Ich bin ein Berliner II

I recently wrote a blog about why I left England and moved to Berlin. It was a pretty scathing denouncement of English politics and society, and also offered an extremely pessimistic forecast for the future of working people there. 

Rereading, maybe it was a little strong in the end. In truth, it's only half of the story of why I left. Half? Probably less.

Since arriving at the beginning of September I've spent almost every weekday morning at German language classes, trying to wrap my head and tongue around this most inconsistent, bludgingly logical, expansive and grammar-heavy of languages.

Along the way I've discovered the joy/nightmare of compound nouns – individual words formed by joining two or three together (or many many more); particularly those individual words that pinpoints a situation, emotion or feeling that in English we need several lines for.

My favourite so far is

Backpfeifengesicht (Back/pfeifen/gisicht) (n) a face that cries out for a fist in it, or ' a person with a face in need of a fist'.

This one compound noun describes an emotion you might feel when looking at a picture of, say, Jeremy Clarkeson, or people who play loud tinny music from their phones on the bus, or, you know, Tories.

We should totally import Backpfeifengesicht into the English language immediately!

But I came across two more compound German nouns that winded me like a grammatical one-two to the stomach. These words cut straight through the bluster and semi-comfortable narrative that I had built for myself about my emigration, and forced me to coldly address my true motives, even if at the time I wasn't even really aware of what they were.

Torschlusspanik: (n.): the fear, usually as one gets older, that time is running out and important opportunities are slipping away

This one word burrows down, laser-like, to the nub. Having spent 15-odd years working for various wonderful organisations and with a 'achievements' CV that I am immensely proud of, I found myself pushing 40 with limited career options, treading water, and with the niggling feeling that life was passing me by elsewhere.

But added to the Torschlusspanik that was lurking with intent around my stupid head was utter campaign exhaustion and disillusionment with British/English politics. I'd spent 15 years working with some of the best people in the world on brilliantly worthwhile campaigns, and with some minor successes along the way.

But all the time I felt that the Tories, conservative ideology and the right were winning, and would win ultimately, because they controlled the story, the media, the state instruments (police, judiciary etc), the House of Commons (with the Lib Dems, then), the story and, really, the pre-Corbyn Labour Party.

The Tories will use May 2015's surprise election win to destroy the lives of millions. And this made me sink into severe

Weltschmerz (n.): mental depression or apathy caused by comparison of the actual state of the world with an ideal state.

15 million British (probably, mostly English), almost half of those who voted, voted for either the Tories or UKIP. And with that the tiny flame of hope that I still held for England was extinguished. In its place a resentment towards England grew.

I think a lot of activists and campaigners suffer Weltschmerz at some point, especially acute after the 2015 elections I imagine. But it's what you do to haul yourself out of it that counts. Some people crack on, more determined than ever to fight for a better world.

I used to be one of those people.

But when hit with a lethal cocktail of Weltschmerz and Torschlusspanik over just a few months, I petulantly threw my toys out of the pram and buggered off to a more progressive country for fun, adventure and new opportunities.

Now then, where's that German grammar exercise book?

Ich bin ein Berliner

Dear England

I ought to let you know that I am slipping away from this scene of nightmare.

Though I made the decision to leave in May, I've been gone for six weeks or so now. I don't imagine you noticed; likely, my leaving was a tiny blip on your radar, unseen, slipping by your seething, broiling obsession with those coming the other way. What's one more exile to you? I'm somebody else's immigrant now.

I'm leaving you, England. I think it's best to get that in first, then we can go from there. I'm leaving you for Berlin. But this isn't about Berlin, or Germany, or the EU.

It's about us.

I've been wondering for a while where it all went wrong, trying to remember the exact moment or moments that would see us come to loathe each other so terribly.

Because, in the early days, when we first met, I think I really did love you.

And for so many, many reasons.

Back then, in the first flushes of youth, to me you were a country of exquisite optimism, of rebirth, a kaleidoscope of communities living for each other, a stern matriarch but whose gentle maternalism coaxes the best of us, a duopolostic dream of aspiration, fairness and ambition.

You taught me in those early years to grow through kindness, empathy and compassion. You taught me, at a tender age, that the greatest love and care that you show for others is reflected right back. That it was never about escaping where you were from. It was about taking your community with you.

And I believed in it. I really did.

I believed it, because I thought the love was mutual – that by working hard at our relationship we would grow together.

Onwards and upwards, our kid.

You spent 36 years telling me to be kind, to believe that all people are equal, to look out for those less fortunate.

But all the while, you were growing cynical and bitter.

You see, of late, there's something terribly mean about you.

You can disguise it, dress it fancy-like with on-message slogans and focus-grouped soundbites. You can make us look the other way. For a time, at least.

But like the dread stare of a cruel man, the eyes give it away.

And those courageous enough to look harder recognise the dark, freezing mist swirling across the land; something truly, deeply terrifying.

Our children, the most helpless and vulnerable, living in poverty and condemned so early; our new-born dying in hospital at scandalous rates; our wonderful old folk, who gave their all for us, forgotten.

All work and no play makes us exhausted and beaten.

Rickets and gout, those most common of afflictions of the Victorian poor, are back.

Food banks are not normal.

Food banks are not normal, but one day soon, if we're not very careful, they will be.

None of this normal. None of this has to be this way. We have become social pariahs to our neighbours, weird outriders of Europe, where everything is back to front and upside down and many suffer the unsparing consequences.

But this isn't an accident, is it?

You're using our corpulent riches to fund the poverty-as-policy war on the young, the disabled and the vulnerable. On all of us.

You are determined to rip apart the land beneath our feet and the streets we live and die on because the heartless whispered poison in your ear and it trickled down to your soul.

Really, England?

All this, driving your ungodly vans through our towns that are less white than others, to the cheers and applause of millions, causing the fine golden hairs on your neck stand to receive the ovation.

I see no further future here than a land of insecure, unstable jobs, of growing inequality, of declining wages, of laughing bosses, of richer rich and poorer poor, of odds stacked against us, victims to City spivs and thieves, scapegoats made of the powerless, differences exploited as a violent divide, a dirty future of ripped up land and deep scars...

And I can no more watch this destruction around me than I can stop the hurt. So I've made my choice, as difficult and cowardly and heart-breaking as it is.

I think it's best I just go now.

I wish our Celtic neighbours well in their quest to be rid of you. You don't deserve them.

So, in case you ever cared, for once and for all, I'm leaving you.

I'm leaving you for your lies and deceit, for your unsparing meanness, for cheering the war on those poorer than us, for the hearts that you are blackening, our friends that you are turning against friends, the blood for which you are baying with every selfish ballot tick, the pounds of flesh that you cut from each of us until you carve deep into the bone.

For the country that you keep telling us you are and maybe, perhaps, once dreamt of being...

'I ought to let you know that I am slipping away from this scene of nightmare. I can do no more good here.'

In sorrow

Matt
Berlin, 14 October, 2015

Debut short story published and available to buy. Which is exciting.

My very first published short story, The Girl in the Red Polkadot Dress, featured in the 10th anniversary edition of Amelia's Magazine, 'That Which We Do Not Understand' is now out to buy.

'The midwife turns from the Bailey family belting out Auld Lang Syne, and smiles. And in her gentle smile, on the edge of life, I finally have found what I’m looking for in my dreams. In her smile, at last peace flows through me, and I understand; the dawn-age sliver of time between what we know and that which we do not understand is the place where stardust dances. Born from this gap in the universe we are each judged, not by God, but by the breath-taking power of collective humanity, molded by kindly forces that find its ultimate expression through love and creativity, dignity, kindness, and a silent strength.

'The midwife smiles a crinkled, knowing smile again and, with the spark of a newborn in her eyes, whispers into my ear something magical.

You can buy it here.

How very exciting.

On Approach to Beijing, and other stories

My first ever attempt at writing short stories was a short collection written for my mum's 60th birthday. As first audiences go, she was great and brilliantly supportive. This, of course, had absolutely nothing to do with my relationship with her, and everything to do with the strength of the writing, I'm sure.

Anyway, that's why Jan (said mother) appears in nearly all the stories. Peter is her husband, and David her son-in-law. Click on the title of the story to read the whole thing. Hope you like them. I promise I'll get better.

On Approach to Beijing 

The train slowed to a halt beside the station platform. Looming large in Jan’s window was the dirty yellow and black station sign, with the train company’s omnipotent ‘M’ logo crouching on it like an angry insect. Jan’s mouth fell open. She tore her eyes away from the sign, stared suspiciously at her empty cocktail glass, then around the carriage at her fellow travellers, then back at sign. She peered closer, unbelieving.

Bell at Sea

Thinking about it, Jan still wasn’t completely sure how she ended up as part of the crew of a 18th Century pirate ship.

Just six weeks earlier, almost to the day, she had been sitting desolate on the Bristol quayside, watching absent-mindedly through her one good eye the ferry boats sail past towards the city with cargoes of tourists. She had fingered the black patch covering her right eye, drained the last of the rum, and sighed heavily.

* Concerning the Sighting of the Red Throated Needle-tailed Hawk

In one long, graceful arc, the hawk swooped down from its perch at the top of a tall oak tree, gripped Janice tightly by the shoulders, closing its talons like a vice.

* Lovely Man

Meowington looked unconvinced. ‘Look’, continued Mr. Tibbs, impatiently. ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. We can’t stay here. We’re too exposed. Next time it won’t be just your arm Tinkerbell will try to rip off.’

Meowington stared gloomily at the floor. ‘So it’s come to this. Choosing between a cold-blooded killer who murders for shits and giggles, or a human sadist who just blind hates us and wants us dead.’

Mr Tibbs sniffed. ‘Well, you do crap in his soil, to be fair.

* Patriarchy

Well-behaved women seldom make history.

Birthdays

David moved over to the body. The old lady was lying on her back, wide-eyed, breathless, ashen-faced, her left leg at a terrible, crooked angle. It was too dark to see whether there was any blood. He was grateful for that much.

He knelt up on his haunches and looked carefully up and down the road, scanning for signs of people or movement. Nothing. So he glanced up at the sky and, with an almost imperceptible nod, placed his hands on the corpse’s chest, over her still heart. Concerning the

Sighting of the Red-Throated Needletail Hawk

Hillsborough: Two oranges

When a Bright Green editor texted me to ask if I would write a few hundred words on Hillsborough today for the website, I stared at a blank screen for hours, and all I could think was: where to fucking start.

I could write a few thousand words on any single aspect of the Hillsborough disaster 23 years ago; why a huge FA Cup semi-final between two of the then biggest clubs was held at a thoroughly inadequate ground; the fateful decision by the South Yorkshire police to open a turnstile and allow thousands of fans to push into the single central Leppings Lane pen, crushing those at the front; the lack of leadership and confusion shown by the South Yorkshire Police through the entire disaster; the Sun…

But, then, I would be telling you nothing you shouldn’t already know about that terrible day. Other sources will give you a much better account of what happened.

This is my attempt. I apologise for the rambling.

The grieving process for the loss of a loved one has the objective of enabling and allowing the grieving person to accept the loss and ultimately move on with their life; never forgotten, but finally at peace with their loss.

When crucial stages of that process are carved out and removed for the sake of saving the skin of those responsible for the loss, it is an outrage. And when then, after denying the relatives any knowledge of why their loved ones were allowed to be crushed to death, and allowed by whom, for the blame to then be rounded right back on the dead and dying victims themselves, then it is monstrous.

I was nine years old in April 1989, and as a good Kopite in a Liverpool FC household (the neighbours on both sides were Toffees, and had gone to Villa Park for the other semi-final against Norwich) I was glued to our small TV in Merseyside. I don’t really remember much of the actual footage. I do remember thinking something must be wrong because my Dad shut up his butchers in the Liverpool suburbs early and arrived home in tears. I never saw my dad cry, before or since.

I remember visiting Anfield a few days later with my Dad and seeing the enormous mile long chain of football scarves stretching across Stanley Park, from the gates of Everton’s Goodison Park all the way through the Shankly Gates at Anfield to the Kop. I remember the endless rows of flowers on Anfield’s turf, and Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish and players John Barnes, Alan Hansen and the rest over the next few weeks going to funeral after funeral. After funeral. After funeral.

There’s one memory that looms in the corner of my childhood from then that even now reduces me to tears whenever I stop too long to think about Hillsborough. Among all the flowers and tributes were, in the corner of the Kop, placed purposefully on the front concrete steps, two oranges. Just two oranges, on their own. My Dad had to explain to a nine year old that this was where two young friends stood at every single Liverpool home game, always bringing with them a couple of oranges to eat at halftime. They were there because, from the 15th April, 1989, one of the oranges wouldn’t be needed anymore.

What followed one of the worst disasters in British peacetime history was a cover-up just as great, as the South Yorkshire Police, with the pliant cooperation of the British media and a Tory politician, scrambled and squirmed to quickly shift the blame from those at fault onto the dying or dead victims. After all, the people dying on the Hillsborough turf were only working class Scousers, already vilified and shat on for a decade by an aggressive Tory Government and its media cheerleaders.

Yes, the logic must have gone, the British people would be much more likely to happily believe in another round of scouser-bashing than they would the police could be at fault. Liverpool was a city already under attack by the Tories – mass unemployment, disgusting levels of poverty, the Toxteth riots, total and unyielding blame for the Heysel disaster a few years previous. Nobody would likely question that Scousers were at it again.

Because of the doggedly heroic Liverpool MPs Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram, we now know the truth: that blood tests were taken of dead fans to check for alcohol levels; friends and family of the dead at the ground were aggressively interrogated about how much alcohol they had drunk; background checks on the dead 96 were carried out so as to further denigrate their name; junior officers’ reports were changed to load blame on the fans.

As we’ve said for 23 years, alcohol or violent behaviour was never, ever a factor.

And the Sun. Ah yes, the Scum. We need not go into that front page. It has now become clear that the source of the lies came from South Yorkshire police and local Tory MP Sir Irvine Patnick briefing the Sheffield-based news agency Whites.

When the furious backlash to the Sun erupted in Liverpool, News International realised that they’d just cut off a large chunk of its working class readership. It’s said that the editor responsible for the ‘THE TRUTH’ headline, Kelvin MacKenzie, called up Kenny Dalglish and asked what he could do to repair the damage. Kenny replied that the next day the Sun should print on the front page, in a type as big as the original headline, ‘WE LIED’ and hung up. Sales of the Sun never did recover, and probably never will in Liverpool.

And then, just to keep the establishment’s story true and on course, there’s B*ris Johnson’s 2004 Spectator article:

(There) is no excuse for Liverpool’s failure to acknowledge, even to this day, the part played in the disaster by drunken fans at the back of the crowd who mindlessly tried to fight their way into the ground that Saturday afternoon. The police became a convenient scapegoat, and the Sun newspaper a whipping-boy for daring, albeit in a tasteless fashion, to hint at the wider causes of the incident.

So what more is there to say, now? As a Liverpool fan, Hillsborough is in my DNA as much as Rome 1977 and ’84, Istanbul 2005, Shankly and Bob Paisley, the ‘JESUS SAVES (and St John gets the rebound)’ graffiti on a local church outside Anfield, and Robbie Fowler’s Support the Liverpool Dockers t-shirt.

We went to the Hillsborough Justice benefit gig at Anfield in 1996. We chanted ‘Justice!’ until our throats were sore. We danced and cried and sang along with Trevor Hicks (who lost two daughters at Hillsborough), the Manic Street Preachers, Lightning Seeds, Space and the Bootleg Beatles, the squad of LFC, John Peel and the London Community Gospel Choir to You’ll Never Walk Alone.

We spent a never-planned quiet minute at the Hillsborough Flame tucked outside the Shankly Gates at Anfield before every match we went to.

We went to ex-Red John Aldridge’s last game before retiring from playing at Tranmere Rovers; Aldo, a local Liverpool man who barely recovered from seeing 96 fellow Scousers crushed to death in front of him. Tranmere’s Prenton Park was as full of LFC as Tranmere shirts that day.

Now, though, most importantly, just 23 years too late, maybe the families of those who died, and the City itself, can at last move into and past the final stage of grieving, for how can as intimate a community as Liverpool not react as one when almost 100 of its sons and daughter are ripped murderously from her heart?

Liverpool fans, Scousers, it can categorically now be stated, were not to blame for 96 people not coming home from a football match.

The South Yorkshire Police, the British media and the Tory government all conspired to shift the blame firmly onto the dead and away from the Force. Shame on them.

Of course, if the blame doesn’t lie with the fans, then were does it lie? And if it is with South Yorkshire Police, then who specifically? Surely the man in charge at Hillsborough on 15th April, 1989, right?

I hope this ruling makes life on the golf course a bit more uncomfortable for ex-Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield. And I hope that one day, waiting for him to finish his 18 holes, in the clubhouse two uniformed officers will ask him to accompany them to the local police station to help with their inquiries about an incident 23 years ago.

I watched David Cameron’s speech today with a bunch of Unionists crowded around the little TV at the UNISON stand at the TUC in Brighton. Through bleary sight I saw a hulking FBU man from Liverpool listen to the harrowing evidence with his hand over his mouth and tears in his eyes.

And those oranges… those oranges. Maybe now whoever was responsible for those oranges has his peace at last.

For the record, recorded here as Steve Rotheram MP ensured they be recorded in Hansard:

John Alfred Anderson (62)
Colin Mark Ashcroft (19)
James Gary Aspinall (18)
Kester Roger Marcus Ball (16)
Gerard Bernard Patrick Baron (67)
Simon Bell (17)
Barry Sidney Bennett (26)
David John Benson (22)
David William Birtle (22)
Tony Bland (22)
Paul David Brady (21)
Andrew Mark Brookes (26)
Carl Brown (18)
David Steven Brown (25)
Henry Thomas Burke (47)
Peter Andrew Burkett (24)
Paul William Carlile (19)
Raymond Thomas Chapman (50)
Gary Christopher Church (19)
Joseph Clark (29)
Paul Clark (18)
Gary Collins (22)
Stephen Paul Copoc (20)
Tracey Elizabeth Cox (23)
James Philip Delaney (19)
Christopher Barry Devonside (18)
Christopher Edwards (29)
Vincent Michael Fitzsimmons (34)
Thomas Steven Fox (21)
Jon-Paul Gilhooley (10)
Barry Glover (27)
Ian Thomas Glover (20)
Derrick George Godwin (24)
Roy Harry Hamilton (34)
Philip Hammond (14)
Eric Hankin (33)
Gary Harrison (27)
Stephen Francis Harrison (31)
Peter Andrew Harrison (15)
David Hawley (39)
James Robert Hennessy (29)
Paul Anthony Hewitson (26)
Carl Darren Hewitt (17)
Nicholas Michael Hewitt (16)
Sarah Louise Hicks (19)
Victoria Jane Hicks (15)
Gordon Rodney Horn (20)
Arthur Horrocks (41)
Thomas Howard (39)
Thomas Anthony Howard (14)
Eric George Hughes (42)
Alan Johnston (29)
Christine Anne Jones (27)
Gary Philip Jones (18)
Richard Jones (25)
Nicholas Peter Joynes (27)
Anthony Peter Kelly (29)
Michael David Kelly (38)
Carl David Lewis (18)
David William Mather (19)
Brian Christopher Mathews (38)
Francis Joseph McAllister (27)
John McBrien (18)
Marion Hazel McCabe (21)
Joseph Daniel McCarthy (21)
Peter McDonnell (21)
Alan McGlone (28)
Keith McGrath (17)
Paul Brian Murray (14)
Lee Nicol (14)
Stephen Francis O’Neill (17)
Jonathon Owens (18)
William Roy Pemberton (23)
Carl William Rimmer (21)
David George Rimmer (38)
Graham John Roberts (24)
Steven Joseph Robinson (17)
Henry Charles Rogers (17)
Colin Andrew Hugh William Sefton (23)
Inger Shah (38)
Paula Ann Smith (26)
Adam Edward Spearritt (14)
Philip John Steele (15)
David Leonard Thomas (23)
Patrik John Thompson (35)
Peter Reuben Thompson (30)
Stuart Paul William Thompson (17)
Peter Francis Tootle (21)
Christopher James Traynor (26)
Martin Kevin Traynor (16)
Kevin Tyrrell (15)
Colin Wafer (19)
Ian David Whelan (19)
Martin Kenneth Wild (29)
Kevin Daniel Williams (15)
Graham John Wright (17)