Life Lessons from the past few weeks

• Crochet is really tricky if you attempt it immediately after applying body oil.

• Juggling does not get any easier if you fail to take the balls out of their tube from time to time.

• It is inadvisable to succumb to a rush of enthusiasm for juggling if you've just returned from a première, full of bubbly.

• I need to hoover (vacuum) under the bed.

• Improving my German is doing weird things to my French. When nattering away in the latter, I now find that while the words come fairly easily, they are curving themselves automatically into German phrase and sentence constructions. The result is an occasional frustrating brain-crash, and a pianist wondering slightly bemusedly whether I was German...

• A short holiday with friends in a chaotic family house overflowing with children, animals, noise and hospitality definitely counts as a change that's as good as a rest.

• But goodness, my flat is nice and quiet!

• It is possible to cycle slowly and infinitely carefully through the icy hard-packed snow and not come to grief (although double-layered gloves are a must otherwise your fingers freeze).

• It is also possible to skid and crash spectacularly on the grit that's left over once the snow has thawed. Nice serious Germans picking you up, however, may fail to appreciate the irony and therefore why you're laughing like a hyaena. Good thing I have no reputation to lose!

The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it*

My fledgelings have flown the nest; they've dared to spread their wings and fly (damn, now I'll have Summertime knocking around my head for the foreseeable...) and I wish them all the very best in the world.

The mother, mind, I had to boot off the balcony. I'm very sorry, pigeon, but you've raised one lot successfully, and I need to keep the Hausmeister's wife sweet.

A very definite change of season, here; I spent yesterday cycling and walking around the woods, and whilst the heat has not yet quite gone from the sun, I felt a tang in the air, the occasional whiff of smoke, and in the breathless silence ripe nuts were falling from the trees. Leaves are starting to change colour, the world turns...

There's even talk of starting rehearsals for the Offenbach this week! Hooray! (Although I am - curious? - to see what the staging will be - the make-up artist I talked to while she was painting and powdering and primping me for my photo shoot grinned and whispered - verrückt. This basically means totally insane, and considering how many German stagings are bonkers, you'd have thought they'd got used to it by now, so for her to grin like that... hmm! Let's hope that (a) it's crazy enough to be funny and (b) I get to hang on to enough clothing not to scare the audience to death...)

* Marcus Aurelius. What??? I binge-read the thrillers in English I fished out from the library, so the Meditations it is.

A sweet disorder in the dress...

...seems to be pretty unavoidable, actually, if one combines a penchant for flowing, ground-trailing skirts and riding a bike. Well, either a little disorder, or (which has not YET happened, but I can see how it might) a full-scale magnificent crash off the bike in a welter of velvet and greasy chains.

Thus far I've avoided the issue as far as possible by knotting up my skirts on front and wearing bicycle leggings underneath. The trouble is that somehow it seems indecent to oik up or unknot my skirts in public, and wearing only the cycle leggings I feel naked! (I do NOT. DO. trousers.)

This is only going to get worse, I feel; a kind lady pointed out to me today in the market, after I'd gone to buy flowers and vegetables, that my dress was knotted around my thighs and looked a little strange... Bless her! I'd cycled in and completely forgotten to normalise myself.

At least, however, it just feels like a practical problem. The people here, thank goodness, don't seem to give a damn what anyone wears. Sure, most of them wear jeans and T-shirts all the time, as far as I can see, but they don't bat an eyelid at whatever I've chosen to wear, which is gloriously restful. I indulged in a daytrip to Wiesbaden last week, because I'd heard it was gorgeous; well, my main impression was, it felt exactly like one of those hyper-snob Italian spa towns (what is it about spa towns? something in the water, maybe...) (incidentally, the photo is of the Schiller statue in front of the opera house). Lots of extremely thin ladies in skinny white jeans, eyeing me disdainfully due to the lack of designer clothes and superabundance of flesh! Luckily I managed to confuse them with brilliant Italian earrings and matching hair flower... but I have to admit, I felt so much better coming back here!

Today the theatre had a Theaterfest, where the doors were flung open to the public. There was a costume fashion show, guided tours, scene painting for children, brilliant jazz concerts, enough unexpected sunshine to *really* enjoy beer and sausages in the open air, a wonderful opera highlights concert... oh, I had fun! Most of all, though, I appreciated the way the town and the theatre interreacted. The entertainments were all free. The costume show I attended was packed to the roof, and I was next to several entranced children, being instructed by their parents or grandparents, and evidently close to getting hooked on this idiotic art. People wandered in and out. Catching up with some singer friends later, they were assailed on all sides by friendly supporters. Evidently the town is proud of, and feels part of, its theatre. (I need to do a bit of thinking as to how one could extend this to, say, England, but it's a nice example to follow.)

The clothing dilemma can only get more complicated as the seasons close in; but I have to admit I'm actually enjoying it! The worst options are endurable; all I need now is a waterproof cape, and I'm Superwoman!

Oh, good lord, I bought a bike! I reckon I must have been completely undone by the lovely fresh air here, and by having walked yesterday along the banks of the Rhine for a good distance, then longing to go further, and being overtaken by hordes of cyclists of all ages and degrees of fitness. I was then consumed by the urge to lay my paws on one of these marvels; luckily I had sniffed out a second-hand-books-and-bric-a-brac place, and knew just where to go.

En route, I stopped off to buy a lock at a cycle shop (having failed at the Proper Cycle-Enthusiasts' Shop, where either I asked for completely the wrong item, or they innately disdained the very idea of locks - I mean, what would you need a lock for when you have taken your beloved cycle to bed with you?). I spent a bit more than the minimum, meaning I now have a lock which requires me to wrestle with it as with a python, so tightly and securely is it coiled. Evidently part of the fitness thing, balancing the excessive use of the muscles of the lower limbs in cycling...

Actually I'd previously wandered through Lidl, wondering if they might have a cycle lock. They didn't, but had all manner of wonders relating to cycling. I sniggered at the padded cycle leggings* and strolled on, undeterred (but with a jar of vegetables which I couldn't find in my dictionary and therefore couldn't resist).

Having snagged my prize from the sweet, gangly, absent-minded bookseller, I wheeled it cautiously through the streets. A wave of ohmygodwhathaveyoudoneNOW? swept through me - after all, it has been a couple of decades (aargh) since I last rode a bike. I had one at Cambridge - and in my three years there I had three accidents and it got stolen four times, despite me having painted it in lurid and revolting shades of fluorescent green and yellow. The last time, I thought, they can damn well have it. (Mother was relieved, I think; one less thing to cart back when I graduated.)

However the trepidation was soon overtaken by a ferocious desire to hop on and conquer the world. It is TRUE! Once you've learned to ride a bike, the knowledge never leaves your body. Emboldened, I swept past the flat and on to the river bank I'd walked down before. Along I whooshed, (OK well snailed a bit at first, and got overtaken by pensioners and very small children, but I soon remembered how to change up gears) and felt a glorious sense of freedom. (I would say, surely there is no better way to see the countryside, but I actually still think that the best way is on horseback. However common sense prevails and I am sticking with a bike for the moment.)

I cycled about 5K downriver (or maybe upriver - not quite sure yet!) before turning, and realising that whilst the cycling motion came naturally, I'd unfortunately forgotten how to change down gears. The way back felt rather longer...** This moment is recorded for posterity in the photo above. Please note the bike is not abandoned, simply resting attractively against the railings whilst I contemplated the distance home through the viewfinder.

Well, that's it. I own a cycle and have worn flat shoes all day. Never mind the dratted language, I am now Officially German.

* now on To-Buy list, given state of behind; I thought I'd learned my lesson vis-à-vis saddle sores last time I pinched a friend's horse and headed off into the countryside for the afternoon, only to be forced to limp the last couple of miles back to the stable leading said horse by the reins. It would appear not.

** although much enlivened by my first glass of local wine - see next entry!