Colourful Fence

G put this up today. It's a sari she bought in Pune (she doesn't wear them, she uses them as bedspreads and sofa covers - the colours and patterns are lovely). The reason it's on the low roof on the terrace is our auxiliary cat Munni.

She's been getting out on the terrace and thoroughly enjoying looking at the world. We've been around just to make sure that she didn't try to escape. However, at about 11 last night we heard a noise from the terrace. We went out just in time to see Munni heading up the roof and over the ridge on to the neighbour's side.

We tried coaxing her with her favourite crunchies and trying to get her to play with the laser-pointer dot. Nothing worked. She ignored us completely. Life on the other side of the roof was far too exciting. We gave up on her after half an hour. "Let her have her fun" we said, while internally I was thinking "yep fun for another 5 minutes and then please come back in, I'm worried you know".

No need to worry, we nabbed her as soon as she reappeared, which was only about 10 minutes later. And so the Munni Fence was built.

Oh and here's a charming story to round off Friday. After finishing at 6, I headed into town and decided to pick up a bag Knabberzeug (a German word for snacks which you pronounce k-nabberzoyg, you must pronounce the K). I looked at the 2 queues at the checkout and although the woman at the front of the short queue was unloading what looked like a week of groceries, she was nearly finished.

I thought "I'll go there, be out in no time."

And then the woman pulled an unexpected Awkward-Customer manoeuvre that I haven't seen before. When told it was 50-odd Euros and so many cents, she emptied the coin collection in her purse and asked the cashier to take it from that. It would have been a bit cheeky if she had only 1 euro coins.

But she had only about 3 of them.

The rest was in 50, 20 and 10 cent pieces.

And did she pack up her groceries as the cashier was counting the money? No, she watched. And when she was told it was short by some 7 Euros, she pulled out a 10 Euro note to pay the balance.

It was, by some distance, the Biggest and most Blatant "F*ck all of you" this year. I hope it never happens to you on a Friday evening when all you want to do is get home.