Now if there's one thing I do like, it's a party.
On Saturday a friend of mine turned thirty, and in the true German tradition he had a shindig.
However, there's a slight twist in the German observance of this very special day.
The custom is that any male who isn't married by the age of thirty must, on his thirtieth birthday, sweep the steps of the (aptly named) Rathaus, which is the town hall in English.
The ladies don't get away with it either; they have to clean the brasses on the town hall doors, but that's nearly always a more low key affair.
Anyway, I digress...
So, where this was once seen as a mark of shame by the older generation, it has now turned into a celebration of bachelorhood and freedom. While the newly turned thirty year old sweeps the steps, sometimes dressed in a suitable fancy dress, (on Saturday he was dressed in an inflatable Sumo wrestler suit), his friends and family drink beer and schnapps, laugh at him and in general have a good time.
Some carry on drinking throughout the day and up to the evening "do", which is a tremendous feat of alcoholic endurance I can tell you.
Because all parties in Germany are paid for by the host, the party on Saturday was all free; I just had to turn up. There was beer on tap, more spirits than a Customs and Excise Christmas party and a LOT of drunken Germans.
It was a great night which ended around six the next morning.

So why am I telling you all about this?
What has this to do with my writing? Has it any literary connection what so ever?
Well, the Rathaus is next to the public library, and I went there on Saturday to change my books.
Tenuous?
Yes, but a great day.

Reg :-) (hic!)

Just knocked off.
I'm cream crackered now. Nightshift does tend to take it out of you.
Right I'm off to bed now, I'll tell you about my weekend another time, it was WILD !!!

OK, maybe not wild, but it was good.

Night night.
Reg :-)

Well I received an answer for my query as to whether I leave a space after a full stop, comma or question mark; and boy do I feel stoopid.
They replied,
"There is always a space after a full stop, just not two, as some people use."

Aha… I see now, though I wonder who would want to put two spaces after a full stop?
Where's the sense in that?

Whatever, I'll rewrite it all, WITH a space after every punctuation mark, and just hope rejections-ville ain't the next stop.
What is a bit unsettling is the fact that I had already sent them a short story, with this strange punctuation spacing that I'd picked up on incorporated into it. However, they were gracious enough to reject me without mentioning my faux pas.
They probably thought, "What a divvy".
And they'd be right.

Tee is getting to grips with Frank Delaney now. We had a brief email flurry and then it was all quiet on the western front, so I take it she's going for gold on it.

It's my first practise with "The Band" tonight, which will be interesting because the chap who has my drums at the moment is in Hamburg all week.
At the moment I'm a drummer, sans drums… so I'm not expecting a very productive evening. However, it's better if I turn up to tell them personally what has happened, instead of just not going which would send the wrong message, thinks I.

And with that, I bid you all a fond fondue.
…Fondue.
Reg :-)

At the moment I'm waiting for a reply from a magazine about their formatting requirements.
They specifically put down that under no circumstances should I put a space behind a full stop.
It looks weird, but they want it like that so that's how I've done it.
However, they then write to reiterate that they want no unnecessary spacing after punctuation marks, so does that mean after a comma or question mark too? Or after closing a bracket or inverted commas? Am I being dull here?
Anyway, I decided to ask and I now await eagerly their answer.

It sounds silly and to my untrained, amateurish eye it looks off, somehow.
However, they require that the script be in Courier, and so it doesn't look THAT odd after a while.

Anyway, Liverpool meets Chelski again! For the fifth year in a row we battle it out with Abramovitch's boys in blue in the Champion's League.
My German mates are gutted because Bayern have to face up to the mighty Barcelona, which in one foul swoop puts an end to Bayern's run of luck in regards to facing weaker opponents. A fact that I took great relish in conveying to my downhearted German buddies… he he he.

Anyway, gonna take a wall apart now and build it up again…why is my spare time plagued with such unnecessary Sisyphean-like jobs?

Well, life's like that I guess…

Reg :-)

When I said the, "Hello Johnny" story was experimental, I didn't expect it to be so experimental that my mate Ads couldn't understand it!!
DOH !!!
He read it, said it was a good read and that it kept him glued to the pages, but he couldn't understand why a doctor in the story was calling him Johnny when the hero/victim's name was Gary… which meant he completely missed the point.
Ah well, he said it was a good read… just a pity the point didn't get across.
Whatever, I changed it, sent it to Badger-Bonce Winterbottom to read and he understood it straight away.
Thank Tarby for that.

So…
What else is happening in my little world?
Nothing.
I'm still on short time, achieving nothing at home besides writing short stories that nobody understands and getting successfully on my wife's wick.

So with that happy thought, I'll leave you to it.
Oh, I've joined a band. Just for fun, defo no serious musical aspirations here; I just want to play the drums again.
Let's see where that all ends, eh?
Hopefully not in tears…
Adieu,
Reg :-)