I spent two weeks in Berlin in total, and my last night there was Dave’s 28th birthday. When we first met he was only 22. I was 23. Mad.
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Germany | A Sudden, Fantastic and Long Overdue Change
Okay okay okay – this one’s on a topic I’ve been wanting to write about for ages, but have always felt a little bit wary of. Here we go.
Continue readingGermany | How Does Bob Marley Like His Donuts? Wi Jammin’
Lawd it’s good to be back.
Continue readingGermany | Back to Berlin
It was a lovely, peaceful, glowing week with Jeanne – although, as I’m sure you’ll understand, I’ve not written too much about it because I’d like to keep it between the two of us.
Continue readingThe Berlin Diaries – Heideglühen
Vic and I were complaining to each other a couple of weeks ago that although we’ve been in Berlin for a quarter of a year now, we’ve only gone to a few night clubs. I’ve been to Chalet, Monarch, Sisyphos twice, Kater Blau four times, and yet there are dozens of clubs I’ve never gone anywhere near. So, when Michelle text me last week saying she was off to the near-mythical Heideglühen for a day party on Saturday, I was well ready for mayhem. Mayhem I tell you! Continue reading
The Berlin Diaries: One Last Time
Well now, I’m home from work sick as a parrot. I can’t move from my bed and it hurts to look at a laptop screen, but I’ll have a pop at this while it’s fresh in my head. The weekend just gone, I revisited the city that started everything: Berlin. Continue reading
The Berlin Dairies – Time’s Almost Up
It’s the 19th of February, and these dairies have been running on for 18 months now. They’ve become less frequent, sure, partly because I’ve got used to life in the city and therefore am less inspired to write a 3000 word dirge fresh off the heels of yet another evening’s ketamine and kebab consumption, and also partly because I have, through no fault of my own (honest) been drunk a LOT. We’re not talking Oliver Reed or Shane MacGowan levels of astoundingly ever-twatted, there’s no need to worry, but certainly enough booze quaffed over a 6 month period to reopen Bärenquell Brauerei for a long weekend. Continue reading
The Berlin Diaries – Robo Poetry
Here, right so: Dave is pretty smart. His head’ll swell if I say ‘really’ smart, so it’s just ‘pretty’. He loves maths and algorithms and all those things I hate. Dave likes to fuck around and make new little formulas, and his latest thing is a programme that analyses large examples of text, then rearranges it into new sentences. And he’s done it to my site.
And lo, below you will find the result: generated completely at random from the snowfall of daft old blog posts that make up this website, a few dozen barmy snippets of prose. They actually sound like me, which is weird. They make fuck all sense, of course, but they’re entertaining. Some are funny, some are bizarre, and some read like neo-noir science fiction haikus, which is pretty cool.
Give it a read – and try not to think about robots taking over and stealing all our jobs and whatnot. It probably won’t happen. It’s going to be fine. Everything will be fine. Continue reading
The Berlin Diaries – Spoken Word, Finally!
Oi you lot, guess what.
No wait, don’t guess, because there’s no point, because I’m going to tell you in around a hundred and fifty words’ time, and anyway you lack the means to actually respond to me beyond yelling at your laptop screen and, though it certainly tickles me to imagine you getting all red faced hollering at a small plastic oblong, in the end t’would be only a waste of both your time and mine, although I suppose I’ve already wasted my time by writing this – and wasted yours by making you read it – and so basically, what I really want to say is: I am deeply sorry for ever starting this sentence which is, to be frank, so lengthy as to be obscene, and I wouldn’t at all blame you if you logged off your computer right now and went for a lie down rather than read the rest of this god-forsaken shit-heap of an article. Continue reading
Waiting On India
This image has absolutely no relevance to the article. Great album cover though, right?!
Seven fucking weeks and I’m getting giddy, man. I don’t have a long winter stretching ahead and the slow climb into summer and living tree branches – I’ve got this gorgeous gleaming severance, a runaway, a hop and a skip and a great big fuck off all the merry long dance to sunny Elsewhere. And it’s this that’s keeping me going through this cold sad winter – filling every day with dreams of hostel beds and foreign bars, mountains and heat cracked motorways and all of it, all smashing together, clacking like marbles, clacking like judging tongues. Continue reading