Letter No. 5

Sorry, but True

approx. 10 minute read, or 15 minute listen | first performed at Books Without Covers #13, Theatre im Kino, Berlin 
Person on top of a hill with a small black & white dog
Tilly and me on a hilltop near Gerswalde in the Uckermark
​​“We drive out into the Uckermark to tank up on green and take Tilly the Terrier for walks. Swimming in the lake where Frau Merkel also has her weekend dips, I wonder if this pond has hidden security or if Frau M does her Arschbomben from a helicopter.”
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Letter No. 4

 Learning Te reo Maori at 90 & The awful German Language

approx. 14 minute read | guest letter, Mildred Collis Scott
Picture
In our building, we got Country & Western: on the left, the stately Hamburg weekly "Die Zeit" announcing the death of Helmut Kohl & its upstart cousin "Bild" cheekily announcing what's SO great about Germany in our Treppenhaus = stairwell
​​“I wanted to say that I did enjoy the Mark Twain piece you sent. I had the same problem myself. Taking offence really at the fact that, although I could stand the genders (in German), I just couldn’t forgive them for retaining those case endings!”
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Letter No. 3

Bullshitland

approx. 6 minute read
first published on http://thelocal.de/expatdispatches
Picture
lamp post poster, Berlin, 2018
​​“​​Antipodeans suffer terribly from instant-expertism and I – with my shaky command of German – am a case in point. But it is only when I buy into the myth that Herr Klein has constructed around me, as a peerless example of Integration, that I truly cross over into Bullshitland...”
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Letter No. 2

The Wrong Language

approx. 4 minute read | 
​first published on http://thelocal.de/expatdispatches
Picture
German 101, surviving another primary school nit emergency: keep reading until you reach THE VERB (setzen = sit, as in don't sit here).
​​“In typically fickle fashion I changed languages after one week of German instruction. Partially because of my instinctive rejection of a language which forced me to listen until the end of a sentence to get the full meaning of what was being said. I was now living the nightmare of that illogical logic every day.”
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Letter No. 1

The English Shelves

approx. 8 minute read 
Picture
gerund or infinitive? Kind of both...on my bookshelf, just keeping it real
​​“Achso, I reply, frantically fishing for correct grammar and finding only a close approximation; then would it possibility be for you to be ringing the other shops, and to interrogate them all if they are having the same something? Frau Verkäuferin raised a skeptical eyebrow...”
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