Black Friday

The label "Made in Germany" was introduced by law in 1871 by Britain to ward off cheap, inferior imports from Germany. Japanese motorbikes and cars got a similar treatment in the 1970's.

Our sauna was built in 1976 by a southern Germany company, Klafs Saunabau who are now world leaders in sauna & related products. It's 2m x 2.5m, lined with hemlock inside and is in original condition including the electric oven. It cost 7000DM = 3500 Euros.

Tonight was sauna night, an attempt to ward off the gruesome Black Friday weather. The Germans have a very open attitude to going about a sauna and the general approach to nakedness eg FKK "Free Body Culture". In fact it's not an issue here as indeed Evelyne, a German born, USA resident Bliped a few days ago.

I remember nights sweating with Bliper Nogbad in various Munich Hotel saunas with towels well knoted around our nether regions and giggling at the naked bathers in the famous English Garden in the middle of Munich. That was 25 years ago and I have now got used to it. Takes a while, particularly in our rural area, to get used to siiting between your 55 year old chimney sweep and the 18 year old female supermarket cashier who gave you such a cute smile two hours before (smile was more a sympathetic "Take your time Grandad finding the one cent coins in your wallet, the queue of 20 can wait another 10 minutes".

Talking of queues and the English. I only learnt today what Black Friday was. Turned on my email for the first time in a week and was swamped with messages offering discounts. Then happened to switch on Sky TV and saw a long report from Tesco's and sundry other retailers branches up and down the land being stormed by shoppers, pushing and shoving with the police being called in and injuries sustained. What ever happened to the "Fine English Style" I reported on just two days ago? World leaders in Queuing discipline degenerated overnight by a very questionable US practice.

Well at least Nigel F can't blame this one on the mainland European immigrants.

Talking of things from the USA. Was overjoyed to re-discover MissWinterFinch is fit and well and living at PDBudd now. Seemingly while out in the garden refilling the wild bird feeders she got hit by an avalanche of snow from the house roof causing concusion and she forgot her MissWF passwords.

Just a footnote: After the sauna was relaxing with a liter glass of freshly pressed orange juice beer watching the weekly Must TV programme in these parts for agriculture and environment. Wonderful research project on computer controlled feeding of breeding sows whereby they get their food individually when called by the PC with their individual names. The only one who won't learnt is the leading pig in the pack who pushes and shoves the others out the way, just as in Tescos today.

Another very interesting bit - Low fat milk products are almost certainly not good for you, calories remain the same, the fat is replaced with artificial "E" number additives in an attempt to get back flavour. One doesn't get that "full" feeling and so eat more. So low fat is not going to help you with a diet and probably overload your system with allergy producing chemicals.

Finally at long last a bio-gas unit built that uses rubbish rather than maize. Probably a result of some weird EU laws, the farmer only gets half the price for his electricity that a maize using and environment destroying farmer.

A rerun of the programme is on the web but only in German of course.