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  • be the change you want to see in the word

    My German sweetheart and I argue about my right to make up new words in his language. It’s not that he’s possessive about the tongue, it’s just reflexive conditioning, embedded in even the most free-thinking German: Das machen wir einfach nicht. Das machen wir einfach nicht is a gem I have preened and polished since I first heard it and it’s become a watchword for me, one I use to tease him the way that he used to tease me, during Tony Abbott’s reign, by shouting whenever someone cut us off in traffic or nipped past us in a queue, Team Australia! It was given to me by the outraged waitress of a swanky cafe in the centre of town, where I’d ventured some years back to do something exhausting and invasive. I decided to reward myself by having coffee and a piece of cake in this gorgeous airy cafe space under an awning, because coffee and cake in a swanky place costs little more than cake and coffee in a greasy spoon – as opposed to, say, two dinners.

    The waiter took my order and took his time getting back to me. I could see him sitting yarning with the barista behind the big Gaggia. When he finally showed up he brought a coffee that was different in every respect to what I had ordered and his thumb was hooked over the cake plate. I looked at what he had set down and thought: You know what? I’m just not even going to argue, it is too much energy; I’m going to leave. As I was unlocking my bike out front a red-faced waitress came whizzing out behind me. “Gehen Sie?” Are you going? Yes, I said, taking her to mean Please don’t be disgusted with us – it’s ok, your colleague just didn’t listen to a word I said but no big deal, I’m just gunna go.

    She drew a deep, panicky breath. She was as outraged as a bantam. “Das machen wir einfach nicht!” she said, immortally. That, we simply don’t do! I got on my bike and rode away, quaking and laughing. To my sweetheart I have explained how as a 21 year old moving to England I had to learn to my horror a whole new vocabulary – mustn’t grumble, can’t complain, not for the likes of us and it’s simply not done. I have told him how I spent my first six months there in a rictus of “Why the fuck not?” I have twisted this über-German phrase into Das machen wir einfach so: we simply do it so, that is simply the way we do it. Last weekend tramping a thirty kilometre round between two scenic villages I lost sight of the trail of intermittent blue dots painted every now and then onto a tree trunk to guide walkers. Just as we reached the fork and needed our blue dot there it was. How come this trail was so well marked and others have been ill-signed and in disrepair? My partner shrugged. “The trails are maintained by different hiking clubs in the local area and some do a better job than others,” he said. Inspiration fell like a blue dot onto my forehead. “Das machen wir einfach so-so,” I told him. When we reached the last village and faced a final two kilometre hike uphill to the train station we had been walking for eight hours. I’m not a hiker. Wordplay is all that kept me afloat as we tramped upwards on the sandy path in between the needling trees. That, and the ferns by the path and the thought of our dinner, in the city, which we would einfach selbst machen.

  • nation of dog lovers

    You know you’re in Germany when you can saunter into a department store carrying your dog on a leash. The dog accompanies you up the escalator, looking longingly across at the fluffy bunnies quivering in their mesh cages down in the pet department. When the dog starts barking and kicks up a fuss in the queue to pay for haberdashery findings, and everyone turns with expressions of indulgent affection, that’s when you know you’re in Germany. When the woman staffing the cash register leans in to ask confidingly, Darf er eine Leckerli haben? Is he allowed to have a little treat? She has drawn open her cash drawer and pulled out a little bag of crackling dog treats. She gazes over the counter at the dog with a doting expression. She says, Mäuschen? my little mousie-mouse? wouldn’t you like a little yummy treat? The people at the next register have stopped their transaction to watch. Everybody is smiling fondly. The dog takes the treat politely, then drops it to the floor. His owner, known in German as the Herrchen, the little husband of the dog, bends to pick it up and then the dog takes it and gulps it down. An elderly lady in the queue says, That’s right. He takes it only from his Herrchen.

  • gun culture

    Let’s think about the whole gun control question from another angle for just a moment. Imagine everybody has their own nuclear device.

    The Constitution enshrines our right to own these nuclear bombs and besides, we need our nuclear bombs in case the Government one day comes for us and we need to form a militia.



    The fact that many backyard nuclear bombs are detonated by toddlers who find them lying unlocked in their parents’ closets is immaterial. We will hold to our weapons until life is prised from our cold, dead land. All we have to do is rely on each and every fellow American to use their nuclear bomb sparingly, wisely, responsibly, and well. We simply trust every citizen to remain aware at every moment, even when humiliated, angry, drunk, sleep-deprived, heartbroken or feeling insecure, of the catastrophic long-term consequences of this short-term stress relief.



    I can’t see how this is ever going to work. It doesn’t even work with lemonade.

  • opportunista

    In the supermarket I was queuing in front of a woman with a lot of groceries. Her arms were laden and I stepped aside to offer her the space to put her stuff down on the conveyor. Germans are possessive about their conveyor space and it remains the only country where I have ever had someone not only install one of the little dividers between my groceries and his, but then lean across me to reinstate the missing divider between mine and the person’s in front of me; then rock back on his heels and give a satisfied nod, saying to himself almost sweetly, “Hmmphf.”

    The woman spilled her goods onto the belt and said, “Ich hab’ gerade ‘was vergessen. Kannst du…” She had forgotten something, she darted away into the aisles and disappeared. I said hello to the guy with all the piercings who works the register. He scanned my bunches of vegetables one at a time. The woman slipped back into her place in the queue and put one of those toilet ducks on the belt beside her things. She smiled at me. Her smile, and the fact that she’d used du rather than Sie earlier, gave me a slender opportunity and I made the most of it.

    “Kannst du bitte – das nächste Mal – vielleicht daran denken, etwas ein kleines bisschen umweltgesunder zu probieren?” Couldn’t you please, next time, perhaps think of trying something a bit environmentally healthy? I tipped the plastic duck-beaked bottle to show her. “This stuff is complete poison. It goes down the drain and comes back out the tap, goes into our rivers. There is a brand called – Frog, I think they sell it here, you might try it.” I strove to sound as casual and off-handed as I could. This is perhaps the five hundredth such conversation I have had in a grocery store with a stranger and I’ve got skills. “Have you ever thought about trying the recycled paper toilet tissue?” I’ll ask, sidling up like a flasher in the aisle. “Ah, no,” they might say, looking startled. Often they confide they have sensitive skin and it’s supposed to be much scratchier. Oh, good god. Around us in the shadows rainforests fall to bulldozers and orangutans limp away from palm oil plantations so that we can eat our corn chips and make our soap. “Actually, it’s softer,” I always say. I’m smiling. “I mean – it’s been pulped twice.”

  • illicit flower factory

    Today my boyfriend discovered the illicit dried flower factory I have been running in his apartment. At first glance it looks as though a two-dimensional squirrel has made herself a nest out of private papers and unwanted official letters retrieved from the waste paper bin beside his desk.

    “What’s this?” he said, lifting away the heavy row of comic books along the shelf to reveal my little stack of flattened envelopes and folded paper.

    “Uhm,” I said, “that’s my dried flower factory. I have one at home, as well.”

    The whole city has burst into bloom and the streets are filled with love. On our way down to the post office a man in the street grabs me, both hands clasping my forearm in a grip surprisingly determined and strong. An African man, bearded, handsome, long muscular arms and that’s all I see of him. He is smiling, pleading, manly, he is wooing me in his own language. “Danke,” I keep saying, “Danke, nein, ich muss ~ ” and wrenching my arm away I turn back to the taller man I have come out with, my beloved, who is bristling and who wraps his hand possessively about me at the waist. “What was that?” he asks, “you don’t know that guy?” “No,” I say, “he just really liked me.” “You look confident today. But why would he grab you while you’re kissing me?” he growled, looking over his shoulder in a feint.

    “Well, that’s why,” I say, having understood the man in an instant. Perfect attraction is like that, if it so often only lasts a moment. “He liked it, I think, that I was laughing and teasing and reaching for you. I think maybe he thought, I’d like a woman to look at me that way and to kiss me like she loved me. I’d like that woman.”

    He isn’t really worried, because he knows I love him. Other men casting glances and women looking at him are not new. And I know that he loves me too, he treats me beautifully and his dark sweetness and deep limpid loving heart are my water and my salt in the desert of city sugar and fat. And I know that he understands me, better than the guy who grabbed me in the street and would not let go, his eyes imploring and his smile broad, might ever do.

  • born by scissory section

    A German’s interpretation of my Australian pronunciation of flasher just yielded the phantom of the flesher: a guy who walks round with his coat open, flashing people with his flesh. Having cherished sundry other examples like “this cost fifty bugs” and “you have a great bump” I was reluctant to point out the error – but I’ve been made to promise so I broke it to him, gingerly; then had to turn away to hide my overweening affection when he confessed he now felt totally discombubbled.

    Yesterday my osteopath described his daughter’s birth by making a scissors motion: she had to be cut out, his wife had “a scissoring.” Thus we render unto scissors that which is scissors’, yield unto flesh what’s in flashes. It’s all gold.

  • camera ambulance

    Is it Germans who are so trusting, or just Berliners? A woman cycled up with her grandchild, I think grandchild, in a netted baby trailer and parked her bike under the tree where we were standing. We were waiting for the guy who repairs cameras, as I had dropped mine onto the cobblestones an hour before. His window was dusty and the handwritten sign promising, “Ich bin gleich wieder für Sie da,” was not convincing. Peering in I had the impression he maybe hadn’t been “there for us” in a century or more. The woman glanced up at the staircase leading into the house she as visiting. She glanced at us. “Sind Sie noch ein Paar Minuten da?”

    The child was sleeping and the stairs were steep: she clearly didn’t want to have to rouse him carry him, lock everything. Oh, yes, I said: we are waiting for the camera guy, we’ll be here a few more minutes, “wir passen auf Ihr Kind auf.” We will look after your child. Oh, thank you, she said, and bounded up the stairs – actually bounded – without so much as locking her bike.

    Is it Berliners who are so fit, or just Germans?

    The camera guy came strolling magnificently down the street carrying a little notepad. His belly was broad and his gait wide and easy. “That’s him,” said my partner, “it’s got to be.” And we were right – the guy pulled up outside the shop window and gazed at the small group which had gathered. “Ein richtiges Kamera-Party,” I said, we’re just having a bit of a camera party. He laughed, the sun is finally out and everybody is happy. The shop is called Camera Ambulance. Just as he was unlocking the door the grandmother came leaping down the stairs to collect her child. “Danke,” she said, and I told her cheerfully, “Der wollte nach München, um seine eigene Karriere zu folgen – ich habe ihn überredet.” He was keen to set off for Munich in pursuit of his own career – but I talked him out of it. “Ah! that’s a relief, many thanks,” she said, giving her fresh beautiful smile. On the cycle ride home we followed a woman with such a gloriously high round arse that as she was pedalling I turned to point her out to him, and he was on the verge of pointing her out to me. Berlin is filled with beauty. And babies. Perhaps it is not so much an attack of baby fever as the fact that all the babies who exist hereabouts already have now woken from their long sweet winter sleeps and taken to the streets, they are strolling in carriages, towed by their parents’ bikes, sitting nodding in half dozens in the large buckets on wheels by which local kindergartens transport their charges. If you gaze in at the window of a Kinderladen (a local ‘children shop’) you will see sweet little low tables with tiny chairs set with plates and sturdy cups, at which the Kinderladen staff crouch down to sit at child level, while everyone is served a proper hot lunch.

  • the wrong underpants

    Walking home we were following a guy who could not stop fiddling with his own underpants. They were clearly intensely uncomfortable and as he walked, he plucked at them, front and back. It was amusing because he was so beautifully dressed, with a calculated insouciance that, as it turns out, requires constant upkeep. He plucked at his undies from behind. He tried lifting his belt away from his lean belly in front to sort of tug from inside. With pinched fingertips he took another slurp at the back end. Finally in desperation he started shoving his hand down the front of his trousers to rearrange everything for comfort.

    We were in stitches. My companion kept up a running commentary, gravely observing in an undertone as though reporting a flock of seagulls on the pitch during a slow game of cricket. The guy was in an agony of discomfort and we were in an agony of suppressed gales of laughter. It was just too picturesque. The long-legged boy and his long-legged friend had identical sloping gaits. They were tall and stooped forward as they walked, curving their shoulders, wearing a uniform of sorts: black stovepipe jeans. Leather jackets. Wide belts. Greased hair and sunglasses propped up in the slew. All of this grooming and devil may care was undermined by the incessant twitching and plucking. They reached a bench facing the water and plonked themselves down. We drew level with them. I was carrying a metre-wide loop of rusted metal I had found in the street and when I picked it up, saying, Oh! isn’t this beautiful! my companion said: so long as it doesn’t end up in my apartment – it’s lovely.

    I said to the beautiful young man as he lounged there, “Du sollst diesen Slip wegwerfen, er ist offensichtlich total unbequem.” I saw him turn to his friend to say, “I have no idea what that…” So I turned back. “You should throw those underpants away. Clearly they’re just completely uncomfortable.”

    His face broadened to a smile. He said, with a lilting whinge, “I want to put them in my friend’s bag but my friend won’t let me.” Australian. The friend rolled his eyes. We were all grinning like maniacs. “You should put them in the bin,” I said, pointing to the scuffed receptacle standing by them, surrounded by its usual audience of open-mouthed beer bottles like a choir of baby penguins. He said, “Just they’re these really nice underpants…” “No,” I told him, “No. They’re not for you.” “Ahhh,” he said, lying back in his splendour in the sunshine by the sparkling water, the summer of his life he bought a leather and went to Berlin.

  • at boyfriend school

    What bothers me most about getting older is losing that glorious, elastic authority which I used always to use to shame men out of behaving boorishly. This afternoon we came through the park and passed the boules courts along the riverside, ruled off with low fences like dust baths for human sparrows, and I was collecting blossoms from the various flowering trees, the Spring has waited so long. The park was full of drug dealers and pregnant women and dogs, everywhere dogs. It all seemed glorious and I collected eight different kinds of blossom. Finding a second bush with the same flowers as a sprig I had already collected, I went up to it to make my little sprig kiss a sister flower still attached and growing. Saying, “Sistah! Hey sis!” and making smoochy noises. Then at the next hollow where the table tennis tables are set up I found another bush with the same flowers and went over to it, making kissing sounds – my companion said, mildly, “Are we going to be doing this all the way home?”

    Alongside the boules courts we passed a man unzipped with his back turned, right there among the people, women, children, men, dogs, he had barely bothered to shunt himself into the bushes and it seemed so arrogant, so rude. I stared at him, turning my head as we walked past until he looked up and then I could say, witheringly, “I can see you!” He stared back, a complex expression crossing his face. I believe I read him perfectly. I said to my companion as we walked on, “You know – this is perhaps the most galling part about getting older. I lose that natural kind of authority of gorgeousness. Ten years ago he would have gone, Oh my god, that beautiful woman! and I have disgusted her! I’ve lost status in her eyes.”

    He murmured appreciatively and slung his arm around me. But I didn’t want his compassion, I wanted his incomprehension. After a few dozen more steps I nudged him. I was grumbling. “You do realise that now would be a great time for you to say something beginning with, wait but Cathoel you are a beautiful woman?” He laughed. “Jeez,” I said. “Didn’t they teach you anything in Boyfriend School?”

    “Cathoel,” he said, “you are still a very beautiful ~”

    “Nope!” I put up a hand. “Do not use the word ‘still’!” But he wasn’t done. Unperturbedly he carried on, “~ and you will probably be beautiful until the day you die.” “Ahh,” I said, my breath sailing out of me like a breeze, and then I felt my body relax and my face grow warm and I snuggled back under the crook of his arm, where I like to belong.

  • the oliver twist

    I have a friend who teaches piano. Today she said to me, “I have two students now from Australia. And both of them are called Oliver.”

    “Wow,” I said, “how many Australians called Oliver can there really be? There’s only like twenty-five million of us.”

    “Not that many,” she said, “because they’re all over here.”

    “They’re Oliver here,” I realised, making us both laugh, yay me.

    There are so many Australians in Berlin, I hear our accent in the streets. And three of my Berlin friends are Kiwis, which means that one in a million New Zealanders is not only living in Berlin but is within my own personal circle of acquaintance. This seems so astonishing and improbable.

    We were heading towards the door and she held it open for me so that I could carry my bike through. I was thinking of the election in five weeks which will hopefully depose inhumanity in Australia in favour of humanity; and how I hope all these Berliner Australians will get to the booths. I thought about our strange and resonant homelands so far away and as we parted at the foot of the stairs I burst out, “You know, sometimes I kind of get the feeling, like – who’s looking after the place?”