thursday 2 – came back from meeting at gbr with also the italians and then a meal with peter afterwards in the augustiner brauhaus on kaufingerstr near his hotel

katie was just going to bed and the girls sang the beatles’ “lullaby” to her
they were in a boisterous mood, singing songs and harmonising beautifully

friday 3 – round to dr’s this time the replacement GP dr keefer, since my normal one was away, liked here approach to the problem, she structured it to follow these lines of enquiry:
ENT (HNO) – eliminated more or less since i was getting more or less no benefit from the flopsy bunny exercise had been given
orthopaedics – this was the next stage, so i went along and got another exercise to do 5x a day after waking up, to loosen and stretch the neck/head part of spine, plus keep it warm
eye doctor

interesting pete opts for an infection (labyrynthitis?) and katie for stress as the cause, and interestingly the dr keefer mentioned stress on the way out as giving the dizziness symptom, which i had maybe not perceived of before when stressed

saw an interesting article in latest version of the heft, chrismon.de

saturday 4 – listening to saturday live, Toyah Wilcox is on Inheritance tracks talking about how her marriage develops with robert fripp, how different they are and the björk song, “human behaviour” after the sensitivity of “bridge over troubled water” – her experience reminded me of the time when i was in hospital at about 10 years old to have my little toes straightened and had requested this on the hospital radio request show

sunday 5, madrid – early start and took shuttle to hotel, met up with amman and then later sajin for the athletico match against valencia, which they won easily at 3 v 0 with 2 goals from griezmann

met up at the sol with some others and went to the restaurant in the old part which hauke had gotten recommended, almendro 13 – served by old women who were very sweet when asking for no carne

monday 6, madrid – start of presentation course, went for meal at the diversia with our team and hauke’s

tuesday 7, madrid – getting tougher on the course, meal at the hotel

wednesday 8, madrid – again a tough day and not sure wanted to go out or take a rest from all the stress, decided to go out and we ended up at the best, for vegetarians at least, choice there was with a side plate and main dish arriving together, mine was goats cheese on a slim baguette and a lovely pasta

barradepintxos.com

both teams were there and there was a chance to catch the end of the barcelona v paris st germain game, where they took 3 goal chances in the last 10 minutes of the match to overtake and go through on aggregate, due to the french giving up, the ref being a bit generous and some driving play from barca

thursday 9, madrid – tough day and losing it a bit, having to do some complex excel work to combine stacked bar and bar chart:

Step-by-step tutorial on creating clustered stacked column bar charts (for free)

went through presentation and trying to remember numbers

meal in a persian restaurant opposite al campo supermarket complex

friday 10, madrid – big day of the exec presentation and ours got picked apart, anyways all over, absolutely tired out and glad to be going home

had been suffering from dizzy spells all week when getting in and out of bed

saturday 11 – waking up very tired and dizzy again, had woken up and fed lizzie, then gone back to sleep
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/10/bernie-sanders-interview-trump-democratic-party-resistance
nice comments on why he is a progressive, not a liberal

listening to saturday live, Corinne Bailey Rae is on Inheritance tracks with another björk song, “there’s more to life than this”
went into look at sabs, who was amazingly back, because I’d gotten up to feed lizzie and hadn’t noticed her, was emotional looking at her so still and beautiful asleep and thinking about the quote from the book am reading:

then Soul Music with the story of the song:
“The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”, written by Ewan MacColl for Peggy Seeger, made famous by Roberta Flack.

sunday 12 – after church went to hypo kunstgalerie on theatinerstr. for an exhibition on “Spaniens Goldene Zeit”, basically the 17th century covering the slow decline of the spanish empire, the state went bankrupt four times, lost a lot of its territory, including portugal, was never invaded and it was a flourishing time for the arts, with painters like el greco and diego velazquez

monday 13 – working at home, still very tired from the week away

tuesday 14 – working at gbr and guan giving presentation on new stuff

wednesday 15 – second day at gbr working with tom and we get a lot cleared up, including access to the test device

good time at guitar lesson, we are 7 when everyone is there and 6 this evening
we’re learning a difficult piece from mozart – landlerische tanz in 3 parts – chords, picking and melody, amazing michael got us all to run through each doing one of the parts all together, meant complete focus for this lesson on this piece

thursday 16 – tommi let me in around 9.30 at gbr, head still swimming a bit from the dizziness i still have, as if the earth moves for me!

still not up to going swimming, so spend the evening upstairs but with the girls doing stuff, don’t really get to see much of them

friday 17 – working at home, went for gentle jog around west park

band practice and the last for papa and sharon who are moving to micc, as katie mentions more dynamic, young, but also more controlling, fundamental

saturday 18 – got up 6am fed lizzie and listened to clare balding’s rambling on a literature walk with members of the jane austen society on a walk in east hampshire

got down to some work in preparation for the week ahead

katie made linsentopf for tea, she had gone to see the film “moonlight”

we sit around with eve, after guitar out and singing john denver’s raven’s child and ancient rhymes, we all have a nice sing song to edelweiss, then a couple of beatles songs but chords were removed from chordie, then abba’s slipping thru my fingers, our last summer, supertrouper and thank you for the music

sunday 19 – listening to point of view and tom shakespeare talks about the derivation of nostalgia from the greek, meaning “old pain” or “our pain”, explains why sentimentality and looking back can be painful and since the memories are clouded, it is likely bound to be painful, either with the pain from that time or the pain that we can’t go back to that time

leading service with christina, feeling better about the lagerungsschwindel, although am less affected when getting out of bed, it is still not quite gone

had a rosinenschnecke from rewe which tasted quite good, more currants than raisins and the dough was crunchy, interesting change

finished off some work and planning for trip to hamburg and manchester

saw that beverley craven was performing in settle when john and i are there, so got us two tickets

packed all stuff from office, then go upstairs to finish off packing, finish the book “night train to lisbon” by pascal mercier

yesterday she was desperate to sing yesterday and let it be, which we sing now as she stretched out by the radiator onto katie

monday 20, hamburg – getting started on testing with joerg and holger
went to schach cafe in evening with joerg
http://www.schachcafe-hamburg.de/
near to sbahn rubenkamp, the longer sbahn to work

tuesday 21, hamburg – saw andi from way back in the H1 days
went to oktober cafe in evening with joerg
http://www.cafeoktober.de/Barmbek/index.php
near to sbahn barmbek

wednesday 22, hamburg – carrying on to try and start getting test results, but not quite there yet
went swimming for 40mins near hotel then meal at station

thursday 23, hamburg – finally getting first test results
went swimming again for 40mins near hotel then meal at station

friday 24, hamburg and clitheroe – some more decent test results, then flight to blighty, rush through airport a little since passport is after security check which throws a lot of folk, including a group of roadhouse crew hells angels barging through at the last minute near the gate, to also make the same flight

got super car, renault captur, nice and high-up, roomy, nonetheless compact, listened to radio 4

saturday 25, clitheroe/skipton – went for light run then to tescos for some milk for breakfast – had set the washing running and it had walked out of its housing, so rickety was the installation and levelling

geoff turned up and made an offer for the work, knocking off 400 or so, still slightly under 8k for the work, have to consider whether to accept

went over to see mum and then on to see auntie jean for tea

sunday 26, clitheroe/skipton – got up and working out application for clarence estate, then doing some cleaning up ready for taking to recycling next time

spent 20mins at manor house with mabel but she was not very responsive, until mentioning “poor phil”

went over to spend half a day with mum, got there before tea and stayed watching a few programs with her on tv including the program which shows how things are made, this week was about the brompton bike – how it is built at 18 different stations on the production line and brook’s leather saddles – how british leather is thicker due to the inclement weather the cows have to endure

got back after briefly visiting margaret and james – their plan to visit Malham Cove was turned into a visit to yeadon tarn to look at the airport – watching planes leave to dream destinations!

monday 27, hamburg – got up at 4am uk time which was a challenge as the clock’s went forward, but did it in good time and listened more or less to the same stuff on the radio which we listen to every day from 6am so was thinking of the girls getting up, it helped not having to fill the car up – choosing half a tank has two advantages according to what was explained – no need to full up and if it is needed, you only pay the reduced price; disadvantage is only that one might overpay if one doesn’t use half a tank, which was the case for me, i did less than 200 miles with 23 litres as half a tank, so about 10% overpaying, but worth it for the time saved

the easyjet flight over was wonderfully quiet – initially sitting near to someone who followed me all the way to hamburg sengelmannstr. and to the same office block!

got some lunch at edeka to eat at the office

some more testing work in the afternoon then meal at cafe october with anatolii, peter and holger, peter pranging the wing of his car ever so slightly on a low placed post with awful difficulty finding a parking place, he was most troubled thereafter, car kaputt now! when we looked at it in the cold light of day, was amazed at just how little had been done, few tiny surface scratches which would polish out and a scratch along the sill hardly visible – the metal had absorbed so much

tuesday 28, hamburg – jet off about lunchtime and get home in time for tea

wednesday 29 – tough guitar lesson, all 7 of us there and splitting the music into melody, picking and chords for the 3 country dances by mozart, challenging and really struggling but monica was helpful and encouraging

went along to the elternstammtisch to support dorothea and generally find out what was going on
most are concerned about choices for the seminars, some overbooked
the class is described as “lieb aber laut”, which is not bad i suppose, chatting with eve later she confirmed this was the general view
walking back dorothea got me going about brexit and this meant a distured sleep

thursday 30 – went out to garching office and met up with paul and dan for lunch, was nice being early and having space and time to chat

went through some open points with the akamai peerings, which was interesting to understand

had hoped to go to swimming but bottled it in the end and was nice to sit around and listen to girls after supper – in actual fact had tried to get a CD working for Eve to study listening on french, but in the end it needed a different CD and workbook to be bought

they often leave us out, casually concentrating just on one another’s opinions and arguments

friday 31 – get up and go for first interview about getting german citizenship / second passport:
https://www.muenchen.de/rathaus/Stadtverwaltung/Kreisverwaltungsreferat/Staatsangehoerigkeit–Einbuergerung/Einbuergerungsstelle.html
einburgerungs test at gasteig
https://www.einbuergerungstest-online.eu/fragen/10/

working at home, and due to katie’s worries generally about sabs, decided to confront her
she was very open and said actually that she wanted us to chat with her when we have worries, be more open with her, very constructive and brought out my worries about the school magazine, which was biggest concern – took away action to load Scribus software on the windows machine

katie and i have pizza for evening meal, then we have late start to band practice and joseph plays bass, well the chester electric guitar stuck into the bass amp, since we don’t have a bass

went well, 3 good songs