Tag Archives: Train Stations

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Iain With And Without An M. Banks

I never know what to say when someone dies, even 10 years on. Gala and I joked my epitaph should be, “Fuck you looking at? I’ll knife ya.” Ten years ago, Iain Banks died. Shit joke. Unequivocally my fave author at the time. I’ve read a heap since then and in that specific genre only Tamsyn Muir and Ann Leckie have come close. Yeah, a lot of other writers are amazing and touched my heart, made me laugh, but this is the you can take a tote bag of books to a desert island kind of love and it’s those three with Iain forever first.

Like so many weird subculture scenes, Iain got the attention of way too many straight white dudes. And because he was a nominally straight white dude, with a love of fast cars, whiskey and drugs, he doesn’t get much attention outside that very mediocre bubble of dudes talking. Yeah, Excession is a banger of a space opera, but have you read Feersum Endjinn? Or Whit? That shit has radical, liberatory politics all the way through. He was writing Black, Brown, trans, queer liberation and love back in the ’90s. And he always seemed like one of those so rare, genuinely good, thoughtful, fun, caring men. The kind we need a whole lot more of.

Over the almost twenty years of this blog, I’ve written about or mentioned him in the low hundreds of posts. He even has his own tag, though for that number he should be a category. Here’s some of my faves, chronologically.

Which caused me to read some of my own writing from the last decade and I’m not as shamed or embarrassed as I feared. Which might be me lacking in self-awareness of what I’m missing, but whatever.

And what caused this — I was not paying attention and February 16th was his birthday and it’s 10 years since he died — was a thread by Assoc for Scottish Literature with a bunch of links to articles and interviews I’m going to remind myself of by putting here:

(Not including the Guardian one though. Fuck that TERF transphobe rag. Wouldn’t piss on it if it was on fire.)

Cheers, Iain. I’d have loved for you to scare the shit out of me in the passenger seat of a red F40 hooning the highland roads of Scotland.

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Länderdreieck From Görlitzer Brücke

I’ve lived in Berlin how long and never walked the old elevated train line from Görlitzer Park almost all the way to Treptower Park? Over the Görlitzer bridge on Treptower Kanal and it’s just all trees and unpaved paths. It’s an absolute gem and once again Berlin pulling up her skirts to show a bit of ankle it’s Berlin, upper thigh. Even in winter.

Fuck the Berlin and German political parties (allll of them) for ramming a massively expensive and useless dildo of Autobahn all the way through the east end. What this stretch should be is a connection over the Ringbahn line and into Treptower Park and Plänterwald, through to Königsheide and south through Wasserwerk Johannisthal and out of the city along Teltow Kanal, or east through the old rail yards of Johannesthal and out of the city along the Spree. That would be excellent. And would also end up with wild boars and foxes hanging out in Görlitzer Park.

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Gesundbrunnen Humboldthain

Walking to the U-Bahn after rehearsing with Isabelle in Wiesenburg. Best part of Berlin is Wedding.

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Decycling the Frame

Gala came over for a spontaneous equinox visit this week, and spontaneous plans to make a short film. Me and my endlessly riding the Berliner Mauer, calling it art, discovering Tilda did it first (and twice), not caring ’cos it’s not the same, having the Gala with a bike who needs a short “About Me” film for her agency, and me loving the Dreilinden stretch of the former Berlin Wall (plus it’s one of the sections where the Mauer diverges and spreads from the Mauerweg route, and I’m still piecing it together). A Wednesday plan, a Thursday morning prep, a bike via Brandenburger Tor and Hauptbahnhof, S-Bahn to Griebnitzsee, or rather Wannsee ’cos there’s track work, and yes, you can take your bike on the Ersatzverkehr Bus, then biking the bourgie Potsdam side to Glienicke Brücke, and biking back on the forest-y northern side, past Jagdschloss Glienicke and all the bonkers Baroque architecture, around one of the East German exclaves of Klein Glienicke (More cobbles! Hills and cobbles! 2nd worst cobbles I’ve ridden in Berlin, 4/5 Paris-Roubaix stars of terrible joy.) past Steinstücken, along Teltowkanal as the sun came out, and scooting onto the old Autobahn bridge. Then following the sandy tracks where the Autobahn used to run until we went parallel with the A115 and arrived at the bridge by Kontrollpunkt Dreilinden.

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Berliner Mauer — Albrechts Teerofen

After the division of Germany, the West Berlin neighbourhood of Albrechts Teerofen jutted into East Germany like a peninsula. From 1952 onwards, it was cut off to the north, south and east by the East German border fortifications. The Autobahn towards Helmstedt/Hannover passed through the eastern end of the district. This was where the “Border Checkpoint Nowawes” [Babelsberg] was set up. It was later to be called “Drewitz Border Crossing”. When the Autobahn was rerouted on 1969 to pass by the south of Albrechts Teerofen along what is now the A115, the East German government had the Drewitz Border Crossing moved as well. In the summer of 1965, the 42-year-old West Berlin resident Hermann Döbler was shot dead near the old border crossing when his sports boat entered the East German border waters in the Teltowkanal. His female companion was badly wounded and permanently disabled. Although the boat had already turned back. the East German border guards deliberately fired aimed shots at its occupants. In 1981 after lengthy negotiations, the East German government opened traffic along the Teltowkanal near Albrechts Teerofen to freight shipping towards West Berlin. This shortened the barges’ journey by about two days.

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Schloss Babelsberg from Glienicker Brücke

Out riding last Thursday with Gala, following the Berliner Mauer from Glienicker Brücke anticlockwise back to Dreilinden in a small, partial remarking on Cycling the Frame, a film I didn’t even know about until after I’d begun orbiting Berlin as an art-ing process. More new bits of the Mauer mapped into me as Wege. More new stretches of cobbles. It’s all about being pounded by the cobbles.

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Berliner Mauerweg — Dreilinden

There was a map of West Berlin and the Berlin Wall I saw at the Stasimuseum Berlin, which showed exclaves of West Berlin, as well as some deviations from the path the Berliner Mauerweg takes. Being ‘winter’, and a while since my last proper ride, I thought it was time to go exploring along my regular big ride route again.

I’ve passed through Drelinden along Königsweg a couple of times already, past Checkpoint Bravo, which you drive through shortly after Grünewald if you’re heading south out of Berlin. The path of the wall is a little south also of Königsweg, which you can see on a satellite map as a light sandy scar in the dark forest, curving down to Teltowkanalbrücke and Kontrollpunkt Dreilinden, and over the canal curves again westwards towards Steinstücken, the exclave now split by the S-Bahn and very much not on the signposted Mauerweg. This turned out to be around 7km of sandy, slippery riding getting increasingly rougher on the south side with tree routes and trails broken by horse riding — proper cyclocross fun. Followed by getting lost around Steinstücken. And later realising I’d missed the whole weird Wall Border in Klein Glienicke.

A shitload of fun on a 107km ride on a glorious winter’s day that made me forget all about white cis sportswomen shitting on trans and intersex people.

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Top Tube Reminders

It was going to be something like “enjoy suffering”, for what turned out to be a muddy, sandy, forest-y, riotous fun 107km ride. Decided for something a little more fitting with a 14° sunny mid-February day.

  • drink & eat every 15–20 min
  • stretch back & neck
  • change saddle & hand position
  • over & under-gearing
  • stand up
  • breathing
  • calm & joy

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Berliner Mauerweg — Widdershins

Three months ago, during Ramadan, I decided I needed more art goals. This morning I got up early and rode the Berliner Mauerweg for eight hours. 173 kilometres of cobblestones, gravel, deteriorating single lane concrete roads, forest trails (mixed with gravel and more cobbles, or sand), single track, sand everywhere, plus some rather luxurious roads and bike paths for the other slightly more than half. I’ve been thinking of this and other not-quite-art / definitely-art as Solo Endurance Works. Emma Pooley has been a big (remote / unaware) mentor for this, particularly the work I do on a bike, however it might (or might not) make itself as art. Either way, I’m pretty fucking tired, sore, exhausted, space out, possibly rather pleased with myself in the wash of all that raked over-ness. And there’s so much to say about history, the Berlin Wall (along which Germans should have to walk each year, like performing the Hajj), my own selfhood and my struggles with, which is the reason for this in the first place. Another time.

Embrace the Suffering.
Accept it and Suffer.
Make the pain your choice, and be happy about it.
Practice to ride like you care.
You have to really care about it, you have to really suffer. — Emma Pooley

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Notes On My Top Tube

  • drink
  • eat
  • stretch
  • saddle position
  • hand position
  • over / undergearing
  • standing
  • breathing
  • stay calm