The prayer is working so far and today I made a trip to the new Wien and Co ‘Mega Store’ at Shopping City Sud.
My record of finding anything at all at SCS is appalling so I did not hold out much hope but I said a quick prayer to Julia and found the bloody thing immediately. Of course gigantic signs every 50 meters helped - but even so. And I did not get lost coming out - astonishing.
I have had many tingles and I hope my prayers a working for you and are not just because of anxious bees.
I will do my best - but remember that Julia is in an election battle with Big Ears at the moment and can’t spend every waking moment on our trivial problems - because the future of humanity is at stake.
There is an interesting report in the Sydney Morning Herald about a woman who was supposedly deafened by a child on a plane.
“American tourist Jean Barnard, who embarked on her dream holiday to Australia and New Zealand in January last year, alleges the trip became a nightmare when she boarded a Darwin-bound Qantas plane in Alice Springs, walked to her assigned seat and came face-to-face with a three-year-old boy across the aisle.
The boy allegedly leant back over his armrest toward Ms Barnard and let out a scream so severe that blood erupted from her ears, leaving her "stone cold deaf".
Now I know what this can be like. As I reported from Høje-Taastrup in Denmark a few months ago:
‘There was a diversion in the waiting room when a small child – who was being taught (very successfully) by her parents to shriek – hit a note so high that my ears popped and stopped working and all I could hear for the next few minutes was a fizzing, crackling noise like static on a radio - or the noise an old vinyl LP makes when there is no music.
I heard the faint ringing of bells, a strange whistling and a few bars of Calendar Girl by Neil Sedaka before I recovered and moved some distance away from the child before it shattered my iPhone’.
Now I admit there was no blood so it did not compare with a Rammstein or AC/DC concert where temporarily blind, deaf and disoriented patrons have to be helped from the venue by Paramedics.
But these types of things can catch you unawares. The spontaneous shriekers are the killers. The ones who build up more slowly are easier to cope with. The best ones are the ones whose mothers hit them to stop screaming
(Ma’m do you really think that is a good idea - I have experience with small children and I can assure you that if...I am sorry...I can go what?).
Well after being struck by the mother the child does stop screaming for about 30 seconds while it gathers every ounce of its strength and sucks its lungs full of air and clenches its tiny little hands.
This gives the nimble and those with their wits about them enough time to bolt from the building, get to the cosmetics section and stuff their ears with cotton wool or at least shelter behind the cornflakes (these are very workable baffles and absorb noise).
When the final shriek does come it pops the lenses out of eyeglasses, explodes pacemakers, shatters jars of peanut butter, sets off all the nearby car alarms, opens electronic garage doors and sends all dogs within a radius of one kilometer into a foaming frenzy.
I think this is the cause of most of the deaths when for no apparent reason large dogs suddenly tturn on their owners and maul them. They should keep at least one of these dogs in every supermarket.
This scream finally triggers the circuit breaker in the mother's brain and she can no longer see or hear the child - or indeed recognize it has her own. She can finish the shopping in a blissful state unaware of the screaming soggy bundle in her stroller. This is necessary as otherwise mothers would simply abandon their children in supermarkets and go to nearest bar to get hammered - and then where would we be.
Anyway - good luck to Mrs Barnard. She is taking the legal action in LA so any outcome is possible.
