Gloria! Gloria!

Categories: translation, triumphs

Date: 02 October 2008 00:20:22

Diddle diddle, tiddle diddle, diddle diddle, tiddle diddle, Gloria! Gloria! In excelsis Deo.

This morning, my self-employed handyman friend arrived at 8 o'clock to start on the decorating. As HandyAndy is also a bit short of work at the moment, we had done a deal that he would work on decorating the spare room at a rate which undercut the quote I had been given with the obvious advantage of having me as his Builder's Mate to - ahem - speed the work up a bit. The idea of two of us working on the room was to try to get it finished before offers of "proper" work came in.

We had just manhandled all the furniture into the middle of the room and laid down the dust sheets when the phone rang. One of my clients wanting 1,300 words by 4 p.m. A quick look at the document to see if I could remember any German and I accepted it. My brain cells must have been turbo charged as I'd finished by 1 p.m. A spot of soup for lunch and I presented myself in the spare room to clock on for the next shift. Seconds later, the phone went again. An offer by another client for 3 days' work. HandyAndy is on his own - which I am sure suits him fine! Is this little flurry of work a positive sign for the future?

I'm sure I have mentioned previously that whenever one decides to embark on a major project during a period of professional inactivity the phone rings. And I shall be living in chaos for some time... HandyAndy has parked a wheelbarrow of kit in the living room and the contents of the spare room are in the dining room and my bedroom. A general state of disorder is not altogether uncommon in my abode but I have vowed that all that STUFF is going to be sorted out, shredded, binned, sent to the charity shop, etc. It is NOT going back to its previous home. I said this last Christmas when I had my office and bedroom decorated...and I succeeded in a fashion - except that all that STUFF went into the spare room... Now, nine months later it has been shifted again. I'm running out of places to hide it so I shall have to tackle it or die of embarrassment every time someone comes round and has to sit on a pile of files. I have a feeling it's going to take me ages to go through it all. I'm sort of hoping I'll be employed in a gainful manner to the extent that I won't have time to deal with it... but then again... I'm hoping I'll be rid of it soon. Would Christmas be a realistic target?

No doubt my gentle musically inclined readers will immediately recognise the overture to my post as being part of Vivaldi's Gloria. And why is this piece of music by the great Antonio particularly apt? Well the words are quite appropriate but if you remove the first syllable of Tony's surname you will be left with the name of the German supermarket for which I am now translating some wierd computer programme.