Tag Archives: Kate Ferguson

How to be a hit among your chosen demographic

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If, like me, your natural disposition is ill-suited to the modern-day rat race, I would recommend infiltrating a group of seniors. After extensive exposure, I discovered age to be the single greatest factor affecting my personal popularity.

In fact, among the over-65s, I enjoy close-to-celebrity status.

Here’s how you could too.

1. Develop a permanently pleasant and attentive expression

For years I thought that when people said I was a good listener, they were being kind about me being a poor speaker. But it turns out that years of pretending to listen to people who bored me allowed me to develop a highly attentive expression and an uncanny ability to match my face to the appropriate tone of the conversation, despite not being consciously aware of the topic under discussion.

This makes you appear wholesome and respectful, two of the most coveted characteristics among the over-65s.

2. Use your nationality to your best advantage

After tricking seniors into liking me with my pleasant and attentive expression, I tell them that I’m Irish. They use this information to justify their positive first impression. “Oh, Ireland,” they say. “So lovely and green!” Once when I gave up my seat for an old lady on the train, she said “I bet you are not German! They have no manners any more.” When I confirmed that I was, in fact, Irish she said “I knew it!”

3. Start a blog and employ an unusual marketing strategy

As well as visiting Frau Bienkowski, I’ve started volunteering at a seniors’ club. It is an incredible place and I have started counting down the days until I am old enough to sign up to all the activities offered there, from herb-tasting and cooking classes to tango dancing and Chinese conversation. Along with four other lovely volunteers, I’ve set up a blog called Berlin ab 50 where there’ll be articles, podcasts, videos and more catering to the over-50’s living in Berlin. If you’re over 50 or German or reading this right now, you should check it out!

If you follow and adapt these handy tips, you too could become instantly popular among your chosen demographic.

The Devil you don’t know

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My last visit to Teufelsberg

My last visit to Teufelsberg

I thought LSB might be missing Edinburgh’s hills, so I decided to take him up “Teufelsberg,” or “The Devil’s Mountain,” to see a Cold War spy station that is crumbling to pieces.

The station is surrounded by a fence. Last time I was there, I clambered through a hole in it. Inside there was a vast spy column and a huge building, both falling apart. And graffiti, everywhere. And gaping holes in the concrete floors. Yellow felt lining and rusty bicycles lay strewn on the ground.

This time, all the holes in the fence were closed up. We walked around and around and thought about making our own.

My last visit to Teufelsberg

My last visit to Teufelsberg

Suddenly we encountered a commotion.

There’s nothing I like more than a commotion.

A man dressed in camouflage gear and a green beret was standing by steel gates, barring entry to the facility. He had his chest puffed out.

A group of tourists were standing by the fence, fretting. Their friend was inside the facility and he was not answering his phone.

“Oh my God, we need to get him out,” said one.

“Dude, don’t worry, he’s out of battery,” said another.

“Hi,” I said, “what’s going on?”

“These guys won’t let us in unless we pay €7,” one of them told me. “But we think they’re dodgy.”

I took a closer look. Three men were stationed in a triangle outside the gates.

Apart from the one with the green beret, there was a lad of about nineteen. He was wearing baggy jeans and a cap. Another man in a brown jacket was standing very still and watching us from a tree.

Our conversation took place in English.

“This is complete bullshit,” said one of the tourists. “These guys are just trying to make money.”

“I like the guy’s beret,” said another. “He’s sure playing the part.”

The man in the green beret kept his chest puffed out and gazed ahead with steely resolve. When he was asked why we couldn’t enter without paying he said “It’s patented.”

My last visit to Teufelsberg

My last visit to Teufelsberg

I’ve never been in a fight but something in the air felt like one was brewing.

I caught the eye of the youngster in the cap. He had a harmless, roguish face. I took a liking to him though I suspected he was a criminal. He didn’t speak much English. He struggled to explain that the facility was now managed by a really cool dude and that it wasn’t safe to go inside, but for €7, we could take a tour.

I startled him by breaking into German.

“What’s the deal?” I asked. “Why can’t we go in like before?”

“Dude,” he said. “I know it kind of blows but you see, it’s not really safe to go in.”

“Really?” I said. “But it’s safe if you pay?”

He looked sheepish.

“No you see, you go in for a tour,” he said finally.

“I see,” I said. “How did you get this ‘job’?”

“I’m friends with these guys you see. I used to come here all the time and I loved it. And now I’m training to be a gardener and this cool guy is doing up the place and that’s how I got involved.”

“Who is this guy?”

My last visit to Teufelsberg

My last visit to Teufelsberg

“Shalmon Abraham.”

“And he is your boss?”

“Um, yeah.”

“Can I Google him?”

“Oh, I never said that,” he said, looking at my feet. “By the way, I really love your shoes.”

“Thanks,” I said. (I got them in a vintage store in Rathmines.)

We chatted some more. My new criminal friend had been to Ireland. He said he liked the sheep and had visited Belfast.

Meanwhile, there was more commotion. The group of tourists said they were calling the police but the man in the green beret said he would call them first.

Police arrive and speak to man in green beret

Police arrive and speak to man in green beret

So he did.

LSB and I stayed on scene, chatting to the tourists and to the youngster from the other camp who had admired my shoes.

“You know, I really did use to like coming here to hang out too,” he said. “I’m just kind of on the other side now.”

It was like Romeo and Juliet.

Suddenly a man and a little girl walked out of the facility, accompanied by a petite, gamine French girl.

'Shalmon Abraham' speaks to two film-makers and French 'tour guide'

‘Shalmon Abraham’ speaks to two film-makers and French ‘tour guide’

“Hey man,” my possibly-criminal friend said to the man. “How’d you enjoy the tour?”

“She didn’t say a word,” the man said, motioning to the girl. “Barely even when I asked her a question!”

A little while later, a police car drove up the hill.

I decided this was a breaking news situation so I retreated close to a hedge to take some pictures.

A policewoman got out of the car and had a talk with Mr Green Beret. A policeman talked to the tourists, whose friend had meanwhile emerged unharmed from the facility.

Then a man in a white body suit appeared.

“That’s Shalmon Abraham,” said my new friend.

Shalmon Abraham did not take off his mask when talking to the police.

Police talk to tourists

Police talk to tourists

I asked the policewoman if the facility was really “patented.” She said it was.

I asked her when. She told me years ago.

I said I had been here a year ago and had encountered no unofficial looking men dressed in military gear barring my entrance.

She said that was strange.

I took some more pictures. Then LSB and I climbed another hill.

When we got to the top, he said “Let’s charge €6.50. We’ll undercut them!”

At home, we Googled Shalam Abraham. He exists (under is nuclear power suit). He’s a 28 year-old artist. And evidently, he has friends in high places.

Frau Bienkowski meets LSB

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“Are you alone?” Frau Bienkowski asked as I poked my face through the door.

“No,” I said. “I’ve brought somebody for you to meet.”

LSB was on his best behaviour. Earlier, he’d been fretting about the propriety of his shoes and had asked how he would know the appropriate time to shake hands.

Wandering through the streets of Berlin in the past few days, we’d rehearsed the following sentence ad nauseam:

Es freut mich, Sie zu treffen. Ich habe schon viel von Ihnen gehoert. (=It’s nice to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you)

LSB is a fast-learning savant but word order is not his forté.

Frau Bienkowski held out her hand. LSB smiled nervously and got ready for his moment.

But he wasn’t quick enough.

“Es freut mich, Sie zu treffen. Ich habe schon viel von Ihnen gehoert,” Frau Bienkowski said.

LSB gaped at her. “Freut mich, freut mich,” he said.

I had already recommended LSB’s services as a wheelchair driver, which meant that for the first time, we could venture outside the grounds.

Frau Bienkowski had the afternoon all planned out. She had a plastic bag full of laundry which we were to drop off at the dry-cleaners before going to the coffee shop next door.

Frau Bienkowski wanted a pot of coffee and a small treat. LSB and I decided to share an enormous piece of Zupfkuchen, a decadent chocolate-cheese cake of Russian descent.

When we brought it to the table, Frau Bienkowski looked disgusted.

“You are to have a cake each” she said. “On no account will you be sharing.” She turned to LSB, who looked bewildered and bemused. “Get yourself your own,” she said. “Go on.”

I translated for LSB. He waved his arms about ineffectually. Frau Bienkowski became sterner and LSB got back up to examine the cakes on display.

“I wish he were that obedient to me,” I said as we watched him choosing a pastry. Frau Bienkowski laughed. “You are too young to be sharing cake. It’s ridiculous.”

From the window of the café Frau Bienkowski could see the neighbourhood where she grew up. “There used to be a tram on this street,” she said. I asked her whether she remembers horses and carriages.110

“Yes,” she said. “There used to be a track for horses.” But it, along with the tram was abolished when Hitler came to power.”

“Why?”

“They widened all the roads,” she said. “For the rallies.”

She said she remembered watching them as a girl.

“What were they like?”

She paused. “They were exciting.”

Frau Bienkowski asked us to take her back to the old people’s home through the park.

The sun was out and the birds were singing.

“After the war,” Frau Bienkowski said, “there were no trees here. Everything had to be used for fuel. There was nothing left.”

Back in her room, I asked Frau Bienkowski if I could show LSB the photograph of her family.

“Yes,” she said. “Take it down from the wall so he can see better.”

I asked LSB to guess which child was Frau Bienowski.

He chose a toddler with wispy hair looking to the side.

But it wasn’t Frau Bienkowsi. She was the little girl kneeling on the bottom left, with short hair and buckled shoes.

Frau Bienkowski’s three fried eggs

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Frau Bienkowski was wrapped in a blanket, wearing a nightie.

“I’m not at all well. My nose is blocked, I lay awake all night and I keep breaking out in sweats.”

“Oh no!” I said.

I moved closer, and placed a large box wrapped in orange paper on her lap. “I’m sorry I couldn’t see you on Tuesday,” I said. “But Happy Birthday!”

Her face changed.

“Oh no, Katechen, you weren’t to do that.”

“Open it,” I said.

“But it’s so big!”

“Go on.”

She tugged gingerly at a piece of Selotape. “I’m going to keep the paper.”

As she worked on the other corner she said, “I think I might know what this is.”

image source: www.amazon.com

image source: http://www.amazon.com

“Well, you just wait and see if you’re right.”

She lifted the sheet covering the top of the box to reveal the radio CD player I’d bought in Media Markt just a few hours earlier.

She blinked. “But it’s such a big present. I need to give you some money.”

“Nonsense,” I said.

“But Katechen…”

“Keine Widerrede! Now, tell me about your birthday party.”

She paused.

“Well,” she said finally, “Seven of us met downstairs for coffee and I got lovely flowers. They came from the Internet. Nowadays, you can get everything on the Internet.”

“It’s true!”

“Anyway,” she continued. “On my birthday, they said I could choose to have any meal I liked. And I knew exactly I wanted.”

“Really?” I asked. “What did you want?”

“A fried egg,” she said. “I crave them so much.”

“And did you get one?”

“I got three!” said Frau Bienkowski. “You might think that’s a lot, but they were tiny; this small,” she said, and made a little circle with her forefinger and thumb.

“And were they good?”

“They were delicious.”

“Do you not usually get eggs here?”

“Oh, just scrambled,” she said. “But I’m sick to death of scrambled.”

I remarked that this seemed a happy kind of home.

“Well,” she said. “Maybe for a year or two. But I’ve been here for five. You’re not supposed to be here that long. Most people arrive and die after a year or two. But me – I’m still here.”

“I had one good friend here for two years,” she continued. “But then she had a stroke and died. You do grieve…”

“Of course,” I said.

I took out some photographs of LSB and my family, which I’d promised to show Frau Bienkowski.

LSB and I before a college ball

LSB and I before a college ball

She reached for her magnifying glass and turned on the light.

The first was a picture of my family at the legendary Familienfest last year.

She moved her magnifying glass over each of our faces. “These are my sisters,” I said. “And that’s my mum, and this is my dad.”

She lingered over my father’s face, examining it carefully. He was wearing his trademark scowl, which he reserves for people with cameras and for reading electricity bills.

“He’s handsome,” she said. “I might have fallen for him too.”

“He’d be delighted to hear that!” I said.

My family at Familienfest 2012

My family at Familienfest 2012

Next up was a picture of LSB and me all done up before going to our college ball a few years ago. “He has such brown eyes,” she said. “Like you. Your children will have even darker eyes again.”

Frau Bienkowski looked at another picture of my sisters and me and asked for our ages.

“And they’re not married either? None of you?”

“Nope, none of us!” I said. “Maybe some day.”

Frau Bienkowski remarked on how nice it was to have such a big family. She herself, had just one son. But he and his girlfriend died in a car crash more than thirty years ago.

“At least I have memories,” she said. “People who never had children have none.”

I provided a clunky translation of the English expression Don’t cry because it’s over, laugh because it happened.

“It’s true,” said Frau Bienkowski. I nodded, and we were silent for a little while.

“By the way,” she said later. “That drink you got last time..”

“My latte?”

“Yes!” she said. “I heard a report about it on the radio. Next time we go down to the café, I want to get one. It sounds very nice!”

“We will absolutely get you a latte next time,” I said.

Frau Bienkowski knows all about LSB. She even knows that he’s coming to visit me soon.

“You’ll bring him here, won’t you?” she said.

“Oh yes, he’d love to meet you! “But you’ll have to help me teach him some German words.”

She smiled. “I will!”

I took the CD player out of its box and plugged it into a socket.

I placed an audio book CD into the player.

A man’s voice filled the room.

“Can you hear that?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Frau Bienkowski. She looked happy.

When I got up I had to step over a cord attached to the lamp on the table between us.

“The bulb blew the other day,” Frau Bienkowski said. “And the type of bulb the lamp uses has been discontinued. Luckily, Frau Brein once got me a batch of ten, which will last me until I die.”

Freshly Pressed

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For most people, “freshly pressed” means a glass of orange juice with pleasing bits of pulp, possibly accompanied by a croissant or lakeside view.

But for bloggers at WordPress, “freshly pressed” is an accolade.

It means that a WordPress employee has decided to feature one of your posts on their homepage, exposing you to lots of other bloggers, some of whom decide to “follow” your blog and a few who take the time to leave you kind and thoughtful comments.

Image source: www.ulaola.com

Image source: http://www.ulaola.com

For an introvert, it’s like winning a year’s supply of networking.

It’s like being at a writers’ conference, with sweaty palms, about to approach a stranger with an awkward, self-deprecating introduction, only for the entire spiel suddenly to be rendered completely unnecessary, paving the way for a return to the happy corner where you were munching a canapé and starting at animated people self-promoting.

Today, I was “Freshly pressed.” It made me very happy indeed.

It also made me think about encouragement and success.

I’m no neuroscientist, but sometimes I wish I were.

When I am sad or frustrated or overjoyed, I like to imagine the neurons in my brain squirting coloured impulses, which travel across convoluted chemical tracks at reckless speeds.

When some one says something kind or complimentary to me, a little cluster somewhere behind my forehead ignites,like a flickering light bulb finally screwed in right. I might respond awkwardly, by fumbling with my hands or countering with disproportionate (but heartfelt) praise.

But all the while, inside a little squirt of something which I’ll call adrenalin for want of an MRI, has begun to gush about my head, leaving me feeling unusually motivated.

Kate Katharina poses as an introvert suddenly relieved of the duty to self-promote.

Kate Katharina poses as an introvert suddenly relieved of the duty to self-promote.

It’s like magic, really.

Except it’s magic that anyone can perform, any time.

Encouraging people is deeply satisfying. My mother is so good at it, that she could probably turn professional.

My favourite people to encourage are humble types, whose faces immediately display a strange guilt when you tell them that they are wonderful and who can’t think of any words to say back.

Or people who have a secret dream that isn’t quite so secret and whose faces melt strangely when you casually remark that they could achieve something they’ve never admitted to desiring.

Fortunately, you don’t need a top hat or a bunny to encourage, though in some cases either or both could come in useful.

You can encourage with words or gesture, or even by keeping your dissent silent.

And like an alchemist, you can cause a little light to go on in someone’s mind, giving them the energy necessary to finish a painting, or take an exam, or learn to swim or ride a bicycle or sing a song.

Thanks to all my readers, old and new, for encouraging me to cultivate this little patch of blogosphere.

I wish I could say that being “freshly pressed” hasn’t gone to my head, but I’ve already told you all about the little light bulb that lives behind my forehead.

“Freshly pressed” or not, I promise I’ll try to keep my writing free of pulp.

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If you want to join in the fun on Facebook you can find Kate Katharina here.

And if you’re more of a Twitter-er, you can find links to my latest posts here.

From Tolstoy to Twitter

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Edinburgh is just the place for thrifty, book-loving odd-balls.

Many areas, like Bruntsfield, Marchmont and Waverly sound like settings that Jane Austen has fabricated.

There is even a Bingham Park and, while I’ve yet to come across a Darcy Drive or a Wickham Way, it’s only a matter of time before mindful town planners restore the literary balance.

I suspect the city was designed by a brilliant, absent-minded professor of literature, who approached the task like the writing of an essay.

There are examples of sublime beauty, like the Balmoral hotel, the Walter Scott monument and of course Edinburgh castle, but they are clumsily linked by several hills, which pepper the city indiscriminately. The effect is similar to the reward felt by a reader who huffs and puffs their way through stodgy prose, wondering where it is all going, only to stumble suddenly on something quite profound.

Edinburgh

Edinburgh

On Thursday, I stumbled across the St John’s charity bookshop in Stockbridge. A poster in the window said “Clearance! Everything 50 pence” and I was inside as fast as my little legs could carry me.

It was cluttered and reassuringly musty. Bookish types sporting oversized anoraks and tufty hair browsed stealthily, building discerning piles of poetry, murder mysteries and natural history.

While I prowled the store, several dismayed customers asked the elderly couple behind the counter why everything must go.

“We haven’t got enough volunteers to keep it going,” said the man.

“Now where am I going to go for my books?” asked one lady and sighed. “If only I’d known, I would’ve given up a few hours,” said an English man, who blinked a lot and bought the collected works of Oscar Wilde.

“Well, get stocking up,” said the old lady. “Anything that isn’t sold will go into recycling.”

I didn’t need to be told twice. Some of the titles I had been perusing were so promising that the thought of them condemned to shredding alongside household bills and letters from the bank sent a shiver coursing down my spine.

I was tragically limited by the confines (56 x 45 x 25cm including wheels) of my hand baggage allowance. Nevertheless, I managed to add six books to my collection. It only set me back £3, which is about the cost of a glossy magazine offering to make me beautiful and thin.

I am now the proud owner of: The Personality of Animals by the appropriately named H Munro Fox, The Childhood of Animals by Sir Peter Chalmers Mitchell, Know Your Own IQ by H.J. Eyesenck, The Common Reader by Virginia Woolf, The Hill of Devi by E.M. Forster and most promisingly of all: The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism and Fascism Volume 2 by Bernard Shaw.

I opened the most humble-sounding of them, Virginia Woolf’s The Common Reader on the plane earlier. I kept it open on the bus and then on the underground and even brought it to bed with me.

Roger Fry's painting of Virginia Woolf Image source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Roger_Fry_-_Virginia_Woolf.jpg

Roger Fry’s painting of Virginia Woolf Image source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Roger_Fry_-_Virginia_Woolf.jpg

We travelled well together. Ms Woolf seemed to understand the dilemmas of contemporary blogging as early as 1925.

In her chapter “Modern Fiction,” she asks what about and why and how we should be writing. Baffling questions that the amateur blogger faces every day.

Sometimes I steal snatches of conversations I’ve had and slap them onto the blogosphere. Other times I talk about love or meat or peeing audibly.

Occasionally I think about weighty things like politics or God and think I should write about these things too, yet I can find nothing more to say.

And then there are the times I dream of invention. I wonder whether my paltry life experience could ever be transformed and trapped within the dusty covers of a big fat book.

It’s worth remembering that unless you’re an academic, Woolf’s chapter title doesn’t age well. “Modern fiction” is by nature a relative term. But what she says about the dilemmas of writing may apply to anything from Tolstoy to Twitter. She asks us to:

Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions — trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms; and as they fall, as they shape themselves into the life of Monday or Tuesday, the accent falls differently from of old; the moment of importance came not here but there; so that, if a writer were a free man and not a slave, if he could write what he chose, not what he must, if he could base his work upon his own feeling and not upon convention, there would be no plot, no comedy, no tragedy, no love interest or catastrophe in the accepted style, and perhaps not a single button sewn on as the Bond Street tailors would have it. Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.

Sometimes I get stuck inside the semi-transparent envelope. I know I’m there when words fail me, or I lose the desire to write. It takes a hilly city, with rough cobble-stoned streets, place names that make me feel like I am Elizabeth Bennet and charitable book-sellers to break the seal.

“You’re not thinking of marriage, no?” asked Frau Bienkowski.

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“So we have a new pope,” Frau Bienkowski said, as I handed her the bag of medium-sized apples and two packets of sugar-free sweets she’d ordered.

“He could have been a black man,” she continued. “It wouldn’t have mattered.”

“No!” I said.

“But there was something irregular about Benedict’s resignation, wasn’t there? Popes don’t just resign!”

I agreed it wasn’t their custom.

“Could you get us some coffee?” she asked, pushing her stroller over to me. “You can put the cups at the front!”

I pushed the Zimmerframe down the corridor and passed three ladies in wheelchairs. One of them had a remarkable face, like a gazelle. They were staring straight ahead. One of them was saying, “You could write a novel about a life, if you just think back to all your encounters. You could write a novel. You really could.”

I placed Frau Bienkowski’s cup in front of her, and she pushed one of her sugar-free sweets towards me.

“So tell me, how has work been this week?”

I told her I’d been busy and that the new pope was creating a lot of work for us.

“It’s good you’ve got work,” Frau Bienkowski said, “especially as you’ve booked flights to see your boyfriend!”

“I couldn’t agree more,” I said.

“You’re not thinking of marriage, no?”

“Well, it would be difficult logistically since we live in different countries,” I said, apologetically.

She nodded. A few weeks ago she’d told me that she thought German president Joachim Gauck really ought to marry his long-term partner, since she travelled with him in an official capacity.

A little later, we got talking about Germany. “We’ll never escape our past,” she said and paused.

“They could have just removed the Jews from official positions. But there were good Jewish doctors, good workers. Sending them to concentration camps, killing them was wrong.”

For the first time, I felt uncomfortable around Frau Bienkowski.

“Of course it was,” I said.

Frau Bienkowski presented me excitedly with a fashion catalogue. “Look what I got in the post!” she said.

We spent some time leafing through the pages and commenting on the clothes.

“I like that,” I’d say, pointing at a blue and white striped cardigan.

“Yes,” she’d reply, “It’s pretty, but look at the pattern on that blouse .. it’s a bit much, isn’t it?”

We looked at a model in high-heeled shoes. “Do you like them?” I asked.

“Oh yes,” she said.

“Did you wear such high shoes when you were younger?”

“Oh yes!”

“And could you walk in them?”

She smiled. “If you wear them, you walk in them!”

We read some more of the story about the cantankerous 100 year-old living in an Irish convent.

I apologised that I wouldn’t be able to see her next week.

“Don’t you worry!” she said. “This should never be an obligation. And tell Andrew I say hello!”

Blogileaks: Kate Katharina rocked by sell-out scandal

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If you want to be rich and famous, you should definitely start a blog. It’s the only way to keep up with the Mark Zuckerbergs of this world.

Katekatharina.com is a case in point.

From the beginning, my sober treatment of issues such as my talent for gibberish, my reputation as a creep and my savant boyfriend left readers crying for more.

I had to purchase extra electronic storage to cope with all the fan mail I was getting. I rejected several offers to write for renowned publications on the principle that Katekatharina.com was a more reputable source than say, The New York Times.

After some time, it became impossible to walk the streets of Dublin without being accosted by an admirer of my prose. The effort of gazing at my feet modestly every time a particularly apt turn of phrase was repeated to me by a stranger became too great. I decided to move to Berlin, where I thought I could descend into relative obscurity and focus on my art.

A rare moment of calm from the crowds as I climb a tower in the early days of my time in Berlin.

A rare moment of calm from the crowds as I climb a tower in the early days of my time in Berlin.

But it was not to be. Here too, passengers on the underground tap me nervously on the shoulder and say “If you don’t mind me saying so, you look really like Kate Katharina from Katekatharina.com. Others are more aggressive, pushing through crowds to thrust a pen and a print-out of my latest post into my hands, crying “Bitte, bitte, ein Autogramm fuer mein krankes Kind.”

Yes, my route to fame and fortune has been paved with widgets and clusters of html.

Or possibly, it’s been a bit more like this:

I’ve written over 200 posts here. Sometimes I spend hours writing a serious piece contemplating the meaning of art, or describing a tiny dead mouse whose death still haunts me, while other times I chronicle my developing relationship with a 93 year-old woman or defend pigeons.

The mouse that haunts me still

The mouse that haunts me still

The effort has paid off. Last summer the embassy of a wealthy middle eastern country offered to pay me to write a piece outlining – among other facts – the wisdom of its ruler and the progress the country has made in the areas of human rights and gender equality. When I replied saying that I did not feel I could write an impartial piece given the requirements, they promptly reassured me that I could be “reasonable and objective,” as if I were simply displaying modesty.

They’d found my contact details through a referral to the blog from an article I’d written for The Journal. That particular article paid me handsomely in… exposure (?) and afforded me the pleasure of trawling through a host of comments, most of which misinterpreted my article to conclude I was a Paparazzi fiend.

A more recent success occurred when the Past Pupils Union of my secondary school read a post I had written reminiscing about audible peeing in the school bathroom. They posted it onto their page and my hits rocketed.

I rejected numerous offers from prestigious publications

I rejected numerous offers from prestigious publications

And then recently, someone working on behalf of the company X contacted me, offering me a modest sum in exchange for linking to their site.

I had a drink with my friend, another freelance journalist in Berlin.

“You’ll be compromising yourself,” she said. “And for €80?”

A niggling part of me thought she was right. “But,” I argued, “They said I could write about anything; I just have to link to their site.. I mean I link to sites all the time, many of them happen to be commercial! And Y is not immoral!”

“And,” I continued, ever more desperate. “Every time I want to watch a video showing death and destruction on the BBC website, I first have to watch a stupid ad telling me to ‘invest in reMARKable Indonesia.'”

“I know,” she sighed. “It’s terrible the Beeb does that.”

So, here I am, “selling out” for the first time. The compensation is €80 (I hope!) which will pay for my monthly transport. For the amount of hours I’ve spent thinking about how NOT to make this read like a sponsored post, it’s pittance.

If I were living in a time when people still paid for writing, I’d have earned a couple of hundred for this 800 odd-word piece.

But I’m not. I was born into the digital revolution.

So, for all the would-be bloggers out there, the most important piece of advice I can give you is to take yourself excessively seriously. Just like me.

Otherwise, the attention from the fans can get too much, and you begin to crave the days when your blog had a small, loyal readership and when you deliberated for days over whether to post a link to a website offering to help people see again.

Frau Bienkowski and the Irish Convent

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Frau Bienkowski was sitting by an open window, soaking in the sunlight. She gave me a faint smile. It was not her usual welcome. She was in pain.

“Every limb hurts,” she said.

We had been planning to venture outside the moment we got some sun. I asked Frau Bienkowski whether she thought she could manage.

Ten minutes later she was pushing her stroller around the grounds, naming flowers and telling me about the people she knew living in the neighbouring buildings.

Every so often she stopped and sat on the ledge of her stroller.

“Am I slower than you thought?” she asked.

“Not at all,” I said. “I’ve only ever seen you in your armchair.”

We passed two caretakers smoking at a back entrance to the canteen. Frau Bienkowski called over to them. “I was faster last year!” They nodded sympathetically and one of them, a young woman with a scraped-back pony tail and jet black hair said, “oh, the curse of biology.”

Frau Bienkowski told me she remembered what flowers were blooming when the Russians came. “You don’t forget a time like that,” she said.

After our walk we went for coffee. I ordered a latte. “What’s that?” she asked.

I told her it was a mixture of espresso and steamed milk. She said she’d try it next time.

We chatted about parents disapproving of mixed marriages. She said it happened lots after the war and I said that in Ireland in the past, a Catholic-Protestant marriage could divide a family forever.

“You know, you’re only supposed to stay an hour,” Frau Bienkowski said after two.

“Do you have something you need to do?” I asked.

“I don’t want you to feel obliged, that’s all,” she said.

“Frau Bienkowski, we have discussed this before. This is a pleasure.”

“Oh, very well.”

Back upstairs, Frau Bienkowski asked me to read from “Die Pforte zum Himelreich,” the book by Irish writer Una Troy which I brought her last week.

“I started it,” she said. “And it is very good. But my eyes became swimmy and I couldn’t read on.”

The scene I read was a dialogue between an eager 23 year-old upstart journalist and a 100 year-old woman in a convent. She was Ireland’s oldest person and he was vying for the scoop on how she’d managed to live so long. She gave smart-ass, wry responses.

I put on my best crotchety voice for the old woman and an effeminate whine for the young man. Frau Bienkowski laughed out loud three times.

“You should be a professional reader!” she said. “I can completely imagine that nun!”

When I left, Frau Bienkowski said, “You bring me such joy.” This time her smile was real. It made my day.

Frau Bienkowski’s Photograph

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“How may I help you?” asked the chiselled librarian with grey hair and round eyes.
“Do you have any books in large print that you’d recommend for a 93 year-old?”

He typed into his computer and frowned.

“We have very few books in large print left,” he said. “The demand simply isn’t there. Old people are opting for audio books.”
“I suspected as much.”
“Wait though. Come with me. We do have selected titles.”

We snaked up and down the aisles at the back of the library. “Ah this one could work … and this! he cried, snatching a book every few shelves.

He left me with a pile, from which I selected Die Pforte zum Himelreich by Irish writer Una Troy, featuring nuns in small-town Ireland and an unconventional 100 year-old lady who stirs things up. I also took Ulla Lauchauer’s Ostpreußische Lebensläufe, roughly translated as “Biographies from East Prussia.”

“Yes, the story about the nun sounds interesting,” Frau Bienkowski, who was wearing green, said later.

Then I took out the book about biographies from East Prussia. “Can you bring me that photograph?” Frau Bienkowski asked, motioning to a frame hanging over her bedside table.

Frau Bienkowski balanced the black and white photograph on her knee. She turned on the lamp on her magnifying glass.

“This is my grandparents’ Golden Wedding Anniversary in East Prussia,” she said. “If you look carefully you can see the number 50 carved into the flower arrangement at the back.”

“We were a big family. That’s me at the bottom on the left,” she said pointing to a little girl with cropped hair and buckled shoes kneeling on the ground. “Those are my grandparents in the middle and those are my aunts and their husbands. These are my cousins.”

“She was killed,” she said pointing to an aunt. “So was she, my cousin too. He fled, and so did she.

“And this man” she said pointing to the back row of the photograph. “He was married to my aunt Anne.”

“She was very ill, and told him to flee alone. He did, and she died soon after. Years later we heard from him. He got away, and married again. But he said ‘She’ll never be my Annie.'”

“Yes, they are all dead now,” she said.

Later we talk about how her perm needs to be touched up, about how she would like some new clothes from the spring catalogue and how she left everything she owned at home when she moved into the nursing home.

“I don’t want to know what happened to it all,” she said.