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A month later than expected* she’s here, one of the few drama students I can stand although from her moaning the feeling might not quite be mutual as I have forgotten how much she likes to moan at me.

I haven’t had many guests here and so as a result due to me not drinking things like tea I don’t bother with tea bags as my father well knows from various occasions when he has helped me move. Luckily like any true brit she’s got some with her and I have a few dregs of milk and a leaky kettle so I can at least stop her moaning about that.

She say it’s just a problem that she has with scorpios and gave examples of me, her father and her boyfriend so I think the real problem is likely to be the important men in her life.

She can’t seem to believe that I am going to take her into school tomorrow and get her up at six thirty or so to do so as in her own words, “she’s ill, not slept much in the last two days and just spent the last day travelling across Germany to get here.” No one stays we me for free and as she hasn’t brought any Marmite with her she’s going to school.

*thanks to an email mix up saying she’d be here on the 16^th of last month. 

In the land where every road seems to have a cycle path alongside it how hard can it be to purchase a bike wheel? – Today I found out.

I did try getting a wheel at the weekend, however at the wholly reasonable time of 3:30pm on a Saturday afternoon it seems bike shops in Germany are not open for business and so I tried again today having made a note of opening hours…

Although my notes were not complete it turns out as on arriving at the bike shop I managed to arrive during the lunch hour, luckily I had a book so I leaned up against a wall and continued reading John Buchanan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps.

Lunchtime over the shop opens and I enter and explain that I am after a front wheel for my bike and despite me speaking German and the owner speaking English, he didn’t seem to get past the idea that I only wanted a front wheel and not a whole bike.

So onto the next shop and in I go chat happily in German with the shopkeeper discuss the size wheel I want and within 5 minutes or so I have sorted out a wheel, puncture repair kit and pump.

Only one problem…

I had the measurements for me wheel and I gave them to the bloke in the shop, but it seems that he gave me the wrong size wheel as the tyre that came off my old wheel is too small to fit this one – although it took me a few minutes of unsuccessfully trying to put the tyre before I actually sussed this.

So back to the shop tomorrow methinks..

This weekend I was invited to a party to celebrate a couple of teacher completing their probationary period and so Saturday night saw me out drinking a mixture of red wine and sambuca and miraculously awaking the following morning without a hangover.

That said I was missing a few things such as money from my wallet as when I had headed out I had had quite a full wallet and it has taken me until today to account for it as it was not just lost as I first thought.

My recollection of the night is deciding to leave at 2am and getting a taxi home and falling into bed, however the night didn’t quite go like this as I have been finding out.  My first clue that I was forgetting something came the next morning as upon going to my computer I noticed I had been on it last night and had changed my MSN name to warn people that unless they wanted to deal with me hungover not to wake me up.  Normally when I drink and use my comp my spelling doesn’t suffer as I compensate by paying closer attention to it, however I obviously was further gone than usual when I got home.

Further clues came at school today as I am sure that people who were out with me on Saturday were smiling when they saw me and a couple made a point to ask me if I had got home ok, but I wasn’t sure if I was just being paranoid or not and so at the end of the day when I got a chance to speak to a teacher I chat to regularly I enquired as to what my behaviour had been like and that I hadn’t been too bad and then I was told what I had done…

I might have thought that I went home at one but apparently I was still there at 3am when I had moved properly onto shots and I was taking people along for the ride with me and buying rounds for the table and as a result two people today have told me that they aren’t going to drink sambuca with me again.

Interesting thing to note is I may have been rather wasted but I do remember clearly making sure that I had €8 to get me home in a taxi so at least my homing instinct works and I didn’t have to hazard random bruises from the drunkard’s magic bus.

I figured that I’d pick a nice simple topic for today as although I one older class today is young class central and an in depth analysis of Shakespeare would be asking a little to much of them, so I decided to go with retelling the stories of Hans Christian Anderson.

It seemed like a fairly good idea at the time, after all who hasn’t heard at least a couple of fairy tales? Although today has taught me that although we may all have heard fairy tales we may not have heard the same versions as when I asked the class to retell me the story of Cinderella or Aschenputtel as they knew it and I heard a very different version to the story I know…

Once upon a time Cinderella lived with her parents and her beloved mother became ill and passed away, after a few years her father remarried and although the marriage may have made him happy, Cinderella was far from happy as she was bullied by her new stepmother and stepsisters and forced to do all the housework.  Her father was unaware of this as he was often away making his fortune, although when he returned he would bring gifts for his daughter and stepdaughters.  On his most recent trip his stepdaughters had requested all sorts of finery, whereas Cinders had asked for just a hazel twig, which she planted on her mother’s grave.

Cut forward a few years and the Dad is not about and the prince of the realm wants to get married and he throws a ball to meet the ladies and naturally the Cinder’s stepmother tells Cinderella that instead of going to the ball she must sort some peas instead pointing out that Cinderella has nothing to wear.

So Cinderella is left alone with her chores or at least she is alone until some birds come along and help her do the job in a fraction of the time and then lead her to her mothers grave where she finds a wonderful gown hanging from the hazel tree and heads to the ball to have a great time. Naturally the prince meets her and falls for her, however as Cinderella has to leave early to beat the rest of her family home he doesn’t find out who she is.

So he has another ball, but she again leaves early and leaving him unaware of her identity. So the prince hosts a third ball, but this time coats the steps with tar, resulting in her leaving her a shoe behind when flees towards the end of the night.  So now Prince Charming has a shoe it’s time for him to play a game of “If the shoe fits” and eventually he arrives at the house of Cinderella and co.  Cue the first stepsister to try on the shoe, which is too small for her.  So in an effort to make it fit she cuts her toes off, however a little birdie rats her out to the Prince and so the second sister gets to try the shoe on and again having feet that are too big she decides to cut off her heel, but she is also busted by the birdie.

Cue Cinder’s coming out to try on the shoes, which being hers fit and that all (well Cinders and Prince Charming anyway) live happily ever after.

So the BBC has posed 4 ethical dilemmas for it’s readers to see what they would do and so here are my answers to their questions:

Problem 1: You wake up in hospital, next to a world famous violinist connected to you with various tubes. You’ve been kidnapped by the Music Appreciation Society. Aware of the maestro’s impending death, they hooked you up to the violinist. If you stay connected, he will be totally cured in nine months. You are unlikely to suffer harm. No one else can save him. Do you have an obligation to stay connected?

Nope I don’t after all the bastards kidnapped me, now if they had asked nicely I might have considered it – but having been kidnapped I am likely to be in a bad mood and unlikely to listen to them, although if they were offering to hook me up with Vanessa Mae I might be tempted to reconsider;)

Apparently 75% of people agree with my decision.

Problem 2: In the path of a runaway trolley car are five people who will definitely be killed unless you, a bystander, flip a switch which will divert it on to another track, where it will kill one person. Should you flip the switch?

Consider the switch flipped after all the good of the many and all that…

Again about three-quarters of the people surveyed agree with me.

Problem 3: Again, the runaway trolley car. You’re standing on a bridge above and decide to jump on the track to block the trolley car. You will die, but five people on the track will be saved. But you are too light to stop it. Next to you is a fat man. He would certainly block the trolley, although he’d undoubtedly die. A small nudge and he’d fall right onto the track below. No one would ever know. Should you push him?

Well no ones going to know, which also means I am not going to be credited for saving the other people – but it would mean more pies for me.  So bye bye fat man!

Only one in four people agree with me on this one – I am not a sheep!  I suppose in this case I’d be a murderer.

Problem 4: A rock falls and blocks the exit of a cave you and five other tourists are exploring. You spot a hole elsewhere and decide to let Big Jack out first. A man of generous proportions, he gets stuck. There is no other way out. The tide is rising and, unless you get out soon, everyone but Big Jack (whose head is sticking out of the cave) will inevitably drown. Searching through your backpack, you find a stick of dynamite. It will not move the rock, but will certainly blast Big Jack out of the hole. He pleads for his life; he does not want to die, but neither do you and your four companions. Should you blast him out?

It’s another fattie and so it’s more pies for me if I blast him out (not to mention no pies EVER for me if I don’t) besides it’s a choice of me or him and I have the excuse that I am saving the lives of others and not just my own hide to salve my conscience with.

Once again the masses agree with me, which means I must be right!

Summer is well and truly here as my slightly red arms from falling asleep in the sun earlier in the week can testify to, but on the plus side it has been delightful to sit in the park reading.

One of the reasons it’s so good is that it’s free and on a budget like mine that’s always good as the books I either already own or nab from the school library and so this week has seen me devouring books at a rate of at least one a day so far this week I have read…

20,000 Leagues Under The Sea – A classic by Jules Verne and I only picked it up after a teacher made a chance comment about Nemo meaning nobody in Latin and sparked my curiosity in the book.

The Divide – A bargain at 50 cents, this novel by Robert Wilson is about a genetically modified man with heightened abilities created as part of a government project and then abandoned, cut forward 25 years and he’s developed a split personality and becoming increasingly more ill, can he be saved?  Of course he can, he is the protagonist of the novel after all although both of his other personalities do ‘die’.

80 Days Around The World – Another Jules Verne book and I read it because I enjoyed 20,000 Leagues and I remember the cartoon series from when I was a kid and it’s a shame I’d seen that as it meant I knew how it already ended.

Little Heroes – A satire of the music industry by Norman Spinrad with the message that Rock and Roll will never die and it’s always going to be powered by drugs, at least that’s the message it seemed to give me as the sweet music only started when the characters started tripping and stuck to the men at Musik Inc.

Paranoia – Written by Joseph Finder and purchased by me for the sum of €2.50 and a thoroughly enjoyable book about an employee being manipulated into the world of industrial espionage and with a wheels within wheels twist ending – if this kind of scenario actually existed you would be paranoid.

Luckily I have a nice big pile of reading material at the moment so I am in no danger of running out and I might even have another go at trying to read the German novel I received for Christmas which I still haven’t really got into, but I’ll only do that if I want to read the dictionary as well.