Stories from all categories
Picked up the most marvellous book, it's by Jared Diamond & it's about traditional societies (which, he points out, survive in partial form in even the most harried industrialized landscape and were universal to us ...read more
I shared a restaurant nook tonight with three dinosaurs in suits, entertaining a young lady. The young lady was "three weeks pregnant" to the oldest dinosaur and hardly said a word. ("We're not telling anybody ...read more
Went to a museum of ornate Islamic art and have finally learned the difference between Sunni and Shia. They began wrangling as soon as Muhammed was dead. Sunni say, the head of the church should ...read more
Cycling home under a high full moon through a dark city so cold it's as though the streets stand motionless under water. Northern Europe, cradle of so many things, including me. The buildings stand serene ...read more
Went out early, the sun through my window a lure. My favourite chic but drowsy wine bar cafe was playing Billie Holiday. Unusually it was filled up today with dishevelled, sleep-drowned people. A shovel-load. I ...read more
Interesting coincidence between the accidents of physics and the compulsions of human nature: so often when a glove falls, in the street, like a leaf it will lie palm-side-up, as though its fortune is about ...read more
I just fell into one of those instant street-friendships that sometimes lead somewhere and very often don't. It is so lonely & exacting trying to make a life in a completely new city, I seem ...read more
5
Gleis Siebzehn (Platform 17). Here is where ten thousand Jewish Berliners were herded onto trains. Only very latterly (1991) was a memorial opened. It is very simple and harrowing. No names, just numbers all the ...read more
Went out to a bar with a new friend who is musical, Tuesday nights is quiet night in Berlin so we walked and walked, trampling snow that had reached that pearly soiled colour that is ...read more