We Had Plans To Ignore You

A selection of cold slurpers and a device that drapes a fine frozen mist over my head and neck and someone playing the soothing end of the Nick Cave spectrum on a nearby marimba if at all possible buttercup, I said in sweltering German to a foamy-bearded waiter who'd come to repair my mojito. I didn't tell him that the largeness of the ice cubes had led to a horrifying inconsistency of temperature within the drink which jeopardised the entire 23 remaining hours of my holiday, because I didn't want to sound out of touch with world events.

Disaster Magnets

Everywhere was hotter than everywhere else. The bar's walls were tiled up to head height with patterns like illustrations of non-existent plants. We sat on a hundred year-old couch drinking white russians. Murky declarations floated off the tongue of the man opposite, through the blob of smoke above the table and into our perspiring ears. The Cunt has removed democracy in Europe, Berlin is dead, I have to say this quietly or my listening countrymen will have me crucified. He described what things were like and we described how they seem now. We asked about the tiles, he said the place used to be a classy something or other, before the tiles were covered up, abandoned, then rediscovered and polished when this place opened, the last proper old new bar in poor old dead new Berlin, soon to be devoured by the unstoppable crushing jaws The Cunt calls prosperity.