Bottling it

Oh dear, only just spotted the phalanx of 2-litre coke bottles full of sterilising liquid next to the kitchen sink. That means OH will do some serious wine/cider bottling today. His latest batch of Polish-fruit-syrup/Lidl apple juice concoctions has matured into Falling-Down-Water, which will keep us partying, or, given the stupid weather, lying dumbly on the sofa watching endless re-runs of Tatort on German television of an evening.

Speaking of which: yesterday, we watched a brilliant programme on German public tv about small enterprises in a little corner of Brandenburg just southwest of Berlin. The premise was a bit like Coast, but on a strictly regional basis. The presenter cycled around a particular lake, forget now which, south of Potsdam, and checked out a selection of mini businesses, for example an Italian backyard restaurant, a sea buckthorn farm run by a brilliant, crazy woman who has managed to turn these orange berries into anything ranging from juice, wine, icecream to skincare. The next segment of the programme featured a fruit crate stage set up in a garden by two loopy ex-GDR musicians who have been performing together since the 1970s and who were clearly, judging by their discreet body language, still very much in love.Their performances required audiences to bang wooden shoes together. Of course! Those Germans! What was so brilliant about it was that the programme also functioned, in its own small way, as regional marketing, thus cycling part of licence-payers' money back into the local economy by advertising small businesses that offered services and products that were affordable to people on low or middle incomes. For example, the Italian backyard restaurant in Berlin-Neukoelln was run by an older German woman who was offering two-course meals for 8 euros or single meals, proper Italian restaurant fare, for 2.50 euros for people on benefits (who would normally not be able to go out for a meal at all).

I liked most of the programme segments and if I lived in the area, I would make a point of visiting all of these places during a day out (and leave money there). 

I was watching all of this and suddenly felt quite homesick, not so much because there aren't equally lovely and loopy enterprises here because there are (although many seem priced with moneyed ex-London retirees in mind) but because the only thing that publicly-funded regional telly here can come up with is a weird mix of gruesome rape/murder reports, fawningly patriotic coverage of Olympic-torch relays, sombre announcements of local boys blown to bits in faraway countries they had no business invading in the first place and scary-eyed Tory-mouthpiece Susie Fowler-Watts putting the boot into striking public sector workers.

I put all this to OH in a plaintive tone of voice, made more plaintive by the surprisingly potent elderflower champagne (what was left of the unexploded bottles), until I realised that maybe, it was partly to do with differential funding. A quick online check turned out that, indeed, Germans pay around double the amount per year for their tv and radio licence than the Brits. An interesting conundrum: every year when it's due, I rage at the size of the licence fee because I think publicly funded tv in this country has become, and I can't find a better, or more polite word to express the depth of my feeling here: truly shit. It's shit. I don't want to pay dear money for programming that is this shit. But perhaps it's shit because it's not adequately funded? Then again, if the licence fee was doubled, wouldn't the money go to some voracious executive or a self-important, and usually male, "celebrity"? Because that's what this place is like.

I have resolved though that this summer, we'll make a point again of ferreting out the hidden local gems such as the Snail Racing Championship we visited in one village one summer, or banger racing next to a power station near King's Lynn. I also, seriously, having lived in this country for so long now, need to spend at least one expensive evening at a Bingo Hall. I just have to.