Clutching at straws. Young straws. Thought I’d better have one last go at being young. Like an old tosser moonwalking at a wedding. Not that I want to be young, of course. But something youngening caught my attention.

Darlings, I hate music, naturally. If we take hate, for the sake of fun, to mean like less than something else. And I think I probably prefer silence to music. But I have found last.fm bordering on the enjoyable. I mean, it’s got ELO and everything. But I probably wouldn’t have paid it much attention if the itinerant, who’s decided to beat the credit crunch by robbing a bank and swanning off to Mexico – at least I think that’s why he’s there – hadn’t got me more addicted and introduced me to all sorts of new folk. I’ve discovered all sorts of lovely German stuff, a fun Argentinian song that I torment my beloved with, as well as trawling through to find songs that might evoke particularly intense moments of happiness from the past.

So the itinerant or the programme itself led me to Fink. “Ooh, that sounds rather nice.” Though I wondered if he was trying to pretend to be American. And then bollocked myself for daring to wonder when who am I to know what any musician from Brighton sounds like in this day and age when the last time I went there all one did was eat rock and perhaps stumble, amid much guffawing, onto the nudist beach and wrap your feet in bandages from all the blood-letting wrought by the stones on the beach and contemplate that the sea as viewed from England’s southern coast looked almost nothing like the sea one saw on the travel catalogues I used to order as a teenager to try to broaden my parents’ horizons. And then the site cleverly tells you if the musician is on tour or not. And, blow me, Fink was. Playing in Berlin too, if you don’t mind.

“BiB, this could make you young,” I thought to myself. I could go along to a concert. I could perhaps wear make-up other than the stuff I put on my nose to hide the alcoholic’s veins I’ve got there. If I get the application wrong, I look almost exactly like the scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz. I could take narcotics. I could binge-drink alcopops. And snog folk. And vomit and hold my lighter in the air. And then cry because Mark from Geography got off with Stacey and not me. Wanker. Bitch. And then ring my mum and say I’d spent my bus fare home on Diamond White and would she pick me up from Harrow Weald.

I got this close. I’d composed an e-mail to everyone I know in Berlin – an unholy alliance of foreign faggots and foreign bloggers, adding a couple of made-up German-sounding e-mail addresses to pretend I was integrated – to suggest we all go together. See how young I am? Yes, let’s go to a concert. We’ll dance and take drugs. Oh yes, a week-night of course.

“Darling, I’m inviting everyone I know in Berlin to a concert on Thursday so you have to put a temporary tattoo on my neck and spray my hair blue on Wednesday,” I warned the Russian so he had time to get accustomed to the idea of the new, young me.

“Syurzday?”

“Yes, darling, Thursday. It’s not as if I’ve got a job to go to. And it’s Fink’s… Fink. Don’t you know him? Oh, he’s incredible. Amaaazing. I’ve, like, got a lot of respect for him actually… it’s his only night.”

“But Syurzday ven you go beenge-dreenkink veez ze fyeggots and ze bloggyers.”

“Darling, you’re right. Thank fuck you remembered.”

I deleted the e-mail and cried from relief that I hadn’t forced myself to listen to noise live. I kissed the Russian goodbye – he was going skateboarding – and poured myself a sherry.

The Russian, who has asked that I refer to him here as ‘my lovely husband’, but I have had to stick to the old version, call me anal, because while he is, by all accounts, almost unbearably lovely, he is not technically my husband, and we can’t just go around lying to all and sundry, is away. I don’t think, even though it isn’t a family trip and he is still somewhere on Germany’s hallowed soil, it’s a complicated ruse for the sake of an affair. Ostensibly, it’s to do with academia. Going off somewhere to do study in a group. Can you imagine anything more ghastly?

The trouble being, of course, his fellow students. The Russian had the misfortune to meet me at a tender age. Though perhaps any age would have been a misfortune, though naturally I tell him on an almost daily basis that I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to him. And the trouble with youthfulness, and my being older, is that he must have, at some unhealthy level, held me in some sort of esteem. Not my words or opinions, necessarily. But in the early days of our courtship, shortly before emancipation of the serfs and just as Avdotya Potapovna was about lo leave our service, I suppose I was, technically, the grown-up. The one with a job and some qualifications behind me. And, fatefully/fatally, for the Russian’s future happiness, translation was the profession this exotic grown-up, whom he also happened to be in love with, was beholden to.

When it came to emigrating from St. Petersburg and the Russian deciding what to study in Berlin, the only way of him staying here or, indeed, getting here in the first place if we wanted to play Germany by the book, which we did, neither of us having an imagination, call me strict, but I don’t think the Russian took the procedure all that seriously. There was a couple of minutes of fingering through the university prospectus. “Mongolian Studies?” “Darling, don’t be ridiculous.” “Scandinavian Studies?” “Darling, do you even like foreign languages especially? Why not something computery? You love computers. Or proper cooky-cheffy training. You’re a whizz in the kitchen.” “Translation?”

Without hesitation or explanation, I went to St. Isaac’s Cathedral to throw myself off the dome but was thwarted by the entry price, which was 400 times more expensive for foreigners than for Russians, and then counted my blessings that poverty had prolonged my life on this occasion and made my way home to reason with the Russian. “If you study translation in Germany, you’ll go blind from the glint off all the translatrices’ glasses within the first term,” I prepared internally as my killer punchline, deciding against throwing myself in a canal as a plan B as I remembered Rasputin’s ignominious end. Anyway, I can swim.

“Darling, if you study translation in Germany, you’ll go blind from the glint off all the translatrices’ glasses within the first term,” I remonstrated, the padded inner front door barely closed behind me. Silence. I was pleased that the Russian was stunned so by my excellent reasoning. Only to find a note tucked between the samovar and the collected works of Vladimir Ilyich.

“Gone post-office. I choose tryenslayshn for staady. I syend off epplikayshn.”

Forty years later and here we are, the Russian allegedly nearing the end of his studies. And thank heavens, for the world needs as many translators as it can get.

“All going well down there?” I wrote to inquire, assuming this translation outing must be taking place as close to hell as geographically feasible. “Or have you been blinded by the glint off translatrices’ glasses?”

“Almost blind,” came his immediate reply, only to be followed by a stream of incomprehensible typos, a translatrix with particularly dazzling eye-wear having presumably loomed into view.

While alone, I have worried my inability to be a grown-up might have terrible consequences. In a chaos-theory, butterfly-effect way. That, say, I might wobble my body along in an attempt at rhythm to Good Shoes and that the current of air created by my flapping double chins might make the curtains billow and catch light off a candle and before you know it the whole castle house would have burnt down.

I’ll probably be all right though.

The Russian doesn’t realise that the world will end if he turns on the heating at random. I don’t mean because the ice-caps will melt and the oceans will rise and the only habitable place on earth will be a very crowded and inhospitable peak somewhere in the Himalayas. Though perhaps I could factor that worry in too. No, he doesn’t realise that all sorts of chaos will be unleashed on an unsuspecting humanity if he just struts elephantinely up to a radiator and, terrifyingly, turns it on at random.

Whereas I, like any sane person, of course have to have a radiator on a setting. They go from 0 to 5. Obviously, strikingly so, a radiator can only be switched on to a whole number. Or, if I’m feeling very, very devil-may-care, a radiator could just about conceivably be switched on to 2 and a half. 3 and a half. But the Russian will happily – happily, I tell you. He even laughs maniacally after he’s done it and puts on an eye-patch – and nonchalantly turn the knob without even looking and walk away and get on with something else like ironing the bills or filing the tea. Once he is safely out of sight, I will approach the radiator with trepidation, as if approaching a ticking bomb.

2 and a quarter! 4 and a seventh! Not even on a notch. The arrow might not even be aligned to anything at all. Just looking blankly at a bit of white plastic, between black lines crying out to be aligned against to save the world from instant chaos. I take a few deep breaths and gingerly adjust the dial to a world-saving setting. No doubt, on each and every occasion, getting there in the nick of time.

I rush to the bathroom to get a cloth to apply to my forehead. The veins in my temples will be throbbing. I will cry from relief at having saved the world again. Suppress narcissistic thoughts along the lines of, “…and what thanks do I get, eh?” And try to regain my composure. I turn the hot water on but instantly sense that all is not right with the world. Bracing myself for the worst, I turn my head slowly to the right.

“Oh god, no!” the water-heater will be on 3 and a bit. “Jesus H….” but there’s so little time left to save the world that I don’t even get to finish the exclamation. I hurl the dial to 3 or 4, depending on whether I’ve been paid or not, and dread to open the bathroom door. The chances are, after all, that the whole world will have collapsed. Descended to a pile of dusty rubble. The bathroom will stand, the only man-made structure surviving, in recognition of my attempts at good-deedery, on a spindly pinnacle of rock… Yet I must have just got there in the nick of time once again. The bathroom doesn’t open out onto a scene of devastation and lifelessness. The dingy corridor is just where it’s always been.

I dash to find the Russian. This has gone on long enough. I plan to have it out with him.

He is busy filing the tea.

“Darling, you switched a radiator on to 2 and a seventh. And the water-heater was on 3 and twelve seventeenths. How can you be so disrespectful of human life? Don’t you care about humanity’s fate? This is probably why Russia’s history is so troubled. Democracy won’t just flourish with irregular settings left willy-nilly in flats everywhere.”

“ByeeB, I no khev time diskaas zis now. I filink ze tea.” And he cackles a cackly laugh and puts an eye-patch over his second eye.

I repair to my quarters, close the door for the peace and quiet I need to mull over the fact that fate has thrown me together with the world’s most dangerous man, and ponder the future. I begin to give in to self-pity. What bad luck. To be thrown into the maleficent arms of the world’s most recklessly uncaring man. But I glean a sliver of bright light. It may be my bad fortune to have to adjust dials for all eternity, but then, aren’t I fortunate to feel the glow of good-deedery that saving the world so god-damned often brings? And then, if we’re counting our blessings, I have to be grateful that the Russian is the only person on the planet who has the disorder of not turning radiators and water-heaters to numerically succinct settings!

The quandary solved, I switch on the TV to clear my head. To let worries be driven out by images and noises of vapid, empty nothingness. I go to adjust the volume. With only minor dread. I mean, surely he couldn’t have… Surely he wouldn’t be so evil as to… To not have the volume on a setting divisible by 5. I press the volume button. 17!

“Oh, god, no!”

Keep your fingers crossed that I keep making it on time.

The Russian’s got an iPhone. I can’t remember if it was for Christmas or just for occasionless extravagance. Probably the latter, knowing the Russian, who loves nothing more than a bit of occasionless extravagance and only thinks a day has been well spent if cash has been parted with to acquire something needless and luxurious. Or on a night out. Or on flights somewhere. Which perhaps bespeaks a much better attitude to life and money than my own, which consists of never leaving the house and, the second a penny ever arrives, doing something sensible with it, like paying tax, or paying bills, or paying off debts, or going out and blowing it on booze.

Still, the Russian has an iPhone. And I can quite see the point of it now that I’ve worked out how to win the tennis game. And then it has that clever Shazam music-recognising programme which Herr Engelsk alerted me to last summer which I then thought – and might still, at a push – was the best technological invention since the fax. But now we’ve discovered the even funner midomi, which is a programme that lets you sing into the phone and then it tries to tell you what it is you’ve sung. Unfortunately, it almost always tries to tell you you’ve sung something by Avril Lavigne, when I don’t think I’ve ever heard a song by her (except I do know Complicated, having just looked at a list of her songs) (I’ve got a feeling I might have gone head-to-head in karaoke against my niece in that one) (I bet I won) (though not via iPhone), but we have managed to make it recognise us singing something by Abba, Eternal Flame (on the Russian’s recommendation, as he said, belittling his singing abilities, the programme had even recognised his rendition) (though he thought it was originally by Atomic Kitten) and Hava Nagila.

But anyway, apart from improving our tennis and singing skills, the iPhone is even refreshing our education. I think it’s just as well I’m a whoopsy as I’d be much too thick to help my children with their homework but we did have cause to resort to mathematics the other day. Technology can make even the utterly mundane interesting for half a second and the Russian and I whooped with wide-eyed amazement when the device told us that it was 360m to our nearest tram-stop and 460m to our nearest U-Bahnhof whereas, I must admit, trudging those unquantified distances in real life has never aroused my excitement once.

“Hm, so it’s 100m from the tram-stop to the Underground,” I said to the Russian as we were bored of discussing the essence of being yet again.

“Da, I sink so… Oi, nyet, ze distance maast be as ze byurd fly.”

“Oh, well maybe I’d better go and stand at the tram-stop and ask the phone how far it is to the Underground then, otherwise we’ll only have to move on to, ‘Whither the Russian soul?’ or, ‘Something happened on the way to the smetana queue/chip-shop’.”

“No, use myeths,” suggested the Russian, as if I was 14.

Anyway, thinking it was good for my personal redevelopment, I’ve been out to buy a set-square, a protractor, a compass, an exercise book with squares in it, logarithm tables and a slide-rule and got down to business. But to spread the fun, I’d like your help or, rather, I’d like to test your skills too and see whom, based on IQ, to foster and whom to delete from my circle of acquaintance.

“Hmm, but which maths to use? Well, I’ve got two distances and one unknown distance. Two known lines and an unknown line. Ooh, a triangle. Oh bugger. Is this trigonometry? I don’t know my sin from my cotan. Or is that something else? Oh, hang on, it’s a perfectly straight line from here to the tram-stop. And then a 90° turn from there to the Underground. Oh my god. It’s a right-angled triangle!”

Darlings, Pythagoras it is.

Frau Schmidt has a gammy hip. Frau Schmidt has an appointment with a specialist to see about getting a hip replacement. Frau Schmidt needs to get to the U-Bahnhof which she knows is 460m as the crow flies, because every time she needs to get to the station, she waits for an obliging flock – or is it parliament? – of crows to sweep her off her balcony and deposit her there and they announce the distance like a taxi-driver might announce his fare. But today the crows refused to deposit Frau Schmidt at the U-Bahn as they were on the go-slow and said they wouldn’t fly a flap further than the tram-stop. “360m, that’s our limit today, Frau Schmidt,” they squawked. Frau Schmidt says it hurts if she has to walk more than about 200m. Will Frau Schmidt make it to the U-Bahnhof without too much trouble or will it be effing and blinding all the way?

Right, we’ve got the hypotenuse, i.e. the distance from here to the U-Bahnhof. 460m. And we know that from here to the tram-stop is 360m. So, how far is it from the tram-stop to the U-Bahnhof? Please show your workings.

All correct(ish) answers will receive a one-man standing ovation.

Darlings, what’s yours? In DWBs*? A virtue-gap being, of course, the period of clean living it takes you after a period of unclean living to put the wicked memories of debauchery and ribaldry behind you and feel that you wouldn’t look out of place and, indeed, might even cut quite a dash in a village church on a Sunday morning?

Not that, as a wicked old nullifidian – darlings, I all of a sudden got worried by the word atheist and wondered if it made me be a wanker to come out as one. That what’s-his-face Hitchens – not the one in America whom I can’t help having a crush on even though I’m probably meant to disagree with quite a lot of what he says – I might even do, possibly, but he always says it so alluringly – although he looks much worse now that he’s had all those makeovers and his teeth done. No, the sour-puss brother – is right that atheism is a belief-system in itself. I mean, I don’t think it is, but then I want my unbelief to be un- rather than actively non-, I think, and worried that if atheism is active belief in there not being a god, which I’d probably be happy to throw my lot in with, actually, then I’d still rather be labelled, when the machine in the people-labelling factory gets to that stage in its workings, just in case, say, by some, admittedly, extremely queer twist of fate, we had to be labelled according to our beliefs, with a label that meant, ‘doesn’t-much-go-in-for-that-religion-lark,’ which perhaps nullifidian suits better – I should be equating attendance of a service in a village church with the height of virtuousness. And, as tolerant and respectful of others’ belief systems as I am, sometimes, I must say my faith in a certain type of Christian wearing t-shirts with verses from the Bible was cruelly dented when I saw a walking billboard quoting Jeremiah 30:17 – King James Bible version: For I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds, saith the LORD; because they called thee an Outcast, saying, This is Zion, whom no man seeketh after – trying to barge into a hot-dog queue.

But I do do that equation a bit. Which is an odd virtue to have at the top of my virtue Christmas tree. That the personified height of virtue should be the type that turns up at a village church religiously – boom, boom – of a Sunday morning. This moral nirvana is located, in my head, in some corner of England I don’t know but can ascribe all the attributes of a virtuous idyll to. Probably in Lincolnshire. Near Spalding somewhere. And the church would be full of kind Lib-Dem-voting types who popped in on their old neighbours and bird-watched and wore greens and browns and whose wickedest ever misdeed was failing to enter a cake in the village fête. The men would all look like this and take The Telegraph – or would Lib-Dem-voters take something else? – and like cricket and obviously prefer rugby to football and drink real ale – but not to excess, although perhaps they’d allow themselves one half-squiffy evening three times a year – and be active in local politics and drop in on new residents of the village to make them feel welcome – probably taking along the cake they’d forgotten to enter in the village fête and a bottle of surprisingly good white wine that they’d bought when staying at their house in Brittany – and speak less-than-execrable French and be thinking of learning Spanish or Italian and think Britons’ lack of knowledge of foreign languages was worthy of despair and that knowing a few words of the local language can really open up the culture and the locals react so differently (as they are packing their goods into the removal van from the house you’ve just bought off them) and know how to use a gun, though would approve of Britain’s gun laws and would drive within the speed limit but cycle where possible and support local businesses and certainly never inhale and be an accomplished, considerate lover. (Too depressed to describe his wife now. Lucky bitch.)

But a half-logical moral idyll to create because it’s as far-removed a life from my own as I can imagine within the same cultural boundaries. And I can’t think what the perfect moral man from my other two worlds – Russia and Germany – would quite be like. Except that the Russian moral paragon would ruin things, for me, culturally, by lecturing folk on how this was moral perfection and everyone else should live like this too and the German would be proud of his beer consumption and probably like to do things in the bedroom that my Lib-Dem-voter would have to wrinkle his brow at.

Because the time of year has made me feel particularly unvirtuous. Not that I feel guilt – oh gosh. I did one of those word-cloud things for this site and, apart from me, me, me, narcissistic drivel, public masturbation, me, me, me again, the word ‘guilt’ came up. Bugger – at calendric hedonism, really, but I do see the picture of the boys from Swing Out Sister, which I carry around with me as something to aspire to at all times, slowly erasing itself like Marty’s family photo in Back to the Future. Day upon day of wanton drinking. And not doing anything virtuous, i.e. work, which would nudge my moral compass closer to Lincolnshire before you knew it.

But that’s the festivities done. No time for any more fun till the vernal equinox at the very earliest. The weekend can just jolly well skip straight past my hard-nosed threshold and hand over my fun-ration to the wonderful couple next door. (Yes, they did complain on Christmas Day, since you ask.) It’s working my fingers to the bone from now till 2017.

Though I’m not sure if it’s the current alignment of the planets or the global economic crisis meaning we have to make cuts where we can, but my 2009 virtue-gap from marauding, self-destructive, bawdy, loud-mouthed, braying arse-hole to sedate, glasses-wearing (and my vision is perfect), Schubert-listening, moralising, tutting tosser with the demeanour and sartorial acumen of a Latin teacher is now down to a single DWB*.

I shouldn’t be at all surprised if I make the 2010 New Year’s honours list.

*days-without-booze

Have you ever seen such beauty? You can see it even bigger here. Doesn’t it just make you want to grow a beard right now and go and do nothing but chant and swing an incense-burner all day? I was so staggered by the beauty that I had to dash to last.fm and listen to two songs by Ace of Base in a row.

It’s in the town of Rostov, north-east of Moscow, and not to be confused with Rostov-on-Don which is in quite another part of Russia altogether. This Rostov is one of the towns of the Golden Ring which are all so dripping with churchly beauty that I want to give up all that is worldly and go and live as a holy fool, spending my nights and days murmuring in a cave. Naturally, having lived down the road – by Russian standards – for two years, I didn’t go to a single Golden Ring town but, if I’m spared, it’s down as an ambition for a suitably vague point in the future. Still, Novgorod – not to be confused with Nizhnij Novgorod. I do apologise for all this – where I have been, has enough churchly beauty to make your heart ache too, as, indeed, does Moscow’s own Kremlin. Ignore anyone who tells you to go to St. Petersburg, which is where Russians pretend to be Italian.

Anyway, that’ll do as a Christmas card, won’t it? It’s got snow and churches. And one of the wooden structures in the foreground is almost bound to have a manger.

Have beautiful, bearable days.

Darlings, the sky over Berlin has decided to give up on keeping up even the meagrest of appearances. The sun thinks, unlike the diligent lamp-lighter in the Little Prince, that it is not worth its while shining weakly for half an hour or so a day and has put its feet up and decided to tend to Berlin later. The shortest day is, of course, just behind us – summer starts today! – but the shortness this year appears to have borrowed an extra layer of grey. It is now gone 8, so should, I think, by rights, be daylight and, while you wouldn’t think it was night if you bothered your arse, needlessly, to look out the window – I’m only bothering to open the curtains so I’m not the subject of neighbourhood tuts – the sky hasn’t got that much of a daytime quality about it either.

So I plan to eat and drink the darkness away. Plus everyone’s favourite day of the year is just around the corner so eating and drinking are majorly par for the course. And we have guests coming this year – they know this blog exists, so I can’t be too revealing – but we are a drop worried about what we’re going to give them to eat. Mind you, they’re both from the English-speaking world so hopefully don’t know anything about food. Still, I slightly can’t get beyond thinking a bowl of cornflakes for the starter and then two bowls of cornflakes for main course. Perhaps with a bowl of cornflakes with sugar for pudding.

Plus there is a no-sweet-things policy in this house…

We’ll relax it for guests. But, gosh, terrifying letting people into your home, isn’t it? Giving them first-hand experience of your domestic folie à deux. The Russian and I are going to have to hide so much evidence of bits of our existence over the days to come. Like we did when his brother came to visit before he knew my darling was a trouser-bandit and I was his bellebeau and then he walked into the kitchen when the Russian gave me the only spontaneous peck on the cheek he’d ever given me. And then the Russian accidentally pinched his bum. I think as long as I can remember to take my discarded clothes off the Christmas table, we’ll pass muster…

I think it may have been a one-man executive decision – the no-sweet-things policy – but the Russian mostly goes along with it and makes sure that any gorging on Snickers is done outside the home. I do occasionally remember that policy needs to be enforced so, in moments of political zeal, I carry out spot checks and make sure no sweet things have been smuggled into the house. Yes, sorry, I’m afraid you do have to remove your shoes and belt, sir. All in the name of girth-control, of course. Which hasn’t factored in that the consumption of 18 billion savoury/liquid calories a day are also a significant contributory factor to size.

But it’s the season to be jolly. To let your hair down. Bend the rules. Yet I am busier with work than I have ever ever ever been in my long-legged life so have had almost no opportunity to make the most of the atmosphere of almost unbridled joy that Berlin’s ever-smiling, ever-polite citizenry never need an excuse to create. I did manage to have one or two light ales in honour of this chap’s birthday the other day – there was a sweet angel at the occasion that I chatted to. When I realised I was being exposed to a new species of human, I asked him his age. And he said 24. Which I think was the sweetest thing I’d ever heard. I didn’t even know 24-year-olds still existed! I gave him a brief lecture: don’t take drugs, put a little money aside every month, what do you mean, you’re a musician? Get a job! And a hair-cut! Help little old ladies across the road, an apple a day…, wash behind your ears, wait till you get married, tolerate benignly but laugh and point fingers the second they leave your field of vision at those dim enough to think differently from you, look both ways, careless talks costs lives, honey’s very good for you. And then I gave him the five-euro note I’d been planning to use as a hankie to buy an ice-cream. Mind you, that’s 700 quid now, isn’t it? – but otherwise it’s been work, work, work and almost no play at all.

So the Russian had smuggled in Nutella. I’m a late adopter because of growing up in such non-privilege. Can you believe I didn’t get to go skiing in Switzerland for the first time till I was 15? Fif-fucking-teen! If that’s not child abuse, I don’t know what is. But a school French exchange when I was 17 introduced me to Nutella. And oysters, and rabbit, actually, but Nutella’s resonated with me more ever since. But, obviously, one can’t just pander to one’s desire for Nutella! Like other almost unimaginably extravagant luxuries, I thought it was to be savoured strictly away from home only. Perhaps in a little hotel somewhere. Or as the house-guest of an obscenely rich friend who just has Nutella cavalierly lying around cupboards! So I needed an excuse, to assuage my guilt and justify the consumption, to open the jar, excavate huge, great, stonking mechanical-digger-loads of the stuff and polish it off before looking down at my rotund frame and regretting it with due speed. “I’ll only allow myself a spoonful with a cup of tea,” I settled on as a routine and had hardly got to my second cup before it was all too late anyway and the Russian had cleaned the thing out better than brigands raiding a jewellery shop.

Anyway, it’s led to a quest for ever better, ever more luxurious, December-only sweet items. And we’ve discovered this. If it’s only available in Germany, and you’re mad enough not to live here, drop what you’re doing and hijack the first conveyance that will get you here. Chocolate and mint but – imagine! – even better than After Eights.

I think we’re all allowed a little indulgence till the sun comes back, don’t you?

Insomnia or, at the very least, disturbed sleep caused by worrying that I might die while dancing along to Mickey by Toni Basil, is wreaking havoc with my clockwork. Still, as luck would have it, I’m keeping the world afloat single-handedly and there’s no time for sleep with all the scampering I have to do in my translatorly hamster-wheel.

Do you dance, darlings? I used to think it was a thing to do but as I’m now not far off the telegram from Her Majesty, I’m close to giving up the ghost. I’ll throw myself around a dance-floor if need be, but need doesn’t often. My mother taught me to waltz, or to move in a shape approximating a waltz, no doubt seeing it as a vital life-skill for a man about to embark on adulthood in the 1990s – I put it down to her not knowing how the world works rather than actual madness. And, anyway, her mind’s in far better shape than mine is and she’s 200 if she’s a day, which she is, at least, because she had me, and I wasn’t born today, or even yesterday – and I dutifully tried to pass on my dancing skills to the Russian in case we ever establish a foundation and start hosting gala dinners but my beloved is not light of foot or, indeed, mass and I think his dancing exploits are best left uncategorised, unnamed and unchoreographed.

(Speaking of choreography – Ms. Basil’s main bag – guess how old Toni Basil is now. No cheating.)

So dancing has become a vicarious pleasure.

Call me heterophobic if you will but I’ve got a feeling gay men probably set an ounce more store by dancing than our heterosexual brothers. Us gayers being artistic types – I only translate to help humanity. I’m a singer-songwriter-sculptor mostly – means that a dance-floor pulsating with poofs might even have the odd profesh or two on it and it’s not a rare treat to see someone moving in a way that seems to have education behind it. I look on in admiration and order myself another drink.

Darlings, but even we artistic gayers are products of our surroundings. And unless one makes a very concerted effort to pretend to live in a different world and is very selective about the company and geography one keeps, there are still chapters of one’s life that are heavily heterosexual. I am unfortunate enough not to know any gay men much older than myself or any long-term gay older couples. So I don’t know if the Russian and I, as surely as bankruptcy follows Christmas, will do that couple-dance that so many of our older heterosexual co-humans do. You know, the sort of jivey-dance. Him twisting her around. Their arms fumbling overhead. Catching her, supposedly, if she has spun clean away and then halting that momentum and spinning her back at just the right time. And all performed, almost without exception, with a total lack of co-ordination and skill after the committed consumption of booze.

I was only reminded that I didn’t have a prototype of couple-future when the Russian and I ended up Sunday-night-drinking in Poland. The club was quiet, naturally, and only hardened boozers bothered venturing out in flagrant disrespect of the working week ahead. Psychotically drunk people who’d never been to ballet school hurled themselves around furiously. Occasionally I would worry that it was about to descend into violence. The more psychotically drunk men were all much the most huge and most meaty present. “Probably not gay at all,” the Russian and I would reassure ourselves, drawing naturally gifted and florid designs for pink-gated communities on beer mats, but then one would pull his trousers down and dance in his boxer shorts and the other would pull his t-shirt off and then, in a crowning dénouement tying up all loose ends neater than a Vienna baker, they would snog each other and collapse with an unsexy thud onto the stage. (The Russian and I set fire to our blueprints.)

And it was only the straights who could show us the way in how to grow old gracefully and dance like proper couples. A deliciously jolly pissed couple did the inelegant jive-dance. Their movements were so slow, so padded, that even their reactions to getting the spins wrong without fail would come about twenty seconds later. Mr. would spin determinedly on. Ms. would move as the laws of physics dictated, having no mental input to contribute, and would be hauled back in close when Mr. was in a position, both physical and geographical, to do so. She would try to mouth words of apology and self-deprecation, blinking very slowly throughout. He would guffaw jollily. Then they would snog.

“Darling, we don’t know how to do that dance. Maybe it is a vital ingredient of a happy partnership. And we don’t have any older gays to ask guidance. We are pioneers. We don’t know what the future holds. Oh god, if we get rich and establish a foundation and have gala dinners, will you instantly then run off and leave me for someone 19? I promise I don’t mind that you wear pyjamas.”

Luckily for us, No Stress then rattled scratchily off the gramophone. We got jiving with the best of them and, do you know, I think we were even better than the Puerto Rican couple.

The troublesome thing is choice.

I went to Poland. Quite by accident. I’d only meant to take the S-Bahn to Potsdamer Platz to go and see Klee and Koons – it’s K season at the Neue Nationalgalerie. Lowry and Lichtenstein up next. I’ll have learnt the whole alphabet by 2013 – but got confused and ended up in Warsaw.

Made up for my error by going to see Koons and Klee another time, though. May I recommend to anyone thirsting art but who hasn’t got a bean to walk around the outside of the Neue Nationalgalerie building if they want to see the Koons? You’ll see every single exhibit thanks to its perfectly glass walls. And the troubling thing is, if you go in, apart from having to pay, which makes any transaction less satisfactory – just ask a man who frequents prostitutes if you don’t believe me – you might watch the little video about Mr. Koons. And that slightly spoiled him for me. Because while I was quite happy to look at his big bowl of eggs and think, “Hmm,” I was slightly underwhelmed by Koons the man. Nice enough guy. But I wish I hadn’t heard his justification for his works. “All about acceptance.” Drone.

But Klee was far more problematic. Horridly prolific. Wall-to-wall fucking art wherever you looked and downstairs at the NN is loathsomely spacious. Couldn’t get away from the stuff, though I did have one moment of joy when I went to turn another corner, fully expecting another frightful, never-ending vista of more wanking Klee, and it was just an alcove with a fire-extinguisher. The one brief let-up in the whole sorry affair.

But there was a lovely museum-goer with the best intellectual hair I’ve ever seen. A small gent. In his 60s. Jacket, shirt, trousers. Brown shoes, of course. Wandering around with his less intellectual – at least if her hair was anything to go by – wife who nodded spouselily and dutifully at his disquisitions. But his hair was top-hole. A swirling typhoon of hair, which may have had its whirlishness increased by having to double as an extremely elaborate comb-over. But the most extraordinary thing was the pate – is that the word I mean? You know. That bit where all the hair seems to spring from. Where he’d have had a bald patch if he’d had less of his intellectual hair – was just behind his left ear. I was transfixed. Much more interesting than the endless, non-stop Klee.

And the art made me think of potatoes, and how, as I shuffled from one hateful Klee to the next, I’d much rather be engaging with potatoes. Preferably eating them, of course, but, at a push, even looking at them. I’m not sure whether I’d rather have peeled potatoes than be at the Klee but it might have been a close run thing.

So I ended up in Poland. The Russian – for he was with me. You think one of us would have noticed we’d missed our stop when the border police got on, but no – commented, when we took a breather from hijinks, that, say what you like, and Poles may well like to say otherwise, being in Poland does feel just an incy bit like being in Russia. Warsaw looks quite like Russia – all hugeness and parallelograms – and the hustle and bustle of downtown Warsaw feels quite like the hustle and bustle of downtown St. Petersburg and Poles and Russians look quite alike with their chunky men and all the glamour pusses and Poles and Russians abandon themselves to fun, when they have decided to abandon themselves to fun, in the same concerted, uncynical way. It’s very attractive.

We had such fun that the Russian has had to convert to Catholicism and I’ve had to go and rescind my excommunication from the church so that we can quickly join Opus Dei and self-flagellate the pleasant memories away. In the meantime, we have fantasies about moving to Poland. Like Russia, but not. Surely we’d learn the language in ten seconds. And the totty! My god, the totty. We have retuned our souls to their Slavic settings and now have to fight drearily over who gets to wear the best shawl.

But, darlings, the only problem is that Poland gives you choices. If you go to a cash-machine, it asks, “Do you want us to fix the exchange rate now or let your bank do that, kind sir?” When you pay by card, the machine asks, “Shall we charge you in złotys or some other currency of your choosing, kind sir?” Honestly, do these people have no respect for their totalitarian past? I can’t cope with that kind of choice! The whole trip was wasted prevaricating.

But once there’s a lucky dip button on all Polish machines, that’s it. We’re emigrating.

“Surprising to bump into someone around here,” I thought to myself. They looked familiar, but I was damned if I could remember who it was. The ideal solution would have been to pretend I hadn’t seen them. Turn my eyes away not too demonstratively. Fake rivetedness in some passing fancy. But it was too late for that. We’d clocked each other. I was going to have to tough the occasion out.

I rid my throat, preparing for speech. And began to contort my face to express honest but, I hoped, polite bewilderment. The stranger’s face showed no equal foreboding, so I was going to have the redoubled shame of being the only one to admit I didn’t know who the other was. I clicked my fingers. Then wiggled them. All semaphores for, “It’s coming to me. Tip of my tongue.”

“Sorry, I know I know you from somewhere, but I can’t remember where. You’re going to have to tell me your name. I do apologise.”

“Raashn,” said the Russian, who never had mastered articles.

“Good Lord! Well, fancy that! What are you doing round here?”

“I leev kheer,” said the Russian. “Zees our flyet. Kyen I gyet past?” And he disappeared into the bathroom.

“Well there’s a thing!” I thought, though I suppose bumping into the person in my own flat should have been something of a hint. It’s a rare occasion indeed that out-and-out strangers parade up and down the corridor from kitchen to living room, bedroom or bathroom. Though with all the talk of doom and gloom I shouldn’t wonder if I were soon sheltering all sorts of sundry Berliners down on their luck.

“Darling, do you mean we’re still a couple?” I inquired having entered the bathroom unannounced, eager to get to the bottom of the mystery and deciding, our acquaintance rekindled, that I had the same rights of intimacy as before. “It’s just I’d clean forgotten. I mean, it’s been so long. Must have been ‘99, mustn’t it? The Biafra campaign? Or, no, wait. ‘03. Jonty’s wedding! Where have you been all this time?”

“In nyext room,” he said with ease, as if conversation of this levity was an everyday occurrence. He wiped toothpaste foam away from his cheeks.

I went back to my quarters to regain my composure. There I’d been thinking I was a man of leisure without a care in the world and it turns out there’d been a significant other all along. So troubling was my confusion and so chaotic the flood of memories pinballing round my minimally-furnished head that I wasn’t even sure if my conscience could vouch for good behaviour in the intervening years. Still, no time for going back over old ground now. It was time to face up to the current lie of the land. Which seemed to mean a new beginning. A clean sheet. Starting over.

“Um, so what’s your best news?” I asked the Russian when we next bumped into each other, minutes hardly having passed. An old trick I learnt – the Trucial States, ‘77 I think it was – to oblige the person to answer positively. Or was it to counter the slew of miserable old widowers my parents appeared to have adopted when I was young? Ask them how they were and they’d have the cheek to answer in all honesty. “Well, BiB, sure I don’t like to complain but this diabetes is fierce hard altogether. I can only have 100 calories a day. One cup o’ tea and that’s me lot.” Poor old widowers. Gone to London to make their fortunes and if their wives didn’t up and die the second they left, their children flourished with some foster family or other while they floundered, unable to look after themselves in the big city.

“Obama veen elyekshn,” the Russian retorted, only minimally getting into the spirit of the question yet refusing to take the contemptuous scowl off his face.

“Really? Did he? I hadn’t heard. Yes, that is good news.”

“And your byest news?” asked the Russian for the sake of at least passable propriety.

“Well, funny you should ask because I did see three rather gripping Hungarian women on the U-Bahn. One was prim. One was terse. One was frumpy. And they all had such small feet. And I thought the prim one had probably married rather well and the terse one slightly hated her. But the frumpy one seemed the happiest and…”

“Zet not news. Streektly spyeekink.”

“Oh. I see. Well, you know, darling. Same old, same old,” and I closed the door gently behind me.