Hello again, my dear readers! Just a quick one to fill you in on what else happened in May, all those weeks ago...

So, fresh back from Barcelona, I had just a few days to have lunch & dinner with various folk before heading off to our village in Austria with Michaela. We had to sort out the handover of our house from the old tenant to our cousin Martha's daughter Verena and her bloke, who were moving in on 1st June.

Neither of us had enough time to make a weekend of it, so we drove down really early on Friday morning and came back on Saturday afternoon. Still, we were there long enough to get everything done paperwork-wise (you know, visit the bank, be exasperated at how shite the estate agent is, that sort of thing) and still have some food & drink style fun with rellies.

And on the Saturday evening I was singing with my choir - did I mention that I've joined a church choir in Schwabing, just to the north of the centre of town? - in Munich's Long Night of Music, which saw 200-odd venues with different live concerts from all genres. Bénédicte, Lorna, Michaela & Christian came to see me sing, and then we went on for some food & drinks afterwards. It was weird to be in concert dress again, for the first time in years & years! I sang like an angel - of course - and the rest of the choir were okay too.

It was a lovely hot day on the Sunday, so Christian & I cycled out to Feringasee, a man-made lake to the north of town, to indulge in that quintessentially German pastime of nudie sunbathing. And then we stopped at Bénédicte's for dinner on the way home. She had also invited her friend Nicole from the EPO, and we had a lovely time stuffing our faces with crêpes.

Oh, okay then, I'll write a bit about June too! Have I mentioned that I'm giving individual German lessons to the two sons of Kate, Michaela's friend from the EPO? Well, that's what I was doing on Mondays before school broke up for the summer, and then I was going on to badminton from her house, and then on to the Kloster for drinkies. Quite a lot of cycling, to be fair!

It was Bine's birthday party on the first Friday in June. She held it in Café Kosmos, which I had only once - briefly - been to. I really warmed to it on this occasion. It's got something of the shabby-chic of lots of cool places in Berlin. And the prices are extremely reasonable too. Bine had commandeered the front room upstairs, but there's only the one serving area so we were up & down the narrow iron spiral staircase all night. The place was thronged with cool dudes & dudettes! I felt really rather old.

Michaela & Lisa came over to Christian's the following night. He had decided to do a curry evening in honour of our India trip, and by golly he cooked up a storm! It was a lamb curry with stacks of red peppers and chilli, and he did a barnstorming dhal to go with it. Five star! Marvellous!!

The following week was Lorna's birthday, which we celebrated in Ysenegger over in Neuhausen, her (soon to be no longer, what with E.ON moving all their Europe-wide trading staff to Düsseldorf) neck of the woods. It had been a lovely day all day, but it decided to dump a load of rain that evening. Thankfully we were indoors, so our beer didn't get diluted.

And I had a wine tasting at Gerhard's flat on the Friday night. At last! I've felt bad every time Gerhard has rung me in the last two years, since first I went to a wine-tasting at his with Jürgen, ooh, it must be two years ago. Each time, either I've been away, or someone's been over to visit me. But finally I was able to attend. It was a very interesting night, because the winemaker was there himself to talk about his produce and the wine industry in general (he's some sort of bigwig in the German wine industry).

I'll round off with Michaela's birthday, which she celebrated at the Greek restaurant reasonably near her house. It was a lovely hot evening, and we had a long table in the beer garden area, at the back, so the football coverage (on monster flat screens) didn't disturb us too much. The boys were both part of a little dance routine that Lisa had organised with a bunch of the kids of Michaela's friends. Cute!