SUSIE MALLETT

My visitors today

Showing posts with label Carnival. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Carnival. Show all posts

Wednesday, 22 February 2012

Life is busy

Jolly Professor again, 
inventing new and more intricate games to test his skills

Blogging 

Yesterday evening I put the finishing touches to a posting that I then published on my other site, the conductive upbringing blog:


I posted it over there as I was going to post something here too about the German carnival atmosphere, both locally and throughout the entire country. I wanted to describe the doughnut-eating Bavarians and the marathon lunchtime bake by the only pancake-eating Brit in Boxdorf.  

I was going to write about being accosted by a clown at the tram-stop who gave me a doughnut, a voucher for the chemist shop he was advertising and a lei in Bavarian colours that, I am proud to say, I wore all the way to work.

Instead of writing about carnival I wrote the conductive blog that I posted over on my other blog and I also prepared a paper to post elsewhere.

Then I ran out of time

I did quite well really with what I did achieve, considering that I returned home from my work at eight o’clock in the evening. I decided that the festive blog can be written at the same time next year when carnival, doughnuts and Pancake Day come round again, followed as usual by a time of fasting.

Fasching really does not seem topical anymore!

As Lent began today I had to fight the traditionalists amongst the German staff to be allowed to keep the carnival streamers up in the conductive group for the duration of the half-term holiday. The children had requested a party atmosphere.

Last-minute changes

Political subjects are always used as themes for decorating the carnival floats, from those at the smallest village processions to the huge festivities in Mainz, Cologne and Dusseldorf, the heart of carnival fever in Rhineland.

Over the last couple of days I read in media from all around the world that last-minute creations were being made in order to incorporate the resignation of Germany’s President, Mr Wulff, in the anonymous, masked, political statements of Rose Monday and Shrove Tuesday. Some of them can be read about here:





A repeat performance

Just like it always was in my Mum’s kitchen, so it was in Boxdorf today. Pancakes were on the menu for a second day running, at special request from the Magyars!! Now that is praise indeed.

A never-ending saga

I have done with pancake-baking for the year now, but I do not think that the media is finished with the story about Germany’s already resigned and the yet-to-be-appointed Presidents. That long story gis sure to go on  until 18 March but without all the fun of carnival to accompany it;


You never know, perhaps it will still be topical enough to get a mention in next year’s carnival creations!


Wednesday, 15 February 2012

Bits-in-between for two conductors…

 …things conductors get up to at lunchtime!

It is Fasching time again, when everyone dresses up!

A colleague needed a carnival-costume for tomorrow’s party in the Kindergarten, so who did she turn to for a hasty creation? To me of course , the artist amongst us.

I arrived at work today, having spent the morning getting the latest book ready for the printers, just in time to coincide with my friend’s lunch-break. I had been pre-warned an hour earlier of my task so both of us were equipped with bags filled with old, grey clothes. We had everything that we could possibly need, from an all-in-one sleeping outfit, to bandanas, socks and vests, all in various shades of grey.
My friend wanted to be a big, grey bunny with big lopping ears!

I, she who has everything, delved deep into my dressing-up box and fished out a rabbit’s nose and whiskers that I believe first saw carnival-action in the spina-bifida group at the Petö Institute, in February 1990. It got a quick wash and was as good as new, it even still has its original elastic.

We set to work, my colleague by telling me what she wanted and I by quickly stitching the pieces of material together. With the all-in-one suit turned inside-out to hide the logos, with the short socks sewn onto the arms of a T-shirt then stuffed with cardboard for the ears, bandanas and the rest of the T-shirt and a pair of underpants made into head-gear, and two teeth cut out of paper, we were soon finished.

I used only six pins, all I had, and pale, blue cotton for sewing, also all I had, and, as I only used scissors once to cut the arms off the T-shirt, almost all the clothes can be returned to their original use. Even the pom-pom used for the tail can be sewn back on the bobble-hat it was taken from!

Time

As you can see in the photograph we ended up with quite a respectable big, grey rabbit and it did not cost us a penny! It cost us just a little bit of time, but not much, sixty minutes each at the most.

What it gave us in return was a lovely hour together having fun in our time off.