If I have gathered anything from these past few days, it is that Berliners are a rude and noisy race, but then so are the English. The English may pretend to be polite, on occasion, but their falsity is more disgusting than their beer, and when the Great Scorer comes to judge their existences they will have as much of a hope of entering the Kingdom Of Joy as a Hindu cow, or a cauliflower, or Osma bin Laden.

Do you remember him? Some of my younger readers may be shrugging their empty little heads off of their sloping, acne-pocked shoulders, but six years ago he was the most terrifying man in our world, and his shadow hung thick and stinking over our heads like LA air.

Last most people heard of bin Laden was when he spookily turned up on TV right before the 2004 US elections to help little George Bush out. Where is he now? We are still at war, but we have no proper enemy. This is demoralising indeed. We have nothing to hate but ourselves, so we are forced to terrorise poor, innocent little pop stars, like Britney Spears.

But so what? A strange and beautiful girl lies sleeping behind me, and I suspect my clattering to be an obtrusion to her sleep, even if it is quieter than the revelous Germans outside this ceiling high window. You get two single duvets to one king-sized bed in this country, or at least this hotel. That makes the chance of an argument about duvet-stealing as doomed as a pig in the desert, but it also makes for less flesh on flesh, given the instinctive burrowing nature of the human animal, and flesh on flesh is what most of us live for, for good or ill.

On these things shall I brood, as I burrow in my single duvet, and listen to the revelous Germans. Nos da i pawb.

— Tuesday, February 27th, 2007