The madness of.....jungle bells and kamikazi reindeer.

I know that I'm in danger of becoming even more boring than I normally am, but really!  Saturday was just about the straw that broke the sodding camel's back; sorry camel, it's not your fault and whoever came up with the idiom wants shooting, tomorrow...or we can wait until after your Christmas pantomime gig.

The first part of the morning was pleasantly spent with an old friend, who wanted to visit a village shop, which was a mixture of DIY, gardening and barbecues.  I might add at this point the entire reason for a leisurely drive into deepest Bavaria was to view a particular brand of barbecue called Weber; no doubt named after that distinguished sociologist, Max Weber, a dead man who has continued to rise in my estimation with each passing year of life.  I might also point out that this is was a Saturday morning in December, -5c outside, and a hard frost had settled during the night, which made the German countryside look particularly pretty, especially from inside the car.  But to my delightful friend, when it comes to barbecues, the weather is a mere side issue and of no great importance when planning ahead to spending an enormous amount of time on his huge balcony, happily cooking a herd of cattle.  If nothing else, at such times and in his company, you quite often don't realise it's brass monkey weather, where everything from the nether regions has given up the ghost, withdrawn into the inner sanctum, and gone into hibernation until the daffodils are in full bloom.  I digress slightly, but only because I'm sitting in front of a partially open window, and typing is the easiest way of preventing the fingers from falling off due to severe frostbite.

So having seen the barbecue, which resembled something the size of the Dead Sea, and having watched my friend's eyes widen in future culinary delight, and noticed that the cows had disappeared from the adjoining fields, we made our way home.  As we drove along the autobahn I couldn't help but wonder why anyone should ever buy a decent car, which is capable of putting the willies up the likes of the Jeremy Clarksons of this world, and then drive at a speed a tortoise suffering from constipation would die from out of utter shame, were it to be seen piddling along at such a miserly rate of knots.

I was dropped off close to home, and although it would have been nice to have a Saturday off, I had to work as I'm taking far too long completing a particular task that needs doing.  For the next few hours, with a short break for lunch, I managed to get stuck in and things were looking that much brighter, having abandoned the Internet and turned the phones off I was very productive.  The latter part of the afternoon was marked down for getting the shopping done, and I duly wandered off into town at the appropriate moment.  Knowing full well the town would be groaning with the weight of tourists, due to the Christmas market, I sensibly went the way of the 'wise men', avoiding the ant like infestation, by avoiding the main street into town.

Of course, by avoiding the town centre, I fully expected to avoid the crowds.  Yes, by now it should have become apparent that I'm using the word 'Avoid/ing' a lot, not because I can't find a suitable synonym, but because I thought I'd got avoidance techniques down to a fine art.  However, like all men of greater talent than I possess, which really doesn't say much about men in general, my delusions of avoidance greatness came to an abrupt end with a massive punch in the face; had a horse decided to kick me in the groin it would've hurt far less.

It seems that not only were the tourists out in force, the Franconians had also decided to join them.  The Franconians are a separate branch of the Teutonic family tree, who adopted the name 'France' after Boney's invasion of Germany, who in turn don't have much in the way of fond memories of his time in Germany.  Ok, I'm being slightly flippant here, and taking several tonnes of pinched salt for the sake of artistic licence (those who take their history seriously go to the link above).  However, what can't be escaped is that I live in a beautiful city, Nürnberg, which becomes particularly more gruesome with the arrival of sweaty bodies in their thousands, who are in turn joined by thousands of Franconians out to buy gifts, duly put under the Xmas tree to open on the evening of Christmas Eve, a tradition carried on by Lillibet Windsor and her hoard of kin being as they are of German extraction.  It's one of those strange anomalies that the British hate Europe but are quite happy to have a monarch whose European ties reflect the European Union map.  Maybe the fact that Europe wasn't interested in being a member of the British Empire, or the Commonwealth that followed, is the key to the problem

But I've seriously gone off the rails and need to get back to where I should be; which if you've read this far I've no doubts that you're wondering where the hell you are, or for that matter where the hell the idiot writing this is.  As we can plainly work out I am here, and you are here, so we must be here together.  Anyway, the town was packed solid and it was virtually impossible to move with any great purpose in mind.  For a people who pride themselves on being logical, it beats the hell out of me as to why every Thomas, Andrea and kinder should want to come out at the same time. OOOOOOOOOOO I could whistle on a wallaby's pouch were it not so serious!  I now realise why I quickly abandoned the game of rugby at such a young age, the scrummage is a very annoying and often painful experience.  It also taught me the finer and more subtler forms of the Anglo-Saxon language, which later became even more refined by the French.

After swearing several times that I'll never venture forth into the jungle bells of an insane yuletide city, where  kamikaze reindeer are the norm, and where Franconian men and children wander about wearing Santa hats sporting red flashing stars, unfortunately I will have to.  God I hate life!