Yesterday, we met a gentleman whose daughter acquired a severe brain injury in a car accident more than 20 years ago. It was an extraordinary meeting and he is an extraordinary man. I am sure that that meeting was just the first of many to follow. He said two things, I don’t want to forget. Ever. The first was that you never give up on people that are in his daughter’s or in Pádraig’s situation. Never ever. You always have to give all you can to support their way to recovery. The second point he made was that whatever you do for people like his daughter or Pádraig, you do it with the aim of getting them back to fully functioning and independent members of society. Two statements I find difficult to reconciliate with talk about return-on-investment in the health sector…

“To tell you the truth, I don’t really want to hear about problems – I want to hear about solutions”, a manager in one of my previous jobs used to say to me. What I ‘heard’ was, “go away and deal with the difficult stuff yourself and share with me the ‘glory’ of success”. Not a smart way to manage people, I thought. And still think.

The Germans have many problems (don’t get any of my non-German family started). One of these are ‘coat hangers’. Well, not the hangers themselves, but what to do with coat hangers when you want to dispose of them. As everybody knows, Germans are the world champions in separating rubbish. I will never forget the expression in the faces of my friends when they first came to Ireland some years ago and I showed them our one and only rubbish bin – they were looking for all sorts of different bins in all sorts of different colours for all sorts of different things. At this moment in time, the German government is in the process of issuing the ‘6th Regulation for the Modification of the Rapping-Regulation’ (or something like
this) which will, they hope, address the problem of the coat hanger.  The new regulation will need to be passed by the Bundesrat, though, so there are still some tense moments down the line. But once approved, Germans will, finally, be able to dispose of coat hangers in an easy-to-follow way: (1) if the coat hanger was purchased together with clothing, it can be dealt with as ‘wrapping’ and disposed of in the ‘yellow’ bins; (2) if the coat hanger was, however, purchased separately, it will have to be disposed of as ‘rest’-rubbish in the ‘grey’ bins as “Restmüll”. (Before you ask, they have announced that they already started to work on the ‘7th Regulation…’ which will, it is hoped in Government circles, allow Germans to dispose of coat hangers in just one and the same bin. Who’s to say the German’s make life more complicated than necessary?)

Just to avoid any confusion, the above is not a joke (you know the German sense of ‘humour’) but was reported by Der Spiegel magazine a week or two ago (17/2014, p. 46)

Pádraig today had more than five hours in the viva-la-Thekla. It was great to see him sitting out of his bed for the third consecutive day, though, maybe, it was a bit long for him. It was also quite warm today in Hamburg which wasn’t too comfortable for him either. His heart beat was up very high (for the first time in a long time), he had a slight temperature, and they were giving him some IV fluids, though nothing to worry about really. It was a good resting day for him today, following the live music session and the ‘dancing’ over the past two days. Really exciting stuff. One really great thing Pádraig did today was to move both of his feet when Pat asked him to do so. The effort was quite unbelievable for him to manage to do this, but he did manage, and he did move!

If I was to work in Government, and if I was to be asked to work on the ‘7th Regulation…’, I would not come up with more problems (such as: what to do with empty toilet rolls, or – worse – tea bags with compost, metal clips, and paper all in one), I would come up with a solution: make life easy, follow the Irish example.

Today’s German Music Tip
Tim Bendzko, Wenn Worte meine Sprache wären (recent). You can find the lyrics and their translation into English here.

What’s hot
rest
What’s cold
high: blood pressure, temperature, pulse

The German word/phrase/verse of the day
Mogelpackung