Try to work out whether I can afford to get back over to Ghana to see my sweetheart, I asked a friend: how long will this pretty autumn weather last? We know all too soon it’s going to get misty and grey and damp and bitterly cold – but when? Oh well, he said: November […]
I learned a poetic new German word just now at the little health food shop. The man behind me had put just one item on the counter, a carton of Folgemilch. I asked him, “What is… follow milk?” “Well,” he began, and something about his tired, slightly harassed, but ever willing to be helpful expression […]
I just sold my air mattress, late on a Saturday night, to a small, muscular, warm dude whose name is Ramon. He rang me an hour ago from my online classifieds ad and asked, how much longer are you up? He described what he wants to do with it – lie under the stars among […]
Whole streets in Berlin have grown into green tunnels while I was away in Africa. Trees so heavy with bloom they are almost touching sag together across the road. From above, they must resemble giant posies. To resolve my sense of cultural and geographic dislocation I decided to focus on the sky and the trees, […]
Today I am going down to my favourite Berlin cafe to write. Last time I was there was four months back and I did not plan to be away so long. It was winter then and a homeless man came along the rows of customers to beg. He stood for some time reading over my […]
Late night supermarket in Berlin’s wild west. Two pretty girls in their pretty outfits are queuing ahead of me, they have high arses and high heels and high ponies, their hair spilling from the crowns of their heads. The blonde one rolls her three bottles away slightly from my lumpy ginger root and my mesh […]
I was walking home up our rainy street when a woman popped her head up and spoke to me. She had the doors to her car standing open and was looking put-upon. “Entschuldigung,” she said, imploringly, “ich habe eine Bitte.” Excuse me: I have a please – a request. “Yes, gladly,” I said, as Germans […]
Coming past the apartment below me I heard from the stairs the unmistakeable noises of grief. Fresh, recent, still shocking grief. It was new, and she was pleading with him. I stood hesitating on the steps. He had just delivered some devastating blow and her voice rose and I heard how clearly everyone must have […]
Och, my heart’s pounding! I just queued in the supermarket next to a man taller than me (rare) with whom I conceived one of those fleeting yet it stains your day – your weekend! – mutual desire curves founded in, apparently, mutual liking as well as pheromonal drift. Oh, I stood next to him and […]
Two Americans in a coffee shop staffed by Australians. This is Berlin where not everybody bothers to learn German. They come in and order and make themselves comfortable. One starts talking about Sylvia Plath. He is reading a book about her life only it’s not very good. “I mean, with Hughes,” he says, sounding oddly […]
The guy I adore has conversations with birds. These appear to be actual reciprocal chats, where the bird says something and he answers. After he has mimicked what the bird has to say, the bird often answers again. Again he responds, using a sound palette of his own devising: whistles, chirrups and chirps, clucks of […]
Two swains drifting like white roses on the dark canal. My Berliner swain calls them swains and I never correct him. Similarly I refrained for reasons of selfish enjoyment from pointing out to an earlier, South Australian swain, who though a native speaker was heartily dyslexic (he called our chimney ‘the chumley’), that the swans’ […]
I’ve a German-speaking friend who since quitting tobacco suffers terribly from grievings. ‘Grievings’ are what happens when you depend on a drug and then give it up: heroin grievings, nicotine grievings. I quit coffee in January, and today in the Lebanese shop where the machine sent out aromatic blasts and the steam collected on the […]
