Listen man,
Back in the sixties when my dad was a bus conductor and my mum was a...bus conductor; we abandoned all for a life of equality in East Germany.The workers paradise.
My dad was sick of the class system, the price of beer, the nouveau riche and all those damned prols. So we boarded the boat train at Liverpool Street and sailed from Harwich of the Konigin Juliana to the Hoek. Then we boarded a succession of steadily ageing trains to Berlin; by the time we arrived we were on a huge black steam engine which had red flags fluttering on the front; I kid you not. At the iron curtain we had a bit of a problem because my mother wouldn't come out of the loo for the goon with the gun. But after that, all was well. We moved into a little hotel off the Ku-Dam in west Berlin and my dad met his contacts, a cockney bloke and another odd fellow and there we were - across the border in to East Berlin to stay....or rather not. My mother was horrified to see people queuing for plums and other rotten fruit at a stall with an armed guard. She decided she preferred Marks and Spencers and my dad was completely outvoted, regardless of his class consciousness. We went back to West Berlin and frolicked around the city. We saw the famous Wall museum and fresh memorials along it. Then we came back to Stoke Newington. My dad went on to work for Rupert Murdoch. What can I say.
I was never a class warrior or had any notions of travelling/hippyness. I wanted to be soldier and defend my country (prat). I was 24463988.. until they found me out. Now I am here. I have never been called Dave. Sometimes people call me Martin. People call me Marcus at their peril.
MB