Wild Sovereign Development Site

Tag: flu

  • don’t stand so far from me

    Och, my heart’s pounding! I just queued in the supermarket next to a man taller than me (rare) with whom I conceived one of those fleeting yet it stains your day – your weekend! – mutual desire curves founded in, apparently, mutual liking as well as pheromonal drift. Oh, I stood next to him and he stood next to me. He came up behind me and I cleared my stuff out of the way, as Berliners often do for one another, so that he could lay his heavy armfuls of groceries on the band. “Danke schön,” he said, in just this irresistible voice, and I glanced up and met the most beautiful eyes and a shock went through me and my face lit up and I said, “Bitte!” A pleasure!

    After that we both crowded up close to one another and he was humming and after a little while started singing so that I would see what a gorgeous voice he had. I was immersed in the glowing feeling running up and down my nearer, left side and in parsing his collection of groceries (single!) and in searching round the vault of my brain for some plausible, yet open-ended, conversational gambit. The woman ahead of me had already greeted the cashier and her goods were being rung up. We hadn’t long.

    I picked up the plastic divider between his stuff and mine, only later realising what a perfect psychological expression of my wishes this really was. “Ich habe gehört,” I remarked, holding it out to offer to him, “daß diese manchmal ,Kassentoblerone’ gennant werden.” Ya know, I’ve heard these are sometimes called Cashier Toblerones.

    “Stimmt!” he said, yeah that’s right! He took the thing from me and lifted it up. Pretended to stuff the end in his mouth and tear off a hearty chunk. We laughed and then there was nothing else to do but grow shy, so we both turned back to the belt and gazed at the groceries. He checked out my stuff and I checked out his. I was buying the ingredients for a carrot and ginger soup and he likes decent cheeses. My side was humming. Oh, I was just so happy and contented to be standing just that little bit too close to him, and to be in each other’s aura. There was nothing more to say, apart from, “When will you be here next, you’re so goddamned cute,” so when my goods were rung up I sang out, “Tschüss!” and he said, “Tschüss!” and I ran laughing out of the supermarket, saying to the giant punk out front who holds out his little army cap for donations of spare change, “Du siehst ja so total schön aus, heute!” You’re looking so beautiful today! It wasn’t just the punk in his Saturday outfit of fishnet stockings and a zebra print mini, it was the light, the few trees left in the corner of the car park, the little boy zooming on his scooter with a great determination, the dad who stood and watched with his arms grimly folded – I ran home and said to my companion, who was sitting up in bed holding his stomach and had requested, when I said what might make you feel better, carrot soup, “I just met this man in the supermarket and we liked each other so much! Oh, it was such a joy just standing next to each other.”

    Ordinarily these kinds of stories are just part of the ongoing conversation between us but today, stricken with stomach flu and hungry for his first solid meal in three days, the poor guy went, “Don’t, I’m gunna vomit!” He was clutching his stomach. I has pushed open the window and was peering out in case the cute guy and his cheeses might have decided to walk home down our end of the street, in case I might see him. Bye, love.

  • calvados, ahoy

    Miserable with flu I staggered down to the markets in search of star anise, lemons, and fresh coriander. There was a golden-lit stall with a radio blaring which sells raclette, a stinky, melty, fondue-like cheese, and “hot apple punch.” Hot apple punch! Irresistible. I came round the front of the stall and presented myself; moments later the bloke, who had been sneaking a quick durry out the back, lifted the flap of his tent and introduced himself with the flourish of a magician: “You see? I am already there.”

    I’d like an apple punch, I said, and he said, lifting a golden bottle and tilting it towards me, would you like a shot of calvados in it? Good on a chilly night. In German they say, ein Schluck: a swallow. Oh yes, I said, absolutely: I am wanting it against the flu and I think with the calvados it will be just… “Hervorragend,” he finished for me. Capital, tremendous, outstanding.

    Carrying my steaming cup I went around the vegetable stalls, gathering a bunch of coriander, a quiver of cinnamon quills. At the cheese stall where she cuts slabs of butter fresh from a giant block I bought eggs for the weekend, waiting til she had served the family of Syrian refugees whose host, a Berlin woman in her fifties, hastily appeared to translate for them. “These are really good eggs,” she said, using gesture: “they’re organic.” The Syrian man wanted the eggs but he and his three children screwed up their faces at the pervasive stench of over-mature German cheeses, something they have perhaps never encountered before. The stallholder met my eye and very gently we started laughing. “Stinks, hey?” she said cheerfully to the youngest child, holding out the swinging plastic bag of eggs invitingly. When I got home I put my stock pot on the stove and have added to it the following ingredients, a witches’ brew for colds and flu that I have sworn on for twenty years: it deals with aching bones, the twitching burning skin, the sore throat and feeling of lassitude: heat in a pot full of water for an hour or two, slowly, then serve each cupful with honey and the juice of half a lemon. You’re welcome.

    Witches Brew

    6 cloves garlic, split in half
    5-6 chilies
    half-thumb chunk of ginger, sliced
    6 anise stars
    5-6 quills cinnamon
    rind of a lemon or a lime
    bunch of fresh coriander

    Simmer one hour in 8-10 cups of water. Let stand one hour. Serve each cupful with honey and juice of half a lemon.