Stanstead - an attempted escape

  Stansted, England, United Kingdom
Sunday, June 1, 2008

pink pen scrawl

I hope I am not speaking too soon when I say that Bonn is a lot safer than El Fasher IDP camp in Darfur.  But perhaps you think this is challenge enough for someone like me.  It serves me right for my shameless accounts of life as some adrenaline junkie who specialises in war zones and living dangerously (not true of course - I DO enjoy the periodic toe dipping into danger, but I am largely content with sleepy English Sundays filed with tea, fresh walks in the countryside and a great deal of quiet, safe and unadventurous fireside relaxation).
 
But as I WAS mentally preparing myself to cavort with Sudan, Germany has to be just a little disappointing (ok - I DID retract my views on Abu Dhabi, so I know what could happen).  So how can I live on the edge in Bonn?    Perhaps I could walk around backwards?  Speak in tongues?  Swear a lot?  Punch people?  I have never even BEEN to Bonn, so I am hugely prejudging its dullness, but I will almost feel let down if it is not full of civil servants with highly polished brown shoes and neat hairdos.  I have done some homework - I know it doesn't even have its own airport.  And I have my Holiday German book, purchased in 1998 as I was about to give birth in an Austrian hospital.    Ich habe Schmerzen.  It didn't help much.
 
Things haven't run that smoothly today.  I started the day off by turning the fridge freezer upside down.  Apparently it is an ancient remedy for fridge hic-cups.  I can't WAIT to get home to see if it has worked.  Secondly, it rained.  This scuppered plans to sand down a shelf unit, but as I should have been thinking about Germany, probably all too well.  Thirdly BT have completely messed up my broadband installation and I still have no internet connection, not to mention a mobile signal.  Pretty good for a Head of Communications about to blog about a Media Conference....Fourthly, once I got my head around the going to Germany thing (leaving it as late as possible to focus on said trip) I drove away from the house feeling "on my way".  My iPod kindly shuffled me some suitable Nirvana, Linkin Park and the inspiring Green Day performance at Milton Keynes to get me in the mood (although someone threw Gwen Steffani in there to try and knock me off balance). But when I reached Stanstead, feeling all independent and buoyed on in a strangely anarchic fashion I bumped into someone I knew!  My friend from Abu Dhabi, in fact.  I tried to tell him, he was in the WRONG BLOG, but he insisted he was on his way to the very place I would love to be on my way to instead of Bonn (cards.....close....chest....you get the picture).  Then my laptop ran out of juice and I was reduced to writing this in pink pen on the back of "Communications for Stabilisation in Southern Afghanistan" (which I should have been reading).....
 
...more tales from the small town in days to come....