If I played and believed in the "if" game, I would believe that I wouldn't have ended up where I am now - after all, I would have behaved differently throughout my life - and would certainly not have come across Flame-of-my Life at all, ever.
   My life has had its share of ups and downs. I can now say that I wouldn't want to have missed a single person or event of all those that I have come across, even if at the time the pain - either physical or mental - seemed too much to bear.
   The previous couple of entries also deal with the extraordinary coincidence of rediscovering Flame of my Life. Looking back on my life it now seems inevitable that we should have met again when we did. These last two months have been jam-packed with life for both of us. He tells me he has actually started putting on weight. This can only be good. He is taller than me, but at the moment only weighs two thirds of the kilos I carry. While I may look quite comfy, I am not vastly overweight.
   His illness is the only shadow - but then without this shadow we wouldn't, perhaps, appreciate each other as much. He certainly deals with it admirably. Well, he is used to it; it's only me who is still struggling with seeing him so reduced in body. Luckily, his mind is as sharp as ever and, unluckily, he still knows how to apply its edge to my teenage behaviour from all those years ago. I fear he may be having the memory of an elephant.
   He'll be in the UK next week and I am now having to decide whether I want to let him see my true colours - ie the chaotic person that I am - or whether I should make a huge effort and reorganise my home next week. I think, I am coming down in favour of true colours; after all, I have been stressing my chaos quite frequently and I do not want to disappoint him.
   Although I think him quite perfect, deep deep down I still wish he were technologically a bit more advanced - he doesn't have a computer and I can't introduce him to LingQ. We'll have to work on that one!

Flame of my life and I had a wonderful time during my second flying visit to him within a month. Where do you draw the line between remembered youthful exuberance and having to face the reality of our years? We both are fairly certain that we want to spend our time together, but how? The practicalities of our separate lives lead only to circular discussions. Which country would provide better/affordable care should the need arise? Flame of my life is seriously ill and I have to face the fact that he may not make the 100 years he’s aiming for. But then, my family is not exactly known for its longevity. I don’t want to miss the growing up of either of my grandchildren, whether in the UK or in Germany; he has his own large family across northern Germany. Over the Christmas period I spoke a number of times with his eldest daughter on the phone. She now expects me to write to her and to call her regularly. This time round I met his lovely youngest daughter who is all for our getting together because it seems to do him the world of good. I was inspected by wife no 3, who is 16 years younger than I am. I don’t know whether I passed muster. There are still two children to go with whom I have had no contact so far. His dog has adopted me wholeheartedly, to the extent that she slept next to my bed wafting lots of doggy smells at me. Such devotion! My German granddaughter wants to meet him or, rather, she wants to meet his dog. She keeps asking “Where is Oma’s friend’s dog? Why?” Flame of my life has agreed to visit me here in England in February. Will the culture shock cure him of any ill-considered infatuation? We’ll see.

Did LingQ.com help me find romance? Well, perhaps not directly, but I can trace my current state of affairs back to the beginning of my writing adventures. It all started when….

It all started with Serge, my wonderful French tutor, encouraging me to write. Then came jolanda with the link to Claude’s Polyglot Project, followed by Vera asking why I didn’t submit an article for the book that was going to be published online and in paperback format.

In true SanneT fashion I left it until the last minute, dashed off my contribution and was delighted to have it accepted. Since then I have written contributions for various of the LingQ libraries, with the help of Berta, Marianne and Serge.

This year an old admirer – and I mean old - sent me some money to spend on whatever I like. I chose a writing Masterclass at The Guardian. Absolutely fascinating! They encouraged me to write the story of my life which I did until I hit a wall: complete writer’s block! My activity on LingQ had also come to a stillstand, because I spent so much time not writing.

Then I decided to go beyond the scope of the book and look at some additional material. I found plenty on the internet, together with the telephone number of a guy in Germany whose name sounded very familiar. To cut a long story short: yes, he was the Andy of my youth and his wife was the former girlfriend of a former boyfriend of mine. Andy and I exchanged a few emails and we spoke on the phone. In the third or fourth e-mail he sent me the phone number of the flame of my life (this was when I was sweet sixteen (and very sweet!)).

It took me a whole 30 minutes to gather up the courage to ring Germany. Luckily ‘flame of my life’ answered straightaway. Who knows whether I would have found the guts to try again? Well, dear Reader, he was so happy to hear from me. Apparently, he had spent the last fortnight thinking of me…

So as not to appear impulsive, I booked a flight for three weeks away. Wrong decision, the waiting time was excruciatingly difficult. We were like teenies: texting, calling, writing letters. My phone bill was astronomic. As time has it, it did pass in the end.

He picked me up from the airport – he lives in the furthest corner of Germany where there is nothing but flat land and poplar- or birch-lined roads. I had such a shock on seeing him. I knew we both had aged (after all, 50 years do leave their mark), but he looked so unwell. Apparently, he had a very turbulent life and his various wives and riches melted away. But once we had started talking and laughing, time and illness just fell away. He still has the same eyes he had when I fell head over heel for him all those decades ago. He claims the same about me. All in all we had three attempts to get together when we were young, none worked out. Either, I was with someone else (putative husbands no. 1 or 2) or he was just getting married or remarried. In any case, we had the worst timing ever.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder: our not seeing each other for 30 odd years – last sighting was in 1980 - has finally led to great fondness. I have booked my next flight over already and he is polishing up his English. I wonder whether I should point him in LingQ.com’s direction?

Three things I have learnt:

Do not eat your favourite childhood food - and expect it to hold its promise of sublime taste - when your childhood is no longer just around the corner.

Do not argue with your daughter when you are on a longer visit (whether it's wise to argue during a brief visit depends on you and your daughter's ability to live with short-term irritation).

Do not streamline your house, flat, apartment or room if you have a sedentary life style. Reaching for the stapler may be the only exercise you get on certain days. Would it not make much more sense to put said stapler high up on a bookcase at the other end of the house or room?  For example I no longer have a pair of scissors in every room.  No, not to prevent myself from hacking off my grey locks in despair, but so that I have to get up to get them and thus get at least a modicum of exercise. (Even if it is irritating to have to tear yourself away from playing solitaire in order to play 'hunt the scissors'.)

Just in case I haven't rammed this down your throat yet: here is my entry to the LingQ.com Writing Contest.

What are the most important rewards of learning another language?
When I talk to others about the rewarding aspects of learning another language, they often say it helped them at work and enabled them to make friends more easily when travelling. For me, the rewards changed gradually over the years. Living and learning English in the UK liberated me from the stigma of  having been unable to get it into my head at school.  Being able to talk freely and fluently was so amazing. First it enabled me to communicate with my daughter's nursery, then with her little friends and in turn with their parents. Gradually my social network grew. I went out to work, I was able to study and to teach. Learning English opened up its literature, its culture. Being able to write well was one of the greatest pleasures.

Strictly speaking, this is not a letter from my cottage but rather from my daughter's in Germany. Hers is looking much more like a cottage, albeit one on a grand scale, than my little home in England. Here you see wooden beams, balconies and whitewash on the outside, wonky stairs worn down by centuries of use inside, and hear lots of creaking wood settling down in the cool of the evening. The trampling overhead of hordes of paying guests does distract slightly from the charm, but the view from the window is stunning and makes up for any noise pollution.

This is such a sleepy little place that you would think all is well here. But, alas, humans are human and accidents will happen. The saddest one involved a young local who was an expert climber and a roofer, to boot. One night, under whatever influence, he decided to prove to his sweetheart that he could do his job even in total darkness. He stepped  out onto a church roof in need of repair. Those were the last steps he ever took. He is now the star of the regional wheelchair basketball championships.

Another incident had enormous economic consequences.  A well-known hotel was expanding onto a second site, not too far from the main buildings.  The site for the new building was still being used as their main power plant - they generated a lot of their own energy by using a huge water wheel. Alongside all the electric equipment they also stored whatever material was used on a building site. 

It was night, the end of a well-cherished, day-long, annual celebration: Father's Day. Father's Day in Germany means a day away from the family, lots of drinks with mates and a terrible hangover the next day. It was a surprisingly warm night and the beer was still flowing freely, had in fact been flowing since before 9 o'clock in the morning. Suddenly, a fierce white light pierced the night sky:  an explosion at the building site ripped across the meadow and shook the marquees and beer tents where the noise of the music and shouted conversations nearly drowned out the noise of gas cylinders clanking together high up in the air. 

The fire alarm was raised immediately.  There was only one snag.  The members of the local voluntary fire brigade had all been celebrating for more than 12 hours and were now right next door still dousing their inner fires.  They really weren't in the best of shape.  To their credit, though, it has to be said that they did the best they could.  Some were perhaps even more daring in the face of such danger than usual, and all that without their uniforms and equipment (they were too drunk to drive to get it). It took 20 minutes for the other brigades to arrive, but our local heroes had by then managed to isolate the remaining gas cylinders. Most of the power plant, however, was destroyed: some of it by water damage. It was very dark there for a while.

I don't know whether this has anything to do with the remote location, but they do love a good noise here. Weddings in the village used to start off with friends of the groom standing outside his house with their hunting rifles and shooting off volley after volley at the crack of dawn to make sure he'd make it to church later in the morning.  All this was stopped a couple of years ago, because a tourist alerted the police in the regional capital to a shoot-out taking place next door.

Recently a violent thunderstorm at night coupled with strong winds folded huge pine and linden and chestnut trees like so many matchsticks. The emergency services were inundated with calls.  Remember, the local fire crews are all manned by volunteers:  one of them pressed the wrong button by mistake and in addition to all the terror of a fierce thunderstorm in the mountains, the valley suddenly was flooded with the insistent call of an air raid siren at 10 o'clock at night!  (Everyone here knows the sound, it gets tested weekly at 10 am on a Wednesday. Germany hasn't seen an air raid since before my birth, but it is always good to be prepared!)

I must finish, I have to fly now! Bye!  (You can download the audio for this letter (Letter no 17) and all the others on LingQ. You can find the collection here:    http://www.lingq.com/learn/en/store/49463/ )

This month's focus was firmly on writing and recording for Beginners 1 and 2, although I also took the time for a few Intermediate 'letters'. All the texts and mp3 files can be found in the English library at LingQ.com. I hope they are useful for your studies and that you have fun listening to them. Do let me know!

Ah, that's interesting 
19 short texts for Beginner 1 about all sorts of things. I have added word-for-word translation into German plus some lesson notes.
http://www.lingq.com/learn/en/store/58937

Is there a doctor in the house?
12 lessons for Beginner 2 - normal and informal texts of a not very serious medical order.
http://www.lingq.com/learn/en/store/58759

And now..., silly spellings and pertinent pronunciation
8 lessons for Beginner 2 and Intermediate with lots of examples of peculiar spellings and heaps of phrasal verbs!
http://www.lingq.com/learn/en/store/59597
 
Letters from my cottage in England
6 new lessons added to this collection for Intermediate I and II and anyone else who enjoys reading other people's mad correspondence.
http://www.lingq.com/learn/en/store/49463

 

I have just finished some therapeutic washing up. Knowing how assured you come across at work, I don't know whether you'll fully understand what I am going to write about, but it will strike a chord with anyone who is prone to insecurities. (If you were to think along the lines of a Swiss cheese riddled with holes, you could compare me to the Emmental of insecurities.)

Over the years I have learnt to question my thoughts whenever I feel the slightest inkling of anxiety ahead. The questions Is this thought true? Can I ever be absolutely sure that it is true? have become quite automatic tools. But when even the most diligent application of Byron Katie's work doesn't yield any results and the mouse is busy nibbling at the cheese, I have other things to turn to. My favourite one, both as a preventative measure and as a nearly-immediate cure, is a hug from somebody, preferably my grandchildren.

For those times when I am on my own, I find that more than doing exercise or watching snooker or tennis, it is reading, writing and washing up that enable me to switch off, writing and washing up, especially. Yes, washing up by hand. 

Having indulged ....

If you'd like to read the rest and hear the lot, do join me on LingQ.com - the link to the collection is 
http://www.lingq.com/learn/en/store/49463/  and you can find this last 'Letter from my cottage in England'' here:
http://www.lingq.com/learn/en/store/49463/130629/buy/  Don't worry about the 'buy' bit, using the LingQ library is free. (As any good library should be!)

My free time is nearly over and I am glad that I used it to write lots of new material for English learners. Actually, I had great fun thinking up this slightly mad collection, so I am also pleased on that account. It is aimed at people who have a certain understanding of how English works, but still have enough bafflement to want to know more.

Here is the link:  http://www.lingq.com/learn/en/store/59597