Grateful: Day 56 - Ceramic Pumpkins and The Moon

I feel like I'm really struggling today, for a number of reasons and in a number of ways, and yet, there are such gifts.

The moon today was fat and bright and mottled. And quite big over the city (Cologne). We'd just come from a spa... hot, salty water everywhere, and often outside. There was a bubble spa bit, proper hot and a bit aggressive... I was bouncing around all over the place in there. And all around it was a gently-moving channel of water. Gentle until the attendant guy pressed a button...

Then off it went, swishing round at quite a pace. If you stuck yourself to the outer edge, you'd get whizzed round with it. It was really exciting. I felt about five years old. That's one of those things that doesn't happen so much when you're a grown-up - that you are completely swept away by something. When you're little, you can be swept up and thrown in the air, or pushed on a swing, or spun by your hands around and around. It CAN still happen once you're big, but it doesn't tend to. I liked it.

Margaret couldn't get out. She was trying to swim out of a fairly large gap that let into the bit that wasn't swirling, but each time she tried, she was flung back into the current. She's very slim, so it wasn't that much of a surprise. I had a go. I failed regally a few times too, and I'm quite heavy and definitely strong.

We played at me trying to save her. I grabbed her hand and tried to pull her back to the watery exit, but to no avail. Then I managed to get out myself and tried to pull her through. Eventually, they just switched it off. Almost spoilt the fun.

Just being able to be there is a thing to be very grateful for. And to do all the things we've done today - a walk in the forest. A trip to the spa. Another lovely meal - a hunk of boiled pork, creamy-rich mashed potato and salty sauerkraut.

Next to us, in the place we ate tonight, a big, long, raucous table of work colleagues. They were loud, but friendly and drunk enough to be inclusive. They were playing the best secret santa game ever, called 'Evil Elves'... (thanks, Kate, who doesn't speak German, for a better translation than I was ever going to come up with).

The way it works is this: instead of buying a secret santa present for a particular person, you identify something you already own, something useless, kitsch or ugly, or that you've been trying to shift for ages (among the gifts we saw tonight, a decorative ceramic pumpkin contraption, a bag of random bric-a-brac shite, a floppy disc drive, a huge and convoluted nutcracker involving a metal globe - with countries - that you dropped down a pole onto a nut, or the aforementioned ceramic pumpkin, and a stuffed sheep's head, designed like a hunting trophy, so you can really put it on your wall... oh, oh, and a vinyl LP called 'Gymnastics and Dance for the Elderly', including a record and pages of moves). You wrap it in newspaper and you bring it with you.

They were HOWLING as they opened them. Okay, they were a little bit drunk, that's fair enough. But it was really funny. And you don't just get one. Everyone rolls 2 dice, and the person who rolls lowest has to open the present and keep it. Once they're all open, there's another round. You each roll again. If you roll 3, you swap with the person on your left, if 5, with the person on your right, and if you roll a double, you can pick and force anyone to swap with you. That goes on for a while. My, that sheep's head was in demand. I'd have happily kept it. It was great.

We kind of joined in a bit, by the end. It was fun. It was nice. Just as it was nice when the lady opposite us on the tram home was blatantly staring at whatever the guy next to her was doing on his tablet,with a little tech pen - which we were dying to see - and then looking up at me all the time with a mischievous smirk. Unfortunately, she got off at the same stop as him... I was going to ask her what he was doing and I bet she'd have told me.

Thank you for Esther Lilley and Rob Grundel, and for a great skype chat with Rob a little earlier, which helped me feel a bit more human. And for emails and texts from lovely friends, including Lyndi and Max, both maskers.

I love my bed here. It's great. So comfortable. And I so look forward to being in it. Oh... I can.