Christopher's Kind

I have a few things to say about Berlin, city of a thousand sausages. The other week, I was staying in the very colourful Schoneberg district where Christopher Isherwood and other light-footed gentlemen used to galavant with impunity. At the end of my road, there was a. a big pork emporium where men in blue overalls ate sausage standing up, b. lots of lady prostitutes (and a couple that defied gender classification) jay walking among the bmws, and c. a gaggle of maxi-skirted Roma girlies who spent most evenings dancing around a phone box to a Slavic boom box. Around the corner, I had the dubious honour of early doors at Kumpelnest 3000, a fabulously indiscreet former knocking shop boasting elaborately carpeted walls, glitter balls and a very sticky dance floor where repressed housewives regularly flashed their baps. I resisted; I was recovering from an evening spent at a punk rock reunion party with a right charmer called Chaos whose chat up routine involved donning a penguin costume and slapping a pair of dentures on the table. Believe it or not, it takes more than false teeth to seduce me these days, Berlin or no Berlin.