This week I had an appointment with my ophthalmologist - the eye doctor - to control my irises and to measure my eye pressure. I am supposed to do this regularly because of a health risk I may be carrying along with me: Diabetes Mellitus Type 2 - a curse that seems to have been passed on in my mother's and in my father's family. My father didn't have it himself, but he died young, and so did my mother.

He told me, however, that I ought to be careful and make sure that I avoided risk factors such as too much weight and a life with no physical exercise. As much as I know, one can inherit a certain predisposition for the illness, but this does not mean it has to break out, or then only very late in one's life. But still I ask my doctor now and then to test me and I am always relieved when he says that I am as fit as fiddle.

And I regularly see my eye doctor - but he, too, said there were no changes to the negative, besides the fact that my glasses should be replaced soon, maybe by bifocals which would allow me to read the paper again without stretching out my hands. New glasses or longer arms, he said, and if I don't find out how to grow them longer one of these days, I'll have to drop in at the optitician's.

My last regular lesson is over for some time - there is an intensive course next week which we have dedicated to film, and for this reason we have invited some professionals who know their job and have even worked with some locally famous actors - be it as colleagues of even directors. The state heavily subsidizes such courses as they hope for some know-how transfer to their schools, but they are not easy to get. Fortunately the director of a local theater remembered me from my last drama project and thought this might be something for me, and he was dead right. So all I will have to do is make sure the students are there on time, and that they are nice. The rest is learning, learning, learning. It is good to be on the receiving end of the education counter for a change and get something instead of giving.

It's such a sunny afternoon that I will sit outside now with a new book I have bought and enjoy the sun, because it might be one the last warm days for this season. The water in my pool is only 15°C, but I will have a swim all the same. After the weekend, however, I might stop the pump and cover the pool up for good - and it will quietly wait for me until the end of next April, when the next pool season can start here. Good-bye, panty-days ...

"Thinking about Angelika I get the impression she knows little of the Caribbean side of her heritage. Is she in contact with her mother or any family in Guadeloupe? It is such a different place, life is relaxed, the people are friendly and very sure of themselves. They know who they are. I just wonder if a complete change of environment and the opportunity to explore those roots that stretch right back to Africa might give her a new sense of identity, a pride in herself and renewed interest in life with the chance of finding a new career. Is not that very Africa in her with the beauty and sensuality it imparted that drew men to her and lead her down the road she took? She needs to understand who she is and go forward from there. Why not suggest a short visit to Guadeloupe and even consider going with her just to see."

This is part of a wonderful private message which a very close friend, who incidentally doesn't live far from this place, sent to me today. I thought of it when I was sitting in the Jacuzzi with Elsie, Joerg and Angelika this evening. She had been very brave and taken her clothes off without hesitation. She is still so beautiful, her milk-coffee-coloured, soft velvety skin, and these wonderfully shaped, firm breasts. And then the scars. On white people fresh scars usually appear darker than their skin, but with her it is different: on her brown skin the scars on her chest and all up her leg appear strangely pink and swollen - it makes you swallow hard and feel very, very sorry for her.

Phillip had had the suspicion that the doctors didn't work carefully enough when they operated on her because they thought they were stitching together a mere whore. He found out meanwhile that one cannot do much about this: he was told that when doctors do emergency surgery to safe lives, their main point of view does not have to be how the patients look later, but that they will survive. And this is what Angelika obviously did. Case dismissed.

I will tell Angelika tomorrow what my friend wrote. She might want to travel there, and we would have to ask her mother for relatives, if she stayed in contact. And who knows - I might even go with her and get to see a wonderful place on earth I only know from pictures.

Yesterday there was a rumour at school that Irmgard, the girl who had started teaching after the summer holidays and then quit after some weeks because she felt she could not go through with it, had tried to commit suicide. This morning I had a phone call from someone of the school board, who I have known for a decade, and she confirmed that Irmgard was in hospital intensive care after taking an overdose of sleeping pills and alcohol. She asked me if I could not try to get in contact with her when she was better, as some kind of a school representative (People have seen me talk to her, no doubt. Such things travel fast). I promised to do this during the coming autumn break if possible and report back in case there was anythng to report. On the other hand I am entitled to offer her to go on with her job whenever she feels up to it - not at short notice, of course, as we have a temporary replacement for her - but maybe next term beginning in February.

So in addition to my future stepdaughter Angelka, there is another young woman I will become partly responsible for. And I am glad that there is somebody who very soon will be responsible for me - legally responsible I mean, as he has done this job for some time already and to my very best liking, as it's not only my sanity he is essential for, but also all my other needs and desires.

For some time I have not mentioned Angelika who has been living with us in my house quietly for some weeks now. She is beautiful and good-natured as ever, helps doing chores and the cooking now and then, and tries to bring her feet back on the ground. Her injuries and the remaining scars are hidden under her clothes, but they make it impossible for her to go on working as an escort. I didn't know this but there seems to be a scars and amputee sex scene for perverts, but she definitely does not want to join this.

Which raises the question what to do. She usually said she was an arts student, although she rarely saw the academy from the inside, and she does not seem to have a lot of talents, either, apart from a beautiful voice she must have inherited from her mother. What she has tried out is working as a journalist - like her father - but she lacks proper training. Getting married to a well-to-do guy and act the role of a housewife, she sometimes suggests when she is desperate, and I understand her.

I had first thought she had overcome her accident pretty well and that except for the scars she was fine again. But gradually it shows that there have been deeper injuries and that also her spirit and her joy of life have been severely scarred. However she tries to integrate into normal life again: tomorrow she said she would come to Jacuzzi at Elsie and Joerg's. I have decided to take my old baggy yellow swimsuit along, and when she wears hers, I will put on mine, too.

A visit at the gynaecologist's this afternoon, and it was not as unpleasant as people usually say. She is a woman my age and neither religious nor a moralist, but thinks that if one has reproductive organs and enjoys using them, there is no reason why one should not. I told her that I was planning to get married and she said everything was ready for me to contribute to global population growth as soon as I felt up to it, and that I should just sail into the harbour of marriage full steam.

So all is well on the Titanic and no icebergs to be seen anywhere - which of course only makes those happy who do not know the full story.

Bellatif, you are so sweet to word your comment like this. You are definitely the best and most entertaining blog-writer here and I would be glad I could ever use the language as wonderfully as you. My only consolation is that maybe your German is not all that perfect, either (LOL).

Well, it's one of those Mondays again and incidentally the last of this half-term before the week after we're having some special intensive weeks and afterwards our autumn break. Being the last with regular lessons, it's always busy as all kinds of things have to be finished and handed back. There's also a staff meeting tonight, and I hope it's not going to be too boring.

But the sun is out again and I feel good. I have decided not to put on too much under my knee-length dark blue skirt today - actually nothing - to allow some cool air reach my well used and slightly red and smarting nether regions. Going commando - as the NN term goes if I am right. So when you think of me today, guys, think of me this way ....

I woke up in Phillip's arms
while the sun was tickling my nose,
I administered a premium blowjob
and then enjoyed breakfast
with some more proteins.

I let the sun touch my skin
while I cleaned my pool
and I had a swim
in the 16°C cold water.

I read the Sunday papers
and stopped when I thought
it was just polluting my mind,
I did this and that in the garden
because some withered plants
have to be clared off
before winter comes.

Some things I did out of love,
and some because I like them,
but most in order not to sit down
and mark essays, the pile of which
I must have completed
ere the sun sets,
and the night comes
and I will be doing things
for love again.

Because Phillip had to meet some local politicians last night and I didn't feel much like going along, I went to Elsie and Joerg's for Jacuzzi like in the good old days, when Jacuzzi Thursday was the prime entry in my calendar. It was one of these special autumn days yesterday, when there is fog in the morning and then it clears up towards noon, and later the colours are bright and intensive, and the blue sky is bluer than ever. In the evening it is cool, with dry, crisp air, and dark very soon, while the mountain tops and the glaciers glow in the last light of the day. You already feel goosepimply when you're in the garden in the nude, so you have to jump and horse around and hop into the hot bubbles sooner than in summer.

And although it was not so erotic by far as it used to be, it was nice. Johanna's pregnancy definitely begins to show, and she is just wonderful. We all admired her a lot, and Elsie and Joerg fussed about her and were so very proud, they couldn't leave their fingers from her, stroking and fondling her all over. It seems that she could finally be convinced that penetration is not harmful for the baby, so Joerg seems much more relaxed and balanced than he used to be.

I admire how calmly Elsie puts up with her role as second wife (although she is legally the first and only) - I do not think I could ever be like her. But her wish to have a child and particularly Joerg's seem to be so strong that she has come to terms with her situation and accepts it. First it seems that Joerg expected some sexual interaction between Johanna and her - his mind is not untainted by porn. But this has ceased, and in the way of an oriental potentate he does not insist on having more than one woman in his bed at a time, although they often sleep all together.

What Elsie has done repeatedly, though, is that she has asked me what I thought of another meeting of us two with Aldo, something which impressed her deepy last time. But I must admit I have always hesitated to give her a clear answer.

Designing tests, correcting them and handing them back - explaining problems and some difficulties of the language, consoling those who regularly fail and trying to find out how they can improve. That's typical of this early autumn time, the end of a first few weeks' period from the beginning of the school year to autumn break in early October.

So my private life is not much more than taking the bus to work and from there back home, buying some groceries and having hurried meals. And even if my body asks: And where am I? My mind tells him to shut up because there is no time. There are times one has to stand back, body, don't you see? You'll have your little pleasures when everything else is done. Is it ok if I at least use my fingers a little? asks the body. Yes, but hurry up, I have to get ready and run. That's the beginning of another day.