Category: General

New Seat Belt law

This became effective Sep 1, 2011 in ALL Countries.

The International & National Highway Safety Council has done extensive testing on a newly designed seat belt.
Results show that accidents can be reduced by as much as 95% when the belt is properly installed.
Correct Installation is illustrated below…….
Continue reading “It is OK, ladies, I have put my hard hat on already :-)”

This is the type of music with which I grew up and still listen to often.

Sadly missed

This is the second part of the saga of the amphibians in Germany. At a later date I will write about German views of the British and American military presence as well as the French military occupation, though the latter will be touched on here. This post will be depressing, please accept my apologies in advance for that.

France does not have a volunteer military, something reflected by the generally low morale of their soldiers. They are treated terribly, get paid painfully little, and miss out on some of the best years of their lives. As a result of this, French soldiers often did not have much money to buy clothes or to keep them properly clean. In Germany this becomes instantly noticeable. Germany being, of course, a country in which appearances are important. It’s not uncommon for Germans to put on new, clean clothes simply to walk to corner shop to get one or two items in the evening out of fear of meeting someone they know and losing face. The French, however, were not given a chance to dress properly. Their trousers would often be filthy and raggedy. Their shirts scummy. The cut of both was almost universally poor. Much of the time the clothes were also second hand. Germans are infamously impatient and unforgiving people with such things, generally preferring conformity in virtually all ways. Their appearance would often lead to either sympathy or contempt, especially considering France’s reputation as one of the world’s foremost fashion centres. Continue reading “The Plight of the Little Green Pond Hoppers in Germany.”

This post has been promised for several weeks now. My apologies for the delay in writing it, I’ve been a bit busy with courses at university.

Trier was under the French zone of influence after the war ended, much to the chagrin of the Germans who lived there. Although the British and the people of the Commonwealth Dominions along with the Americans had fought valiantly against the evils of Nazi Germany, they generally showed little ill will to the conquered German people. They ensured that the Germans would be well treated and would have their basic dignity respected. The French did not. They would often brutally beat German civilians who had nothing to do with the war and could not have said anything without risking their own lives. Even decades after the way, the French were still there and behaving themselves dismally.

My mother, born in the early 1960s, was keenly aware of the French military presence. Continue reading “Little Green Hopping Creatures, Smelling Faintly of Garlic, in Germany.”

Sorry about this. I feel the need to share what happened today with those whom I consider to be cyber friends.

Last night, I finished my post awarding the 14th Photographic Competition on ‘Boadicea’s Chariot‘with:-

‘Captain Lawrence Oates was a fine man, by the way. I intend to follow his example for a while.’

I thank everybody for their kind comments on that post and feel, especially after today’s events, that I should explain. My planned and temporary waygoing was nothing serious but just something that I felt that I had to do for the sake of both myself and Mrs M. Continue reading “Goodbyes”