drowning in Berlin

the boyfriend just reached the big three oh. oh as in 'oh my god, i feel so old!' which of course is quite the wrong thing to say to me, who has 10 years on him.
anyway him indoors had always wanted to go to Berlin, so did my usual 'business / pleasure' thing and arranged to go and check out a swanky hotel there, and treated him to his flight as part of his pressie (a word i loathe, by the way, and which i have banned from any publication i am involved with).
so, off we trotted. Air Berlin - lovely. they even gave us a free drink and a sandwich. imagine!
arrived to a sunnyish capital, checked our bags into swankarama hotel (rocco forte's new gaff, very nice too) and off we went to check out our neighbourhood.
anyway. you know sometimes you visit a new city and you feel 'there's something going on here if only i knew to look'? well, as friends of him indoors used to live there we did actually know where to look but we both spent the weekend feeling a bit 'is this it?'
don't get me wrong, we had a lovely break but we were both underwhelmed. i was expecting crisp blue skies, frost and BowieIggy lookalikes in every smoke filled bar but all i got was drizzle and sausages.
our Saturday morning was exciting. Mr D was all in a guidebook tizzy when i arrived back from my organic facial (well, i was WORKING, I'd earned it!). 'I've found a shop that sells Bernard Wilhem, Anne Demelmeister, Ute Pelier, it sounds great' (ok, i know i've spelt those wrong, so shoot me).
unfortunately, it was a cab drive away. if you ever find yourself out of a job can i suggest becoming a Berlin cabbie? you don't need to have a clue about where anything is, an inability to read maps is also fine, as are terrible driving skills, but that's a whole other blog (based, btw on 5 shocking cab experiences).
so, we get a cab. 20 minutes later we arrive at the shop. in the pouring rain.
and Mr was right, it stocks all of those labels and more and is indeed great IF YOU ARE A WOMAN!
'Do you speak English' 'yes'
'Do you sell menswear' 'no'
'Do you know anywhere round here that sells designer mens clothes? 'no'
back into another cab.
how we laughed.

tempted...

from what i can gather my grandparents had a tricky sexual relationship. grandad was an ever-ready, eager beaver, hot blooded male while my grandma would have given queen victoria a run for her money in the prudy stakes. he couldn't get enough, for her once a year was a bit too often.
for gran, 'the deed' was something you did with the lights out, under the sheets and duress (which i do believe is an example of a zeugma, if you don't mind) and commited as infrequently as is humanly possible – in the case of my grandparents i know this to be at least three, as that's the number of offspring they produced.
whenever sex was mentioned in public or an innuendo dolled out over Sunday lunch - as they frequently were: our home life was one long carry on movie, Nan would roll her eyes and mutter something about it being 'dirty' or the person making the crude remark being a 'dirty bugger'.
which makes her choice of perfume all the more bizarre. for years and years whenever i asked my gran what she would like for christmas she would always request the same thing: a bottle of Just Musk (which is so 70s sounding it has just reminded me of that Pat Coombes advert for Tweed which concluded with her declaring 'shouldn't be allowed!'). So, a bottle of Just Musk would be bought, and for the next year Nan would wear it as her daily smell. she would run around the house with a hoover (i've never known anyone do so much house work) leaving a musky trail behind her, while my grandad would sit ogling page 3 of a certain newspapers for hours, steam of frustration almost coming out of his ears.
I am laying in bed (Saturday morning, no work, no gym, cup of coffee, radio 4, heaven) reading Men's Health and I have just discovered that musk, (even synthetic – it no longer uses secretions from antlers or wherever it used to come from) is a 'heady aphrodisiac, sure to signal sexual interest and stimulate the same in others'.
if only someone had told my gran this years ago she could have saved herself so many headaches!
if only she'd asked for Charlie instead our Sunday lunches might actually have been pleasant affairs!

if you ask me...

'what's wrong with your eyes?' enquired my mate loudly yesterday, seconds after we met. at the time we were standing in a queue for a cashpoint so the five people in front of us were also soon wondering what was wrong with my eyes.
'nothing,' i replied.
'they are really red and bloodshot,' blurted my friend, possibly louder than before (he'd been in the pub for a couple of hours before meeting me and had lost control of his volume button!).
my eyes, i pointed out, are always this bloodshot. i'd also spent the whole day in front of my computer and i wear contact lenses, neither of which are conducive to baby-white eyes (have you ever noticed how white the whites of babies' eyes are? spooky).
the exchange reminded me of the time when i was walking down The Strand when i was pounced upon by a blousy market researcher. 'sorry, i'm in a real rush, i can't… ' i explained with a smile. a smile that soon evaporated as the market researcher said 'oh no, i didn't want to ask you anything, i just wanted to see if you were alright! you're very pale!'
you couldn't make it up!

fill your boots

i went to a party yesterday in a house that cost £50 million. it's true what they say about money not buying taste but it does mean you can be vulgar without worrying about claustrophobia. the chandeliers looked like they came from Argos on steroids. my entire house would have fitted twice over in the living room the party was held in (one of five). mikel gorbachov was the guest speaker - which explained the spy-film like security on the door. he spoke (not in English, which he never learnt - bigger fish to fry, but in Russian, which was brilliantly translated by his interpreter) about his humble beginnings and rise to power.
i'd never been so close (3 ft approx) to such an important figure before and i have to say he had a real presence about him. he was imposing in the nicest possible way and seemed very warm. i liked him (i'm sure he'd sleep more soundly if he knew).
my party date had booked herself into a local hotel for the night - quite a comedown from the party venue, it must be said - her room would have fitted into my wardrobe!
when we checked her in the woman at reception went through the normal hotel stuff (and looked at me like i was a punter after an hourly rate!) before declaring 'it's an eat as much as you can' breakfast.
she meant a serve-yourself buffet but i loved the idea of an early morning challenge. as if they'd arranged some kind of pre-work competition to stuff as many croissants and cold bits of toast down you as you could that would get guests rushing downstairs to compete in.
then i had a cross-group (i work for a multinational) conference about the internet and thought about how best to get noticed in anonymous meetings and decided that in future, the first time i looked around the table at my fellow meeters i'd go boss eyed so that everyone would be left wondering who the person with the really bad squint was and who i was looking at.
you get your thrills where you can in January

yes, i know they do Mr Larkin

not only does my father have a facebook profile (and he doesn't even put crap posts on my wall) but my mum has now taken to sending my crude and lewd jokes by text! her last one was about a woman shitting herself over the price of a diamond!
what is the world coming too.

city slickers

when a man is tired of london, they say, he is tired of life. what, i wonder, would they say about a man who was bored of Berlin. ok, i put my hands up – that man is me. i've just come back from a weekend in the German capital and all i can say is booooooooooooooooooooring. no offence meant, you understand. had a lovely afternoon wandering around looking at some nice edgy/interesting boutiques and homewares shops, and had a brilliant 5-star hotel experience (including a great blackhead busting facial) but saturday and sunday were total washouts. ok, so no city is particularly great in the rain but i just didn't get it. sometimes you go to a city and get the feeling there are great things going on, if only you knew where to look for them. in Berlin i felt like everyone had gone on holiday without telling us where!
i did like the currywurst, though.

tree's company

the bad news is that my cleaner has had a little mishap and broken a stone bird i lugged all the way back from New Zealand. i only noticed it was chipped because she had cannily hidden it behind a box, drawing a damn sight more attention to it than if she'd left it in its normal place.
the good news is that the huge tree that a friend gave me, which, despite friend's estimate that the tree was about my height turned out to be 11 ft tall (either i have the height version of body dysmorphia or she needs a new pair of glasses), and which languished in the back garden for a week before i got a chance to plant it, has started to flower, in January, as promised.
my little heart gave a little skip yesterday when i noticed.