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Walking home we were following a guy who could not stop fiddling with his own underpants. They were clearly intensely uncomfortable and as he walked, he plucked at them, front and back. It was amusing because he was so beautifully dressed, with a calculated insouciance that, as it turns out, requires constant upkeep. He plucked […]

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In Berlin people do all kinds of things out loud in public. You can buy drugs, smoke pot in the street and drink beers, you can walk with your dog into restaurants and boutiques. You can dance on street corners. One of the blisses of living here is that everyone is stranger and no one’s […]

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To overcome a longterm injury I’ve taken on some personal training, in a stinky gym paved in black rubber. I can only afford two half hour sessions per week so we need to get us some work done. The trainer is strawberry blonde and perky, with perfect ankles and a somewhat staring pair of baby-blue […]

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Last week on the market I spoke to the girl queueing before me at the fruit stall. She had said to the cashier, Could I have a bag for that too please? which focused my attention from its dreamy perusal of the mountains of plump and glossy fruits. She had put her single lemon, her […]

The place I’ve sublet has a shelf of Joanna Trollope novels and I’ve just reread two of them. It’s so interesting learning all the signs she uses to indicate class. In the gentry, rudeness indicates an unwillingness to pander to form, it is authenticity. In factory workers, rudeness betrays a lack of breeding. Horsey women […]