Temple Cloud

Hi, I know it’s been a while since I’ve updated, but thank you to everyone who is donating to help refugees – whether through my JustGiving   pages , or directly to charities.  I’ve just had an email from the UN Refugee Agency about the situation in Ukraine  and what they’re doing to help, so please have a look at it. In the meantime, I’m still getting on with my reading challenge.   I’ve started reading the next book on my list, but I’m trying to get up to date with blogging about Drachenerwachen .   So… Still at Black West, we jump to a scene with the villains, the thin-lipped man with ash-blond hair and the dainty man called Sherpa Sarvas, who are worrying about why the effect of Kurmo’s imprinting hasn’t yet summoned him to Frau Tossilo.   Sarvas offers his companion a raspberry-flavoured sweet, explaining that the taste of raspberries comforts him because it brings back memories of childhood – so yes, we were right, the sweet-wrapper was a sign of Black West’s presence! The

When they are sure that everyone is asleep, Kurmo and the children set off.   Janka has found a web of material that she bought years ago at a circus flea-market (not to be confused with a flea-circus market) to wrap around Kurmo’s neck and forequarters so that she can hold onto the loops.   Johann decides to ride in Kurmo’s luggage compartment instead, as it’s quite bad enough knowing what a long drop there is from a flying dragon, without having to see it with your own eyes.   Longing for adventures was all very well in the days when they only happened on computer screens, before he met Kurmo and his life changed forever. As they set off, Kurmo warns them that it is a long journey and that the children had better get some sleep.   Johann agrees, and asks, ‘ Kannst du vielleicht das Dach mal draufmachen?   Der, äh, Mond blendet. ’ This stopped me for a moment, because I knew that aufmachen meant ‘open’, so was Johann asking Kurmo to open the ‘roof’ of skin over his cavity?   Sur

Finally, the holiday weekend arrives.   Frau Tossilo has been made redundant from her job at the nearby shoe-shop, and, although she has been offered jobs in other branches, she decides that it’s not worth the long commute and that she will wait a while before looking for another job.   After all, her mother has left her a surprisingly large amount of money, so she isn’t in immediate financial need. Hmm - in my experience of trying and failing to find a job, it’s difficult to persuade employers that you are worth hiring if you aren’t currently in work, preferably paid work (though voluntary work in a charity shop is better than nothing).   After all, Frau Tossilo can hardly put ‘spending quality time with my dragon’ on her CV as a valid reason to take a break, the way that a teacher or crèche worker can list taking time out to bring up their own children as relevant work experience.   But I suspect that Frau Tossilo’s life may be taking off in dramatically different directions, and t

Of course, the death of her mother forces Ilona Tossilo out of the way for a few days, as she has to go to her late mother’s home area to put her affairs in order, organise the funeral, and so on.   In the meantime, Johann and Janka are responsible for looking after Kurmo.   Janka even takes time off from circus skills practice to keep the dragon company while Johann goes out to buy food for him – and after all, she can always practise her agility by climbing on Kurmo! I don’t get the impression that Black West arranged to assassinate Frau Tossilo’s mother, but they are still spying on the block where she lives, and her absence creates an opportunity for them.   Johann, returning with four large boxes of cabbages and waiting for Janka to bring the Pink Prince to lug the vegetables up to Frau Tossilo’s flat on the eighth floor, catches sight of the mysterious ‘Blanket-Peter’, Frau Tossilo’s sinister visitor from the other day, approaching, talking on his phone about placing something

And now, we get a villain chapter!   A thin-lipped man with ash-blond hair is sitting in ‘einen schwarzen Drehledersessel’, literally ‘a black swivel-leather-chair’, which seems a strange way of putting it – I’d have expected it to be referred to as ‘einen schwarzen ledernen Drehsessel’ for ‘a black leather swivel-chair’.   PDB11 suggested that it might mean a chair made of turned leather, whatever that is, but it seems to be a chair that swivels round and that is made of black leather.   It’s just that the ‘made of leather’ part seems to be what the author wants to emphasise. At any rate, the man sitting in the chair, in a tower-block in another country, with floor-length windows looking out onto a frozen lake, is talking on the phone to a man called Sherpa Sarvas, assuring him that their colleague is in Berlin sorting out the matter in hand. I don’t know how I feel about one of the villains apparently being a Tibetan (unless, of course, ‘Sherpa Sarvas’ is just a code-name).   On

Despite having grown up so much overnight, both physically and mentally, Kurmo isn’t too mature to pester Frau Tossilo, as soon as she wakes up, to take a photo of him on her phone and send it to Johann and Janka so that they can see his new skin right now .   This seems a bit of a security risk – what if they’re with their parents when the photo arrives? It doesn’t matter, though, as Kurmo’s friends are already coming round to visit.   Also, it turns out that dragons don’t show up in photographs, which is one less thing to worry about.   (This could also explain why there are so few YouTube videos on how to treat a sick dragon.) At any rate, Johann and Janka are impressed at how much Kurmo has grown, and Janka wants to know whether she can now ride him.   Frau Tossilo isn’t impressed at the idea of treating Kurmo like a pony, but Kurmo himself is excited at the idea of going flying, with or without a rider.   Frau Tossilo protests that it’s too dangerous – the police will be abl

The story resumes a few days later, on New Year’s Eve, with Johann and Janka playing quietly in their room.   Johann, playing on his new laptop, invents teleportation.   As you do, when you’re thirteen and need to kill some time until nightfall and the New Year’s fireworks.   Somehow, I need a much stronger rope to suspend my disbelief over this than over finding a dragon’s egg. It works like the cut and paste functions on a Word document, apparently, only with physical objects.   The computer stores the data of a physical object (say, a bundle of quilts), and deletes the object from one place to paste it somewhere else.   Johann decides to call the procedure Raumen , which I think I will translate ‘spacing’ in this blog.   This possibly isn’t the best translation, since in the science fiction adventures I sometimes read, this usually refers to throwing someone out of airlock without the benefit of a space-suit. At any rate, I get the impression that spacing is going to be an impor