I would just like to say that I do have have several very credible excuses for not blogging these past four months but rather than bore you with trivial detail I shall instead update Paradise Deutsch.

So to begin: is four months sufficient a period to master the cello? Alas no. Is it sufficient to discover that your cello teacher is actually an arrogant egotistical mad pervy bastard with short-man syndrome? Indeed yes.

Unfortunately, following my last post things immediately went sour. He took great delight in mixing up anatomical terms when directing me where to hold the instrument. "Oops, did I say breasts? I meant of course chest, it's my English you know." Sure.

Clearly I am far from being an expert on methods of teaching music but there was a lot more walking around the room, "connecting with the music", touching the piano, and imagining the bow as part of my arm than actually playing the cello.

I already regretted signing the six-month contract as it turned out to contain all manner of sneakiness, the main point of which was that he took money from my account and may or may not feel like "teaching". Several times I arrived at my lesson on time only to find him still with another student and I had to wait almost an hour to begin. It was at this point that I knew I should have listened to Erin, who had said "He's a bastard!" almost immediately after meeting him.

In the meantime, however, Erin and I found a new cello teacher. We went to her house in the sticks for a free trial lesson and I learnt more with her in twenty minutes than three months with Niko, despite it being entirely auf Deustch. I could play a song! I walked out with a light heart -even the cello felt less cumbersome - and was so thrilled to have discovered what it feels like to actually play an instrument and not just absorb the essence of the music and breathe in the spirit of the cello that we missed the last bus and the last train home and had to be rescued in the dark and the rain by Denis, who had doubts about the ability to fit two girls and two cellos in his pimped-out Golf and was right.

The only question was how to cunningly extract myself from the remaining three months of my contract with the prima donna. I had made up my mind to complain that in all the lessons I'd had essentially I could still only bow the open string. As it turned out I needn't have worried as when I arrived at my next lesson he was angry with me, for not going to his concert the night previous. He demanded to know what I'd been doing instead. A row ensued and the contract was cancelled. A perfect result.

Thus is the current cello situation.

I have a great many other events of recent months to relate, most notably the departure of my beloved Adam to Tokyo. We are no strangers to the long distance but a 79-day separation is a new test. However, this has allowed for the occasion of my going to Japan for three weeks at the end of the summer, which is sure to be an adventure, the like of which will keep Paradise Deutsch going until Christmas.

Sundry other news items include two new additions to my ever-growing family in the form of babies: one human, a new sibling courtesy of my father and stepmother, due end of September, and one canine, a Norwegian elkhound puppy by the name of Kizzy, belonging to mother and sister; Brid's wedding in Galway, where I spent most of the day trying not to bawl my head off at how beautiful she looked and how much she and Fred clearly adore each other; a much anticipated trip to the Hay Festival, which included a resistant sister as a last-minute addition, and one fabulous evening in Manchester that was as close to going back in time as I am likely to get, as despite already living in the future there is still no commercial time travel available at a reasonable price.

I hope to recount all of the above instances of interest during the coming weeks but forgive me if I go astray once again - it really is remarkable how much of my time is taken up just by working, sleeping, thinking about practising the cello, and not going to the dentist.

My new baby

My new baby's disturbingly penguin-esque case

Friday night's musical beginnings were a satisfying if slightly delayed success. It was cold and snowing when I arrived at the practice room a few minutes early and the cello teacher, Niko, whose name I type with crossed fingers that he isn't in the habit of Googling himself, told me that they were a few minutes behind schedule and he hoped I wouldn't mind waiting.

Niko's wife was at the piano and another student cellist accompanied her (on the cello that is, not the piano). As previously noted, the practice room itself is rather bare (when I have established myself in a few lessons' time I'll get a photo), and I found myself perched on a cushion on the floor, alongside a lady named Tanja whom had finished her own lesson and was staying on for the social scene.

There were thus five of us crowded into the tiny room; Tanja and I drank some of the Japanese tea and listened to the piano and cello music, and Niko shouted words of German encouragement amid much emphatic gesturing.

Eventually, over an hour later, I unpacked my own cello and handed it to Niko for approval. He ran the bow over it. His face took on a look of agonized horror and he cried out "Oh no no! This instrument has had already a great adventure, yes?!"

It was apparently horribly out of tune. He sat opposite me on one of the room's two stools, I upgraded to the other, and spent the following ten minutes turning the fine-tune pegs by minute amounts scarcely visible to my keenly watchful eyes.

"We have a saying in German: 'Somebody already died tuning a cello'."

He handed it back to me and took up his own instrument. He drew the bow across the strings and a low, resonating sound filled the room.

"The cello is tuned in fifths," he said. "Fifths are perfect! Fifths are pure! You know what is a fifth?"

I shook my head.

"Ok, let me put it this way. If it was tuned in thirds, it could be like this."

He grinned hugely, the corners of his mouth reaching up past his ears, and screwed his eyes up tight. He bowed the G string, giving a long, drawn-out note.

"It could have a very smiley sound, like that! Or," he said, in an instant melancholy, with his bottom lip stuck out, "It could have a very sad sound........"

He bowed the G string again, giving out, to my ears, an identical long, drawn-out note.

He looked up. "Still a third."

Most of the remaining lesson was spent with me bowing the open G string whilst he played along with wonderful, effortless music. Though all I was doing was drawing my bow back and forth across the G string and trying to remember to relax my wrist and my shoulder and to move my body in the opposite direction to the bow, it felt rather good to have some small part in creating beautiful sounds in a tiny room in Heidelberg whilst the snow fell outside.

He talked whilst he played, imparting insightful advice and telling me of his student days, at the same time reminding me to relax and move ("don't forget your body").

He told me that he had been taught to play by a very severe cellist. "I think it was because he had a bad childhood. The kind with only bread and water. And punishment."

He also said, as my bow slipped off the end of the string with a horrible clang that grated the nerves, "You should know, noise is the brother of great sound."

Just before nine I packed up and headed out into the snow, trying to avoid banging the neck of the cello case on the roof as I boarded the tram.

I think I shall like learning to play but the trek up to Heidelberg every week carrying one and half thousand euros of cello with me is an inconvenience I would have preferred to be without.

Champagne, Subway, and a String Quartet

...but not necessarily in that order. During my weeks absent from Paradise Deutsch I have been attending my German language class twice a week, sitting in a class of immigrants whose common language is the mime and feeling right at home as one of them.

I have also taken up the cello. I am not, nor have I ever been, musically inclined but I suddenly took it upon myself to learn an instrument, of which the cello has always held a sophisticated, elegant attraction. Within an hour of taking the notion I had secured private tuition with a cellist in Heidelberg and the following Saturday I took the train to a small town outside Heidelberg to visit a cello maker, whereupon I hired a cello, including all the necessary accessories, for the very reasonable monthly price of €30.

This is what the inside of a cello-maker's house looks like

The cello teacher, who is German and has a Japanese wife who plays the piano, is not as severe or bald as his photograph on the website would have you believe. I went to meet him before deciding whether or not to sign up to his course of lessons (though to be honest, the choice of English-speaking cello teachers in the Rhein Neckar delta is not vast). He has a small practice room a few minutes' walk from the main sqaure in Heidelberg. The room has bare walls and contains only two stools, a kettle, and a grand piano.

After introductions and explanations as to why I wished to learn the cello in particular, he asked if I wanted to hear him play. The music that he effortlessly picked out almost broke my heart with its grace and beauty. I took a gulp of the lukewarm Japanese tea I'd been given by his wife and swallowed a jaffa cake so as not to burst into huge sobs of grief and longing - for quite what I'm not sure.

He handed me the cello. "Now you try". He showed me the correct way to hold the instrument.

"Hug him! Hold him like you give him a cuddle, yes?!"

I hugged the cello.

"Right, now you are holding him the right way. Now move the bow from left to right. Move it gently."

The sound that issued forth was somewhere between a foghorn and a choked cat. But it felt good. He was full of flamboyant gestures and big grins and wandered around the tiny room waving his arms and waxing poetic about the beauty of the cello.

I asked, somewhat doubtfully, if he would be teaching from a book.

"A book, ha! I am the book! We don't need a book. I could have written ten books if I had wanted!"

My lessons are to be once a week, beginning tomorrow evening.

To return to the title of this post, Thursday evening brought the lovely Adam over from England; we passed an idyllic weekend (with only one cross word exchanged when he hung his wet towel to dry on my cello) that left me feeling blissfully happy that I am so lucky to be able to spend an idyllic weekend with the man I love, and yet miserably depressed because I wish every weekend were like that rather than the reality of spending most of them in my pyjamas eating dry cereal from the box and listening to Radio 4 on the internet.

Saturday was Valentine's Day and in a infinite improvement upon last year's, we began the evening with dinner and champagne and then went to see a string quartet play in the town hall. We were the youngest people there by forty years. Nevertheless, the music was wonderful and afterwards we walked out into the snow feeling both very uplifted and very hungry.

This is when we stopped into Subway to share a 30-cm chicken-with-everything sandwich, bringing our sophisticated, classy evening down a notch but it tasted pretty good.

I have been back in the foreign for less than a week and the return to work, in combination with the brisk -15° outside temperature and daily there-and-back soggy tramp through six inches of grey slush due to the bike's being frozen stiff to the Hoff's kitchen wall, has made for a bleak commence of the new year.

However, a new year is an opportunity for a new start and in the spirit of such I have signed up to a German language course at the institute in Mannheim, beginning on Monday. I have committed myself for the next ten weeks for two hours a night twice weekly to the cultural endeavour of immersing myself in the mother tongue of my host country. A bold move but after two and half years of Deutsche living and no imminent prospect of escape it can surely only serve as a productive diversion during the dreary winter months ahead.

An unexpected positive that has come from the arrival of Germany's coldest winter in twenty years is that my flat seems to be slightly warmer; this could of course simply be because it is far colder outside than ever before but whilst I am enjoying being down to only three layers in bed and finding just the two hot-water bottles to be sufficient, I'm not going to question it.

I had planned to detail the events of my three-week holiday in England but the fingerless gloves make typing wearyingly cumbersome so for now I shall say good evening, or Guten Abend, as I will no doubt be in the habit of saying ten weeks hence.

It's been a busy month with visits from Amelia, Mum and sister, and Adam in quick succession, and a trip to the Homeland, which has left me little time to blog, or knit, which were intended to be my chief winter pastimes.

Before my weekend visit to England, I was dismayed to find that my decrepit, cripplingly old toploading washing machine was once again broken.

"This time it cannot be fixed," said the Hoff. "Es ist kaputt, finished".

I wasn't sure I believed her because she hadn't actually had anyone in to look at it and this was her personal verdict. She left a note reminding me yet again that the washing machine does not belong to the flat; it is my responsibility to repair or replace.

The Lavamat 240, circa 1972.

Being escorted from the building.

The space available for the washing machine is in the bathroom and is 45 cm wide. Trying to find a new machine to fit into this narrow gap was not going to be easy, particularly when I was reluctant to spend more than 100 euros. It would surely have to be another toploader. I turned to eBay.

There was one machine being auctioned, located in Karlsruhe, about an hour's drive away. It looked fine, was the right size, and a reasonable price. I put in a bid and waited. Some days later, the auction mysteriously ended early. By this time I was thoroughly fed up of handwashing and had resorted to digging clothes out of the charity bag so I was unwilling to give up when I'd found what I needed.

I emailed the seller, who I was disconcerted to find was called, I kid you not, Trusty Dirk. I don't know about you but I have reservations about buying domestic electrical appliances over the internet from a man named Trusty Dirk. However, these were desperate times. I asked why the auction ended - he replied to say that he'd been offered 25 euros to sell the machine immediately.

What's a good trade name that'll show customers I'm honest and reliable?

I emailed back and offered 50. My limit for the auction would have been 100 so I considered this a bargain. In another suspicious twist, Trusty Dirk, who I was beginning to suspect was less than completely trustworthy, replied to say that ok, we had a deal but I need to hurry because there's a lot of interest. I doubted that but wasn't in a position to argue. He asked me to call him to arrange collection.

Later that evening I hesitantly dialed the number and waited. A male voice answered.

"Hello?"

"Hi, is that, er, Trusty Dirk?"

"Look, if you're the one calling about the fertiliser you can forget it ok, I'm hanging up!"

"No, no!" I managed to cry, "I'm calling about the washing machine, I emailed you earlier?"

There was a pause.

"Are you the one that's going to pay 50 euros?"

"Yes."

"Good. You can pick it up Saturday morning. You just need to bring 50 euros cash."

"Erm, ok."

He gave me his address and hung up. I had a bad feeling about the whole thing.

I drove to Karlsruhe with Tim. Shortly before we arrived I had a text from Trusty Dirk, asking if I was coming alone.

"NO", I texted back. "I am with ten male friends, eight of whom are policemen and the other two are in the army."

Disappointingly, or not, depending how you look at it, Trusty Dirk turned out to be a skinny ginger economics student at the University of Karlsruhe - even more disappointing, for Tim at least, was that he lived on the fifth floor of the building. Happily though we were soon on our way back with a new old toploading washing machine that is at least twice the height of the old one but fortunately the same width.

I have so far used it twice; it seems to only respond to the D program ("Buntwashe") and it periodically makes alarming clanging noises but it works and the spin is quiet. I try not to touch it if possible.

The newly ensconced Washmaschin; not the most aesthetically pleasing appliance but for 50 euros I can live with it.

As to what happened to the old one I cannot honestly say. Guido hauled it down the stairs and put it out on the street. Twenty minutes later it was gone. As Adam observed, in Germany even the scroungers are efficient.

It is the middle of October and time to begin the winter knitting. The most ambitious items I've created so far are hats and mittens. I've decided to expand my range and knit a Christmas jumper. Sleeveless, to begin with. Nothing too complicated.

Whilst incapacitated with the overzealous allergic reaction I practiced the shaping and pattern of a Christmas jumper. I found a reindeer pattern online and knit it into a green-and-white trial run.

I made two enormous errors. Firstly, I misread the chart and only knit the legs on the knit row rather than both knit and purl rows so they came out rather thin and spindly. Having realised my mistake but unwilling to rip the legs out I then moved onto the body. This time I was careful to include the pattern on the purl row but now I erroneously doubled every line of the pattern.

So, rather than elegant reindeer leaping gracefully across the jumper, I got something more akin to llamas. Robot llamas.

Spindly legged robot llamas: not a good look.

I frogged it all out and started again. Fortunately, I got reindeer the second time round and so I began the Christmas jumper proper.

I've been threatening to present Adam with an outrageous hand-knitted garment for some time. He has solemnly promised to wear it on Christmas Day but severely doubts that he'll ever be persuaded to don it on any other occasion (fancy dress does not count).

I started it last weekend and have knitted all the way to where I'll begin the armhole shaping. I added in a row of snowflakes for extra naffness. I've taken it off the needles now as I'm taking it with me to England at the weekend and I need to measure him before I continue. In the meantime I've started on the back.

Essential German Vocab for Knitters

Knitting needles: stricknadeln
Circular knitting needles: rundstricknadeln
Wool: wolle

A webcam, I thought. Why haven't I got one? I'm an expat, I have the internet, and I have people to see back home. All living-abroad types have webcams.

I went to a digital-things shop and and bought the first I found that was under 20 euros and said Vista on the box. Upon opening, I was shocked to find that it looks disconcertingly like an eye. A wild, manic eyeball that is staring, threatening, and thinking dark thoughts. It's the PC equivalent of Edvard Munch's The Scream.

Tell me I'm imagining it?

Trying not to look at it, I plugged it in; nothing happened but I loaded up MSN Messenger nonetheless and called Mum into a conversation.

"I've got my webcam," I typed.

"Ooh good," she replied.

"Can you see me then?" I asked, waving at the Eye. It stared unblinkingly back.

"No," she typed. "Can you see me?"

"No. But you haven't got a webcam have you, Mum?"

A pause. Then "No."

Clearly something had gone wrong.

"Have you taken the lens cap off?" asked Mum, helpfully.

"I don't think it's got one," I said, picking it up to make sure.

After lengthy investigation of all the buttons on the Messenger toolbar I gave up. When it comes to computers, if the instructions suggest anything more than Take Out Of Box, Plug In, Click Go I instantly despair.

I may make a brave attempt and wade part way through the "Wizard" ("Bastard" would surely be more apt), convinced I'm being tricked, frustration steaming out of my nostrils and fogging up the screen, before picking up the whole lot and dumping it in the cupboard under the stairs and refusing to look at it for a week.

With much concentration and three glasses of white wine I eventually got it working and can now have successful jerky robotic video links with Adam. The rest of the time I keep it covered with a tea towel and turn it to face the wall. I don't like the way it watches.