Stories from all categories

come to the cabarache, old chum
6
Made a little performance the other night at a beautiful cabaret improv evening hosted by the lovely Marlène Colle in seedy cab-savvy Berlin - I read something almost unbearably sad among the expressive dances and ...read more
presidential debate
Big guy who shouldered in front of me to the vegetable stall on the markets kept picking up and fondling everything, laying things lingeringly down. In between handling the produce he was adjusting his own ...read more
autumbled
3
Autumn in Berlin and the grimy guy begging outside our supermarket is absorbed in a book. When I come home he's set it down to thank a woman who dropped some coins into his smashed ...read more
Trump, the Musical
Some lines from a musical we are idly writing, online, a bunch of strangers, in response to one of the many memes celebrating the second candidate's atrocity, which says: super callous fragile racist extra braggadocious ...read more
love is the what
3
Reaching my Kiez in the late afternoon* I nearly ran into a boy-girl couple kissing strenuously outside the Turkish supermarket. This supermarket annoys me because they always reel off too many plastic bags and I ...read more
all done by hand
14
Off to the hand surgeon to find out whether in his opinion he needs to operate on my finger. The thought of some man cutting me open, down the narrow bone by which I hold ...read more
cigarette break
A lot of noise round the house today as the Hausmeister - Deutschland brims with masters - has called a gang of workmen in to saw back the thorny bushes round the huddle of bins. ...read more
jet laggard
7
I wonder if anyone else has trouble adjusting after travel, it would be reassuring to me to hear about it if you have. It's more than just jet lag. Arriving in Brisbane I was paralysed ...read more
Chinatown!
1
It took me four hours to make my way across town, people kept shaking their heads. "Too far for walking." "There won't be much happening," said the girl who'd been to Brisbane and Sydney, "the ...read more