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since the blows of the Great War but you’ll still discover scar traces in London’s turns and alleyways.

get slower, shorter, older and later. This must be the new normal the financiers and politicos talk about, worse is better, standing is more comfortable than sitting. This must be the recovery at work and I’m the one at fault for not seeing the beauty of it. Commerce comedy in mind, though life and death to my morning rumble on the Paddington line, I remember Yossarian, dumbfounded and horror-struck in the bomber cockpit with clouds beneath his feet, hearing the news that Milo Minderbinder has traded away all the silk parachutes.

and the blossoms come out. Old, mothball Albion dusts down the colours for the spring promenade. Let the young take charge and save us they will.

just missed me, silvering the highstreet as it slid north. And I remembered Of Love and Hunger and Fanshawe shivering under the sheets in his buffeted room atop the boarding house, alone and broke, not even a shilling left for a pack of fags, rain greasing the windows, smell of kippers and damp carpets drifting up from the guest lounge. Maclaren-Ross earned his shelf space in the Library of the Dead with that one book, with its puddled roads, warm beer and shut terrace doors. And when the storm passes, Fanshawe mutters to himself,

Some other town’d catch it now.

England changed so much, and changed not at all.

of spring on the sandstone. And the gateways stand open, new stones cut and laid to replace those eroded, rain-bit, gouged by bike handlebars, dissolved by car fumes and the salt wash thrown up from the road. The town gets ready its clean suit of stone.

was a humble, sea-spat shell, a fragment of Caribbean shore. I don’t feel guilty resting it on my palm, it’s only on loan, I’ll carry it back someday and restore planetary balance.

I went walking, trying to find a coffee. Feet took me down to the train station and the only place open at eight in the morning on a Sunday. I stood sipping the java juice and staring up at the copper tower that flanks the station’s omnibus esplanade. Steps to take you closer to the gods, or the safety and secrecy of higher ground. Is that where the idea came from, to escape the sand floor of plain existence? And if AI is the endgame of human evolution, could we build machines that are smart enough to dream new ziggurat shapes and sanctums? There’d be some sweet magic in that.

we had minders and drivers, a promoter to guide you through their city. We had a working reason to linger, to enter the backstage rooms and bars, to learn a little of another life. Books are my escorts now. I laze in the apartment with Isherwood, sink a beer with Fallada, swollen red hands trembling on his prescription hunt, even share the cold in those first great pages with Leamas at the checkpoint hut. These visions of the city seem true as the thoughts of what I did yesterday, the places visited. But book memories are fixed and locked in print, whereas the next corner turn or swinging bar door grants future secrets. Read all you want, but keep riding the rails.

after the Wall came down, I was in a backing band on a Golden Oldie tour, with a high-rise hotel room to myself overlooking Alexanderplatz. I was greenhorn lonely and homesick until The Troggs took me under their wing. Out for a walk with Reg Presley, we cut through a casino lobby, trying to get out of the cold. I’ve never known a summer in Berlin, each time I’ve been there’s that raw wind blowing and the trees bare and brown. Presley was telling me about crop circles and other reality irregularities; I think he ended up writing a book about them. It was before he made a pile from royalties on one of his love songs, before he could say no to the Euro gigs if he didn’t feel like going. We killed an hour at the casino bar, waiting for the bus. And I remember thinking, this is pretty cool. A quarter century later, I stumble out from the U-Bahn exit with my kids hunting for a tram connection. We disturb a Japanese film crew, furtive – no permits – in the dark, get shushed and waved away, and I see the hotel and the tower against the winter sky and I remember. I don’t feel as though any of what’s happened has been under my control. And I wouldn’t change a thing. It rolls by. Until the next time, Alexanderplatz.

ain’t bad, as palaces go. The Tor, the tower, the Tiergarten and the galleries, Foster’s dome peeping from the rooftops, this town is full of treasures. But I wouldn’t trade them all for my first glimpse of Nefertiti in the Neues Museum. The beautiful one has come. I near swooned at her limestone profile. Worth flying around the world for. Worth more to me than any tin machine or grand building, well-polished or stately they may be.