Halloween and Gardens in the Age of Inflation

Today I woke up before 10 a.m. and went to the bank and shopped at a drug store in the mall. Needless to say the shelves are overflowing with Christmas specialities: foil-wrapped chocolate balls, Printen gingerbread, marzipan, and chocolate St. Nicholases.

The drug store also sold the second battery I needed to begin taking photos with my half-digital, half-analogue camera. (We have a photography manual whose first edition was printed in 1974, appropriate for my 1980s research.)

And I stocked up on Halloween candy.

Finding Halloween candy is more challenging this year. I've been bombarding my teammates at work with updates about the 2022 Controversy of the Chocolate Bars: Bounty, Mars, Milky Way, Snickers and Twix bars are largely missing from the shelves of grocery store chains due to a pricing disagreement between the Mars company — which wanted to hike up prices — and big German retailers — which refused. (Although the Turkish supermarket down the street as well as newspaper kiosks are still selling the bars as singles, so we're not entirely deprived.)

That said, when Ge. and J. from a long walk to Tempelhofer Feld, they mounted an epic foraging spree of three grocery stores and returned with a generous Halloween candy haul in the evening, including ... 1 Bounty bar, and a pack of off-brand coconut chocolate bar minis. Their haul will be stashed in the pantry until Monday, of course.

On a less sugar-high note, I felt perturbingly feeble when setting off for the errands, though, having trouble walking normally at first and feeling short of breath. That said, it hasn't been all that long since Covid, and perhaps a lack of sleep exacerbated the symptoms. What's also funny is that I have no trouble with high-intensity exercise.

We had a breakfast of croissants and coffee after that, then T. — who was visiting us — began her epic, meticulous preparations of two lasagna casseroles: lasagne noodles, tomato sauce arrabbiata, spinach, cottage cheese, and a lighter sprinkling of grated hard cheese on top.

In the meantime I cycled off to the allotment gardens. It's verging on November, of course, so leaves are often very brown or red, most apples and quince are either gone or rotted (I was able to bring back home a little apple quince from a basket, however), and a few red apples have remained behind like raw rubies in the winter muck. While the temperatures have been balmy lately and the sun did appear later in the day, there was a cloud cover.

Many gardeners were in their plots today, gathering with friends or family, trimming away the summer growth, and even mulching branches with machines roughly the size of a high-backed chair and no noisier than a lawnmower. It had been years since I last smelled the fragrance of hot sawdust.

I did manage to nearly ding the rear spoiler of a motorcycle with my bicycle, however, by almost falling off my bike when turning into a path.

It wasn't devoid of comedy, especially when I sensationalize the anecdote into 'I got into trouble with two bikers today.' But it was dumb of me to nearly bash up someone's prized belonging.

I tried taking a few photographs of the flowers and trees. But due to the time of day and the weather, the colours were dull and lifeless in the viewfinder. Besides, the uneasy feeling lingers that it's likely there's black-and-white film in the camera (I haven't used the camera in a long while, so I've genuinely forgotten); so it's possible that all the delicate shades of colour I was trying to capture didn't make sense for the medium.

Then I went to buy ingredients for my 1701 historical meals tomorrow. We still have two bottles of beer and a bottle of cider in the pantry, but I was unable to find mead at the small organic food store. Instead I bought spinach, pears, apples, plums (from Italy), and a nice, zucchini-looking dark green spaghetti squash. We still have wheat flour at home, too, and that will likely be the base for most of the cooking and/or baking.

***

On Friday, teammates and I watched the 1993 children's film Hocus Pocus as a 'team event' in advance of Hallowe'en. It felt quite wholesome, and I liked the 90s nostalgia, and was amused by some of the rudimentary acting. The special effects and staging were I think intended to feel a little fake.

But I did work overtime after the film, and didn't get enough sleep. So I've succumbed to brain fog today while typewriting and playing the piano, making lots of mistakes.

Researching the year 1982 didn't entirely go well; but I'm pretty disgusted by the Falklands War, so the half-heartedness today was partly a gesture of protest. Next week I will hopefully catch up on buying a Viennetta ice cream cake.

1981 and 1700: Two Historical Experiments

Friday and today I took the day off from work, although at least from the most selfish perspective perhaps two weeks would have been better.

*

On Friday I 'celebrated' the year 1981. After I went to the supermarket for an unconscientious shopping trip, we prepared grilled cheese sandwiches using our panini grill in honour of toasties.

In the evening, I cooked a Canadian Thanksgiving meal belatedly: roast chicken with bread stuffing, potatoes mashed with celeriac, cranberry sauce, apple sauce, and steamed Brussels sprouts. T. joined us for the meal, although Gi. stayed in Brandenburg.

The apple sauce was likely the worst I've made. But it used fresh apples from the allotment gardens, as well as a quince wrapped in a cloth separately so that the stones in the flesh wouldn't end up in the sauce.

*

On Saturday, because I've grown a little bored of reenacting modern times, I inaugurated a new 1700 to 1900 historical experiment that will run in parallel with the end of the 1900 to 2022 experiment.

The biggest challenge for me was avoiding looking at anachronistic electric clocks. But attempting to hear church bells over the city traffic to tell time on a Saturday, when there's still a lot of traffic, would probably only work when I'm outdoors. Perhaps I need to set up a sundial on my windowsill. (But I'd also like an excuse to visit old churches in Berlin that predate the modern period.)

For hygiene I'm substituting modern practices. There is a public water pump from the early 20th or late 19th century in a side street near the family apartment, fancy and operational, but the warning sign on it clearly indicates that the water isn't for drinking. I definitely won't recreate bathroom amenities that predate the late 19th/20th centuries.

Also I knew that it would make me cranky during the following work week if I woke up as early as people generally did in 1700, so I woke up past 9 a.m.

The period-appropriate breakfast was quite dreadful. That might be due to my misunderstanding the recipe, which was adapted from a Swabian recipe in the Baroque period. It was a soup of toasted wheat kernels, — which were supposed to be shredded but I just pounded them with the stem end of the spoon — scattered into salted water, left to swell, and then topped with onions that had been fried in drippings. It tasted like oily water from the bottom of a pot of burned popcorn. It felt indigestible. (Confession time: rather than fire up that old wood-burning stove that is so easy to find in Berlin, I went with a modern gas oven instead.)

For lunch, I invited out the family to a real Swabian restaurant in the neighbourhood. We ate spätzle and drank beer from the tap, and had two large Kaiserschmarren pancakes for dessert. Eating al fresco in the warm autumn air with sunshine around us was lovely.

Afterward I went shopping for Sauerkraut, beer and butter, but didn't have the patience to go to the market.

I played a few pieces (17th-century hymns and Purcell) on the harpsichord that was loaned to us years ago from a family friend; read another two pages of Cervantes's Don Quixote; read the introduction to an anthology of post-Civil-War English literature; and read two medieval poems in Latin with a German verse translation opposite. Technically I could have also done needlework.

Altogether, through research and imagination, I am getting a feeling for how my part of the city might have been like 300 years ago.

But many things are driving me crazy about the time period and the 1980s are pure luxury in comparison. For example:

1. The stronger role of religion in daily life.

2. The lack of modern bathroom amenities and laundry facilities.

3. Low literacy levels?

4. High poverty rates — according to one secondary source I read, a town in Swabia might consist 30% of people who were too poor to survive without food handouts from their local aristocrat.

5. Even Bach and Scarlatti were young in 1700 — too young to have published any music yet. Not only is the musical scene a comparative wasteland, but the harpsichord also doesn't have the same richness and variety of sound as a modern grand piano. (Although I can learn to play the recorder, guitar, or flute on this occasion.) Also, the harpsichord had a key that is wildly out of tune, but I decided to keep it out of tune for the sake of authenticity...

What I do like is that 1700 feels more sociable. For example, if I understand correctly, one would actually need to go to a coffee house, surrounded by people, to lay hands on a newspaper or on coffee: no anti-social consumption in solitude at home except perhaps for the very rich.

*

Yesterday the siblings and I cycled to Tempelhofer Feld. It's definitely the decline of autumn, the leaves on the trees very deeply yellow and red and brown, leaning toward the latter end of the spectrum. But the field was well visited, having much the air of a 19th-century impressionist urban people-scape, and a smattering of kites flew in the sky.

In general, at home, I've been playing more music. Beethoven's piano concerto No. 3, Schumann's famous quintet (piano part), etc. — I'm exploring longer works again and I guess putting to good use the impulse I've had lately: to return to familiar things for comfort as work seems to bring nothing but grief, and I feel too emotionally fragile to put more pressure on my brain by reading modern literary fiction or non-fiction. I suspect that the moral pressure to save gas is also quenching the joy I'd take in cooking.

What Does Achievement Really Mean?

I've been back to work today and it's less bad than expected.

That said, I guess I'm beginning to realize a bit better how unhealthy the job has been for my sense of pride in myself.

I still have mountains of impostor syndrome, no matter how much I labour away on behalf of my tasks and my colleagues. (Although to be fair, I'm already used to having mountains of impostor syndrome about freelance writing, and in that case I wasn't being paid for the trouble.)

My task load also increases exponentially every month, to exaggerate a little. So no matter how much I do I will always be asked for more.

Yesterday I'd sight-read most of Schumann's "Abegg" variations on the piano, for fun, and doing that gave me a far purer sense of achievement than anything else I've done for months.

Wrestling with the Covid Kraken

For the past two days I've been wrestling with a case of Covid; two of my siblings had already started being ill earlier this week and last week, so I thought I knew what to expect. But in the end experiencing it myself was rather less agreeable even than that.

On Thursday I had a sore throat and took a sick day from work, and I took things easy and played the piano and did other quiet things until the early afternoon. Then I took a nap, and after that the full experience set in. Fever, chills, joint aches, nausea, etc. kept me awake intermittently for much of the first night, although it became better after I finally gave in and took an aspirin. Yesterday I mostly felt too weak and headache-y to even sit at a computer. Now it's better.

My mother kindly bought a supply of bananas and apple sauce, so that I could have things to eat that wouldn't unsettle my stomach, and family and teammates have been very sympathetic.

Despite the worst part of Thursday night, it's been more enjoyable than work. Its constant pressures and well-meant scrutiny from upper levels, the departure of another teammate from the company, another teammate's pain (she looks set to lose her second parent), and the deep anxiety of other teams as (with a continually reducing workforce due to the layoffs and the inability to hire more people) the amount of tasks we can finish for clients becomes smaller and smaller.

I've had to remind myself — lying awake briefly in the middle of the day or the night, and thinking — that I need to accustom myself to the thought of picking everything up again next week.

'Theirs not to question why, theirs but to do and die.'

1978, and the Joys of Work Life at Peak Shopping Season

It's the year 1978 and I didn't really throw myself into the experience in an overly worthwhile way.

Instead I dusted bookshelves, windex'd windows and picture frames, and vacuumed one room.

Cycled off to two sets of allotment gardens through the rain and slight wind, returning with four damson plums, two pears, two apples, oxygen pumping through my arteries, happy recollections of glowing quince, magenta asters, and a deep autumn fragrance of freshness and seasonally appropriate rotting as if the earth were gently sagging in on itself and reabsorbing the leaves and fruits.

And I went shopping at the organic grocery store for mushrooms, figs (the best I've ever tasted fresh: sweet in a sharp, sun-ripened way, tangy in the centre), milk, celery stalks, and one or two other odds and ends.

Discovered recipes from the 1970s in our kitchen pantry: One, a compendium of recipes for zucchini, including apparently the zucchini bread recipe that I tasted once when my paternal grandmother made it around 1990 and never forgot. The other, a booklet of recipes that accompanied a yoghurt maker that has long vanished. In the end, I ended up not cooking.

Practiced typewriting again. This time it was more fun, although per the lesson I had to type out words I'd gotten wrong until I finished a whole row without a mistake.

We had our traditional croissants and coffee for breakfast, and then T. came over. She made boiled eggs for all of us, then concocted a salad of tomatoes, spinach, egg, and dressing.

Ge. only returned from his morning shift at almost 4 p.m.

At that point I was going to drop off a cloth bag of donations for Ukrainian refugees. It was the only delivery in the parking lot this time, due likely to the rain, and the drop-off point was unmanned today. (Or, to bow to 2022, un-personed.) I felt rather awkward after I'd cycled away when the rain started up again, as there were two soap bars in there that are likely not rainproof, and a soggy bag is never fun...

Speaking of which, a pair of jeans is now also drying and waiting for the wash, as my rain jacket sheltered me reasonably well but didn't extend to my legs. I don't think I've bought clothing for a few years (hazard of my profession; one becomes chronically disgusted with excess), but a cycling outfit with rain trousers might not be amiss.

It's becoming chillier and I'm wearing the slippers that my godfather-and-uncle M. gave me for my birthday, as my toes clearly weren't enjoying the prolonged contact with cold hardwood floors and draughts. On my first outing today, the fragrance of woodsmoke lightly lay on the air.

A lot of acorns are also rolling over the cobblestones; and underneath old horse chestnut trees, car tires had mashed the green pulp into thick clusters of little fireworks on the asphalt.

My mother and I briefly met at a restaurant-café with M., who shared his plump, sweet and comfort-foody Kaiserschmarren with plum compôte, and sipped on a coffee with amaretto biscuit while debating with us about the repeat of Berlin's last election cycle.

*

As for work, it's a bit 'First World problemy' and not the worst time of my life (teenagerhood and my 20s were a great preparation for adulthood in setting a remarkably low bar), but in the moment it feels really challenging.

Like in March 2020, the workload is so brutal that it is turning colleagues against each other; I've heard of and seen in person tensions that make you unhappy to think about. I haven't been perfect myself, and turned into a regular Rumpelstiltzkin last Friday. ... The top manager who consistently sets a clear boundary against overwork is herself overworked and out sick again: her good beginnings are a wasteland. Power vacuums are popping up as people try to fill in for others who are burned out or absent for the moment. The overzealousness adds another frenetic impulse to the overall stress. The frequency with which colleagues are going behind each others' backs about projects is awe-inspiring.

I suggested in the last team lead meeting that maybe it doesn't make sense to put events in each others' calendars if we see they're already full, putting meeting on top of meeting to squeeze it all in. In my view, this unhealthy practice is being led from the top of the company downward. A few team leads seemed to Very Much agree with this, but then two very well-meaning and assertive higher-level colleagues assumed this meant that we just needed to follow proper meeting protocol and we needed to say when we have too much. I caved into my Canadian side and subsided instead of buckling down.

— I crafted an announcement afterward, reminding everyone in the company that Tuesday and Thursday mornings are supposed to be meetings free, including the advice the higher-level colleagues gave amongst the bullet points. I ran it by the team lead group and left it open for comment or objection for about two or three hours, and then posted it in the company-wide channel, attributing it to the team lead group. — Which I guess makes me one of the people who kind of go behind people's backs... But whatever my overimpulsiveness, if it saves two or three colleagues severe stress, I think it's hopefully worth it.

This weekend I'm not even complaining so much to my family, mostly because I don't want T. to hear about work stuff during her holiday; but also because it is just tiring to think about. At least I'm not crying quietly into my breakfast as I've sometimes done on weekends... and it should all be over by Christmas as the shopping season settles down.

I also will guiltily confess that I actually look forward to colleagues' holidays in at least two cases (not in my own team). I really, really like them personally and our professional collaborations can also be very fruitful; but the stress is so much lower when they're not bursting into my work days at random moments like wrecking balls.