Torpedo Entenhausen 1 - FC Porno Villa 0

Mark Twain wrote

My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years.

The major reason for the thirty years are the genders of inanimate objects. If you don't know them, even the most simple sentence has a 2/3 chance of being wrong. My attempts to describe the matches of Torpedo Entenhausen in German are often confounded by a combination of alcohol and der/die/das confusion. Yesterday I made a small step towards learning German: the word for a football pitch is masculine, der Fussballplatz. I found this out because, as manager, I needed to know whether the pitch was waterlogged or not. During a couple of calls to find and pass on this information I was corrected.

"So, the pitch. Is it playable?"
"Yes, HE is playable"

So, one noun down, a few thousand to go, and things are fine until summer comes and we play on grass. A grass pitch is also called a 'Feld', which is neutral. Yet it is still a pitch, which is still masculine. I have been learning German for nigh on twenty years, and hold little hope of mastering it in another ten.

Well anyway, the pitch (male) was playable, and the defence (female, but consisting of four males) of Torpedo held firm. We shot the winning goal (neutral) in the second half (female). I wonder how long you have to write like this until insanity (male) sets in.

Kickerfreunde 3 - Torpedo Entenhausen 7

I have progressed to player-manager of Torpedo Entenhausen. This week I was only the manager, as I hurt my foot the day before the match. Manager me fined myself a week's wages, which player me felt was rather unfair but financially irrelevant. It's times like this that the days and nights playing Championship Manager '93 don't seem wasted.

I don't like to take too much credit for the victory, but I did persuade everyone to turn up, on time, at the right ground. I also brought along the kit and two balls to warm up with. As I've never classed organization as one of my strength's, I'm quietly pleased with the start to the 2009 season.

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I see that the Bank of England have started printing money. It seems to be time to turn paper money into solid assets. I bought all the juggling equipment I need last week, and a new pair of football boots. I could stock up on tinned food. One of the comments below the story suggests buying a wheelbarrow to push your money around in when hyperinflation sets in. It would also be a good way of moving tinned food around. While I wait for financial meltdown I could put it on my balcony and fill it with plants. A wheelbarrow it is then.

Diddle der der, Diddle der der, Diddle der der Dee

A while ago, I wrote that being woken by a telephone makes me nervous. Between 2001 and 2005 a telephone ringing at unsocial hours was almost certainly a call from the control room of the Hermes particle-physics experiment, saying that something was wrong with a souped-up Stern-Gerlach experiment, and that I should stop sleeping and start fixing it. At first it was an exciting challenge, as Stern-Gerlach experiments are fun things. But fun things can become tiresome if you're forced to do them in the middle of a good night's sleep, and by 2005 I was exhausted, nervous, and depressed. The phone calls weren't the only reason, but they didn't help. I dreaded the sound of the phone. I knew that a call would lead to stress, meetings and being made to feel useless. I imagined destroying the phone with a blunt object, or sinking it deep into the river Elbe, weighed down with a couple of stones, and hearing the ringtone fade away...

Now logically, my fear of a ringing phone should have ended by 2006. Nobody rang me any more about Stern-Gerlach devices, and I knew this, but if my sleep was disturbed by a phone ringing, I woke up feeling panicky and nervous. This may or may not have something to do with Pavlov's dogs.

This week I have been trying to change my thought process. When my phone rings I say to myself, "I hope it is a friend wanting to do something, which will be good. I will be hopeful and answer the phone". This morning I was woken by my phone ringing. For two seconds I felt sad and negative, and a little nervous. The move to grab the phone was a slightly panicky motion. I then remembered to say that it would probably be a friend, and felt a little better. It was a friend, and there was no need to feel nervous.