HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL MY READERS!

The time has just flown and I haven't got around to writing a new post. Although I shall be away for Christmas visiting my daughter and her family in Germany, I still seem to have had a lot of things to buy. I am celebrating New Year with some friends and as I won't be back home until 30th December, I really needed to get a few things organised for that celebration.

I have nearly finished my packing. I am just taking a carry on bag as usual and it is always a bit of a struggle to cram everything in - especially as I get presents for my daughter's kids given to me to take to Germany. Travel light is my motto, and really I can buy almost anything that I might forget to pack and need (like deodorant or a toothbrush) when I get there.  I am looking forward to meeting up with former colleagues, drinking mulled wine at the Frankfurt Christmas market and catching up on all the news, the triumphs and disasters of my grandchildren. What a wonderful time Christmas is!

So a big HAPPY CHRISTMAS to all my readers.  I wish you all a peaceful, joy-filled time.

Christmas Markets in Germany

 I must admit that I love Christmas. I love all the excitement leading up to it. When I lived in Germany I found that Advent, the four week period leading up to Christmas, was one of the most heart-warming seasons I had ever experienced. My local town held their Christmas market on the first weekend in Advent. The local clubs set up stalls selling mulled wine and all kinds of foods: pancakes, hot dogs, waffles. This was hugely important to the clubs in financing their various activities for the coming year. Sometimes their very existence depended on the amount of money they made. There were other stalls, of course, which sold hand crafted Christmas ornaments, knitwear, gloves, scarves.

The weather was usually cold and I remember my feet feeling like blocks of ice. Neighbours and acquaintances were to be met with strolling among the various stalls, noses red from the cold, scarves nearly up to their eyebrows. We would sometimes linger to chat near where chestnuts were being roasted in order to get some warmth from the fire.

If I close my eyes I can get the aroma of mulled wine, gingerbread and cinnamon and I can taste the rösti, hot from the pan, just the thing to warm one up. Rösti is a Swiss dish consisting mainly of potatoes and is absolutely delicious.Originally Swiss farmers in the Bern region ate rösti for breakfast but nowadays it is very popular in Europe. It is easy to make.
Here's the recipe if you'd like to try:
Grate raw potatoes very finely (allow 2 big potatoes per person roughly), sprinkle with salt, melt two generous spoonfuls of butter in a frying pan, add the grated potatoes, press together to form a fritter, and fry on both sides until golden brown. Cut into portions and serve with apple sauce. Delicious. If you like, you can top it with a slice of cheese and pop under the grill to melt.

I will be in Germany this Christmas in time for the last of the Christmas markets. And yes, I will eat rösti and have a mug or two of mulled wine. It all tastes so much nicer under a frosty German sky.

The Smallest Room - Facilitating the Facilities

Many years ago I visited Amsterdam with my daughter, and as I have a (somewhat) weak bladder, I needed to find a toilet, a public one if possible or failing that, to use the facilities in a restaurant or cafe. We ended up having coffee and cake which we didn't want in a cafe where the rest rooms were watched over by a burly lady who ensured that everyone paid 50c to use them. Not that I mind paying for using the toilet, far from it. It is just that so many eateries have those big scary signs which say "for patrons only" and well, when a girl's gotta wee, she's gotta wee somehow or other, even if she doesn't want to buy a coffee which will only make her want to wee again in an hour's time.

I was therefore intrigued to learn what the city of Bremen in North Germany is doing in this regard.  They have a scheme entitled "Nette Toilette" which translated means "nice toilet" and you can use the rest rooms of any restaurant or cafe which has a sticker to this effect in the window. You are not obliged to buy anything. Wow! I wish more cities had this feature, it would save me many a frantic search. Participating restaurants and cafes get paid between €50 and €100 a month for providing this facility. A spokesperson for the city said that Bremen saves around €450,000 per year on the scheme compared to the upkeep of public toilets which were not always as clean as could be desired. From the point of view of the restaurants and cafes, it does direct more traffic to their premises even if not everyone actually sits down for a meal or a coffee. You can even download an app with a map of all the locations!

Click here if you understand German or simply want to view the map of free toilets in Bremen.

Bremen's free toilets (in German)
If you scroll down you will find a map giving the locations of the free toilets Nette Toilette

This would be such a boon to me when I embark on my Christmas shopping next month. It's all psychological, I guess, but the knowledge that there are toilets easily reachable will be one of the main comforts to all that trekking around the shops!

Best Friends Forever

"A man should keep his friendships in constant repair" a quote from Samuel Johnson which is as true today as it was in his time. How do you keep your friendships in repair? You meet someone, find you have a lot in common and see each other regularly. Then they or you move away. After a while telephone calls become less frequent. If you are of my generation, you still write a Christmas card and a letter, long or short, which tells what you have been doing since last year's card.  You'll still be in touch but if you were to meet up there might be awkward silences. Yes, I am guilty of this, too.

I was reminded of this recently when an old friend phoned me. We had shared a flat in London for a few years. I don't keep in touch with her regularly. And yet we chatted as if we had seen each other only yesterday. It's the same with another friend of mine, who I only meet or phone periodically. Yet, we have no difficulty in continuing where we let off in our conversation of last time. Again, she is someone I shared a flat with many years ago.
Under normal circumstances I would never have formed a friendship with either of these two women. We are totally dissimilar. If we had met at a party, we'd have most likely exchanged small talk and moved on. But we were thrown together when we shared a flat. I have shared a flat with many different people. It was inevitable. Flatmates got married, moved away and I got married myself. So what kept these two friendships alive all these years (too many years to admit to it!!) ?  My two friends live in different countries and do not know each other. They probably would not even gel if they were introduced.
I don't really have an explanation. Perhaps it is because we shared a few ups and downs in our lives. Perhaps we resonated, deep down, with each other. Because, with one or two exceptions,  I have not kept up with any of the other flatmates I had. Certainly I have not the same feeling of friendship towards them.
True friendship is not based on similarity, it would appear. Maybe it is based on sincerity, on being interested in one another's happiness. On being there if the other person wants to pour her/his heart out. I added "his" because men can make great friends, too. It is just that I have never shared a flat with a male and thus cannot give any opinion on forming friendships in that context.

In my novels LOVE AT A LATER DATE and LOVE AT CLOSE RANGE, Ginny and Deirdre are close friends although they are totally different from each other in outlook. They have each other's welfare very much at heart. We all know that such friendships are rare and all the more precious for that.
Maybe we should let our friends know how much we care about them once in a while.

Love at Close Range Kindle E-book Promotion

Just a quick heads up to readers. If you haven't read Love at Close Range yet, (the follow up novel to Love at a Later Date), you can get it for free as a Kindle ebook from tomorrow, September 22th to Tuesday September 26th from Amazon
I really enjoyed writing this novel and hope you will enjoy it, too.

 LOVE AT CLOSE RANGE ON AMAZON.COM

I'll be back here soon writing my next post.

Love at First Sight?

How many of us believe in love at first sight? Quite a few, I should think. We see a stranger across a crowded room and feel instant attraction. Is that love at first sight? I think so. It doesn't mean we have found the love of our lives. It just means we have found someone we are very attracted to before we even speak to that person.
Has that happened to you? I've been smitten by someone's looks and the conviction that he also fancied me only to discover when we actually met and got talking, that he wasn't really my kind of guy.
I have also dated guys who were very pleasant but who I felt I would never fall in love with and who either broke up with me or I broke up with them. Later I did meet one or two where I found myself regretting it.
Love is a tricky thing, isn't it? One minute you're over the moon, the next you're wiping a bloody nose because you caught him cheating or discovered he already has a significant other and just wants to add your scalp to his bedstead.
Is there an answer? And if there is, what was the question? The knight in shining armour just doesn't exist and we are all aware of that. Yes, we like to drool over those romantic films and novels, but deep down, we know that Joe next door or Jamie who we're dating is not perfect but he suits us, he's the one. That's because we're not perfect either. If we were perfect or we teamed up with a perfect partner, life would be so dull. We'd go looking for adventure the first chance we'd get.
It might be an idea to remember that the next time we roll our eyes over something. Nobody's perfect, not even Mr. Right.

Simply a Love Story

I am re-reading Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (of course) and enjoying it as usual. It's like visiting old acquaintances - you know what they are going to talk about and how things are with them even if you haven't kept in touch as you should. The Dashwoods are highly entertaining. I think, though, that my favourite in the novel is Sir John Middleton, their landlord. He is such a kind-hearted soul who believes that everybody is kind-hearted too. He is one of Jane Austen's most credible creations and we can only be sorry that there are not more people in the world like him. Marianne Dashwood, indeed, looks down on him as being intellectually her inferior, but some of his warmth and enjoyment of noisy pursuits - round games in the parlour, sailing parties and balls -  would have made her a happier character. Her sister Eleanor was surprised at herself for ever imagining there would be "time for conversation" at Sir John's house.
Mrs. Jennings, too, is portrayed as a nosey, coarse woman, but she later demonstrates her great concern for Marianne, her affection for Eleanor and general kindness to them both.  Another of Jane Austen's realistic characters.
In the edition of the novel which I'm reading, a learned American professor sets out to make the case that Jane Austen was trying to demonstrate some of the thinking of the time. He maintains that at that period there was an ongoing debate about the role played by intellect and by feelings in society. Marianne, the sensitive one, could never do anything by halves and represented those who had to be enthusiastic about everything and who sank into grief when things went wrong. Her sister Eleanor was of the "suffer in silence" type.
With all due respect to this professor, I have to say that I think Jane Austen simply wrote a love story. One or two of her biographers claim that she was the real "Marianne" and her sister Cassandra was best represented by Eleanor as the steady, calm one. Certainly, like all writers, she drew on her experience and like all writers most likely threw in bits of characters she had observed in her circle.
I am not convinced that she was trying to make any kind of statement.

None of this takes away from my enjoyment in reading the novel. Having lived in London, I find the descriptions of the Dashwoods' adventures in that great city highly entertaining. The two-penny post which Marianne used to write to Mr. Willoughbly has been immortalized in literature. And even though I know very well how it is all going to end, I still enjoy reading it and smiling over the various characters depicted there.

Romance is not only for the young

"You are never too old for romance" I believe it was Ingrid Bergmann who made that statement and I agree with her wholeheartedly. Young romance can be magical but it can also be heartbreaking - we have loads of songs and books about that aspect of it but not enough about romance in later years.

I started my novel LOVE AT A LATER DATE with this in mind. I know a number of grandmothers who are young at heart, willing to take a chance on life, curious about new things. I know mothers and grandmothers who are devastated when the children start to grow up and don't need so much shepherding any more. So I asked myself what would happen if a still-young grandmother lost her dependable job and was thrust onto the job market? What would happen if a man she was in love with in the past comes back into her life? Will she choose duty to her daughter and grandchildren over looking for a new career? Will her love from the past still have power over her now all these years later?
It was great fun writing this novel and judging by feedback from my readers - both older and younger than the heroine in the novel - they had great fun reading it. I believe in books that bring a smile to your face. I must admit that I'm not into all that agony and hardship stuff in fiction although I do find autobiographies of people who have surmounted hard times and made peace with themselves very uplifting and encouraging. But life's too short to pick a fiction novel with a grim plot line as weekend reading. Let's have a happy ending that brings a smile to our faces!

A Letter to Jane Austen

Dear Jane Austen,

I have read all your novels and loved them all with just one exception: Northanger Abbey.
I return to them again and again. It's like visiting old friends. Emma Woodhouse and her father who is so careful of his health, Eleanor and Marianne making do on a low income, Fanny Price living in the awesome environs of Mansfield Park. I hardly need mention the lively Elizabeth Bennet and the stuffy Mr. Darcy, not that Mr. Darcy would be everyone's fancy but the telling of his proposal to Elizabeth and her spirited refusal is a treasure among "romance" novels.

You grew up in a world where women had to marry in order to have what was known as a comfortable provision. Or they had to be rich, like Emma Woodhouse. We know that you were not wealthy. Yet you refused to accept the norms of your day and your heroines are all rebels in their own way with the possible exception of Fanny Price. Many readers are impatient with Fanny but you  remained true to the character - given her upbringing and circumstances, it is highly unlikely that Fanny would have been a rebel. That is what makes a talented author, to know the characters you have put on paper and understand how they would react.

Having said all that, I can't tell you how depressing I find it when modern authors "build" on your stories - murders and vampires included! - and books are published on your private life and "wild love affairs".  I have read a collection of your letters many of which concerned domestic matters. You were most entertaining when you described acquaintances or people you had met and were very proud of recognizing an "adultress" on one occasion despite having been told she was not the one. I have read one or two biographies of your life and as far as I can gather, you fell in love with a dashing young man (I feel you built Wickham's character around him) and refused another gentleman's offer. There might have been more romance inbetween but as your sister Cassandra burned all your letters during a bad period of your life, we are never going to find out all the details. And we don't need to. We can admire your work and enjoy all the nuances of your characters (and compare them to people in our circle of acquaintances!).

So, thank you Jane Austen, thank you for the pleasure I get whenever I re-read one of your novels. You are a treasure!

Getting that New Look

Up until recently I didn't spend a lot of time or money on cosmetics. While the kids were growing up I didn't have the spare cash and when they'd left home, I didn't seem to feel the need. Like a lot of moms, I just managed with what I had always been using. Then one day I caught sight of myself in a mirror in a really good light. Wow! My skin looked tired and very very dry. That part of me which was used to "managing" protested a bit but next thing I found myself in a department store looking around the many beauty products at the various counters. I finally settled on Clinique, which I have used in the past.
I must admit I felt a bit awkward. I'm a granny, for goodness sakes, and here I am asking for advice from a young, very glamorous woman as if I were a gawky teenager. Maybe because of my embarrassment (if you could call it that - it does take a lot to embarrass me) I was treated with the utmost courtesy and consideration. The beautician was most charming. She sat me down, looked at my skin which is both dry and red, and listened to what I wanted. She then applied Clinique redness solutions, a daily protective base moisturizer, followed by Clinique redness solutions makeup. To top it off she added a dash of Clinique sunkissed true bronzer pressed powder. I must admit I was a bit dubious about the bronzer. True, I had just returned from a month on the continent visiting my daughter and her family and we did have very hot sunny days, but still I didn't want to look like I was in disguise or something. I am still not too sure about it. Last time I went out with the "girls" one of them asked me if I'd been sunbathing...For evening wear, though, I think the bronzer looks OK.
Of course I forked out much more money than I had ever paid for makeup in the past. But as the slogan says, I suppose I'm worth it. At any rate, by the time I got home, I felt pretty good and wondered why I'd never indulged myself before.
I just might book myself in to one of those beauty treatment places where you get facials and pedicures and lounge around in a robe reading magazines with names like Homes and Gardens and Best Holiday Destinations. Bring. It. On.