Lockdown Day 36: Monday 27th April, 2020

Get the beers in Trick!” Desperate Dan yelled from the other end of the bar where he was practising his schoolboy German on a nice slice of Black Forest gateau dressed in little more than a blue bikini and suspenders. She looked pretty fucking amazing, but I doubted she was really the cherry on the cake he was looking for that night.

We were young, we were daft, we were wasted. We were Scottish and we were either in serious trouble or in heaven. I discarded the third option – that we’d died and gone to some Germannic Hades, the beer was way too good. Although I did wonder if Jewish Hell might look something like this and what Dan made of it. The bar was dark and menacing, shadowy and life-sentencing. It devoured the night, savouring the blood, sweat and beers of long-haired bikers grunting away in rustic German below the eagled tricolours fluttering on the flitting breeze wafting in a raucous chorus of saxon drunkenness from the streets. Deutschland, Deutschland über alles? Vielleicht. Vielleicht auch nicht. The neon lights sparkling on gantry bottles of schnapps and bourbon, brandy and vodka dimly showcased a mittel Europa puppet show where ragged players masqueraded as emancipated manikins in the Nurnberg night. Midgard on meth.

  An archetypal cabaret of decadent delinquents paraded their wares around this saturated stage, ‘Willkomen. Bien venue. Welcome.’ In the far corner patched bikers wore the Bosche tag proudly around a raucous card game of cups and kings which somehow included knives. Across the room, scantily clad Teutonic maidens awaited knightly rescue from the harsh Valkyries scolding them incessantly, herding them away from the vampyres melting into the shadows and towards the rich princes at the bar. Dominance and Submission. Twin Blue Oyster Cult guitars rang out around the bar and echoed through my freewheeling hippy head. A rotating tart or two or three propped up the corner of the worn bar elegantly smoking in near naked isolation. A neonAzi escaped from one of my lesser acid trips idled by the pool table as his mate racked the balls beside two remnant Euro-hippies rolling a dream. As the most human of the haphazard hookers bent down to retrieve the lighter she’d dropped, her left tit popped out momentarily before she tucked it sloppily back into her bodice. Catching my glance, she winked “Hallo Suβe.” 

  Jewish Hell? Possibly. But celtic heaven, certainly. I was ecstatic. Pink Floyd were now blasting out Astronomy Domine, the beer was cheap and our pockets still full. Desperate Dan was enjoying himself way too much to be worrying about eternal damnation and lost souls. Shit, I didn’t know if Jews did damnation and lost souls. That all seemed a bit fuzzy to me. I sat back and embraced my world view of a life to be savoured and enjoyed and celebrated each and every day for the God-given wonder that it was. This was mid-seventies Nurnberg, thirty years after the fall of the national socialist dream, the June night deepest just before the dawn and dark new turf for us teenage explorers. We were lost in our lunacy and I was loving it.