Skipping back to the feeling of being in the Tindermill, there is no word for this feeling in English that I know of. For me it involved a mixture of shame (that’s culturally relative) and just the human-ness of being horny and low-key boredom with a kind of non-committal leisure vibe: like a loose, long-standing arrangement to go play pool on a Wednesday night. You could go any time, and it just feels neat to know that you belong to the pool hall gang.

I wanted to say that I did enjoy the Mark Twain piece you sent. I had the same problem myself. Taking offence really at the fact that, although I could stand the genders (in German), I just couldn’t forgive them for retaining those case endings!

Antipodeans suffer terribly from instant-expertism and I – with my shaky command of German – am a case in point. But it is only when I buy into the myth that Herr Klein seems to want to construct around me as a peerless example of capital i Integration  that I truly cross over into bullshitland. 

Since early childhood I had nursed a burning desire to be a French nun: the fact that I didn't meet any of the pre-requisites, such as being French or having an acquaintance, no matter how fleeting, with any religious doctrine, at all, was of no concern to me.

Ah, I replied, fishing around frantically for the correct conjunctive, then would it possibility be for you to be ringing the other shops, and to check them all if they are having the same something? Frau Verkauferin raised an eyebrow skeptically and replied, do you know how many shops we have?