My E5 Hackney

I almost forgot about this video. It shows my drug hell house, a really nice café called "Dreyfus" (go there! http://www.dreyfuscafe.co.uk/), the soap that will forever remind me of my druggie flatmate, because he used to buy exactly that brand (you need clean hands for your needle) and lovely Mare Street down to Hackney Central. I made these snippets when I was back in Britain. In case you missed my odd feelings about that trip, catch up here.

https://t.co/SvL9Qx4UWH
— Laura Varriale (@LrVrrl) 16. Dezember 2013

Every time I’m thinking of leaving Berlin, comes a weekend and...

…I decide to stay.

During the last weeks - well, since September to be more accurate - I’ve been getting constant flashbacks from London. I know, I know. It’s normal to think of what happened exactly one year ago. But with another degree to end soon and a highly competitive job market (listen to the people who say “don’t go into journalism unless you’re in the countryside and happy with local association stories”) the question evolves whether to stay in Berlin or not.

It might be the Berlin winter issue. It’s horrible in the winter here. GDR buildings greyer than grey, cold wind piping through the streets and the weird and awful moisture on trams. But is it that?

Do I need a change of scenery? I had that already in London and was not too sad to come back. What am I complaining about? Berlin is hip, comparatively cheap and I can sit every morning in a café without feeling the social pressure to work during office hours, because everyone else in the café bumming around is either a freelancer, unemployed or an unemployed freelancer. (Yes and some are existentialistic hedonistic pensioners)

So I shouldn’t feel bad about hopping from one job to another and complaining about money. No one has it. Even the city itself. Or is it the quarter-life-crisis? Naaah, I don’t think so. Besides some stuff I really like my life. Poor but sexy. What are they then, these constant doubts?

Maybe I should ask the question the other way around: why am I not leaving Berlin? Hell yes, that’s a brilliant thought. This is an easy answer: Because Berlin centres its beauty on the evenings and weekends. No it’s not at all about Berghain and booze. It’s about the people. For more than one hundred years, the city has been a magnet to all sorts of people. It’s the spirit of the night that brings these interesting people and me together. As I am mostly out and about at the weekend, it’s the weekend that saves my love for Berlin. Thank you weekend.

You probably find a lot of fascinating people everywhere (maybe not in Hanover) but the density is very high here. Of course I met great people in London, but they are rather split up between their E5, N1 and E2s.

Aaah, everything’s fine. I will put this post on the wall and read it out loud on weekdays before going to bed. My personal Lord’s prayer. Let’s light a candle for the city. Amen.

Back from being back

I should have read Irvine Welsh before I moved there. In “Porno” Sick Boy describes my old neighbourhood exactly. I should have known better.

I recently went back to lovely London. It was great. The city showed off its beauty. I strolled around places that shaped my London experience. My old neighbourhood in Hackney for example. That was a tricky rebound. I liked my house and my neighbours. I hated my flat and my flatmate. Some of you will know and experienced it yourselves. The flat was - exceptthe bathroom, kitchen and doors (you could slip your two hands under them) - fine. I even had double-glazed windows (!) and a pet. Sadly, the windows were so badly installed that the curtains moved when it was windy outside and the pet was a mouse. I heard also a rat running beneath the walls. But it was alright. That’s London.

Surviving my flatmate and his habits was my everyday challenge. First I thought that he was a nice guy and we would get on. I wasn’t really interested in being best friends so I didn’t think much of the rejection of my invite for a beer on my moving in day as an omen for this living nightmare. But as time went by I recognised the sweet smell coming under the door every evening. And through the blinds of the window hole in the wall from the kitchen to his room. No it wasn’t a scented candle.

“That’s not upgrading his IQ, but fine with me”, I thought, having a Greenpeace history. A few months passed with some of his strange weekend benders ending at the flat with friends and a dog called “Chaos”. I was a bit pissed off with them, because they turned techno music on at 4 am and pooed the bathroom so well… full that I rather had a shower at the gym than home. Plus the gas was constantly empty, anyway. I made a few remarks that he must have had fun and that I could hear the music. I didn’t want to be the boring flatmate. I had a reputation to defend. I’m from Berlin.

-       “Do you know Berghain?”

-        “Yes.”

-       “Man, I love that city. The nightlife”

-       “Yes it’s fun”

-        “When I was there, I went to clubs until the morning and slept the whole day and went clubbing again. Berlin is so great!”

-       “Well Berlin has some other things to offer too”

-       “Yeah, do you know Simon-Dach-Straße? I went there!”

This was probably the longest conversation we ever had after I moved in.

Last December he met a girl. The weekend benders (Thursday to Monday) were then relocated to home, evacuated on Saturdays to a techno car park rave. Orders from the dealer were made at home: “I need some hash, ex and ketamine”. One point I found an empty bottle of methadone in the kitchen. When telling that in a pub to friends I was comforted with the comment: “At least he’s doing something against it”. Well, that doesn’t help me when the flat smells of fart, alcohol, sweat, shit and spots of blood in the basin. But the worst was the music. I cannot listen to any techno anymore. It hurts. Weeks of sleep deprivation imprinted my mind in disgust with this genre. I live in Berlin. The London experience has decreased my clubbing options in this city tremendously.

Of course I complained. I tried. But how do you get through to someone who’s never sober, always on uppers or downers? The neighbours didn't manage it, either.

You ask yourself why I stayed there for almost half a year? Because it was bloody cheap for London prices. Yes, I paid the same amount for my flat in Berlin for the room in hipster-Hackney. But hey, that’s a reasonable price!

That I never got my deposit back goes without saying.

Hackney Downs. I tried you and, no thank you. I rather enjoy my Kiez.

Back in Britain

This is how a proper supermarket stroll looks like. I was craving these products for almost half a year. Still not satisfied.

https://t.co/8GRoSvI6xm
— Laura Varriale (@LrVrrl) September 5, 2013

German crisis in Greece - the story

Yes, this is a provocative title. And I know that you were thrilled by the trailer I posted two weeks ago. So here it is. True story. The horror scenario of families of the 21st century.

It is a hot day. 38 degrees on Corfu, Greece. The only possibility to cool down is by jumping into the sea. Yes, you could stay in your hotel room with air-conditioning. But hey, this is not America. Greece is in Europe (and still part of the EU). Air-conditioning is for losers. Enjoy nature!

This nature-loving and romantic thinking of a day at the beach is the reason I found myself at the same beach spot as this German family. Mother, father, son. Let’s call them the Michels. It’s their first day of the holiday. Careful steps on the sand. Checking the water. “The water is much clearer than in our sea” and “But colder!”. As these major differences between German sea spots and Ioanian sea spots were screamed out to everyone at the beach, the father joins mother Michel and son Michel to relax under the parasol.

Instead of talking, everybody takes out their e-book readers. Fair enough. At holiday you are supposed to do what you want. You can talk to your family back in Germany. Every reader was – in wise foresight – in a plastic case to protect it from billions of evil grains of sand.

Art in crisis. On the plate in the back it reads "odyssey".

As time goes by, the son gets bored of reading and gets suddenly excited about being at the beach and throws himself on his father’s belly. This unpredictable interruption of being a relaxed tourist on a family holiday, caused by a member of his family, got him mad. Not only that the child is behaving like a child, the son also broke the e-book. The father initially claimed that it’s the son’s fault. The son, not sure why his father got so angry, says that it was an accident and apologises. Father Michel doesn’t want to forgive him and says: “These things always happen by accident! First everything is nice and then something bad happens!”. It is said that this grown-up learns this rule of life so late. “190 Euros are gone!”. Yes, gone due to the love of a child towards his father. Probably son Michel will never hug his father again. It can cost him 190 Euros. Then he continues: “This has turned the whole! holiday! into a catastrophe!!” I have to use so many exclamation marks because Germans talk! in! exclamation! marks!

It’s a horrible situation. I can’t hide behind a book any more and am interested in what happens next. I’m just staring at the Michels. The mother too, because she is just looking as if these two people under her parasol were strangers that decided to make a scene there. The father is obviously the bad guy in the family. Frustrated with his working life. Probably underfucked. All the anticipation of a holiday, far away from everyday life, gone. And as bad guys do, they blame the weak. And the mother sits and does nothing (reminds me a bit of our Living German family)

To emphasise his rude behaviour, father Michel has a very heavy Bavarian accent. But as he tells his son that he turned the whole (!) holiday (!) into a catastrophe (!), the situation reminds me of the movie “Sightseers”.

The couple in the movie were quite like the same. (“You ruined the holidays”) only with a Birmingham accent. And they killed some people. But still.

I wish the mother and son killed the father, because he went on lamenting that he didn’t want to talk about the incident anymore. But I think they didn’t.

The family left the spot right after the incident, because you can’t enjoy the beach without an e-book. And also, it was around six. Dinner time.

Yes, Germans can also be in a crisis. In a country, where people earn 190 Euros a month and living costs are higher as in Germany. But still, the 190 Euro e-book reader is gone. Forever.

German crisis in Greece

...there'll be some moving images and ancient greek holiday fairytales soon. Perhaps not everything in one go. Who wants everything at once? I certainly don't. Except for 2 for 1 Extra Mature Cheddar offers at Tesco.

This is a time lapse of me jabbering in the sunset. If you want more videos (with audio) tell me.

Germany – Federal Republic of Bananas aka Bananenrepublik

 

In the GDR there was a lack of bananas. This was because the German army, the Bundeswehr, wasn’t there to protect sea routes for the packets of bananas for GDR citizens. Different country, no Bundeswehr, no bananas.

In the new trailer for the Bundeswehr, „Marine Trailer Bananen“ (why waste time with catchy titles) the army tells us plebeian citizens that – thanks to guns and soldiers – we can enjoy the sweet taste of these exotic fruits. The video really does enlighten my understanding of economy, wealth and the food industry. The army fires at the pirates, who board merchant ships, kill the sailors and make sea routes dangerous. Piracy must be the reason for why they came up with this bananas idea. You cannot actually see a pirate in the video. I guess Johnny Depp was too expensive and they couldn’t cast people with darker skin because that’s racist.

But the video does seem like a trailer for the army or at least the arms industry (but where is the difference anyway, Thomas De Maizière?). The content: Bombs exploding, guns firing senselessly into the sea. Smiling soldiers. Protecting the prosperity of Germany, wicked activity. A blond female soldier looking at screens (women can also do technical stuff in the Bundeswehr!). Ships and ships and ships. A clip for 16-year-old kids from the countryside with no clue what to do in their life. Join the army! Train on the Gorch Fock!

But for me, it’s conveying a deep, uncomfortable feeling that Germany has too many weapons. All that for a stupid banana? A banana that puts a smile on the blonde girl’s face (why is every woman blonde in that clip by the way?) at the obvious REWE supermarket in the beginning of the clip? Or is it all about publicity? Come on. As Stefan Kuzmany puts it in his Spiegel Online article, it’s weapon porn.

It is such a sad video. Even the shining sun in the video pollutes the atmosphere with awkward pride. We are proud to be soldiers, we are proud to make the way free for bananas for our affluent society. Disgusting.

But most disgusting is that they seem to use the same font for their text in the video as the right wing party NPD on their campaign posters. Yes, I am proud of you, Bundeswehr. Do some research before you produce videos. Or do you want to have this commonality? I guess not.

I want more of these ridiculous videos. I am so proud to be back in the Federal Republic of Bananas. Next time with some drones, please. Let’s forget the famines of the world. Germany wants bananas? Germany gets bananas!

Living German II: The mother does nothing. She sits.

After the last trip to Cologne, we are now heading to Miesbach, the village, where “The Family” lives. The Family has no surname. Reminds me a bit of la famiglia, whichoften refers to the Mafia groups. But as the language book is written in post-war Germany, I guess that the Italian guest workers were just about to find themselves miserable in Italy, so there was no scene for la famiglia in Germany – yet.

In chapter 3 “Was macht die Familie?” (“What is the family doing?”), we get to know the family members a bit better. They are:

-       Anton, the father, teaches, tells anecdotes

-       Marie, the mother, sings, domestic habits

-       Liesel, the daughter, characterless

-       Karl, the son, musical

-       the dog, old and lazy

-       the kitten, young and playful
-    Paula, appears mysteriously in the text

All in all an average family in Bavaria. I think the names are becoming en vogue again.

While the readers are sweating over the accusative case of the German language, they are being indoctrinated about roles of old-fashioned German families. Again, the book is written in the 50s but published, like that, in the 80s. By R.W. Buckley, M.A., a „Lecturer in German, Technical College, Coventry. The suffragettes didn’t come to Coventry I guess.

The hobbies of the kids are boring: Liesel is playing in the garden, Karl is playing the violin (first indication of a middle-class family). The mother sings. Hopefully well.

So the story goes like this:

“Anton doesn’t play when Liesel plays: he is working. He is a teacher (second indication of German Bildungsbürgertum, 60 years later also named as Wutbürger). The village has a school and Anton is the schoolteacher there. He is a village schoolteacher (God, yes I think we all got that).

But Anton plays in the evening: he plays the piano: he is musical. Also his son, Karl, is musical and plays the violin. Marie doesn’t play an instrument. She sings. (I guess very badly, because it is not indicated that she is musical too, but probably she doesn’t have a lot of time to practice because:)

What does the mother do, when Anton works and Liesel plays? (probably shagging the postman) She works too. (does the postman give her money?) Her work is big (and sinful), because the house isn’t small. (damn the Bourgeoisie!)

Marie cleans the house. (Booh) She makes every bed and cleans every bedroom. She cooks. (shame that there are no wives of the guest workers yet, they could do the cleaning and Marie could concentrate on her singing and paint some watercolours of the Bavarian landscape) The house has one kitchen, where the mother cooks. The kitchen is nice and clean. (sedulous mother).

The Family, apparently Paula looks like a boy?

Every child has one bedroom but the house only has one living room. The living room is where one sits and lives. (well, I do live also in other rooms, but maybe the family has transcendental experiences in the other rooms and can only be down-to-earth there). Here Anton plays the piano. Here Marie sings in the evenings (you wannabe rockstar). She likes to sing.

The father drinks wine or beer, the mother likes to drink coffee (Marie has to be sober to cook, the father has to relief himself from the school stress), Paula and Karl like to drink tea (Paula??) and Liesel drinks milk. (Wait, who is Paula?)

The day is nice, but it has come to an end (the arc of suspense!). The sun isn't shining anymore. Because it is evening and then comes the night. Liesel doesn’t play in the evening, she sleeps. What does Marie do? She doesn’t do anything. She sits. (no comment) What does Karl do? He also has work. He is studying. (but lives still at home). He likes to study his book. (I think he never had a girlfriend. Or boyfriend.) He works day and night. (At least that’s what the parents think)”

So, a typical evening with the family: father comes home, eats, drinks, plays the piano, drinks, tells anecdotes, drinks. The mother sings a bit, and sits and watches her husband getting drunk. What a middle class family.

Living German I: American pomposity vs German wittiness

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Because I worked for an educational publisher, I still have a thing for language books. Especially when they are serving stereotypes under the guise of German grammar. Which is perfect because German grammar is one of the nasty ones. The syntax is so complicated that you focus on every single ending of a word instead of the content.

So you don’t realise that you are being brainwashed.

In the fabulous book Living German by R.W. Buckley, M.A., who is (or was) a „Lecturer in German, Technical College, Coventry“, first published in 1957, you can see the patriarchy in German families, written by a Brit and feel the resentments of Brits towards Americans after World War Two in Western post-war Germany. I have the third edition from 1981 on my table. It is remarkable how old-fashioned the dialogues are and it makes me wonder how much they changed during the editions or how little. I guess the latter is the case.

Living German: a guide through cultures

The first dialogue I want to show you is about an American in Cologne who gets guided through the city by a local. Chapter 16, “Karl erzählt eine Anekdote (Comparison of Adjectives)” I translated into English:

(…) An American visits Cologne. This man is a very nice guy (You have to make that extra clear when you describe an American). But he has one bad habit: he shows off too much (well…no comment needed on that). His friend from Cologne shows him the oldest buildings in the beautiful city on the river Rhine. The stranger finds everything smaller than in his country (!). The German shows him the Kölner Dom.

-       “What’s the name of this church?”, asks the American. (beginning of teasing)

-       “That’s the cathedral of Cologne”, answers the German. (poor guy, ignoring the rudeness of the American, might be a slip-up?)

-       “The church of Mary in Boston is much bigger and higher than this dome. Also, reinforced concrete is better than stone. (no, no slip-up, it’s simply rudeness) Do you know our skyscraper, the Woolworth building? (yes, it’s an old book) It’s the biggest building in the world.” (told you)

The German gets tired: he is fed up and searches for a practical answer. (oh these task-orientated Germans) They arrive at the Rhine. There’s the Rhine-bridge, the longest of all bridges. (I think this anecdote is full of phallic metaphors)

-       “What’s the name of that bridge there?” asks the American

-       “What bridge?” asks the German. “I can’t see a bridge.” The foreigner points at the bridge. “Ach so” (I didn’t want to translate this part, because it’s… a very good reflection of Germans being surprised) answers the person from Cologne. “That’s new. I was here yesterday and there wasn’t a bridge before.” (how can you respond to that!?)

The American isn’t so stupid at all. (why this sentence, did it occur to the reader that the American might be stupid?) He laughs and says: “I understand. I have everything better than you, (at least that’s what your insisting on) and you’re making a mockery of me (in original it’s und Sie halten mich zum besten which means to mock s.o, but it is also a word game because it is playing with “best”)

That is how Karl’s anecdote ends, and all the family laughs of that word game. (…)

So, while you were learning about the comparison of adjectives, you also learned that Americans are competitive arseholes and Germans are witty and task-orientated. This doesn’t come from me, it comes from the British person R.W. Buckley. What does that say about the relationship between Brits and Americans? I think Buckley has some resentments towards Americans and really does like Germans. Who else would say that Germans have a great sense of humour?

Blogosphere get-together

Laurie Penny explaining the World. Sort of. Cybersexism Speech at re:publica 2013.

Digital Bohemianism gone OAP

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Well, well. This is how it goes. But I’m not gonna give up. I am not giving up this blog. People who tell me ‘It was fun reading your stuff’ should hold their breath and put their glasses on, ‘cause this ain’t over. They should type in this ambitious, postcolonial and slightly ambiguous theme: marginal man – a woman in between in their mobiles, laptops, iPads and other electronic devices I can’t think of at the moment.

Plus, whenever I hear that phrase it is obviously clear that they weren’t my true readers. Because then they would have known. Known the truth about this next series/season/chapter of this blog.

So making the blog as a topic in the blog and mentioning that is not making this interesting. So I have come up with a nice anecdote from my lovely café with the long-legged hedonistic existentialistic wannabe dandy.

As I was sitting there at a table, reading in my lunch break from work, the ‘philosopher’ wasn’t there. I was quite glad, because I slightly have the feeling that he always recognises me when coming now and then to the café. The bench at the back, which is his hunting ground, was packed with fresh pensioners. Not the young, unable-to-work types, but the ‘I am now a pensioner and the world stands now open for me, I can finally do whatever I want’ types (they made it this far and are still naïve). Sitting there with their newly bought electronic devices, because now they have the time to understand this Internet thing. Oh yeah, they are all male and dressed in muted colours.

While reading Heinrich Böll (I know, a bit too serious and disturbing for a light lunch) the hedonist came in. I looked up and then tried to hide very quickly behind my book. Not very successfully because it’s a paperback. But, fortunately, he passed my table because he was focussed on the back. He stopped in the middle of the café and said loudly: “Here we are now, all assembled. What a nice companionship”.

Oh boy. Who is mocking freelancers working in cafés? This is worse. Imagine a start-up-founder entering a café and saying that. You know what people would say? “Shut up hipster and go get a real job!”

So I say: “Shut up pensioner and go feed the pigeons.”

Existentialistic hedonism

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Hey, yo! Routine. You’ve got me back. Missed me? No? I didn’t miss you either. I’m now fully back physically and mentally. My London time feels now like a dream that occurred once in a while but was never fulfilled.

This is in fact not true at all. It’s my everyday routine that blurs my memory.

Occasionally, I spend my break from work in an office in a café. Oh yes, I have another internship now. I should search for an internship union, I could be their president. Become a person like Bsirske, only with a much better sounding name.

But that is not my aim and would also be a topic for another post. While sitting in the café in Kreuzberg, I always see the same people there. One guy is quite interesting to mention. He has long white hair, kept together with a black hair tie. This ponytail-man, around 60, wears black clothes. In an existentialism way, which means polo-neck jumper and round eyeglass lenses. He is possibly a relict from the student protests of the 70s, but hasn’t got this glow of intellectual radicalism. It’s a glow that most students are lacking. Whether it’s intelligence or radicalism. I leave that open. I’m lacking both. But I’m fine with that. I’m working class. That makes me radical enough and any academic achievement of mine makes me a good example of integration as I’m half not from Germany and officially counted as a ‘Person mit Migrationshintergrund’.

But back to wannabe Camus. He always has, of course, a book with him, sitting in a corner of the café. This overview gives him a perfect chance to spot his victims, whom he can torture with his breathtaking philosophy. These victims are female, middle-aged and good-looking. On a day, when Sartre-double had the book ‘Hedonistic World Views’ (I did NOT make this up) on his table, I saw him with his prey in the corner, discussing emotionally societal norms.

Yes, everyone has their own routine. I’m glad that mine changes every three months. This the length of the average internship. I have been living with that for years now. That is my normal pattern, my memory works in these time units. What does that say about me?

I think I should read more Foucault.

Things that I missed and didn't miss

Missed: German beer
Not missed: bottle deposit

Got some Begrüßungsgeld?

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Here I am now. Back in snowy then rainy, rainy then snowy Berlin. It does feel like coming home, but I came back even more a marginal man than I was before.

It may be a Berlin/North German thing, but people here are so rude. Incredibly impolite. On my second day back I went swimming at a leisure centre. When I and another woman wanted to enter the pool, the pool attendant said that we have to swim in the inner lanes because there are courses in the outer ones. I just said “ok”. What else could I say? I have not become English enough to say thank you. But the woman next to me said what proper Berliners say to advice by authorities: “We can see that on our own!” I’m sure she also said that on the 9^th November 1989 when the Wall came down and someone told her excitedly passing her on the street that the wall is gone: “I can see that myself! Go get your Begrüßungsgeld!”

Yes, it’s a harsh world in East Berlin leisure centres. The woman also spoke for me. Which annoyed me. But I have become English enough to avoid an argument.

I have been moaning a bit about London’s public transport. But now the Berlin transport confuses me. I don’t get off at the right stops anymore. I leave the tram too late and go in the wrong direction. Plus, I’m even confused by the houses my friends live in. Every house looks the same. And no-one lives in prefabricated buildings. It is me. I got lost. My mind is confused. It’s the lack of crumpets with salted butter, I guess.

I also miss crazy women on the bus. On my last bus ride in London, there was an old woman with a perfect witch nose and wearing an Eastern European-type shawl on her head. I’m sure she had just jumped out of a fairytale. She was singing songs that sounded a bit Jewish, but the language was not Hebrew or Yiddish. It sounded more like a made up children’s language. Maybe it was Welsh. There was a crescendo in every chorus she sang and ended in yelling, which sounded a bit like Native American whooping. I enjoyed it very much.

My last bus ride was odd. But perfect in its weirdness. It was a London salute. Just for me.

From being a borrower back to ungültig

Yes, I'm an outlaw in Berlin now. Travelwise.

This is what I did the last months (even got an ID for that): Borrower Trailer

The crazy woman bus driver connection

There is definitely something going on here.

I was on the bus (48) from London Bridge and enjoying a great bus ride upstairs in the front row with nothing else beside me except a pie from Borough Market. Ok, there was a crazy woman, too, on the other side, but she will play a role later in this post.

Whilst enjoying the smell of my steak and kidney pie, I watched London passing by and got sentimental. Happens often these days when I’m on the bus. I’m glad that I stopped listening to music on public transport, otherwise I would have cried during a sentimental song. Well, probably not. I don’t really have sentimental songs on my almost broken phone. Except a reminiscence of ‘Pieces of me’ by Britney Spears. Britney Spears does make me sad. What she went through. Everybody wants a piece of her. So she had to take Crystal Meth and shave her hair off. Poor girl. Or woman, or something in-between. (Remember the line of one song of her ‘I’m not a girl, not yet a woman’?) It’s all in the music, baby.

We slowly got into Hackney and I was starting to think about what I want to do when I’m home. But then, here enters crazy woman number 1 into the story (the aforementioned crazy woman is number 2), the bus didn’t move again. We were just starting off from Hackney Town Hall and stopped again at Hackney Empire (yes, we drove approx. 2 metres). I wasn’t sure on my throne in the first row what was happening downstairs with the ordinary-short-period-bus-drive-passengers. But I could see that car drivers and passers-by were looking at our bus. I heard some shouting from the bus driver and crazy woman number 1. I waited for ten minutes and watched how much attention my bus got. But I was too curious, so I went downstairs. Crazy woman number 2 followed me. She was whispering and rubbing her hands all the time, that’s why I labelled her as crazy.

Downstairs I could see that crazy woman number 1 was standing in front of the bus and not letting us drive. She was crying and shouting with an evil face. Apparently, as I understood from the shouts between bus driver and crazy woman number 1, the bus driver oversaw crazy woman number 1 after he let one woman on board. Crazy woman number 1 wanted that the other woman to get off the bus. But the woman was a bit scared. So was the bus driver. Nobody was allowed to leave the bus. The bus driver called the police. We were waiting and crazy woman number 2 entered the stage by getting, well, mad. She stood at the window front and shouted a lot of fun insults. My favourite sentence was “I’m gonna knock you off ”. She got a really red face and was a bit exhausted after screaming for five minutes, so she sat down and was quiet. Crazy woman number 1 tried every door to get in and the bus driver was trying to make sure that the automatic doors wouldn't open. But he failed.

Crazy woman number 1 entered the bus. Without swiping her Oyster Card. She stood there by the bus driver, murmuring about this injustice in the world. When a woman with her children wanted to enter the bus, because the door was still open, she shouted: “Yes, always using children as excuse!” The woman and her children got off again.

An old Jamaican man with a lot of black-yellow-green (oh, Hackney) necklaces looked at me and said: “I can’t stand this everyday-craziness any more”. Neither can I. I slipped past crazy woman number 1 and got off the bus.

The crux of comediennes

When you think of leading British comedians, who do you think of? You start to think of Stephen Fry, Lee Evans, Michael McIntyre, Ricky Gervais. Easy to continue. Few would start with Jo Brand and continue with a woman. Arguments like “women are not funny” and “I just find men funnier” are still not dead. But when asked why, people struggle to give reasons.

The recent British Comedy Awards show a picture of a comedy industry in the UK that is mainly male dominated. Yes, Julia Davies won two prizes for her sitcom Hunderby and Morgana Robinson can now call herself Best Comedy Breakthrough Artist. But the other seven categories that are not split up between male and female tell us that comedy in the UK is still in the hands of men.

2012 seemed to be a female television year, with several women-centred sitcoms written by women. New Girl, Hunderby and the highly celebrated New York-based series Girls. The fact that Hunderby won two British Comedy Awards (Best New Comedy Programme and Best Sitcom) shows that there is recognition of these programmes, while the American shows New Girl and Girls were acknowledged in the U.S. at the Emmys. And do not forget the hype about a third series of Miranda. You might think that women in TV comedy now get more attention. But a shift from a male-dominated industry towards a balanced one is not really there – yet. The media attention surrounding Girls and Miranda was enormous. But looking behind the hype, they are just a few between hundreds of other, male-centred series. As comedian and comedy writer Eva Braden* says, “these sitcoms stand out, but most series are still produced and written by men”. Cariad Lloyd, a comedienne who started her career in acting before comedy “took over her life”, agrees and says about the British Comedy Awards: “It’s a shame that there weren’t more women nominated. At the moment there are less women in comedy than men; that will be reflected in nominations and awards.”

One explanation as to why there are not as many comediennes as comedians can be found in the history of comedy. The beginnings of live comedy in the UK were in music halls of the 18^th century. Stand-up and sketch comedy are still young theatre art forms in relation to others such as variety or drama. The first UK sitcom, Pinwright’s Progress, aired on BBC radio in the late 1940s. Back then, politics, business and public life were driven by men. After World War Two, with TV establishing itself as a mass medium, comedy was also produced for the screen and famous live comedians like Peter Sellers and Tommy Cooper could also be seen on TV. In the 1970s, alternative comedy circuits had formed in working men’s clubs. Women were rare in these clubs. An exception was Victoria Wood, who started there. When asked in a recent Telegraph interview if it was not a “golden age” in the eighties for comedy, she disagreed and said that it is easier for women in comedy now than it was 30 years ago because the number of possible venues has increased. But she added that there are still more men in the comedy industry than women.

Over the past years, the impact of women in comedy has increased. Female stand-up comedians are booked more often and panel shows like Have I got News for You or 8 out of 10 Cats invite more comediennes. The beginnings of a comedy scene that included female comedians began later than for men. In order to give women in the industry more chances, the Funny Women Awards were set up ten years ago. The organisation Funny Women, which also organises workshops and comedy nights in Brighton and London, gives out awards in categories from scriptwriting to stand-up. Isobel Matheson, who is an executive producer and responsible for the awards at Funny Women, says that “the comedy world is definitely changing and the future looks certainly more rosy for female performers, but I’m still tired of going to comedy nights and watching TV panel shows with one woman in the line-up”. Watching these shows does often give the impression that producers book a statutory woman and are content with that. It seems that they fulfil a duty that has to be done because we are living in a modern society and should also represent disadvantaged ‘minorities’ like women. On comedy nights, women are often second in the second half, which means they are the penultimate act. Whether the comedienne is good or bad, she is often booked for that position. It is unfair for the comedienne and also for the other comedians. They get booked for that timeslot not because of their talent, but because it looks nicer to have a woman in that position. It shows that women have to face challenges in comedy. But it also gives an answer as to why people often cannot explain why they do not like female comedians: they do not know enough of them.

Matheson is certain that women still need support, whereas comedian Braden says that there is no need for that. Although Braden took part in one competition organised by Funny Women a few years ago, she questions its relevance. “It’s like the Special Olympics, women don’t need positive discrimination”. Most young comediennes take part in competitions to be on as many stages as they can. It is not that there is a huge lack of women in performing comedy. Rather, they have to work harder than men to be seen and recognised. And that is why a lot of comediennes are not easily accessible for the public eye. People tend to generalise. If you have only once seen a woman performing comedy, you make your opinion out of that.

Women start their artistic career later than men. Many start in their mid-twenties, whereas it is not unusual for men to start in their early twenties. Female comedians have to face challenges that every woman who wants to have a family and a career has to face. The pressure of starting a family and combining that with a social timetable is hard. A lot of women end their comedy career in their mid-thirties. “Women start later and finish earlier. If you haven’t made it by your mid-thirties, you stop. You don’t have a social life, no settling down, no stability. Women suffer more”, says Braden, who is 32 and, in addition to doing comedy, works as a personal assistant. She adds that the reason why women start later is down to establishing enough self-confidence to perform comedy on stage. This is also one reason why women often choose to do character-based comedy rather than stand-up.

But arguing that these differences are because of gender is too easy and not right. Comedians Braden and Lloyd, who are both confronted with prejudices in their comedy career, highlight that there is more of a difference between every comedian rather than a general difference between the genders. “I honestly don't think you can separate comedians through gender, just as it would be hard to separate actors, scientists or teachers on their gender rather than their skills“, says Lloyd. There is also a difference between character comedy and stand-up, adds Lloyd: “It’s the perception that is different. I do character comedy, which is seen as quite like acting monologues, and I think people don't mind a woman doing that. But straight stand-up, in the traditional male stereotype, I think is harder for women“. Braden says that in comedy the audience is assumed to be male, even if there are just as many women present. The audience makes a comedy night on stage or on TV successful. It is more about how the audience perceives the comedian and this is more a socio-cultural phenomenon than the sheer difference between male and female comedy, which does not exist anyway.

“Good comedy is good comedy”, says Matheson. To laugh or not to laugh. That is what it is all about. Gender does play a role – but in the same way as age or geographical background does. Comedy is political. Not only the jokes but the industry itself reflect changes in society, economy and social movements. The “women in comedy” issue is more a topic that has its roots in society itself and is due to an interplay between many factors. We can see that from the history and the way comedy is today. The British Comedy Awards show a true picture of the industry. The comedy industry today is still not balanced between men and women, but better than yesterday and still not as good as tomorrow.

Matheson, Lloyd and Braden look positively to the future. There are problems for women, but the roots do not lie in the industry only. Women need to be more present. Hopefully, people will then start to argue: “I don’t like Joanna Lumley because of her way of talking, annoying like McIntyre. But I do like…”



*name changed