Summer thoughts

Almost kitsch, but for at least half the year Eiscafé Venezia is a Schwabing institution. From the sitooterie (Scottish for where one is invited to 'sit outside') I can enjoy my evening beer and espresso and watch the passing crowd at the busy Kurfürstenplatz road junction. When I am lucky enough to find cushions to make those hard blue plastic chairs comfortable (for an old man singularly lacking in posterior upholstery of my own) the view of the now empty and abandoned Café Schwabing, reminding me that this summer something is missing.

Considering that for now almost twelve months what has also been missing is a reliable income I find myself surprisingly... happy!

If translation and voiceover assignments have been few and far between, it has meant that I have more time for my writing. Even if my three novels available as Kindle editions seem to be invisible to buyers, I persist in spending days in the agreeable company of my 'novel inhabiting' people. There are worse ways of whiling away time on my laptop or with my notebook when sitting in the shade either at Venezia or at Scheidegger.

Funnily enough, even the arcane demands of German bureaucracy involved in my application for Altersgrundversorgung (state financial support for the needy aged) has had positive consequences. With three different organs of state requiring from me obscure documents proving all kinds of strange things, I was obliged to delve deeply into my accumulated archives. And it was this which gave me the idea of undertaking a thorough 'spring cleaning'. The result, a little flat which now seems more spacious, much more tidy and welcoming.

Even Jessi feels now able to visit what has frankly been... for far too long... a bit of a dump! And such visits are another reason that I am currently a happy old man.