Pierre-Lang Club Home

As if it were yesterday, I can see my brother and I planning the interior design, strolling through the DIY store choosing paint, then leafing through brochures from home interiors shops, picking out items of furniture and selecting curtains and carpets to go with everything. My brother, knowing but not liking my tastes, advised me as best he could – but ultimately he knew exactly how he wanted my flat to look so that he too would like being there. Mutchicish is the name I would give to the style he liked and the ambience we chose: muted, chic and stylish.

And so we set about painting the walls white-beige and light blood-red, with a little sallow yellow and pale blue and a tiny bit of hint-of-green for good measure. As a fan of bright colours, I did manage to get my own way in the kitchen – it received a coat of shocking pink. My brother spent more time laughing than painting when we did that room, I recall.

Just a short time later, my furniture – in a sore-tummy-brown colour and bearing the product name “Noce” – was delivered and moved into position, then we hung up my cream-coloured curtains and fitted the carpets, which were brown and shaggy, just like my dog Max – how practical!

Suddenly, I realised sadly that I could no longer have lots of the things that I had brought from my old flat on view: my sweet dispenser with an Asterix head, for example, would have looked rather out of place on the mutchicish Noce shelves that we had fitted to the white-beige wall of the living room.

“No kitsch whatsoever,” said my brother with satisfaction once we had finished. Before he left, he advised me against hanging up my giant Dumbo soft toy in one of the rooms. He also looked somewhat scathingly at me when I suggested that I wanted to secure my garish 80s beaded curtain in one of the door frames. The only concession on his part was to allow the cloth basket with the paw print pattern – and presumably that was only because otherwise Max would not have had anywhere to sleep.

My flat did actually stay mutchicish for about a year. I got used to the light-coloured walls, my Noce furniture and even the shaggy carpets, which became ever shaggier because Max lost half his coat to them every time he had a good roll around on the floor.

The change came during my second year in the flat. At first it was so gradual that even I didn’t notice anything. The light-coloured walls received various tattoos, mainly colourful flowers and pink butterflies, and then some yellow, purple and orange flowers appeared on the toilet and the boring floor tiles in the bathroom. I didn’t fix the 80s beaded curtain in a door frame, but on the hint-of-green wall behind my bed. Dumbo took flight above my desk and my other furry elephants made their home on top of the chest of drawers. The sweet dispenser, or should I say dispensers – I’ve got one with Asterix and, of course, another one with Obelix – were allowed to sit on the Noce shelves, shoulder-to-shoulder with a variety of other entirely unsophisticated knickknacks such as a bottle full of sand from Syria and an aluminium gold-panning dish from Alaska.

When my brother called in a short time ago, he shook his head miserably and said, “Hopelessly kitsch – I saw it coming!”

Tragically, my tried-and-tested hairdresser has just hung up her scissors and comb for good to enjoy a well-earned retirement, a situation that briefly made my hair stand on end when I learnt of it. Hence I found myself in that agonising position of having to locate someone else to tame my locks. At first, rather childishly, I pushed this fact from my mind. But when bad hair days started to become the rule rather than the exception and my hair began to resemble more untidy haystack than sleek and well groomed, it was clear to me that this hairy situation could not continue and that I could not put off the search for a new salon any longer.

Armed with a recommendation from a friend, I found myself at the door of a salon in my local town, albeit not without having first inspected the joint at length for any hairs in the soup. I was pleased not to find any. In fact, my initial impression was rather favourable, and I requested an appointment with Maria, whom my friend had recommended along with the salon. “She left yesterday,” apologised the boss, a peroxide blonde aged around 50 with pink lipstick and a nasal voice. Great, missed her by a hair’s breadth! “But for your hair I’d definitely recommend Sabrina,” she added, looking at me expectantly. “What do you mean, ‘for my hair’?” I asked, getting a little het up. Careful! Anyone who attacks my hair is also attacking me! “Well, what I meant was…, well, you have…, yes, well…, because of your hairstyle. Sabrina specialises in short hair and she’s great with really modern cutting techniques. That’s what I meant!” You only just got out of that one, girl, didn’t you? I agreed to be seen by the young woman with not a single hair out of place who was smiling shyly at me from behind the boss. “Go on, Sabrina, wash, cut and blow-dry!” squeaked the woman with the nasal voice, who was obviously quick to pull her hair out when it came to her staff.

Still smiling, Sabrina accompanied me to the basins and got down to work straightaway. It was clear to me relatively quickly that I was by no means in the hands of a senior stylist. As she washed my hair, she sprayed so much water in my ears that I almost thought plants would start to grow out of them. Then she massaged my scalp as if she was at a children’s zoo, making friends with the baby animals. Rinsing my hair, she sent a jet of ice-cold water onto my head, only most of it landed not there but down my collar. As rivulets of water ran down my back, I stoically ignored the blunder. I didn’t want Sabrina to get discouraged; the thought of getting into a fight with her before she had started cutting made my hair stand on end (like the situation in a restaurant when you don’t complain about the food before you’ve been served the last course in case the disgruntled chef decides to spit in it for revenge). “So, what would you like me to do today?” Sabrina asked, still smiling or perhaps just smiling again after a pause. “Shorter!” What more could I say? My hair was only a few centimetres long; it was hardly possible to make any major changes or even experiment a bit – saying anything more would have almost been splitting hairs.

Sabrina was obviously not about to get any grey hairs about me being rather short. She nodded and set to work. I closed my eyes so as not to see the disaster that was, given the water-in-the-ears incident, in all probability unfolding above me. After around 15 agonising minutes, Sabina triumphantly shouted, “Finished!” Sweating with anxiety, I opened my eyes and saw the catastrophe in the mirror before me. Unknowingly, Sabrina only just escaped my wrath. In fact, she didn’t even turn a hair. When she then approached with the hairdryer without even waiting for my reaction, I pled for mercy, paid the extortionate price of 45 euros and managed to leave the salon recommended by my “friend” with my head held high, despite fearing the gaze of onlookers as they caught sight of my mangled mane.

As I was walking home, my “friend” – now degraded to an “acquaintance” – called me on my mobile to ask how I had got on. I had just one piece of advice for her: “Maria isn’t there any more, which is a shame. I had Sabrina: you simply must see her next time; she’s fabulous!”

Because I’m not entering into any such living arrangement at the moment, I’m devoting all my energies to the only man currently resident in my household, my mongrel Max, who, as I’ve noticed over time, is actually man enough and thus shares more characteristics with the human male than I had thought (or, indeed, more than I would like) and sometimes causes the very same problems as the “Martian”. 

What’s also obvious is that I’ve acquired a “soft macho” dog – he may be as cuddly as a teddy bear (and equally as stiff when he’s lying motionless on his back, his four paws stretched upwards to the ceiling, wanting me to tickle his tummy), but it’s a sad fact that he’s as wilful as a baby donkey. 

But that’s not what this is all about; rather, the fact is that the similarities between a man and man’s best friend when observed in direct comparison are astoundingly striking, while the differences – in certain situations – are barely worth mentioning (apart from these three distinguishing features that are evidently attributable to the dog: a lack of human speech, using four legs to get around – forgetting, of course, any man rather the worse for wear after a lengthy pub crawl with his buddies – and his hair… I mean, his fur):  

Comparison number 1          

If a human man feels he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t be doing, and on top of that he gets a telling-off, then his countenance has as shamefaced a look as that of a dog – not for nothing is it called a “hangdog expression” when the man’s guilt is plainly evident to the woman and he immediately switches to “I’m sorry, darling” mode. 

Comparison number 2

Despite advances in socialisation and the horrific threat of having to actually do some cleaning themselves, there are still plenty of badly brought-up lads who see it almost as a feminist attack on their masculinity, an attack akin to psychological castration, when you ask them to kindly sit down to do a “number one”. Rebelling in desperation to protect their masculine rights, they heroically defend the last male privilege and carry on sprinkling the carpet. And, not rarely, the last drop lands in their boxer shorts. A dog, meanwhile, is allowed to stand rather than sit to do his business and can even raise a back leg into the bargain, but that’s only because he’s not using a woman’s loo. Nevertheless, the dog’s stream of urine, particularly as it’s coming to the end and the pressure is reducing, almost always falls to the side and the last drop usually lands on one of his back paws. 

Comparison number 3

If a man has a sniffle, a headache or a sore stomach, he suffers more than a woman in labour – and usually with a hefty dose of self-pity, too. His face resembles that of a dying swan or, to put it rather more topically, that of a banker who has just lost billions of euros. And let’s not even go into the noises emanating from a sick male. My dog behaves in exactly the same way – when he doesn’t feel well, he looks like a wounded deer, whines like a puppy who can’t find his mother’s teat, and demands constant attention from the people around him. After all, they are in an absolute state of emergency while he’s suffering and obviously have nothing else to do but focus on the invalid.

Comparison number 4

How men love letting all their garments simply drop on the floor as if their clothes would spontaneously combust when they dress or undress… Dogs don’t do this of course, even if some of our four-legged friends do actually have trousers and jackets, and that’s because they haven’t got fingers to fasten buttons or pull up zips. And yet every day I collect a whole pullover from my shaggy dog – the pullover that I would knit if I could do something with all the hairs that he sheds in every corner of my flat.

Comparison number 5

Both man and man’s best friend require constant feeding – but at least with Max I don’t have to put up with comments such as “Did you drop the salt cellar in the soup?” or “You must have been really busy today, seeing as this has only been heated up!”.

And last but not least: dogs snore too!

copyright by Gabriele Hasmann

With an optimistic outlook and convinced that I too would soon have vital statistics matching those of a catwalk model (well, even if I couldn't do anything about my height, at least I could try to change my width), I put myself through one 80s fad diet after the other and diligently followed all manner of slimming advice that today makes any nutritionalist - and particularly those who were still in nappies during the 1980s - either cry with laughter or give themselves a stiff neck as they shake their head incredulously. Once, for example, I forced myself to eat five bananas a day for three days. I didn't lose any pounds, but on the third day I almost went, literally, bananas...

Despite the occasional occurrence of dietary amnesia at the irresistible sight of a sinful dessert or two, over the years I repeatedly managed to lose weight and, inversely, regain my figure. That said, just a few months later, the yo-yo effect meant that the fat I had lost soon reappeared on my stomach, bum and legs. Analysing my eating habits when I was about 20, I concluded that, for me, eating stimulates a feeling of well-being. It was also at exactly this time that I was finally able to admit to myself that I was - and still am - an incorrigible couch potato - early man may have invented the wheel but he certainly didn't invent the bicycle. Of course, I'd spent a lot of time pondering this negative thinking, which related to almost every kind of physical activity, and the outcome was that it became clear to me that I had absolutely no desire to run around the neighbourhood like someone demented, nor did I want to chase after a ball, regardless of how big or small it was, nor did I wish, for want of clean lakes or rivers in the vicinity, to splash about in a swimming pool reeking of chlorine and containing goodness-knows-what courtesy of the tots in their orange arm-bands.

Even so, I still wanted to pare down my Rubenesque figure and thus continued to keep torturing myself, sometimes feeling less podgy, sometimes more so, and went on one diet - nowadays, they call it an eating regime - after the other. I stepped onto the scales on a daily basis, calculated my BMI, reduced my carbs, tried to sleep myself slim and balanced my metabolism, seeking to dodge every sticky bun and chocolate muffin that dared cross my path.

And so it was inevitable that I developed a certain resentment towards those endowed with a strong metabolism who can eat for two and still look lithe, and towards exercise addicts, who, rosy-cheeked and bright-eyed, pound the streets in all weathers with their Nordic-walking sticks or quickly latch onto each and every fitness trend while spending their day-to-day lives running around like Duracell bunnies.

On top of that, permanent low sugar levels and a low intake of fats meant that I became a right moody so-and-so, and it finally dawned on me that I will never be a tall, willowy supermodel; rather, I'll always have a BMI of between 25 and 26 and will swing between OK and chubby. Heeding the yo-yo effect, I got used to buying all my clothes in two different sizes and reined in my lack of enthusiasm for exercise a little by buying a dog who still takes me out for a walk every day.

All in all, I've come to terms with the whole weight thing. I now think it's OK to be a bit plump - curvy, I call it - and, for the first time ever since I became a woman, I'm satisfied with myself and my figure - most of the time, that is!

Standing on tiptoes, I stretched up as high as I could, just managing to make contact with a Coke Zero from the upper reaches of the drinks mountain, when the bottle toppled over, almost fell on my head and then landed in the trolley with a dull thud. At least it wasn't a glass bottle. I am, as the comedians like to say, "vertically challenged", and usually I ask a shop assistant, although invariably they're not much taller than me, to fetch a ladder to help me get what I want. But on this occasion I didn't have enough time to badger someone.

 I hurried on. Just as I was considering whether my gut would welcome a yogurt designed to reduce bloating, over my shoulder I heard a loud wailing sound, like a siren, and it gave me such a start that I almost dropped the probiotic drinks I was holding. "Hey, coochy coochy coo, what's up?", a young woman asked, causing the child, whose face was already lobster-red, to bawl even more loudly - maybe because he couldn't stop himself or maybe because he was intelligent and didn't want to be asked, like a complete idiot, why he was so displeased. Then, as I turned into the next aisle, I was taken aback by an alarming obstacle course in the form of piles of empty boxes lying around - presumably an added bonus from the store manager for bored customers. 

After navigating the obstacle course without incident, I worked my way to the checkouts, and watched anxiously for any more unforeseen problems that could crop up and prevent the queue of customers from being dealt with swiftly. I didn't have to wait long. The first person in the queue, obviously someone reluctant to pay by cash, had forgotten his PIN code and was frantically rummaging around his coat pocket, where he thought he had put the slip of paper with the digits in question that would save him from humiliation and the people behind him from a nervous breakdown. 

When he at last pulled the scrap of paper from his wallet with a triumphant look, the queue breathed a collective sigh of relief. The elderly lady who was next launched into a lengthy monologue about the weather, while the woman behind her realised she had forgotten to weigh her tomatoes, whereupon she chivvied her portly, bored-looking husband back to the vegetables section, an instruction he acknowledged with a grunt, plodding away despondently, jostling and jolting the other shoppers in the queue as he did so. 

Meanwhile, the elderly lady had come to the end of her meteorological lecture and had paid using all the spare change in her purse. The woman whose husband had grunted was now getting a little uneasy as there was still no sign of her spouse. Finally he shuffled back to the checkout and squeezed his way to his wife at the front of the queue. Just as the man behind me rammed his trolley at my posterior, the baby started crying again at the next till. During all this, I was observing the young chap in front of me, who was placing his items on the conveyor belt in a casual, almost reverent way, as if he was putting together a work of art.

 The infant at the next till was still howling, the checkout girl seemed to be getting tired, at least, her hand movements were becoming slower and slower as she scanned the products, and when I heard "Shush, shush, shush! Don't cry, mummy's here!" from across the aisle, I almost wanted to howl myself. Finally, it was my turn! I pushed my trolley with the faulty wheel out of the store and into the car park. 

It was then, hampered as I was by the temperamental trolley, that it occurred to me: according to agony aunts, supermarkets are a great place for flirting - under the harsh neon lighting, pushing a trolley that may or may not contain intimate items, advertising jingles playing in the background, or announcements like "Cashier to checkout two, cashier to checkout two, please...", underpinned by other shoppers gossiping, their children arguing, your face a traffic-light colour - stressed-out red, bewildered yellow or cantankerous green - blinking... Call me unromantic, but all that makes me feel about as warm-hearted as the artichokes in the freezer section! 

copyright by Gabriele Hasmann