Divide

"I don't see so good anymore" he tells me. Karl-Heinz -- "Kalle" to his friends -- is 87 years old. "I don't see so good, I don't hear so good...and when I go out for a drink these days I don't always make it home." His comic timing is as sharp as ever. It's been …

Trophy

Cup final Saturday. Tonight in Berlin, Borussia Dortmund will take on Eintracht Frankfurt in an all-or-nothing battle for six kilograms of gilded silver and I will not be there to see it. Tickets are like gold dust and I don't want to go to there anyway. Not that I have anything against the capital, on …

Scheisse

The Wildman is here; he has come for the weekend. Come Sunday morning both of us have gaps in our memory and there is a hole in my whisky collection which neither of us can quite account for. Instead of morning coffee we drink beer at a speed which will postpone Monday for a few …

Doppelganger

I see him. It is only in the corner of my eye but he is there alright; a shadow in my mind's eye that will not go away. Dortmund and Bremen serve up a real humdinger of a football game. The lead changes four times as Dortmund come from behind to win 4-3. Victory guarantees …

Patchwork

Today I have come to the village of Ronnenburg in the state of Hesse. Ronneburg (population 3,406, latitude 50.28°N) is not actually one village but three; a cluster of red roofs ringed around a castle on a hill --and I am not here by coincidence. I have come here to join up two points on …