Berlin 1985

When I was 17 I went to Berlin.  That was in the days when West Berlin was completely surrounded by East Germany.  We went on a coach from Hannover, during our school exchange trip..

At the border with East Germany a very serious looking man got on board and had a good look round the coach to make sure we weren't hiding anything.

The main difference once we left West Germany was that instead of seeing Audis, BMWs, and Mercedes on the Autobahn all we saw were Trabants, and about every third one of them was parked up on the hard shoulder, with an East German looking under the bonnet to see what was wrong with it.

I expected East Germany to be very grey, and I was quite surprised to see that it had grass and trees that were made of green, as I'd almost been expecting them to be grey too.

I remember seeing children waving and smiling at the coach from the side of the road, and thinking that they looked happy enough.  They just looked like children anywhere.  And when we got off at the services to go to the bathroom, the tarmac looked like tarmac you might see in the West, and it felt the same under our feet.

I sat next to Paul Edgar on the coach journey and at one point he managed to explode a can of Coke all over my passport, which made it all a bit sticky and it's still stained to this day.  But I did get a stamp on it at the border, which is about the only stamp in it.  Most countries in Europe don't seem to bother, they just wave you through, but in East Germany they had a good look at us on the way in and out.

Upon entering West Berlin it was back to Audis again.  No more Trabants.  Everything was brightly coloured and obviously very Western.  They used to call West Berlin the Schaufenster (shop window) of Europe and it was hard to escape the conclusion that they were rubbing the Easterners noses in it a bit with all the bright colours and the consumer goods and the brand names and the windows full of stuff.  'This is what you're missing', they seemed to be saying, 'we've got different kinds of ketchup and everything'.

My schoolfriends and I had a few hours to spare in Berlin that day, and so of course we decided to go to McDonalds, which caused our teacher Mr Kino to despair of us.  Something about coming to one of the world's great cities and choosing to spend time hanging out in a burger bar.

Then we saw the Wall.  We went up on a viewing platform and had a look over at the Brandenburg Gate, and into the No Man's Land with the Russian guard and barbed wire which surrounded it.  Near the viewing platform were some graves of people who'd died trying to cross over and a tat shop selling cheap souvenirs.  I didn't buy one.  The Wall was massive.  About twice as high as us.  Every so often an American jeep would go past, with troops in the back and a big gun.  On the Eastern side were the watchtowers, looking imposing.

We went to Checkpoint Charlie and thought about going over to the East, but there was a minimum currency exchange of about 30 Marks to go over, and nothing to spend it on, so we decided not to go.

Then we went to the Reichstag and had a look over to the East.  It was such a contrast to what you could see in the West.  I'd heard that on the Eastern side you weren't allowed to live within a couple of miles of the Wall, so the buildings immediately on the other side of the wall looked derelict.  A few broken windows and loose curtains blowing in the wind.  In the distance, you could see the occasional tram but no people.  The trams were a dirty red colour, everything else looked grey.  More like the grey I'd expected when we were on the coach.

It would have seemed impossible at the time of our visit, but the Wall only lasted 4 more years, until glasnost, perestroika and Gorbachev.  I met a lady on a train in 1987 who was from the East.  She had just reached the age of 65 and was allowed to travel again to the West.  She was going to see her sister in the West, for the first time in 22 years.  She seemed very matter of fact about it, but to me, always having lived in a country where you can move around at will, it seemed extraordinary..

Berlin in 1985 was like coming face to face with history, and it wasn't like the history you learn at school, this was history happening right in front of your eyes.  Everything from 1945 onwards had led up to what I saw  right there.

I've been fascinated by Berlin ever since.  I've read lots of books about it, both during and after the war.  About the Berlin Blockade, and about the Wall, and the stories of people who it trapped and divided.  It's probably the most strange and unnerving place I've ever been to, and I'm glad I got to see it with the Wall in place.  I hope to go back sometime soon to see it all joined back up again.



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I almost had a step dad once

I almost had a step dad once.

He was almost my step-dad because my mum never married him.  At first he impressed me because he could do card tricks. 

The first time I met him was in February 1979.  I had passed the entrance exam to go to Leeds Grammar School on a free scholarship and he gave me a lift to the interview. 

At the interview, the school governors asked me a few questions to make sure I wasn’t an idiot.  Then they asked me if I had any questions.  Just one I said.  Is it true that if you’re thick but your parents are rich, you can buy your way into this school?  They seemed to find this amusing, but they assured me it wasn’t the case, and they gave me the scholarship.

For the statistically minded out there, I was allegedly the first person ever to get free school meals there, and the school had been going since 1552.

My almost step dad was chunky and hairy with an orange soft top BMW which was full of fag ends and Rod Stewart cassettes, oh and drawings, him being an architect.

Later he drove a Cortina but it didn’t have any brakes so sometimes he’d have to swerve onto a grass verge to avoid collisions.  Towards the end he bought an Opel Manta but the engine blew up and he had to get a new one.  My mum lent him the money and he bought her some flowers.

He’d never come to the table when dinner was called but he’d come late and then microwave it all to hell and cover it with pepper. 

He thought he was still a miler because he used to run at school and he thought he knew kung fu, although trying to kung fu kick my brother on the ice proved to be a mistake as he ended up groaning in a hedge.  My mum thought I’d killed him when I played him at squash because he dived on top of the racket and it smashed some of his ribs.  More often than not, luck was not on his side.

He wore dark glasses indoors and put things in piles when he was nervous.  We called him Roy Orbison.  He said it was so we wouldn’t know what he was thinking.  Before he got in from work we used to call it Happy Hour

He wore beige socks, he drank fizzy orange in the morning when he was drying out, and he descended into alcoholism.  He wanted to die, he just didn’t know it. He had bad luck but he thought the answer to every problem was in the bottom of a bottle.  There were only more problems there.

12 years ago I became a step dad myself, ie a real one since I got married to someone with children.  At the time I thought ‘All I have to do to be a better step dad than I had is to stay conscious beyond 5.30 pm, not cook fish, chips and frozen peas all together in the deep fat fryer when paralytic, not fall down drunk in the street and have to be carried home by the neighbours and not mess the bed’.  I was pretty confident I could do it.  With hindsight, I’m not sure I was a great success.  I didn’t make the same mistakes, just lots of different ones. 

We never really got on, my nearly step dad and me.  When I was young I treated him more often than not with contempt and ridicule, but when I think of him now I feel sad, because it’s not an easy job and he gave it a go.  And so did I.  And that’s how I know.