Saturday 24th November 2012
Out of control. Miroslav’s been in the home. Polish builder. Shattering. Have been battling damp for months. Thousands spent. But not enough. My home needs complete renovation from top to bottom. Is filthy after Miroslav. £100,000 budget would be agreeable. Must seek to raise equity somehow.
It’s 5 years since it was last done. Time to rip out and start over. The more money (or idea of it), the greater the age, the greater the yearning. Perfection feels within grasp but is not. Why can’t a man stand by with a paint-pot at all times? Why no needlewoman leaping with fresh fabric before fading or staining even thought of? Why no carpet layer laying daily? Why no professional polisher? Why no-one with toothbrush into grooves hourly?
Now I’m in Manchesterford. Earlier in the week I was in Bath. I just never get near the home so dearly in need of whooshing, let alone any shops. I could clear the diary and tend to the home for three months but then what life?
Am totally not on top of the Autumn modes. Autumn in fact has gone, I notice. Too late. Its modes have flown with it.
Next year I open my garden to the public on June 16th. There’s that to worry about.
But Berlin… gashed city. I was there with the Multis two weeks ago. Gashed by a Wall, gashed spiritually by the Nazis, flattened by Allied bombing in the latter part of the War. Those gaining Berlin, the first in at War’s end from our side, were appalled. Whole swathes utterly destroyed. Crushing total victory.
They’ve put it back together to leave a vestige of the gashes or even to bare them: the Holocaust Memorial right in the middle by the Brandenburg Gate. The part at Potsdamer Platz where the Wall was is re-built but remains bleak and empty, perhaps deliberately. In all directions, 67 years since the end of War, 25 years since the end of Communism, still empty lots, crudely fenced-off areas, waste-ground. The classic Berlin view: truncated building with blank end-wall, rendered over.
May I remind: Poor Little Rich Gays have done so much for the old Eastern bloc. We were there: en bloc, as we used to say, Anthony Mottram was installed in Budapest in 1987 and engaged in smuggling young men out through Yugo. Down that Wall came in’89, Mottram perfectly poised for re-construction. Now Angus Willis, through export of slippers to his Hastings Home Store, is re-building Romania.
Unlikely but true: Poor Little Rich Gays have embraced the bloc, and the bloc has embraced them.
Typical Berlin View: Waste Ground Even at the City’s Heart
Old Watchtower from Wall days In Berlin
Sense of Emptiness: Where the Wall Was in Berlin
Building Stump: Typical of Berlin
New Bank Building by Frank Gehry in Berlin
Blank Space Typical of Berlin
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Poor Mr Gehry struggled with the design for the bank. He had hoped to build something more typical of his “organic” taste. The view by the Brandenburg Gate, however, is the most protected view in Germany so the officials fell back upon that other German trait – rule keeping. They told him no no no and directed him to their directions on what was permitted. He played them at their own game and designed his facade to within the millimetre of what was permitted hence the angles of the windows but otherwise pretty straight outcome. The clouds hang on the inside where he exercised his creative freedom. Quite right, of course, for a city to have dress regulations.
Berlin missed a chance! We hear this story so often. But his window treatment is upside-down all the same
Poor Berlin: now gashed by Multis.
No, no, no, the Multis were gashed by Berlin, as a fact.