When a ski season goes wrong

Dear Lady walking back from the supermarket,

It is no longer the case that women of a certain age are condemned to a blue rinse and cardigans. I applaud the fact that you have chosen to demonstrate your youthful heart through your choice of fashion.

Far be it from me to suggest that your calf length leggins and wedge heels would be more suited to your granddaughter. However, might I respectfully suggest that when said leggins tell the world about your need for the security of tena lady, you are not presenting the hoped for image.

All the best.

Yesterday for my birthday all the people at work, literally all of them, have been giving me three kisses (it's a Swiss thing) to congratulate me. Until this year I've had handshakes.

Unless you know about the Swiss, I can't impress on you how big a deal this is. In the three years I've been here, most of the physical displays of affection that I've received from aquaintances have happened today. I have only just started giving Bruno's mum three kisses. I still shake his dad's hand.

If I get any more assimilated I'm going to have to start cleaning my windows and being scared of immigrants.

Bruno's been hot on the trail of ingratiation into our new street:

While borrowing a ladder from the painter and decorator down the road:
"So do you still use this at your age?"

While at a drinks thing for Franziska and Robert next door, on being introduced to Robert's first wife (as if the situation wasn't already a minefield of etiquette):
"Hi I'm Bruno. Are you Franziska's mother?"

I have been doing more Quaker reading recently, which coupled with spending more than four hours in a Catholic church with my grandmother over Easter (latin, choir singing requiems, incense - you got your money's worth), has plunged me back into theological meltdown over the impending sign up.

However, I have told myself that this is not to happen, and am a woman of my word, so have suitably repressed all thoughts of higher nature to the point that late last night my brain did this:

When I was little, I read or heard somewhere that when you went to hell, the devil would know what your worst fears were, and that's what would happen there. In response, I would lie in bed at night struggling not to let any phobia/fear type thoughts into my head. The logic was that if I didn't think about them, the devil wouldn't know what they were, and when I got to hell, I'd just say, "yeah, eating cake, that really freaks me out. terrified. ooh, get those fondant fancies away, no, no."

Back to the present, and hell not being a big part of Quaker thinking, nor Catholic thinking since John Paul's reassessment of the matter, I relived the magic of childhood by wondering if the same technique would work if I was taken to Guantanemo Bay. I know, don't ask. Fairly safe in the knowledge that George W. couldn't read my thoughts, I suddenly remembered having once written in my blog about my now-not-to-be-mentioned phobia.

This morning I'm still slightly having to resist going back and deleting anything that doesn't involve brown paper packaging wrapped up with string.

(possible tip for future Catholic happiness: next Easter, don't go to the Good Friday sombre mass to look at Jesus on the cross under a cloth because of MY SINS, show your face for Saturday Vigils with candle waving where he's still in a bad way because of MY SINS, and then miss the happy Easter Sunday mass where everyone's thrilled to bits because he got up again).

How to get through security at Heathrow:

Step one: Have a glorious weekend in London. Don't go to the greek tutorial you came for, instead go to Primark and do your best to clean them out of all their shoddy but affordable stock.

Step two: Sit on tiny suitcase to shut. At Heathrow, become indignant at suggestion that you will either have to put your handbag into your suitcase or check the suitcase in. Fail to pursuade security staff that a handbag doesn't count as one piece of hand luggage.

Step three: Open suitcase. Remove clothes.

Step four: Insert handbag.

Step five: Put on all the clothes complete with tags, including the t-shirts and two jumpers that you bought for Bruno.

Step six: Waddle through the metal detector.

Step seven: Remove excess clothing and restore packing to original arrangement.