Just like Steve McQueen
This is part two of this post, click on the link if you haven’t read it or this will make bugger all sense.
Living with Frau Fuka was bad enough for the first three months but in the last six months the seriousness of her crimes went up a notch or two.
I have mentioned that Fuka liked to keep tabs on me and my flatmate Gerty when we came in and out of the flat we rented from her. It would be too generous to assume she did this because she cared about us.
If her need to follow our every move was, indeed, out of a sense of motherly duty, it would not explain her little white head popping round my bedroom door as me and my boyfriend at the time took advantage of an afternoon off work. Maybe she felt the need to offer me some bedroom tips, but really …couldn’t she have waited til afterwards???
The sight of her muppet prototype, craggy, Band-Aided, little face whilst in the throes, has since made me muse upon how remarkable it is that I have gone on to have subsequent relationships and have even managed to procreate. People have been in therapy for less.
Motherly duty would also not explain why Fuka felt the need to examine my pants drawer on a regular basis whilst I was at work. Her supposed concerns about the neatness of my laundry did not expand to letting us using her washing machine or even letting us have a washing machine of our own. So I was stumped as to why my pants were being checked whilst I was out.
One day when I walked in on her rifling through my drawers, she made no attempt to apologise, claiming that it was her responsibility to check the flat was being well looked after. I offered her the chance to check the pants I was wearing since she was being so thorough. She said she felt that would be unnecessary. Germans don’t get sarcasm.
Meanwhile Fraulein Gerty, my flatmate had nothing but sweetness and light directed towards her. Why? Simple reason; Gerty’s boyfriend was a nice young local German boy who drove a nice new BMW. My boyfriend was a foreigner.
From the moment Gerty introduced Frau Fuka to Markus, her life was sweet. Whereas Fuka did not even like Sal, my second generation Italian, being in the building. She made no bones about this.
So it fell to me and Sal to flagrantly flout Fuka’s no foreigner rules on my last ever night at the flat. He stayed over and in the morning I walked him past Fuka’s door on the way out to say goodbye. Looking upwards as I stood on the street, I could see her little white fluffy head poking out the window. We both waved at her.
By the time I returned to my flat Fuka had let herself into my flat and was waiting on me, clutching my cassette radio like it was the Holy Grail.
She wanted money. She wanted me out. She wanted to call the police. She knew people who could stop me from leaving Germany.
She was maybe having a flashback with that last one. As far as I know these days Germany is a democratic society where people can only be held for committing actual crimes- shagging a foreign bloke not being a breach of any known current German law.
She would hold my radio ransom until I paid for her to replace the mattress! The mattress? The mattress! Oh, for pity’s sake!
I told her to phone the police. And that it might be a mistake given that she was the one stealing my radio. I reached over and wrestled the radio from her little white-knuckled hands.
I left an hour later asking a frozen faced Fuka if I could expect to meet any problems at the border. Just like Steve McQueen. She ignored me. Then I said, for a laugh, that if ever I were back in Germany that I would pop round for a cup of tea.
“ I will see to it that you can never return to Germany!”, she shouted down the street at me.
The hex was cast.
I was a teenage pornographer
In 1989 I lived in Cologne in Germany for a year. I was 18/19, and worked as an English Language teaching Assistant in a grammar school in the outskirts of the city. I had, when all is said and done, a pretty good year. I met lots of great people, did lots of great things and generally had a bit of a laugh at the expense of the, as it was then, West German government.
The fact that I had to show up for five and a half days and work at a grammar school, was only a minor inconvenience. The fact that most of my students were the same age as me caused a couple of problems. I may tell you about the more obvious one some other time…..
However, today I am reminded of one particular problem as I read a news item today on IMDB about a teacher who showed the film “Brokeback Mountain” to her high school students. The female teacher is being sued by the grandparents of some of the teenage kids, as the film contains scenes of homosexual lurve action. Here’s the link, if you’re interested in the details. it’s four or five stories down the page:
http://www.imdb.com/news/wenn/2007-05-14/#3
Well, been there, done that! I showed “My Beautiful Launderette” to my Year 8 class (18 year olds). Here’s a quick summary for those of you who don’t remember or maybe haven’t seen “My Beautiful Launderette”.
The film stars Daniel Day Lewis and Saeed Jaffrey and is set in Thatcher’s Britain. It concerns the dealings of an Indian ex-pat entrepreneur (Jaffrey) and his nephew (Gordon Warnecke) whom he places in charge of his latest business acquisition; the launderette. Behind the scenes Uncle is trying to marry off Nephew to other Cousin, unaware that Nephew is getting it on in the back room of the launderette with local skinhead sexy-pants, Daniel Day Lewis.
My reason for showing the film? Well it was, your Honour, entirely innocent. I had, in consultation with the head of English, decided to deliver a project on British culture in the political climate of the eighties. Up until that point we had looked at music, specifically the more intelligent lyrical efforts of “The The”, “The Waterboys” and “The Smiths”. We had watched some excellent TV programmes, like “Boys from the Blackstuff”, “Edge of Darkness” and before-it-got-shit Brookside (it used to be great, honest!). Basically it was a thinly veiled ruse to play music and watch telly and chat about them afterwards.
I decided to show Hanif Kureishi and Stephen Frears “Launderette” because it was about multicultural eighties Britain. Oh… and it was cracking, to boot.
The students loved it….until the English Head walked into the class just before the gay sex scene came on, cueing the longest five minutes of my life. After the scene got going he switched off the TV.
MisssyT, as I was then, was summoned to the Headmaster’s office the next day. Early. He was the only person that called me Fraulein T. Everyone else used my first name.
I was to have all video privileges suspended indefinitely. I would consult my Mentor (teacher in charge of me) on everything I gave out to the students. I was made to feel like a porn peddler. I tried to put it in context. He wasn’t interested.
The next week the students asked to see the end of the film. I told them that we couldn’t and I wasn’t allowed to show any more films. They were a bit fed up about it, but not enough to ask their headmaster for an explanation, or fight my corner. It was only school after all, and watching a video was better than doing real work. But if real work had to be done, they would get on with it.
I saw the film a few years ago on telly and was surprised at how tame that scene was. Perhaps I should be glad that it was 1989 and not 15 years later when I would’ve had “Queer as Folk”, “The L Word” or “Sex and the City” to choose from!.
Apparently the year I left, the headmaster had opted not to take on an English Assistant for the foreseeable future.
I must have hit a nerve…..
I was a teenage Pornmonger (wait til the Googlers see THAT one!)
In 1989 I lived in Cologne in Germany for a year. I was 18/19, and worked as an English Language teaching Assistant in a grammar school in the outskirts of the city. I had, when all is said and done, a pretty good year. I met lots of great people, did lots of great things and generally had a bit of a laugh at the expense of the, as it was then, West German government.
The fact that I had to show up for five and a half days and work at a grammar school, was only a minor inconvenience. The fact that most of my students were the same age as me caused a couple of problems. I may tell you about the more obvious one some other time…..
However, today I am reminded of one particular problem as I read a news item today on IMDB about a teacher who showed the film “Brokeback Mountain” to her high school students. The female teacher is being sued by the grandparents of some of the teenage kids, as the film contains scenes of homosexual lurve action. Here’s the link, if you’re interested in the details. it’s four or five stories down the page:
http://www.imdb.com/news/wenn/2007-05-14/#3
Well, been there, done that! I showed “My Beautiful Launderette” to my Year 8 class (18 year olds). Here’s a quick summary for those of you who don’t remember or maybe haven’t seen “My Beautiful Launderette”.
The film stars Daniel Day Lewis and Saeed Jaffrey and is set in Thatcher’s Britain. It concerns the dealings of an Indian ex-pat entrepreneur (Jaffrey) and his nephew (Gordon Warnecke) whom he places in charge of his latest business acquisition; the launderette. Behind the scenes Uncle is trying to marry off Nephew to other Cousin, unaware that Nephew is getting it on in the back room of the launderette with local skinhead sexy-pants, Daniel Day Lewis.
My reason for showing the film? Well it was, your Honour, entirely innocent. I had, in consultation with the head of English, decided to deliver a project on British culture in the political climate of the eighties. Up until that point we had looked at music, specifically the more intelligent lyrical efforts of “The The”, “The Waterboys” and “The Smiths”. We had watched some excellent TV programmes, like “Boys from the Blackstuff”, “Edge of Darkness” and before-it-got-shit Brookside (it used to be great, honest!). Basically it was a thinly veiled ruse to play music and watch telly and chat about them afterwards.
I decided to show Hanif Kureishi and Stephen Frears “Launderette” because it was about multicultural eighties Britain. Oh… and it was cracking, to boot.
The students loved it….until the English Head walked into the class just before the gay sex scene came on, cueing the longest five minutes of my life. After the scene got going he switched off the TV.
MisssyT, as I was then, was summoned to the Headmaster’s office the next day. Early. He was the only person that called me Fraulein T. Everyone else used my first name.
I was to have all video privileges suspended indefinitely. I would consult my Mentor (teacher in charge of me) on everything I gave out to the students. I was made to feel like a porn peddler. I tried to put it in context. He wasn’t interested.
The next week the students asked to see the end of the film. I told them that we couldn’t and I wasn’t allowed to show any more films. They were a bit fed up about it, but not enough to ask their headmaster for an explanation, or fight my corner. It was only school after all, and watching a video was better than doing real work. But if real work had to be done, they would get on with it.
I saw the film a few years ago on telly and was surprised at how tame that scene was. Perhaps I should be glad that it was 1989 and not 15 years later when I would’ve had “Queer as Folk”, “The L Word” or “Sex and the City” to choose from!.
Apparently the year I left, the headmaster had opted not to take on an English Assistant for the foreseeable future.
I must have hit a nerve…..
