Just wanted to let you know that I'm back and what better way than by letting you have a glimpse at some of the things I did while away.
There's probably more to come if anyone is interested, but right now I'll be going into some kind of rehab for three weeks and I don't know about internet access there - those pacemakers and their carriers seem to have to get used to each other. I'm VERY friendly towards mine and call him lovingly my CA, my cardiac ally.

Enjoy, or don't. Let me know in either case.
IMc

Four words
Don’t read these stories!

I don’t really know why I feel compelled to write down these stories I am writing down here. (Actually I DO know but I am not going to tell you right away. Where would be the fun in that?)
They are all loosely connected to a longer hospital sojourn in early 2012, during which I was put into an artificial coma, had to be re-animated twice and ended up with a new-fangled kind of pacemaker implanted – sub-clavicular, I like that word – that works as a defibrillator at the same time.
More four words
These stories are true
Of course they are. I wouldn’t want to be accused of lying, now, would I? WOULD I ?
- See.
Fore mour words. Moor words. Maur words. Sorry, just practising using language again
These stories are lies
Yes, of course they are. I wouldn’t want to be accused of telling true stories in a state of almost permanent drowsiness and later on be confronted with how I met Mrs Schroeder, how I was able to distinguish between male and female monitors etc. I’m not that naive.

My name is IMcRout
Of course my name isn’t IMcRout. It is Jeremy Prendergast Pillingbottom III. By calling myself IMcRout I avoid getting spammed with penis enlargement ads.
Why do you write in English?
It’s presumptuous, innit? I know I am not a Joseph Conrad; I know I am not a Vladimir Nabokov. I admire these writers immensely, their grasp of language, rhythm, colour and whatnot. Yet I know I’ll never be one of them. So, why try?

Several aspects, probably. My daughter, the one who did not marry her British boyfriend, and her British boyfriend, (see ‘Strange Happenings in the North’) yes, the one she did not marry (I have been assured I’ll be the first to know) gave me a book for Christmas. Nothing unusual there; I have been given a book before. But this one was Lynne Truss’s book on Pan-daism, Pandamonium and other popular afflictions of editors, sub-editors and literate people in general, otherwise known as ‘Eats, Shoots & Leaves’.
You see, ve haff got similar problem’s in German, too. There is actually a small but fairly militant movement against the widespread abuse of the apostrophe in German. There is hardly a legitimate reason for the use of the apostrophe at all. Yet you see it all the time.
We had a hairdresser’s down the street called Andreas (the hairdresser, not the street), a perfectly acceptable name for a hairdresser, I think.
One day we thought he’d given up his shop, sold it and gone abroad. But no, he had just redecorated, put in a slightly bigger shop window and put up a new sign outside (instead of one of those silver discs German hairdressers used to have suspended over their doors to show potential customers that the owner was ‘in’ (and for tall young men wanting to show off by practicing headers).
The new sign said “L’André’s”, which was so ridiculous in its insignificance and non-meaning that it almost was funny again.
So when I read ‘Eats Shoots & Leaves’ I’d finally found a fellow stickler and nit-picker. I woke up from my own coma and read about ‘lapsing into a comma’ or some comments about colonic use: sheer joy.
You should know that I have been correcting native speakers almost since I started learning the language myself, i.e. some fifty years ago. One of the first letters came from a former Dulwich girlfriend sometime in the late sixties. Hi, Jules!
Julie wrote me that her friends had given her the nickname ‘Jewdrop’ because of her beautiful hair (it really was, and that skin ..., sorry). Being twenty, German, having just finished my own (equivalent to the) A-levels and being engaged in my compulsory military service at the time, my reply was very cautious and tentative. (Did she perhaps mean ‘dewdrop’?) And the answer was accepted and confirmed without any further ado.
By the way. You can mention the war in my presence. No problem. And after the South African World-Cup, I have no problems discussing 1966, either.
And then, of course, I became a teacher and as such, together with being German, who as you are all aware know everything better, I must have been pretty insufferable to parts of my surroundings. I did PE, too, so there was at least some kind of balance.
Lynne Truss was one of the reasons I decided to write in English. Another one is / was the fact that for the last six months or so prior to hospital, I spent a lot of time on English Language Forums (thank you, fellow freedelfians) trying to help learners of English in understanding some of the intricacies of the language. And it was fun. Apart from the feeling of being helpful, I enjoyed communicating with people from all over the world. Some of them were strictly prescriptive grammarians, others were more on the descriptive side. Apart from grammar and spelling, there were humorous threads, funny pictures, serious discussions about politics or religious issues.
Go and check them for yourselves (forum.thefreedictionary.com ).
I tend to avoid debating politics with Americans, though. The language is just too different!!! Just take the word ‘liberal’ and its completely different meanings on either side of the Atlantic.
So does that explain a certain infatuation with the English language? – It does? But is it enough?
I think the main reason for me is a kind of therapeutic one. I had manoeuvred myself into a situation I found it difficult to get out of. Having to retire early was definitely a major stumbling stone. Going from active, being ready at 7.55 every morning to passive, wondering whether it is worth getting up today, makes for a change.
The fact that my body, or at least parts of it, did no longer want to perform the way they were meant to, was another one.
So I decided to avenge myself, on my body, on my own body. Stupid, I know, but just like the protagonist in Poe’s ‘Tell-tale heart’, who keeps telling us he is not mad, I can assure you I knew exactly what I was doing and if not for this silly pneumonia I might have succeeded.
It is not as if I were or had been suicidal, I was simply too tired to put up much resistance against the decay of my body. Lapsing – or being lapsed – into a comma then probably saved my life.
So much to the benefits of punctuation.
So, one morning, instead of protracting my comma, I woke up and the stronger I became, the stronger my demand for therapy grew and here I am telling you once again,
Don’t read these stories!

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"Before I speak, I have something important to say."Groucho Marx

Your post is fascinating, IMcR.

Come back in three weeks, fit and strong. Your many friends on here have missed you.

Take care of yourself.

Very best wishes.

And I was wondering what happened to you. Well, best wishes!

Ah Bochy - I've missed you so much. And worried about you equally as much. You silly, silly man: - don't you DARE deprive us of your humour and kindness and wit again!!

And don't worry - I shall obey your strictures not to read your stories so I stuck to only reading the first four words. Did I do good?

Go and get better and come back to us when you have done so. My thoughts are with you. Truly. c

Freedelfia is crippled without some essential members.
I wish you full recovery and quick come-back.

Cheers!

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I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

Ei, come back real soon. I personally have missed seeing you so often in the forums that I almost thought you lived here :p Get well soon

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Ako ay ako, ikaw ay ikaw.

Late in on this one, but with the program. Health, peace and laughter to you, my Teutonic friend.

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Sanity is not statistical