In September 1986, following the collision of two ships a few miles off the coast in the North Sea (leaving one, a medium sized passenger ferry, stranded on a sandbank) Pelé was left alone for what felt like the first time in decades. Few knew he was there at all and even they’d now disappeared. …
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The Pigeon on Hus’s Head
There was a pigeon who spent much of his time sat on the head of Jan Hus, that had perfected the art of sitting there just so unflinchingly still, all of the tourists who stopped to look at him thought he was a part of the statue. “Classic Czech absurdists”, they’d say to each other …
Oskar Kosche’s Job
Foto by Stefanie Fiebrig at textilvergehen You just call on me, brother, when you need a handWe all need somebody to lean on As his teammates wheeled away having secured the unlikeliest of victories, a goal that the Unioner will talk about for a generation, Andreas Luthe didn’t join in. He had been at fault …
Jimmy Hoge’s Best Story
There was a strangely sad, though beautiful and quite remarkable moment at the 1.FC Union members meeting back in 2009, when Jimmy Hoge received his golden needle. The highest honour the club can present. He was not a man often at a loss for words, but this time there was a choking in his throat …
Sebastian Andersson’s Goals
I interviewed Sebastian Andersson last year for Textilvergehen, only a day or two after the fire that started in a fridge in the main stand so catastrophically damaged the building. Workers ripped plasterboard unceremoniously off the walls with claw hammers as I waited. They pulled out mile after mile of wiring. It was a mess. …
Dexys Midnight Runners’ “Searching For the Young Soul Rebels.”
Kevin Rowland cut a weird figure walking around town. He must have lived nearby because he’d always be sat in the Chinese restaurant around the corner from my flat by the seaside. It was one of the nicer restaurants, and as such was often empty. Apart from him. He was the sharpest man everywhere he …
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A Sense of Honesty Once Found on Oranienburger Straße
Though in the end I grew to like him, GMF always carried a hint of menace when he turned up in Tacheles. A cold breeze seemed to follow him into the building. He could never shake it, no matter his intentions. He was unfailingly honest in that way. He described himself as being a freak. …
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John Henry Barbee’s Bad Luck
He said that he was born William George Tucker, though we’ll never really be sure. For the life of the man better known as John Henry Barbee is shrouded in as much myth as the man he would re-name himself for. The original John Henry. A steel driving man. Tucker was born in Tennessee in …
Helmut Recknagel’s Nerves
Helmut Recknagel never said what it was that made him go back home to Thuringia from a cold, bright day in Bavaria in January, 1956. He’d been jumping off mountains for half his life. He’d grown up in the looming shadow of Germany’s first ever ski-jumping slope. And this was his first big chance to …
Marlena Shaw’s California Soul
“You’re all I need to get by” could have only been written by a two people who would be married within a decade and remain so for another three. As it could only be sung by two best friends who truly loved each other, staring into each others eyes, teenagers laughing at each others’ jokes …
Jacob Sweetman 