Went out to get my half year’s provision of Marmite this morning. The English food shop ist quite a bit of a train ride away so I get enough Marmite to keep me going for a while. As I sat on the train I started thinking of how I got addicted to Marmite. I went to England a few year’s ago to teach German at two colleges in the very heart of the country. I got on with my students very well. We had this joking kind of way of getting through the lessons. The colleges got the best German results in their history that year. I know I must not take the credit for it at all. Still I like to think that I have the right to claim a tiny percentage of that success. My students kept teasing me by calling me weird. I called them sonderbar in return. I know weird means some kind of strange. I have a taste of when to call a person strange and when to call her or him weird. Still I can’t describe the difference between the two words. When I got to the shop and put those two jar (equals one kilo – just enough for six month) on the counter I asked the woman behind it if she could tell me the difference between strange and weird. „Not an awful lot.“ „I know, but what makes you call a person weird and what makes you call a person strange?“ „I don’t know . A weird person is strange in a strange way. You know when you say weird it’s like a déjà vu.“ „You think my students thought they had met me before?“ I paid too much for the Marmite, but hey, I have no choice being badly addicted. I left the shop an thought what a strange woman she was. I’m sure she thought of me as weird. Maybe that’ s all the difference there is to it. As I was walking slowly to the next underground station I started singing „I’m a weirdo-ho-ho.“ to myself, a song that came out that year when I was staying in England. I always felt very proud of being called weird by my students. „I’m a weirdo-ho-ho. What the hell am I doing here? I don’t belong here.“ I was so proud of not belonging there or anywhere. I was going to go back to wherever in Germany (far away from my parent’s house being the only criteria for my future temporary home). For how long? I don’t know. Don’t ask. Don’t stand in my way. I’m on the run.

PS: I have been living in my present flat for three years and a half. The longest period ever in one place. My parent’s house doesn’t count.

PPS: Webster: „strange“: external, foreign, outside, a rather general term that applies to the foreign, unnatural, inexplicable, or new or to anything unfamiliar that defies a ready explanation or commands attention by its novelty. „weird“: curious in nature or appearance, of strange or extraordinary character, odd, unusual, fantastic, relating to witchcraft or to the supernatural, caused by or suggesting magical influence