He was taking his daughter Tamara to see some twee children's film about a parrot (no, not Monty Python's dead parrot) which she, young as she was at the time, really wanted to see. They arrived at the cinema in good time, bought the tickets and wandered over to screen number whatever.

They waited outside for the cleaners to finish in the auditorium after the previous showing and it dawned on Andreas that they were alone. He looked at the ticket. He looked at his watch. He looked at the door with "Screen #..." painted on it. He looked at the poster. Yes, they were in the right place in the right cinema at the right time, but they were, apparently, the only people who wanted to see the film.

Eventually the usher let them in. They had the whole auditorium to themselves, but still Tamara conscientiously checked the tickets and found their row and their seats, and that's where they sat.

The lights dimmed, the curtains opened and the screen flickered into life. About halfway through the adverts, the door opened and another man and his little daughter entered. Andreas looked, and sure enough, they were looking for their row and their seats.

You have to picture the scene. These two people came in to find the auditorium almost completely empty, except for two other people, and they spent time and effort looking for the right seats. Having found them, they sat in them... directly behind Andreas and Tamara. They were two of only four people there, and for the whole of the film they couldn't see the screen.

John said, "That's really German, that is."

A lot of my time has been taken up with failing to catch up on all sorts of backlogs that just keep appearing out of nowhere. I honestly thought I'd have some time during the holidays to catch up, but it seems that all of my clients think that, because it's now the school holidays in Berlin, I have more time for them. That would be fine, if it wasn't for the fact that they all think that. Not just one or two. All off them.

Work has nevertheless been progressing on &rew extra, which can be found at http://andrewbossom.crosswinds.net, and is intended to be a resource for web designers looking to add that extra professional touch to their web pages. It's now in "publishable-but-still-under-construction" form, so it's online, but more is to be added over the next few weeks. Once that is done, I can finish the update for this site.

The big news, though, is that my good friend Heike has finally had her baby. Those who are familiar with the background to this story will know why this is important for me, and why I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. To those who aren't, I'm not about to broadcast it all to the world at large in deference to Heike's feelings (which is why Heike hasn't featured much in this blog in the first place), but don't jump to conclusions: the child isn't mine, if that's what you're thinking.

Anyhow, if you have advice or questions relating to web design, that board is for you. I shall in due course be linking to it from &rew extra...

Anyway...

A moment of irony today. I was in the church office when the telephone rang. Nothing unusual in that, except that at exactly the moment I lifted the receiver something got stuck in my throat and I suffered a coughing fit. The bizarre conversation went like this:

Me: Hello (cough cough splutter), &rew here.
Caller: Hello, this is the Charlottenburg Health Authority...
Me: (choke splutter cough)
Caller: ...may I speak to Mrs Müller?
Me: I'm sorry (splutter retch cough), I'm afraid you've got the wrong (hack cough cough)... the wrong (choke cough)...
Caller: Oh, you mean this isn't three two seven 0 two...
Me: No, this is three two four (cough hack hack splutter choke)...
Caller: Oh, sorry to disturb you. Goodbye.

It was, of course, Chang Won's fault, which is probably unfair because he always gets the blame. Truculant and difficult only son of my friend Kim, Chang Won doesn't like eating out for lunch, because it means he can't watch Pokémon. So, as usual, Kim caved in and ordered pizza instead.

The company was called "Hallo Pizza", about right for a cheap chain of pizza delivery services. For me she ordered a Hallo Pizza Poncho (chicken and sweetcorn), and for herself a Hallo Pizza Hawaii. Chang Won (who's 12) wanted a Hallo Kids Pizza.

"You don't want a children's pizza, do you?" implored Kim. Well of course, Chang Won knows full well that, when you order any "kids'" menu from a fast food chain, you usually get a little plastic toy or some other novelty. Chang Won wanted the novelty. So he wanted a Hallo Kids Pizza.

It took a while, after Kim had caved in (again), for her to communicate to her son the fact that a Hallo Kids Pizza came in three different varieties. I could almost hear the lad taking the order wishing he'd stayed on as a cleaner at McDonald's. Chang Won eventually went for Ham and Pineapple.

A little later the pizzas arrived. The Hallo Kids Ham And Pineapple Pizza came in a bag, because there was also the novelty, which, as it turned out, consisted of two Kinder Surprise eggs.

Was this, you may be asking, worth the extra effort of ordering a Hallo Kids Ham And Pineapple Pizza? That point, perhaps, is debateable. But as far as Chang Won was concerned, he felt he'd been tricked. I mean, I don't know if you've ever seen a three-and-a-half-inch pizza, but I can tell you it's a pathetic sight...

Personal note:

Hello to Xenia and "babybear" (they know who they are). I occasionally get e-mails from long-lost friends, but yesterday I got two (I think I count babybear as a long-lost friend, it's certainly a long time since I've seen her, although we did only know each other for a relatively short time).

Spam is bad enough. Spam that launches a browser window and connects to a website, frankly, sucks. And spam that is does all that and is sent to me every hour on the hour is unheard of, expensive, annoying and unnecessary.

All of which is apropros of absoultely nothing at all, since it doesn't at the moment affect me personally. Yet. Whether the new government will manage to get anything done more quickly than the last one remains to be seen.

On a more personal note, I can confirm that this the first year I have ever suffered from any form of hay fever whatsoever. Let it be known that in this, the 31st year of my life, I have for the first time ever been subjected to dry throats, streaming eyes and blocked sinuses as a result of large amounts of airborne pollen in the, er, air. I have narrowed down the cause of my affliction to the blossoms on the hedge between our courtyard here and the car hire company next door, which is a pain because one thing I was really looking forward to this year was sitting out in the yard with friends and neighbours in the sun, drinking wine or coffee (depending).

Paul himself will be going back to Britain tomorrow -- at the moment, for reasons connected with visa requirements, he is officially resident in the UK -- and won't be back for another month, so we made a night of it. I won about six games in a row...

It was when we were paying, and Paul said to the Thai waitress that both he and Peter were leaving, when she looked at me and said, "But you'll be staying, won't you?" I said I was, but I couldn't play pool on my own. "Well," she said, brightening up, "you could play with me."

The thing about this particular waitress is that she does have several outstanding points in her favour -- two very obvious ones spring to mind, which were accentuated by a rather snugly-fitting top. The thought of her stretching over the pool table to play a shot was almost too much to bear. "But you won't have time," I objected. "You'll be working."

"Well, phone first to check," she said, handing me a book of matches with the salon's telephone number on it.

"You've pulled," said Paul as we left.