Heimatlos

As impending homelessness looms, I'm seeing all sorts of peculiar places in my as yet fruitless search for an unbefrist furnished flat. Went to a one room place today which numbered among its features a door in the front wall which opened onto a sheer five floor drop (a metal barrier had been stuck across it, but only to about mid-thigh height) and a single kitchen unit into which both the (electric) cooker and the sink had been built. The electricity cable appeared to run between the hot and cold taps, falling something short of the levels of health and safety you might expect from the engineering minded Germans. I'm also spending lengthy periods trying to decipher messages left by an estate agent with what I thought was a serious speech impediment, but which turns out to be a strong Brandenburg accent.

I was very happy when the rain came back and melted away the frozen snow yesterday, as it meant that I could get my bike out again. I didn't feel safe cycling on the ice, especially what with the local habit of turning the traffic lights off to save on electricity.

How to embarrass yourself

Shamed myself today. I was talking to some people and at the same time fidgeting with a pen. Suddenly the lid decided to flip up in the air and drop with seemingly precision guided technology right down the middle of my cleavage, causing great hilarity and cries of "goal" and "can we try?" To make matters worse, I then couldn’t locate the bloody thing. As my ferreting was being followed with keen interest by my audience, I decided to attempt a casual shrug and a “well maybe I’ll just leave it there for now” but this prompted several of the men to offer to help me to find it, so I had no choice but to carry on. By the time it had been shaken out onto the floor I wasn’t so much red as vermillion.

What is happening to my beloved Leeds? Can we really be heading for Division One?

January

Am trying to do things where you don't miss alcohol too much - gallery openings, coffee and cake, cinema trips etc. Of course here you can buy beer and take the bottle in with you to watch the film, so even in otherwise safe territory you're smelling the hops and salivating.

Have bought a balaclava. This time at least I will be prepared for the tundra.

Fireworks and free bars

Christmas passed in the usual haze of parties beforehand and sloth and gluttony during. All very nice too.

Headed back to Berlin for Silvester, via a near death experience flying out of Gatwick, during which the plane started to rock from side to side with turbulence before even leaving the runway, and continued to lurch around violently all through the take-off. A glance around the plane showed fellow passengers universally silent, ashen-faced and those not in the brace position gripping onto their seats with white-knuckled hands. I think we were all pretty sure that the end was nigh. Definitely my hairiest flying experience to date, worse even than the llama on the runway incident in Peru.

Having survived that, of course we then had to run the gauntlet of the sociopathic Germans and their firework chucking antics. At least this year I knew what I was in for, but I was able to enjoy it again as if for the first time through the shocked and terrified eyes of the friend who was visiting from London. We ran hand in hand up Unter den Linden, ready to hit the deck at any moment.

I’ve never done a big public Trafalgar Square type NYE, and probably never will either. However, VIP passes for the freebie tent courtesy of a good friend who was involved in the organising meant that the Brandenburg Gate party was fabulous. The only quibble was that the Scissor Sisters received an extraordinarily tepid reception for such a great live band, possibly a result of the fact that Berlin crowds are even worse than London ones for trying to look cool rather than show any enthusiasm, or maybe just because the city – whose two chief musical modes are techno and dark Nick Cave type gloom-rock - really doesn’t do glitzy disco pop. I think that in the whole of Brandenburg Gate there were only 6 people dancing – us and two gay blokes. The Sugarbabes seemed to go down better, but maybe I just wasn’t in a state to notice by that point. A free bar is, after all, a free bar. In my experience it generally ends in somebody’s tears. Luckily this night they weren’t mine.

Now in the midst of grim January rehab horror. Alcohol-free beer is wrong wrong wrong. Just a small part of its wrongness is that you still spend all night in the toilet. Drinking tea in the Oscar Wilde reminded me of my early days here watching the Ashes, and talking of which - as far as I’m concerned what is reported to have just happened in Australia didn’t in reality happen at all. Come to that, I’m not even entirely sure that Australia actually exists.