kindness of strangers
all police are souls
Entering the park at dusk we passed four very drunk men with maybe three full sets of teeth between them, squatting round a fire in a little glade of trees. Their enjoyment was loud and coarse and strong. We broke into the open and trudged up a slight hill, overtaken by a swoop of bicyclists. They were a family: mum, dad, teenage sister, and falling behind came the 9-year-old girl in her pink down jacket who wailed, Mamma, das geht nicht! (Mamma, this isn’t working). From the other side of the path came unexpected encouragement. A grizzled woman crouching over a joint called out in her throaty, smoky voice, “Du schafft es! Du kannst das!” You’ll make it! You can do it! The little girl put on a burst of speed, possibly out of terror or surprise, and the woman roared after her, “Yes! Yes! You’re doing it! You’re doing it! You’ve done it! YOU MADE IT!” It was such a beautiful, generous, Berliner thing to have witnessed. God love ‘er. With her scars and tattoos and her All Police Are Arseholes jacket.
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