Wolff's territory: Choppy water in the clubhouse at the members' meeting
YACHT-Redaktion
· 05.03.2024
"Honey, I have a request." My husband says this so kindly that I get scared. "The club's annual general meeting is coming up soon, followed by a party at the sailing club," he continues, adding that everyone should bring something. "I know. It's been like this for over 20 years," I reply. "So?" He starts joking around: "Well, and I said the other day in the hall, so it went back and forth while I was working with Wolle and Hanno, well, and anyway, we were talking about the party, and Wolle said that Karla was making her grandiose two-tier buttercream cake again, which everyone loves so much. And Hanno said that he and Birte were bringing variations of Moroccan starters because they'd been to Morocco, and ..."
I turn round and interrupt him: "I'll make a nice potato salad as usual!" He nods. "That's exactly the point. Hanno and Wolle said, 'Oh,' they said, 'I'm sure your wife will make her lovely potato salad again'." He looks at me pleadingly. "What's so bad about that?" I want to know. He says, "They used the word 'beautiful' in such a derogatory way. That's when I said you're not making any salad this year." I put aside the knife I was about to use to cut the goulash. Better safe than sorry. "What did you promise them? Speak up!" My husband squirms visibly, then mumbles: "Wild boar on a spit!" I must have misheard him.
But then he gets stuck in: "It has to be marinated really well, with lots of garlic. You have to marinate it for a few days so that the meat is juicy. It will be a culinary delight. Ha! No one can compete with that! I can't do it, I have two left hands when it comes to cooking. But you, I'm sure you'll do a great job!"
Who actually does the most in the organisation?
Two weeks later. "How nice that all of us are here," Horst from the Executive Board tells us. I almost didn't make it. The last few days have been fraying my nerves, but at least we've driven the huge animal, already attached to the spikes, to the club in a trailer. The damn beast still weighs almost a hundred kilos even without its fur. I've never peeled so many garlic cloves in my life. Not to mention the onions for the sauce. And my husband? He stood there earlier on arrival, smiling benevolently: "Oh no, it wasn't any work. It was fun, and look at the splendour. Sure, it was hard work putting it in, but a real man doesn't mind."
In reality, the boar had been lying in our bathtub for five days, giving me the evil eye. My husband couldn't bear to look at it because he felt persecuted!
"So, let's move on to the items on the agenda," says Horst, leafing through his documents. "For example, that sailors should help more in the club. We received an email saying that the motorboat drivers do most of the work." Ina laughs throatily. "That can't be true. Eike and I help out every year," Horst is corrected. "I don't know how many jetties we've steamed. I haven't seen a single one of the mobo drivers."
Lothar stands up and bangs on the table. "Who renovated the shower rooms? Who? And did I hear a thank you? I never charged for the new tiles. Now they say the mobo drivers help more. Don't make me laugh. That bimbo with the huge frying pan on jetty A said to me: 'I wouldn't be that stupid to do it all for free'."
"Er, Lothar, we really appreciate your work for the club. But it's not just about you, it's about all of us. This point is very important now, because after the storm of the century, the harbour looks like it's been ravaged by a hurricane and ..."
"There's been a hurricane," my husband interjects, rolling his eyes and looking at his watch. The boar, the boar. The sauce, the sauce. "Er, thanks," says Horst. "And then there's the matter of the foxes..." But my husband's patience is gradually wearing thin: "We want to finish here too, I'm hungry." As he says this, he demonstratively drums his fingers on the table.
But he hasn't reckoned with Norbert. "It's obvious that you won't help," he suddenly snarls from the side. "You're always shirking, and it's different every year. It's the same with you, Olli. Once it was your arm, then there was something wrong with your sphincter, and ..." Olli turns red. "It wasn't the sphincter, it was the broken coccyx," he justifies himself. "Because I tripped while cleaning the clubhouse." Norbert waves his hand contemptuously. "Oh, you're always in the queue."
The thing with the foxes
"Sure," replies Olli, who normally wouldn't hurt a fly, now visibly angry. "If you need help mooring again, you can find someone else! I'm not going to pull my arm out in strong winds because of you and then be told I'm not doing anything for the club." That really hit home. Norbert is stunned and you can literally see how he is working. There must be something to Olli's tirade. Is someone's skipper's honour offended, because he can't dock alone? In any case, Norbert doesn't dare speak back. Sulking, his lips pinched, he plops back down in his chair.
"As I said, we also have other points," Horst calls out and tries to take charge again by banging loudly on the table like a judge, only not with a hammer but with a beer bottle. So much so that you don't even know what you should be more afraid of, the bottle or the table. "For example, I would like to finally point out to you all that foxes are increasingly up to mischief here on the club grounds. In plain language, that means ..." Horst simply has no luck. Or no assertiveness. Or both, or neither.
"Why don't we just draw up a list and then everyone can write down what they want to do," Ulf says unabashedly. "Then we'll see who's clearing up the storm damage and who's shirking." He looks round the room, applauding. I nod. Am I the only one? Apparently so. Birte speaks up. "Let's have a nice party today and not deal with all this annoying stuff that mobo drivers bring into the world. We're having a club meeting, we want to be happy! If you ask me, that's a waste of time. I want to drink wine now. And eat a nice salad with the wonderful boar that's waiting for us outside the door!"
But nothing there! "So I'll make my delicious cake again for all the hard-working helpers," Karla agrees. "Don't overdo it," counters Sigrid. "It's a hell of a job taking the cake from the frozen food shelf at Edeka." Yes, the club ladies don't give each other any favours either. Karla turns red. "Something like that..." But Sigrid continues to tease: "Don't think we don't know that."
"It doesn't matter, the cake tastes good," Horst interjects and tries again to divert the conversation to something more important: "The broken footbridges, the broken footbridges! And the foxes, they ..." Again to no avail. My husband just shakes his head. I know he's thinking: "It's a madhouse here, I've gone off the boil again."
The last one to bite ... Foxes
Horst continues to try undaunted. "So the jetties are the most important thing. The electricity boxes need to be repaired, the piles need to be replaced and then we really need some volunteers to support Hans-Werner in the harbour master's office. He can't do that so well anymore due to his age, which is why he's not here today." Now my husband is getting rough. "He's queuing," he says. "He's always done that. That old man! Don't make me laugh." I make a mental note to remind him of his words when he starts complaining about aches and pains again. They tend to crop up when we're not sailing.
"Hans-Werner will be one hundred this year," he is told by Horst. "So what? Does he have a bad leg? Does he have gout? Does he have something wrong with his eyes? He's doing wonderfully," says Gregor, and everyone nods in agreement. I can't believe it and snap my fingers like I'm at school. "I'll help him," I say, and I'm about to ask: "Who else?", but then we hear the noises.
I get up, startled, and rush into the front room, where everything had already been set up for the party. "Bloody hell!" I shout, as six or seven foxes startle and run away. There's almost nothing left: the boar is almost completely eaten, the salad bowls are empty and tipped over, leftover bread and cake are scattered on the floor. "That was the most important point," says Horst with a quiet triumph in his voice: "The foxes!" My husband just mumbles: "I told you from the start that all the fuss wouldn't help. Now we've got the salad." Probably not.
Steffi von Wolff
