Sandlander: #2,727

Circumstantial context

As noted in my previous post, despite my degraded mobility and thanks to the stout beechwood cane that Jessi and Mickey came up with me, on Friday 27th October I was able to get out of my flat for a very special occasion.

It was a good time for Jessi and Tino to be in Munich, with Hamburg and Berlin lashed by Storm Herwart, flooding streets, felling trees and sadly costing lives.

I had just had great news! A translation assignment originally mooted in 2015, was finally confirmed. This means that my year 2017 will end without existential Angst.

Then there was the most extraordinary coincidence. When we learned that Nicholas and his family would be visiting Munich, we had to think of a suitable venue for a reunion dinner. No hostelry in Schwabing-West had meant so much to me as Café Schwabing. For almost ten years it was my second home, in the days when I was earning a decent living, it was my dining room every evening. It was a real wrench when there was a change of tenant in 2015. In its next manifestation as Brasserie Schwabing, the restaurant was over-ambitious, with high prices and pretensions of exclusivity. As a result, the clientele evaporated, the policy having driven off the bohemians who had previously ensure that the place was always full. Another change of tenant was inevitable. As Neuhauser, with an Italian cuisine, the restaurant re-opened two days before our planned family dinner! And it would again be full, with not only former clients happy to return but also waiters and waitresses from the 'good ol' days' (one caught in the snap below).

A further positive augury was the fact that on the eve of the visit from the Londoners I had finished (after eighteen months) the first full draft of my seventh novel.

Familial context

There have never, ever been eight Thomsons gathered at any table! Nick did a grand job directing traffic so that without budging from my place at the head of the table I could have quality time with each of the visitors.

The young 'uns were a delight. Ten-year-old Darcy had found the interactive dance installation in the Rolls-Royce section of the BMW World permanent exhibition addictive. Her brother, Harry, two years older, impressed me with his talent for drawing and painting. We bonded, I think, when he showed me on his phone a colourful canvas inspired by a famous artist whose name he'd forgotten. I identified the influence of Friedensreich Hundertwasser, earning the boy's respect, I like to think.

Then it was Barnaby's turn. Was I shocked to find that the fourteen-year-old and his father are now both taller than I am? Yes! I'd not realized that I had shrunk so much.

Barnaby is hyper-intelligent, well informed in a wide variety of different areas, and I truly hope he decides that he can have an email correspondence with his grandfather. He attends a very progressive school, rated the twelfth best comprehensive in England. With luck, in a couple of years he'll be jumping with joy and celebrating his exam results. In the meantime, one of the computers in his room is chugging along, mining Bitcoins! Okay, 'nuff said!

I listened fascinated as Mickey and Fabienne discussed motherhood. Bringing up three kids is not for the faint-hearted!

The next day Mickey, Jessi and Tino (more or less an honorary Thomson by now) played tour guide for the visitors. The Hofbräuhaus was surely the ideal place for Barnaby and Harry to sample their very first beers!