did I miss something? Is winter over? Have the swallows come back to Capistrano already?

I think the wood was much too popular and was making the punters happy. This alone is reason enough for Bauhaus to stop doing it – so they did.

I had to find Hornbach and was hoping to do this with the assistance of Tom Tom the GPS system. Tom Tom didn’t want to play and refused to work until I was well and truly lost in the wilds of Bezirk 22.

I am one of those people who cannot read street directories. I don’t mean that I have difficulty with them – I really do mean that I cannot understand them and get impossibly lost even when I have the street directory in front of me. I have absolutely no sense of direction.

Anyway – Tom Tom eventually came to life and saved me and I went to the wood department at Hornbach and piled my trolley high. Getting home was much easier although I terrified one local by forgetting what side of the road to drive on at a critical moment. To avoid a head on collision I lurched into a gas station and out the other side. These things happen occasionally and used to bother me but I have toughened up a lot since I arrived here.

I discovered some truly horrible things today. They are called Separable Verbs. Only the Germans could come up with something like a Separable Verb. What you do is take a perfectly good verb – say ‘Einkaufen’ - for shopping and then split it up – and put the first part of it at the end of the sentence. So we have something like ‘Rozalin kauft in Supermarkt ein.’ This is lunacy and is clearly designed to stop anyone but native German speakers getting hold of the language.

I can just imagine the horrors that await me in future lessons.

I see that Mercedes have plans to release a new E Class Model in 2009. Details have been leaked and are on the internet. This means that our car – ordered on 1 September and still not received – is now obsolete. Call me old fashioned but if you buy a current model car shouldn’t you get if before it becomes obsolete?

AC/DC is coming to town on 24 May 2009 and tickets went on sale today. I was going to get some for Cate and I but she says she has already allocated that night to tidy her sock drawer.

We are going to dinner with Rozalin tonight and I am planning on getting her drunk so that she will show me where her tattoos are. Her husband won’t be there because he won’t eat with anyone who doesn’t understand and appreciate separable verbs.

We have received an email from Annie and Michael so they are off the ‘head on a strange animal Photoshop’ list. They are really lovely people and we hope they will visit us.

We also had an email from Ron who says that he is now a Private Investigator. I may get him to track down our new car.

1 comment:

  1. Well Phillip, Sounds like you had quite an adventure! I am so glad you found wood. Sorry about the car not arriving yet. Hubby takes his to work and so I only have use of it every so often.
    Trina

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