Touch Down

A asked me to go to a Christmas dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant with a large crowd of Irish or Irish affiliated Berlin dwellers. The night started well when, walking down the road, a woman asked me directions in German. I understood what she said. She turned out to be one of the many people invited to the same dinner. She was German and spoke English with an almost accurate north Dublin accent.

After about an hour of chat, eating and drinking I looked again at the woman to the left of C. It was J who I hadn't seen in thirteen years. She said she had two kids and the eldest was in kindergarten learning German and adopting an authentic Berliner accent. Her German was pigeon, she said. I told her that I had made a video about the pub we had painted in Italy in '95. "Why?", she asked.

We played 'Secret Santa' and I got a bag of thyme from Greece. J got the photograph that I had brought, taken in Autumn in the gardens of Schloss Charlottenberg. It's all warm light and coloured foliage, a reminder that the grey half light will lift.

For the past two weeks the light across Berlin at midday seems not to have reached above 3200 Degrees Kelvin, rather than the standard daylight of 5600 Degrees Kelvin. Degrees Kelvin is a measurement of colour temperature used in shooting video, with 3200 being equivalent to tungsten light, and 5600 being a standard preset on video cameras for shooting in daylight.

The final night started with an exhibition opening, where they were screening a Stan Brakage film of his first child being born, 'Window, Water, Baby Moving'. There were lots of shots of his hands and his face, towering over everything.

R tried to use the toilet at the gallery and on the way found a man having a fit on the floor. She alerted the gallerist, and order was eventually restored until we set off to go to the Commonwealth Bar. As R turned towards us, the small sculpture made from little wooden blocks standing on a plinth, crashed to the floor breaking into it's constituent parts. I could see the remnants of wood glue on some of the blocks edges. "Why hadn't they used dowel?", I thought. Everyone looked at the floor and no one knew how it happened. R was worried it was her and I suggested we leave immediately. Cocktails in the Commonwealth were beckoning.

Landed in Luton Airport. About 25 minutes into the bus journey to London I saw some graffiti under a bridge. It was written in child like script with yellow paint and said: "a tea set".