I nurse my pint of Sprite – a guest ale, not the lemonade – and take in the rampant stallion before me. Pervy Ray brushes a 63-year-old hand through thinning grey hair, takes a sip from his glass and proceeds as interviewee.

‘You’ve heard of The Sex Maniacs Ball, of course?’ he asks rhetorically. ‘Well, I was kind of unofficial stage manager.’ He adjusts his appalling battleship-coloured waistcoat, a vestment that a vagrant wouldn’t be seen dead in, and clears his throat. ‘Do you remember Rock Bitch?’ he asks. ‘They came to my Ball once and performed at my peep show.’

He’s in a reverie now, lost in a smorgasbord of smutty memories. In fact, if I’d popped to the toilet, he’d scarcely have noticed. ‘They were great,’ he muses. ‘They pissed all over me, and I was up to my elbow with two of them. Christ, they were wild. They even got banned from Holland…and that takes some doing.’

 

Ugly mingers?

 

Throughout the evening, it has occurred to me that some or all of these women mentioned – “gangbang girls”, one could dub them – might not be supermodels. Rough as arseholes, perhaps? In fact, like the back end of a bus is an expression that leaps to mind. And, frankly, what sort of women are they, anyway?

‘Normal women,’ chirps Pervy Ray. ‘Two tits and rude.’ Coo, what a charmer. ‘Rudeness wins over looks, definitely,’ he adds. ‘But I’ll show you a few holiday snaps before we unload.’ So, the dregs of beer are promptly slurped and we pop back to the trucks – to revel in Ray’s pervy laptop photos, some of which actually were taken on holiday.

 

Pervy Photos..

 

He opens a Pictures folder at random, just one of a panoply of pornographic images. And, much as I’m loath to admit, the ladies are perfectly acceptable. Not that one could possibly judge purely on an aesthetic plane, of course.. Above is one of the more suitable pictures of Ray twenty (or possibly thirty) years ago. Sorry it’s so small. (I’ve added a random picture from my laptop to make up for it: it’s Lewis waiting for me to leave a hotel room in Barcelona. Notice his left hand.)

‘This is Jackie dogging in a lay-by,’ narrates Pervy Ray, candidly. ‘And this is Sue giving me a blowjob outside my truck. Ooh, that’s here, actually – right where your cab’s parked. And that’s my arm…it seems to feature quite a lot in these pictures for some reason…’ I think you get the gist.

Ah, but I think I spot a flaw at last in Ray’s hedonistic garden of delight. What about that yummy snuggling after making love with one special woman? Nope, the sanctimonious bugger has got that angle covered, too. ‘I’ve been happily married since 1966,’ he says airily. ‘Used to shag her on stage in Amsterdam, actually. You must know the Casa Rosso?…’ Oh crumbs, he’s off again..

Pervy Ray, as the nickname suggests, is indeed a pervert. Licentious to the core, you might say. ‘Photo for the blog?’ he asks. ‘Hang on then, I’ll take my trousers off and get my knob out. I’m happiest with my knob out, you know.’

Are you wondering how I, a priggish, naive young musician, meet these lunatics? Well, through rock and roll trucking. Naturally. Anyway, it just so happens that my old pal Pervy Ray and I are loading trailers together in West London. The equipment is for the touring Stage Production of Batman Live and, frankly, there are far more trucks loafing about than we like the look of.

 

Swingers

 

‘Job’s fucked,’ tuts Ray, uttering what has long become his standard mantra. He looks at his watch and tuts once more. ‘If we could’ve got away earlier, I’d have taken you to Sue’s place in Birmingham – she’s putting on a gangbang tonight.’ (He fails to notice my expression of abject disquiet.) ‘It’s just round the corner from Aston Villa’s football ground and you can park a truck there if you’re interested.’

Oh, hooray. Yes, I can think of nothing finer than an amorphous mass of dick-swinging nudists. Just up my street. Sounds ghastly. Ooh, unless there’s a raffle. ‘Any chance I could take a flask, Ray?’ I enquire tentatively, wondering if there’s a silver lining. ‘Of course,’ he replies. ‘And there’s no obligation to partake. Nobody will say anything if you just want to watch and have a cup of tea.’ Well, it can’t be that uncivilised, then; a scone might be pushing my luck, though..

A little bit of work now gets in the way of this enlightening conversation; oh, it’s always been the driving and loading that ruins this job. We potter up the M1, abandon the trucks at Nottingham’s Capital FM Arena, and dive into Bunkers Hill pub next door. Pervy Ray resumes the filthy discourse before you can say…well, I was going to say Jack Robinson, but Bukake is the topic he brings up.

 

Gangbang

 

‘Not heard of Bukake?’ asks Ray in disbelief. Honestly, he’s so judgmental – if you admit to sleeping with fewer than four women at the same time, he rolls his eyes heavenward, genuinely astounded. ‘You haven’t lived,’ he says, po-faced.

‘Anyway, you’d love bukake,’ he continues, instantly sullying my reputation as a prude. ‘It’s not a gangbang as such, but it could turn into one. The object, you see, is to cover a woman in as much spunk as possible.’ It’s now my turn to roll eyes skyward and tut. No romantic talk here of mermaids combing their hair on the rocks, that’s for sure. ‘It’s a proper sport,’ he bellows indignantly, steamrollering any potential objections. ‘I was runner-up in the South East Finals, you know.’

 

What amuses me most is the blithe manner in which he churns out this greasy rhetoric. It’s as though he’s speaking of a casual game of bridge in a Gentleman’s Club. Or a jolly stroll in the Pennines with some cheese and pickle sandwiches. ‘Good afternoon out, actually,’ he concludes, somewhat proving my point..

Trudging off to see some mummies in an ancient Irish church – the embalmed variety, not vulnerable single mothers – I get distracted by a sign. “Jazz 4-6.30pm”, it reads. I’m in like a shot.

Or rather, I’m barred by one of those enormous bald men that usually stand outside discos looking unapproachable. ‘You can’t come in dressed like that,’ he says. ‘There’s a dress code.’ Now it’s not as though I’m wearing a Borat thong; I happen to be sartorially impeccable, clad in a snazzy mackintosh, shorts and flip-flops. ‘What, for jazz on a Sunday afternoon?’ I counter.

Quite how this disarms him, I don’t know, but it does. ‘OK, I’ll let yers trew tis woonce,’ he replies in a heavy Irish brogue, softening a little. The jazz is a little disappointing, though. An ageing female flautist rattles off inoffensive, cocktail tunes – a far cry from the edgy improvisation that only a trumpeter on the verge of imploding can foster.

 

One For The Road?

 

As I’m ordering a second pint, I notice the clientele are predominantly men – smartly tonsured men. And a sizeable percentage of them are wearing figure-hugging T-shirts. Whoops, have I unwittingly stumbled into a gay bar again? The trouble with being straight – and perhaps a little naïve – is that I never grasp the extent of a situation until things become dicey.

 

You see, a clever ploy that poofters* use to disarm their quarry is to talk of girlfriends. This once put a certain young intrepid reporter so at ease that he happily ended up in a flat in Wimbledon. Oh, it’s no good talking in the third person, I suppose – the victim’s identity is blindingly obvious. It was the prospect of being cooked a meal that enticed me, and it wasn’t until after dinner that his intentions became clear: I was dessert. Gulp!

Massage, Sir?

 

He whacked on a pornographic film, ostentatiously undressed, and offered me a massage with a heat lamp. Straight men just don’t do that, do they? I was only nineteen..

 

Anyway, back to the present. Tact is the key at times like this; a splash of diplomacy and discretion can work wonders. ‘Is this a bar for queers?’ I ask the barmaid. She nods. Possibly adding insult to injury, I ask which side of the bar is least queer. ‘You’re on it,’ she replies. I change my order to half a pint – got to keep my wits about me – before tossing my own salad in Spar to unwind..

[*Obviously, lest anybody be in doubt, this post is tongue-in-cheek]

Opposite me, reposed on a bentwood chair, is “Eunuch”. And he’s eyeing up my bowl of pitted olives. ‘I’ll give you a little tip,’ he says. ‘What you do is put this butter packet between your hands and then…’ He breaks off, cupidity gripping him as an olive-skinned girl strolls past the window, heading to the beach.

 

‘You were saying, Eunuch?’ I prompt, as I force another glass of Tempranillo down the hatch. He wheels round, brow knitted. ‘We really ought to dispense with this nickname,’ he bleats. ‘Couldn’t you come up with something else?’ What, like Posh Jeremy? Or The Dominator?… No, Eunuch is a humdinger of a moniker; one can’t just chop and change on an ephemeral whim.

 

Pick-Up Arist?

 

He smiles, knowing I’m right. He clicks his neck back into place and begins tucking into a bowl of onion soup, all thoughts of the tanned cutie forgotten. What the chap needs is a little bolstering, though. ‘We could pretend your nickname is a bluff, you know, Eunuch,’ I begin. ‘For example, it could have been administered to knock you down a peg or two, perhaps after your days coaching as an international Pick Up Artist…’ He likes that story; the nickname can stay, at least for now.

 

Now, as I say, or rather I didn’t say, the venturesome Eunuch rolled up at my front door a couple of days ago. There he was, looking frightfully snazzy in short trousers and plimsolls, his ageing BMW immediately being used as a seagulls’ toilet. Now it’s no good asking me whether he drives a 525TD or a 535i – my view of motorcars is similar to that of girls: they simply come in colours, as far as I’m concerned.

 

‘Whatho Eunuch,’ I’d gushed at the Davies threshold, and embraced him in a bear hug. I’d not seen him for three-and-a-half-years. Ah, it’s been a nice break.. ‘The Old Boiler is in the kitchen faffing with the kettle, I think – do go through and say hello. And there’s a pretty girl called Dina loafing around somewhere, quite probably in the drawing room.’ I noticed the impecunious bluebottle hadn’t even brought any wine..

 

Wine, Women and…

 

‘Ah, this is the life,’ he’d said, making himself at home. ‘It’s about time I came down for a weekend,’ Now the last time I checked, a weekend was not arriving on Sunday lunchtime and clogging up one’s mansion until Wednesday afternoon. Still..

‘Ooh, wine,’ he ejaculated suddenly, noticing an open bottle. ‘I say, pour me a large one, would you.’ Bloody cheek..

 

We sat cosily in the garden, corseted by attractive women and dead Busy Lizzies, Eunuch happily tipping a glassful of the pink stuff down his neck in one fell swoop. Well, more like a foul swoop. ‘Any more booze?’ he asked, toying with taking off his shirt. I trotted obediently down to the cellar, grabbing my sunglasses in case he did in fact go topless. The second and third glasses slipped down equally as easily, and after an hour he excused himself for a moment.

 

‘Your friend’s been gone a long time,’ said Dina, lolling around on the grass. ‘Do you think he’s all right?’ I tutted, a little soporific from wine and sunshine, confident that my pal of thirtysomething could look after himself. ‘Probably just fancied playing with his knob,’ I assured her. Well, after about an hour.. Either he was vigorously engrossed in something unspeakable or… Well, off we set to investigate.

…An Inebriated Eunuch

 

Aha! There he was, giggling to himself on the bathroom carpet. ‘Whoopsy, I should have had some lunch,’ he said, unable to sit up properly. Good old Eunuch.

 

Now, I’m not running a dating agency here or anything, but the dashing, playful Eunuch is still – gobsmackingly – on the market. Snap him up, ladies, while you can – he’s got a heart of gold, a sexy voice and a guitar. Ooh, and a shit BMW. You’ll find him on Facebook under Jeremy Turner… (as an ice-breaker, you could always ask him about the butter trick).

I’m disheartened. The “Helsinki Experiment” – tarrying in bars, hoping to be approached by fruity, Finnish girls – failed miserably.

Yep, that pitch to the editor of FHM, announcing Finland as a manifestly viable destination for sex tourists, might as well be scrapped.

Still, onwards and upwards – I’m not beaten yet. It’s just that Storyville Jazz Club was utterly the wrong place to conduct research. Surely there are gaggles of giggling crumpet in Helsinki, desperate for a fumbling tete-a-tete with an Englishman? Well, where the deuce they were last night is anybody’s guess…but tonight I have a back-up plan.

That Kari chap, the stagehand quoted in Part 1, really seemed to know his onions…so I’m going to give this social try-out another shot. ‘If no girls come to you in the city,’ he had said, ‘go to Kallio. There you have a 400% chance. But the women have been drinking beer for thirty years or something – you’re not going to be happy when you woke up.’

Ah, a splendid district for itinerant truckers then, hell-bent on glossing over all that tiresome wooing and unnecessary chitchat. ‘Just if they’ve got hair, it’s a result,’ chimes Michelin Mat, profoundly discouraging me from joining him on a night out this evening.

Instead, I choose fellow rock and roll trucker, Lewis, an angular youth looking not a little like Superman. But away from his native planet of Crypton, he’s a lost soul, speaking in the manner of a sexually-starved schoolboy.

‘Saturday night snatch?’ he asks, in a strained whimper. ‘Excellent. Walloping muff of any description, however dire, is an art form.’ Well, maybe more of a pervert, then, than a teenager.

Anyway, rather than bruise your senses further with Lewis’s gratuitous, unspeakable talk of ‘stoving in back doors’, let’s kick off at “On the Rocks”, a bar near the train station. Ooh, and a ghastly specimen with a hint of an Adam’s Apple has just begun a conversation with him while I nipped to the toilet.

‘Just one question,’ it says, toying coyly with its whiskers, ‘will you kiss me?’ Oh goody, now that is pretty forward. Lewis blanches, playing for time, wondering how best not to upset this studded creature’s sensibilities. ‘Go on, I haven’t got any diseases,’ it continues, doing shimself (sic) very few favours.

This is when you discover who your friends are. ‘Leave you to it Lewis, old bean,’ I crow, moving over to the other side of the bar to bask in his misfortune.

Now, there are a few other rock dragons knocking about in here, cheeks despoiled with metal, but really we might need to toddle off to a nightclub to secure any real data on the dating scene in Helsinki. But I’ll just watch Superman struggle for another minute or two before I rescue him.

Oh, were you wondering why we hadn’t headed directly to Kallio, by the way? Well, on the plus side, yes, the area is a netherworld riddled with violence and alcoholism. But on the minus, Kallio is uphill on the bicycles.

And also, one can become inadvertently embroiled in conversations with prostitutes up there…and I’m never quite sure how one knows. Do they mention financial transactions at the outset? And are those smokin’ hot, provocative fishnets solely the preserve of hookers?Or is it just that she’s cute and likes the attention?  Hmm, tricky one. One doesn’t like to ask.

But I had asked another stagehand – a brutish, bear-like man, known simply as “Animal” – about Kallio. ‘Go to a bar called “Trashbank”,’ he had said. ‘In there, you buy a Finnish girl a Gin &Tonic and her legs open.’

Oh, bloody hell. I know things generally boil down to sex in the end, but this is straying ever further from the purpose of the experiment: to see if Finnish women will take the initiative, drift over and chat to guys in bars.

This is not about whether I can approach a girl, talk bollocks and take her home. And anyway, Animal’s keen advice contrasts sharply with Kari’s promise of free beer into the bargain.

So I’d opted for the city centre again, buoyed on fresh air and naivety, only to have my dreams dashed. Oh, what a long, dejected cycle back to the lorry tonight. But who is floating around the truck park on my return, with a story to tell?

Gentleman Steve, that’s who, and he’s met a girl. Well, more of an aged, mottled cadaver than a girl, but no need to split hairs. ‘Over in the allotment this afternoon, it was,’ he boasts. ‘We had a chat about her beans.’ Ah, good old Steve. That’s cheered me up no end..

The die is cast, the social experiment of the century firmly under way. Yet the words of a Helsinki stagehand begin to look decidedly shaky. Girls don’t seem to be approaching.

‘You take a beer and stand awhile,’ Kari had said earlier, as we loafed beneath an azure sky at the Olympic stadium.

‘Seem a bit lost, as though you’re looking for someone,’ he’d continued, one hand fingering his ludicrous beard – one of those twisted, dreadlocked affairs culminating in a plait at chest height. ‘Then a chick just comes to talk to you.’

My eyes had shone with excitement, ears pricked at the divulgence of such esoteric delights. In fact, I rushed to fetch a notepad. This was hot stuff indeed, the absolute flea’s pyjamas of a secret. You know, I’d totally forgotten about this role reversal of the “cold approach” in Finland.

‘Don’t be too hasty with your beer,’ Kari had advised, as I’d scribbled furiously, hoping to goodness that my truck wouldn’t need moving for at least ten minutes. ‘And of course the next beer is on the chick.’ Yes, naturally, I thought. And she’s bound to be a supermodel too, blessed with scintillating curves?

So here I am, debonair and lost-looking at the Storyville Jazz Club in Central Helsinki. My chum, Ted, accompanies me as a makeshift wingman, eager to witness the cavalcade of stunners that will shortly be overwhelming me.

Ah, sadly, there is a distinct paucity of pretty girls in here, and I’ve possibly fallen at the first hurdle by ordering wine instead of beer. But surely this is just nit-picking?  I’m gently nursing my beverage (as instructed) and duly enacting the air of an unsure, windswept foreigner. It’s only a matter of time, surely.

Ooh, wait for it, wait for it. Lo and behold, I’m being approached…by a Norwegian giant in her fifties. She’s soused to the gills, stumbling uncertainly in the direction of my lap.

‘Don’t take the first girl,’ Kari had warned, lending a degree of calculated menace to the proceedings. ‘You are too easy like that. And you won’t get any beer.’ Crikey, this really is a science, then.

The object of the exercise is not just a jolly chat, but both alcohol and sex? He stroked his comedy beard and consulted with his pal, Tatu, who nodded knowledgably. ‘You need beer and a chick,’ he had said with unwavering earnestness.

Well, for starters, the approaching abomination is not so much a chick as a harbinger of catastrophe. And secondly, she isn’t even Finnish. But she’s awfully keen.

After clearing a bout of emphysema – coughing coquettishly whilst perched on my knee – she points out her husband at the bar. ‘Twenty-four years we’ve been married,’ she slurs, and pops her tongue down my throat while I was asking her to get off. The husband gives a cheery thumbs-up.

This experiment doesn’t seem to be going terribly well..

Writing an attention-grabbing headline is one thing; designing a website is quite another. The latter requires more skill, dedication and patience than you can possibly imagine. Yes,  my IT man’s doing it.

Eschewing the wanton women that line Amsterdam’s canals, we’re spending five hours incarcerated in a Novotel hotel room, staring at a screen. ‘HTML? Or templates straight off the net?’ asks Fat Paul. Ooh, he’s caught me on the hop again. What on earth is he on about? At least I don’t seem to need “de-fragging” this time.

Big Font

As Fat Paul clicks and drags, I cling grimly to his meandering exposition on software and font sizes. I forget his exact words, but Size 14 sounds big enough for me. Truly, though, there are only so many cups of tea – partly because we run out of creamer sachets – that one can drink while designing a website before the eyes droop and the head begins to loll.

A temporary reprieve is needed.  So while he taps merrily at the keyboard, stretching photographs and adding something called a hyperlink, I go for sandwiches.

Cor, there are some ghastly men at reception – covered in gold chains. They have shaved scalps, unabashedly wearing T-shirts (several sizes too large) that say “Money over Bitches”. Slogans like this don’t encourage debate, I find.

It’s no good telling these chaps that, actually, I’d take a “bitch” over money, and perhaps if we looked deeper into their psyche we would discover latent homosexuality. One learns to recognise hostility. My T-shirt is far more tasteful: “If it has tits or wheels it will give you problems”.

The Votes Are In

Back upstairs Fat Paul is still studiously battling with fiddly editing tools. ‘You’ve got 25 votes,’ he says. ‘But the Portuguese guy’s got 1880’. Woohoo, it’s neck and neck, then. Johnny Foreigner is barely in the lead, just pipping me at the post.

If I can get everybody I know to visit www.barnabysadventures.sitebones.com and get ten other people to vote, I’ve already won, I think naively. The euphoria soon subsides..

Namibian shoots out of his truck this morning, like a gnu successfully evading a lion only to drop dead from exhaustion. Despite drowning his meals in salt, he still gets leg cramps, resulting in rapid, athletic movements…

…followed by stertorous breathing and dejected collapses. My doubling up guffawing does little to improve his mood. Though bathed in his usual miasma of grumpiness, he agrees to come on an adventure with Crazy Sandra and her buxom pal, Christine.

It’s a short drive from Gelsenkirchen to Duisburg, Germany’s eleventh biggest city. But there seems to be a theme when travelling with Crazy Sandra. First, make a show of map-reading while plugging in the oh, so foolproof spaznav, then hurtle up autobahns glued to the headrests, and, finally, err at the crucial step. Looking for a cruise boat moored in Europe’s largest domestic port, we pass a sign advertising “Advanced Nuclear Fuels”. This can’t be right.

One could almost certainly purchase Class A drugs on this street…but there is no sign of a jolly river boat stoking its boiler for a two-hour harbour tour. Personally, I would have followed the brown signs marked “Inner Harbour”, but that’s only an educated guess.

As Crazy Sandra battles her Audi round wholesome avenues, Namibian announces that his milchkaffe has gone right through him, and staggers out of the passenger side into Legoland. He returns looking thunderous. ‘You’ve got to tread over so many bloody bricks to have a piss,’ he says, having frightened the children.

Popping my head in – a trot down memory lane, if you like – I am bedazzled at the prices: Star Wars Lego is priced at €560. Perhaps that’s why my father encouraged country walks instead.

Eventually our goal is reached. ‘So what do you say now?’ asks Crazy Sandra. And referring to the ship lift adventure we embarked upon last time, she adds: ‘ This is not closed since thirty years. I am the brilliantest German woman you know. Write that down.’ It is a gentle command, and she beams with pride at locating this unmissable tourist attraction.

It is not lost on me that we are within a hundred yards of where we were an hour ago. The ubiquitous spaznav may now be the penchant of the populace, but I still obdurately refuse to buy one. As if to enforce my view of people losing their sense of direction entirely, Namibian pipes up. ‘Was this East Germany?’ he asks. We’re bordering Holland here. Say no more.

We clamber aboard MS Stadt Duisburg under a brooding sky, motoring towards the confluence of the rivers Rhine and Ruhr. The Rhine, as you know of course, is the river with the most traffic in the world.

What an idyllic cruise: the Bulk Terminal, handling mainly manganese and ore, makes an early appearance, followed by the attractively named Oil Island. Wow, oil depots can be found here.

The sun peeps out – a very brief tease – as we pass silos producing fish meal, then a copper works and the Sachtleben chemicals group factory, producing, among other things, white pigments used in paints.
The next beauty spot is Coal Island. Here, 1200 tons of coal are shipped in one hour. Whoopee! Look what’s coming up: Scrap Island. Do I need to say that scrap is pressed here and loaded aboard ships?

‘Try this,’ says Namibian loftily. ‘You can’t fold a piece of paper more than seven times. Not even tin foil, and it doesn’t matter how big the piece is.’ It does briefly divert my attention from the picturesque fuel bunkering station off the starboard side. Oh, and I hate to admit he might be right.

‘And,’ he presses, ‘they reckon you can turn a tennis ball inside out without cutting it.’ Bear in mind he thinks we’re in East Germany, though..

I had a slightly odd evening in Berlin recently – “random”, I think the youngsters would call it. It started when I met Marie, who is really called Tanya, at her friend’s flat off Friedrichstrasse. You’re frowning so let’s engage reverse gear and incorporate some back story:

A couple of weeks ago I asked my pal, Swiss Jules, for suggestions on places to stay near Milan. He mentioned a jazz festival in Lugano, but I thought accommodation might be booked out. ‘Try www.couchsurfing.org,’ was his reply. I dismissed the idea – chiefly because I don’t like sleeping on couches – and opted for Lago Maggiore instead.

A few days later, though, I thought I’d have a little browse on the site. Aha, you can just meet travellers for coffee or a drink. Well, a coffee is actually a drink but I know what they’re getting at. How nice, I thought, to meet somebody interesting with local knowledge. Maybe I’ll see the side of town that tourists don’t.

Interests/Hobbies

The next logical step is to send a message to a suitable host. Now, I hadn’t initially thought of the site as a dating site but… If you’re anything like me, you’ve no time to delve far into the 1,600 or so entries for Berlin. Find a honey on the first page, is what I say.

Actually, that’s not strictly true. If she had listed her interests as shoppin’ and chillin’, I would have scrolled further. Tanya’s passion for sailing, however, was enough to intrigue me.

An extended nap in the afternoon, coupled with chaos on the S-bahn lines in Berlin, meant that I didn’t turn up in town until 10.15pm. Late for meeting a new girl, I agree, but the nice thing about Couchsurfing is that these aren’t “dates”. Anyway, I reached the flat where a send-off for a Parisian girl was in full spate. I rang the bell.

‘It’s Barnaby for Marie,’ I said. Silence. Bugger, I forgot that’s only her surfing name. Regardless, the buzzer buzzed and there were just seven flights of stairs between me and an exciting encounter.

POLICE – BEWARE!

We spoke of sailing and fashion – the latter topic saw little input from me – and how she would love to have Madonna as a godmother. That was the turning point. What I did discover, though, which is jolly applicable to me, is that drunken cycling is ‘verboten’ here.

No surprise there – this is Germany, after all – but the following news shook me up a bit: if caught, the police revoke your driving licence. That is worth knowing.

But surely a couple of “grapefruit beers” are harmless enough, I thought naively, knocking back the last alcopop in the fridge.

So, if squiffy peddling has you nervous as an oyster at low tide – glancing constantly over a shoulder for blue lights – you’ll be relieved to learn that, in Berlin, the metro runs all night at weekends..

Wow, the Pet Shop Boys are still performing; the Pandemonium tour is in full swing. With just one truck, Neil and Chris have got the equipment down to nine tons – ‘We’ll have to lose some of the crew; you’re a heavy lot,’ they say. This I glean from the tour programme.

What I admire most about them – call it the sublime to the ridiculous if you like – is the importance they place on mealtimes. One o’clock is lunch.

My lunch today is with Donja, the sort of Dutch girl you could buy a farm and settle down with. Living in Central Amsterdam – a hefty cycle ride from the Ajax Stadium – she is convalescing from a snowboard accident. ‘I broke my back,’ she says matter-of-factly. ‘And my left arm.’

A week or so later, her right arm appeared bluer than it ought to; something was wrong. Movement was dexterous, if a little painful, but she forced those rogues at the hospital to take an X-ray. ‘Sorry,’ they said, ‘but that arm is broken, too.’

A corset!

For someone fresh out of a corset – not as saucy as it sounds; it’s more like a harness, really – she’s in remarkably fine fettle, buzzing round the flat like an able-bodied person. Perfectly capable, in fact, of preparing my lunch.

‘You should be able to cook at your age,’ she says, barely visible behind a square foot of Turkish bread. ‘Why don’t you do a course?’ Well, because the whole exercise seems such a bore, that’s why. When I’m hungry, I want to eat immediately, not fool about chopping things.

Food and Wine

I’ve just realised, with an embarrassed shudder, that I’ve stalled for more than a decade now, surviving when at home on a food-for-wine program. This entails being pampered by Shiraz-guzzling beauties most of the time, but heating up a stir-fry myself at an absolute push. I’m not proud of it.

‘I admit it’s less pathetic than a girl not being able to cook, though,’ says Donja, making me feel marginally less useless. She spits a cherry stone onto the garden soil. It feels a bit like a Sunday.

Back at the AC/DC stadium, French Fred is photographing his shoes..