Bonkers is off on an extreme multi-tasking weekend, including a meet up with Val the Cookie Queen!

I am afraid I haven't managed to do my usual weekly (or thereabouts) post this week. I am working on two projects at the moment, involving evenings, early starts, and some fancy mental footwork trying to remember what job I am on every time I pick up the phone. When I do eventually knock off, my brain is completely addled, and I am not up to much more than a distracted scroll through Facebook and a hastily prepared 'fusion cuisine' meal fashioned from the dwindling contents of my fridge.

There will be posts - also on perfume! - coming along once I have got this flurry of work out of the way in a week or two, if not before. I plan to review SJP Stash, Mon Guerlain - that surprised you! - and a few other things, as well as finally compile my bathroom refurb post, now that the finishing touch of a picture is back from the framer's and on the wall.

And meanwhile, I am off on Friday (don't tell Truffle!) to Germany for an extreme multi-tasking weekend, as all my holidays tend - and for budgetary reasons, need - to be these days. It will combine language practice (which I could almost elevate to the status of Continuing Professional Development, even if in practice I am mostly inquiring about platform information and the feasibility of fresh milk for my tea), AND my twin interests of music and perfume. The specifics of the former may readily be guessed, while the latter will be embodied in the human dynamo, fellow blogger, and one-woman gourmet cookie factory that is Val CQ Sperrer(!). Despite not being long back from her action-packed trip to Milan, Val is heading north to Bavaria on Saturday with downhill biking maniac husband, 'no fear' Chris, to meet me for a gig by The Monochrome Set in Augsburg. She being arguably one of only a handful of people in the known world who are diehard fumeheads and fans of that somewhat eclectic band.

The planning of the trip, meanwhile, has not been without incident. I have established, for example, that while Manchester Airport security have absolutely no problems with me taking knitting on a flight out of the country (cue more multi-tasking!), Munich Airport security take a very dim view of my wishing to take it home again. Knitting needles - or Stricknadeln, as they are known over there - are stricktly verboten on account of their non-negotiable status as 'pointy objects' and terrorist weapons. I must say I have never heard tell of a 'in air' terrorist attack involving knitting needles, but I guess there is always a first time. I mean, 'yarn bombing' is already a well-established pursuit, also in Germany...;)

In vain did I try to reason on the phone with the officious official from the Sicherheitsgesellschaft am Flughafen München mbH, and big up the innocuous character of my particular wooden needles: I was firmly told that the material of said needles was...ahem...immaterial. I would have been allowed to take needles measuring a maximum of 6cm on the flight, but you wouldn't be able to knit a scarf on implements of quite such Lilliputian proportions. Even one of those narrow, spivvy Mod ties favoured by Paul Weller would be a stretch, quite literally indeed.

I'll be just as happy to see her this time! 

So there you have it. I will of course report back on the events of the weekend as soon as work permits. And on the day that Britain started the process of leaving the EU - though as I said on Facebook, I had rather hoped Mrs May would trigger Area 51 by mistake - I found a way to ensure the 'free movement' of my latest woolly project (for a nominal fee)...of which more later.

Okay...so that was a sort of a post after all!