 |
| 50 cents a ride. #yourmum |
Stan and I are a great team. He ploughs along the roads like a little two-wheeled tank, coping with all the potholes and cobbled streets, surging forth with minimal wobbliness. I take him everywhere and buy him nice things like a brand new lime-green bike light. He’s enough of a squat little beast that no-one in their right mind would steal him. I know he will be there tethered up at the end of the day, right where I left him.
For so long I used to shake my head with a rueful smile and think ‘Ahh, such is this wonderful anarchistic city which I have made my home’ – but now it’s just starting to get on my tits. And maybe it’s partly me; thanks to the fact that I look enormously younger than I am and generally walk around with an expression of vague consternation on my face (it’s nothing personal, that’s just my neutral facial expression), I’m a natural target for people who want to mess around with some random vulnerable human by shouting in their face or screaming ‘F*CK! YOU F*CKING F*CK!’ out of the car window at me when I’m jogging. And admittedly it was a foolish idea to cycle home at 5am recently after a very long, liquid evening, but the two men who threw their drinks over me when I rode past them were probably not doing it to educate me about bicycle safety. And I bet you any money they wouldn’t have done that to a bloke. The following day a whole swathe of them were having some kind of punks-and-fireworks protest outside my local Lidl right when I needed to buy groceries and it’s not unlikely that the drink-chuckers and the chewy-dog-owner were among them. Not to be prejudiced, but why don’t they just all go back where they came from: Wankerville (twinned with Slough).
And so I would like to address the rest of this post directly to you, the Asis, you bastards. Firstly – and perhaps most importantly – ‘long back and sides’ is not nor has ever been an acceptable hairstyle. Please remove your mullet (or skaggy green buzzcut, or disappointing mohican) from my city and take it elsewhere. Preferably outside of this space-time continuum. Secondly, I realise that the Germans invented the term Schadenfreude, but there is a not-subtle difference between secretly slightly enjoying it when accidentally drops their cake off the train platform and deliberately causing the Schaden (damage) in order to indulge in the Freude (joy). There is no reason at all to do all this pointlessly unpleasant stuff, OR allow your dog to do it while you stand there and grunt with delight. There are so much funnier things out there to enjoy, like Eddie Izzard
or Good Mythical Morning or this film or the mere fact of the existence of a shop called ‘Mister Lady’. It’s a real blow when someone does something to you merely to make you miserable – and soggy, in the case of the drinks incident – and I don’t think I’ll ever quite forget that malicious laugh that echoed behind me as I cycled home feeling dirtied and humiliated.
Although it is true that Berlin feels truly safe, and you can walk home at any time of night with no qualms whatsoever, it’s not a sense of danger that makes this place sometimes err on the dark side. It’s you, the Asis, who would probably never attack a person but wouldn’t think twice about stubbing your ciggie out on their jacket. (Speaking of which, thanks also for the scar on my wrist). It’s like there’s a generous peppering of random school bullies drifting around the city waiting to give some unsuspecting civilian a wedgie. And you’ll never go away; you’re part of the city’s fundamental rebellious atmosphere. Us nerds just have to keep our chin up and let you have your laughs, because no matter how big your dogs are, you are such very small people. Nothing you do will ever stop us getting back on our bikes.
