Into the play-offs

I made the most of a rare opportunity to watch Leeds play on Sky Sports today. We lost 2-0 to Preston North End, the very writing of which seems oh so wrong. On what I saw, we'd be in a good position if we wanted to form a boy band, but would perhaps have less chance of staying in the Premiership should we happen to beat Preston (yes, them again) in the play-offs then either Watford or Crystal Palace in the final. However, it turned out that David Blackwell was experimenting with new players and a new formation, so I'm sure the first team will whip PNE's ass.

I also went to see Good Night and Good Luck. Very pertinent to the current situation in the UK, with an increasingly authoritarian government using the media fuelled climate of fear to erode civil liberties and the rule of law, both domestic and international. A Guardian journalist wrote the other week that "one cannot escape the fact that the intellectual and moral tone of British society enables Blair." You see the truth of this the more time you spend outside the UK. People here at least think about things, they keep themselves informed about other topics than how big the latest flat screen TVs are, and it's not considered acceptable to be openly and totally selfish about how you live your life.

Don't mention the war

I attended a charming little Prenzlauerberg dinner last weekend. I soon realised I’d been invited along only so that some of those present could practice their English with a native speaker. Even so their social skills astonished me with their paucity: one man leaned across the table to ask “are you married?” and then “do you have children?” When both of these elicited the answer no he looked stumped and the person next to him wondered aloud “well what other questions are there to ask?” at which point he came up with the stunner “what’s your income?” I was tempted to ask some questions about 20th Century German history in response, just to show them that there are interesting questions there for the asking. Of course instead I ended up talking about football all night, which is all well and good but I may as well have spent the night in the Oscar Wilde – at least that way I’d have got something to eat. There was nothing I could consume at the dinner because although I had informed the woman who’d invited me that I was vegetarian, she hadn’t passed this information on to the person cooking. A low point came when one of the hosts got out a laptop and started shopping for a new sofa. Needless to say as soon as was humanly possible I beat a hasty retreat, resisting the urge to teach them some new English expletives as I left. I should add at this point that on previous occasions I’ve been to several very entertaining dinners in Berlin, but the incident only served to strengthen my prejudice against Prenzlauerberg and its wannabe cool inhabitants.

Elvis impersonators forced underground

Some billionaire has bought the rights to Elvis’s name and image, and it sounds like he’s going to try and stop ‘unauthorised’ impersonations of the King. But who's going to police it, that's what I want to know? Will he expect tax payers' money to be spent on sniffing out and apprehending anyone with a black quiff saying 'Uh huh huh,' or will he set up his own 'Elvisly yours' force of spies and enforcers?

There is a strange reversal afoot here. When you first arrive, and you have to go up to people and speak English and generally throw yourselves on their mercy, the locals are really friendly and go out of their way to help. On the other hand once you’ve been here a while and are starting to get to know their little ways and attempt a bit of Deutsche, your protestations that ‘no no Berliners really aren’t rude at all’ soon stop. In London, conversely, a throng of non-English speaking tourists blocking the entrance to the tube at Oxford Circus is liable to be treated to several of the choicest insults in the English language and at least one assault from a passing commuter. However, the longer you stay in the smoke the more you realise that if you avoid the tube at rush hour it’s actually not such an unfriendly place to be after all (though still not as good as the north, of course).

Lost brain cells

If my memory gets any worse I think I'll officially have a learning disability.

Skull and Crossbones

A great shame about St Pauli last night; there's no doubt that the 0-3 scoreline flattered Bayern greatly. I am definitely supporting both Pauli and FC Union from now on. Of course every cloud has a silver lining, and if Hargreaves can score a blistering goal like that in the summer all we Englanders will be happy.

Either through pushy insufferable groupies or through a broken toe I have now missed two gigs I really wanted to see within the space of five days. To whit: Dirty Pretty Things at Postbahnhof and Infadels at White Trash. Bloody annoying.

Only nine years in jail for the man who slaughtered his sister in a Berlin street under the grotesque twisting of the concept of ‘honour.’ The thought of young women being butchered for such crimes as leaving unhappy marriages, or refusing to be married to old men to clear their family’s debts, makes me so angry I can hardly think straight. As with most violent crimes against women, when a conviction does actually occur the sentence is of course kept to the barest minimum.

Art can be dangerous

I had a new experience this week; I found myself fancying someone who was a whole 15 years older than me. Maybe this spells the end of the age of the toy boy?

Went to the opening of the über cool new Beat Gallery on Schlegelstr. Unfortunately I had a bit too much to drink and had to have a little sleep (I always think that ‘passing out’ is a needlessly dramatic description). Later, I broke my little toe, but I have no idea how. I think that this might count as my worst ever UDI, it certainly hurts plenty.

Met the man with the little finger handshake for a second time, and somehow he trapped me into doing it again. I suspect that he has OCD. However I am still not discarding the possibility that he does it purely to see if he can make people make tits of themselves, and I am going to watch him closely.