I want you to take sides. I want you to decide how you would do this. It’s about a story my mother told me and it’s one of those stories that got stuck in my head. It’s about onions.

Some of you will know that my sister married this really ‘different’ man. For more than 25 years, they ran a restaurant on stilts high above the North Sea, until they died within a couple of years of each other, now more than 14 years ago.

The year they started to run the restaurant, my mother went up to the North Sea to help in the kitchen. She was a reasonably good cook and she knew how to prepare ‘Kartoffelsalat’, potato salad, a staple diet of Germans, especially Germans from the North of the country. (Funny, in a way, that although there are so many ways to eat potatoes in Ireland, potato salad never really caught on.)

One day, there was a bit of a panic in the morning because the cook was late. He had been out the previous night. So my mother was cutting the onions for the potato salad. The way she did it at home. With great care. And into very small, finely cut pieces. After all, who likes to bite into large chunks of onions, even in a potato salad? My brother-in-law, under pressure as he was, saw the way my mother worked, with great care, looked at her in amazement and nearly flipped: “Who do you think you’re cooking for? How much time do you think we’ve got? This is a business, it’s not home cooking! Do this quickly, we need the potato salad in 20 minutes, not in 20 hours!”

My mother, in her innocence, tried to explain what she was doing and why. That even paying customers, not just your guests at home, don’t like to bite into large chunks of onions when they eat a potato salad. – My brother-in-law, of course, had already moved on to his next victim, he was not in listening mood.

So here is my question: what would you have done? Small, finely cut onions for the family, and quickly cut larger chunks for the customers because time is money? Or would you have taken your time to look after your customers in the same way as you would have looked after your family at home?

It was another busy day in the hospital. Pádraig had something like seven therapy sessions, so many that the nurse from the morning shift couldn’t get in to do the “Körperpflege”. I’m sure they’ll catch up tomorrow, when there will be a bit of therapy down-time.

Pádraig and I went out onto the roof garden again for an hour or two. It is so nice to sit outside in the late summer sun, even the late summer shade. You can hear the train passing by in the distance, the S1 going to the city centre in one direction and to the airport into the other. There are pidgins underneath the decking organising their shelter for the cold long winter months to come. There are distant voices from below, dogs barking, cars beeping. Above all, there is air and a blue sky. I just realised how much I miss the smell of the sea, the seagulls, the boats, the green hills, even the buzz of Dublin. I’d never thought that a hospital can begin to feel a bit like (I imagine it to feel in) a prison.

Pádraig’s arm is still swollen and quite colourful, but it is definitely getting better. He ate a bit of desert again (who wouldn’t do that?). His really quite brilliant (and very nice) therapist came in today to tell me that Pádraig had been again in the tilt table today, for almost half an hour at very close to 90 degrees, and did not have a problem doing that, whatsoever. He also thought, and so did some of his colleagues, that Pádraig has been a bit more alert lately.

Pádraig is on the mend. He has the determination, and the right support will help him getting better.

Before you ask, I think, it’s all about cutting the onions with great care, very thinly and in small pieces.

Today’s German (Music) Tip
So schneidet man Zwiebel in feine Würfel – immer am Finger entlang.
What’s hot
Cooking like you would at home, working like you would at home, treating people with great care like you would at home
What’s cold
Treating your customers badly
The German word/phrase/verse of the day
Boa, glaubse!