Cold Cutter

There are some advantages to being old. One can rant pretty freely without having to risk job and career, in fact, the children probably welcome such written evidence when they go to court to get the old man locked away as being a danger to society.

Another one is that there are official government warnings put out in the kind of weather we are now having that tell us to stay indoors, put our feet up, drink lots (no guidelines on what, so anything goes) and generally relax.

I thought that in the good old colonial tradition I would hit the teapot but was reminded that since Saturday 20:01 (1 minute after supermarkets closed until Monday) I have no milk available. The effort of going to the local milk filling station was too much so I substituted other liquids. Seemed to work fine.

But this afternoon the yearning got too strong and I went to Ottobeuren to replenish my supply. The Bliped road surface milling machine was parked next to the supermarket and reminded me of the poor people who have spent the weekend in traffic jams the length and breadth of Europe at one of those motorway roadworks where machines seem to be abandoned all over the place and not a person to be seen.  The company Kutter (engl.: Cutter) are a large medium sized Memmingen based family company founded in 1925 and very big in the commercial building business in southern and eastern Germany but also throughout Germany in the road surfacing sector.

Friday was the last day of school in Bavaria and so the weekend a real hotspot for travel. Having criticised the UK's Stanstead airport for incompetence just a day or two ago, I was dismayed to see that one of Munich's Airport Terminals was brought to a standstill with 30,000 passengers badly delayed, hundreds of flights cancelled, camp beds set out all over the terminal and general anguish. Seemingly an "innocent" passenger was allowed through the security check without being properly scanned and when the mistake was found, the woman could not be traced on the air side of the security barriers. All the emergency procedures were put into immediate force, closing down the Terminal for hours. One ought to be thankful that the system was robust enough to spot the human error but it must have been miserable for all those missing flights. One forgets about all the possible consequences - what do you do if you had booked a transatlantic cruise from Southampton and you missed the flight?

Back home, I jumped in the pool, thankful I didn't have to work alongside an asphalt laying machine and by the time I got out, the idea of a cool beer instead of a cup of tea was more appealing. I am in the holiday mood. The jungle that I call the vegetable plot is exploding in beans, peas, carrots and also wonderful weeds but that will have to wait a day or two. Brother-in-law Gerhard, had tried convincing me yesterday that the roots of the thousands of young fresh sorrel plants that had appeared would make wonderful tea that didn't need milk and the leaves a vitamin bomb in a salad.

Despite the German government order for us OAPs to lay back and relax, I do still need a small rant which came as I sat next to the pool drinking beer with a straw and a pop-up cocktail umbrella waiting for dusk: an e-mail appeared from GOV.UK at 16:31, titled "UK nationals in the EU; essential information." and headlining "Information on the rights and status of UK nationals living and travelling in the EU.

There was not a single bit of meaningful information as it only repeated the same drivel that has been coming for months. So long as the UK is in the EU, British citizens retain their rights to work and travel in the EU .....and then all the nonsense about the so-called elusive Implementation period after 30th March 2019 which nobody has yet set in concrete. The UK is not one tiny step further than in June 2016.

It's all pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking that totally ignores the reality of "no deal". I hope Mrs May is enjoying her holiday in Italy. She probably missed a connecting flight from Stanstead to undertake a transatlantic cruise to meet her friend in the US and do some golfing. I do have a somewhat leaky inflatable boat available for her should she wish to seek asylum in Libya. I will personally deliver it, even taking into account the jams on the Brenner Pass for roadworks and immigration checks and I will even throw in the now somewhat soggy cocktail parasol that fell in the pool when I choked on her email.

PS I understand Mrs May is rather a fan of hill climbing in Switzerland but no doubt she headed her own advice in the email - the poor UK nationals in the EFTA/EEA countries (Norway, Iceland, Lichtenstein and Switzerland) are not covered by any "in the waiting wing" agreements. Quote "Officials from EEA EFTA States and the UK met on 12th February 2018 .... and all parties affirmed their desire to secure the sattus and protect the rights of UK nationals"