Just do it

What to write about when there's nothing to write about? Well, that's obvious: write about nothing.

Much as I've enjoyed NaBloPoMo, I am getting somewhat weary of this posting-every-day lark, and would have allowed myself an evening off (as it were) but for the promise of prizes looming only five days ahead. Go ahead, call me "mercenary."

G's birthday party this evening, the poor old sod has turned 49 (ho ho ho, won't happen to me for another seven months). It's amazing to think that we met twenty-four years ago, we had adjacent rooms in the students' residence. I've promised to turn up early and help in the kitchen, chopping and stirring and whatnot.

As I was going into the Bauernmarkthalle this morning, I registered a familiar face coming out, but couldn't for the life of me think who it was. He looked at me and obviously (by his expression) registered my face as familiar, but just as obviously, he too couldn't place me; since there were other shoppers coming & going, pushing behind us both, we couldn't stop to work it out. So we walked on and I did my shopping (since you asked: ground fair-trade coffee, Polish sausage, smoked ham, croissants), and as I was on the way out I realized who it was: the soon to be ex-director of the Staatsgalerie. Funny that he should be shopping in my neighbourhood, I've never seen him around here before.

That's what I love about small towns (and Stuttgart has the soul of a small town despite its half-million inhabitants), one is always bumping into people one knows - and it is possible to know some real bigwigs. I'd never have met the director of the National Gallery when I lived in London, not in a hundred years of attending exhibition openings (and it would have taken fifty years to arrive at the stage of being invited to openings).

Regina (the city where my sister lives) has the same character, it's remained a country town despite being the provincial capitol and having a quarter-million population. As we (Sis, BIL, kids, Udge) went for morning coffee at a local place, the Minister of Finance was leaving and stopped BIL to chat with him for a while; as we left, the Vice-Chancellor of the university was coming in and stopped Sis to talk to her. They'd both been driving their own (quite ordinary) cars, there were no bodyguards or paparazzi or any of that crap. (Sis and BIL aren't politicians or university honchos, they're just ordinary civilians - but they live in the right neighbourhood and their kids go to the right schools.)

OK that's your lot, I've got to shower & go.

Twenty-five down, five to go.