Long-time readers of this newsletter might remember the story about the time I dropped my phone in a chemical toilet twice within one minute. That story remains an in-demand hit at social occasions to this day, I think because it makes me come across as so colossally stupid. So I’m thrilled to announce that I return from the Berlin Fringe with a fresh anecdote that makes me seem like a clumsy idiot which also involves a public portaloo. Strap in!

Miranda and I have gone out to Berlin together for the last two years for the Berlin Fringe as a sort of mini working holiday. It’s always very nice, but it’s sometimes tricky to carve out time for the two of us to just go off and do nice tourist-y things together. There’s always lots of show-related work and admin to do, then a lot of associated sociable stuff to do around the Fringe itself. This year we decided to put Saturday aside as a day for us to just disengage from any obligations of what we “should” be doing and go and do whatever we wanted, because we had no shows to prep that day. We began with a swim at Flughafensee, a beautiful lake out near one of Berlin’s many abandoned airports.

Walking to the lake, we passed the small shipping container that served as the public toilet for visitors to the beach, which was easily identified by the overwhelming stink of shit that surrounded it in a shimmering miasma with a 30-foot radius. Against our better natures, we decided to investigate the idea of getting changed in this foul porta-cabin, which was very un-Berlin of us – most Berliners are happy to change in full view, willies and bums as free to enjoy the fresh air as any humble foot or elbow. I, however, am a prude and believe there is a time and a place for my willy and bum, so I tiptoed cautiously into a shipping container filled with human shit in order to protect my modesty.

I changed while holding my breath to avoid breathing any of the air, and managed to escape in my swimming shorts just before I would’ve vomited all over my own feet. Miranda had glanced into the women’s end of the shipping container and had quickly retreated and committed to changing on the beach. She treated me to a very graphic description of a large pile of excrement on which an enormous maggot “unlike any she had seen before” was wriggling around in ecstasy (we later learned that this was a “rat tail maggot,” and having googled it I’m actually kind of annoyed I didn’t get to see it, they look pretty badass, kind of like something you’d see on the cover of a heavy metal album).

As we walked the last short distance to the beach, she outlined further why she was so against setting foot in the shipping container again, saying it was probably also full of rusty needles. I laughed and shook my head – I was in agreement that entering the portaloo had been quite similar to how I imagine it would feel to sneak in and change into your swimming costume in Hell, but I thought she was exaggerating a little bit here. Berlin may have a reputation as a bit of a party town, but I doubted people were just leaving rusty needles lying around. Berliners are a far more conscientious people than that.

After swimming for an hour or so (and given how the rest of the day panned out, it’s important for me to cling onto the memory that we did start the day with a really nice swim), I needed a wee and walked back towards the portaloo. I set off in bare feet because I couldn’t be bothered to put my shoes on, and I was enjoying the sensation of the hot sand sifting in between my toes. But as I got nearer to the toilet and my nose began to wrinkle at the resurgence of the toxic smell, I decided to change tack and just walk a little way into the woods to find a tree. I found one and as I tried to conceal myself behind it, I felt a sharp, extreme pain in my foot. “That’s annoying,” I thought to myself, “a thorn has gone into my foot.” I lifted my foot to pick out the thorn and stared blankly at the sight of a huge rusty safety pin sticking out of it. “Ah,” I thought to myself, “this could be a problem.” I had been right – the Berliners were too conscientious to leave rusty needles lying around the place. But in my confidence on this point, I had forgotten that other sharp rusty things besides needles exist in the world. I yanked it out, hoping it might have been a shallow enough puncture wound to avoid any risk of bacteria entering my bloodstream. A bead of blood came out of my foot alongside it. “Right,” I thought, “that’s definitely gone in, then.”

I googled “what to do if you step on a rusty safety pin and it definitely goes in,” and quickly got the impression that I should go to an emergency clinic immediately and get a tetanus shot. My heart sank – we’d been planning on doing a lot of really nice stuff today. Idly, I googled what tetanus does to you on the off-chance it’s actually sort of fine, and everything you hear about it is a bit of a storm in a teacup. It turns out it causes your jaw to lock and all your muscles to seize up and then you die. I trudged back to the beach and wearily announced that I had to go to an emergency clinic to make sure I didn’t die. It’s to Miranda’s immense credit that her immediate reaction was to be very understanding and supportive and concerned and she didn’t even say “I did mention there might be rusty needles, maybe you should’ve put your shoes on” until several minutes had passed and we were en route to the hospital.

Now that the rest of that day has happened, I have decided to adopt a new philosophy, which will sit alongside “Travel days are travel days and all you will do on them is travel,” a philosophy that has enabled me to reach a state of zen-like calm whenever my travel plans are disrupted for any reason. The new philosophy is “If you have to go to an A&E, that is the end of your day.” I think it will serve me well in future because I’ll be able to arrive at A&Es without thinking “Hopefully I’ll be out of here in about two hours and can go and meet Miranda and walk around Tempelhof together and get an ice cream, and then we can go to the animatronic monster gallery in the evening.”

We asked a receptionist for directions to the “Notaufnahme” (emergency room). Recognising the hesitancy in our German, he gave us a friendly grin, pointed up ahead and said “Building number 3, upstairs” and then pointed down with his index finger. “Upstairs?” we asked, slightly confused. “Upstairs,” he repeated confidently, again pointing his finger in a downwards direction. We thanked him and walked to building 3, where we found that the Notaufnahme was, as we’d suspected it might be, downstairs. I should have learned from this minor miscommunication and maybe we might have made it to Monsterkabinett before it closed.

After being processed by the triage department, I was told to leave the corridor and go “left, then left again, then wait.” I double checked this, even pointing with my hand to make absolutely sure. “Left, then left again?” I asked. The triage doctor nodded and waved me away impatiently, clearly already annoyed that I was hanging around. I left the corridor, turned left, turned left again and found a waiting area. Someone who had been in the triage area with me was waiting here already, so I thought I must be in the right place, sat down and began to wait.

My companion from the triage area went in and came out with a cotton pad taped over her eye and went on her way. Other people who had been in there waiting already went in and came out and went on their way, several of them emerging with cotton pads taped over their eyes. “Lot of injured eyes today,” I thought to myself as an hour ticked by. Other people came and sat and waited, and went in, and came out. Several of them came out with cotton pads taped over their eyes. I began to feel worried. I thought about going back to the triage area to double check exactly what was going on, but after waiting for so long, I was petrified that getting up to check would mean I missed my name finally being called. After two hours, when one of the doctors came out, I told him my name and asked him if he knew when I might be seen. “No I don’t know, sit and wait,” he snapped at me.

After four hours, as all my visions of a nice day exploring Berlin with Miranda were on the brink of disappearing altogether, I appealed to the same doctor when he came out again. “Please,” I said, surprised to find myself on the brink of tears, “I’ve been here for four hours and nobody has told me anything. Do you know when I might be seen?” The doctor looked at me wearily.

“Sometimes people wait here for six or seven hours,” he said. “It depends on how serious it is. What’s wrong with your eyes?” A cold dread that had been hovering somewhere in my chest closed around my heart in a fierce grip.

“There’s nothing wrong with my eyes,” I said. “I’m waiting for a tetanus shot.” The doctor looked confused. “Is this the wrong area to wait for a tetanus shot?” He became even more impatient.

“People wait here for lots of things,” he said. “I’m an eye doctor, but people wait here for facial surgery, nerve problems, skin problems.”

“Ok,” I replied, “so am I in the wrong place, or…?”

“I don’t know,” he snapped, and turned and walked through the doors to the treatment area. I paced nervously back around the corner to the triage area, where I managed to see one of the nurses who had initially seen me when I came in. I was now so upset at having lost pretty much the entire day together that we’d planned that I became quite tearful as I appealed to her through the doors.

“I don’t even know if I’m in the right place,” I pleaded. “Nobody’s told me anything! Please help me!” (which was probably a tad over-dramatic). Her face was a mask of fury.

“Go back and wait for the doctor,” she insisted as the doors closed. Miserable, I went back to the waiting area, buried my head in my hands and sobbed for about five minutes until I felt a bit better. Once I’d recovered, I sat there for a further two hours. Nobody called my name, and nobody passed me. It was getting on towards seven pm now, and I wouldn’t be able to get to Tempelhof before dusk. We might just make the last entry at Monsterkabinett.

At around half 7, a nurse walked past. I was feeling utterly deflated and powerless and very hungry by this point, and had more or less resigned myself to spending the entire night here. But I dredged up the last reserves of my energy to appeal to him.

“Please,” I said, “I’ve been here for nearly seven hours. Nobody has come for me or told me anything.” The nurse looked at me kindly and it nearly made me start crying again.

“Do you have an appointment?” he asked. I showed him the wristband that had been given to me by the triage team hours ago. He looked at it and his eyes widened in shock as he looked back up at me.

“Mr Norris,” he said, “the doctor has been calling you all afternoon.” I burst into tears, and he gently led me back into the area where I had been waiting before the triage doctor had told me to go left and left again. “Just wait here,” he said. About forty-five minutes later, the doctor called me in and asked to see the puncture wound. It was pretty much entirely invisible at this point.

“I’ll clean it and give you your tetanus shot,” he said. He cleaned it, then stuck a dressing on top of it, which hung flimsily at the edges. “It’s not sticking very well because it’s wet,” he said, “but it doesn’t really matter because the wound is so small.” I cringed. I had spent seven hours waiting in the wrong room and ruining mine and Miranda’s day for what the doctor clearly considered to be a really beta cuck puncture wound. “I’ll wrap it up with a bandage too, if you like,” he said, clearly feeling sorry for me and trying to invent ways to make it feel worth my while. He carefully tied his pointless pity-bandage around my foot, then asked me if I lived in Berlin.

“No, I’m just visiting for the weekend with my girlfriend,” I explained, feeling sorry for myself. Involuntarily, he let out a short bark of a laugh.

“Sorry,” he said. “It’s just you spend half your day waiting here. That’s really sad.” I nodded. I knew it was sad. I knew it because I was sad. I didn’t need him to remind me that what had happened to me was sad.

A nurse came and gave me my tetanus shot and I hobbled out of the hospital, exaggerating my limp to make it feel like it had been worth it. It was about half nine by now, nearly eight hours since I had first gone in. I met up with Miranda to eat a pizza and have a drink and we decided to get up early the next day and really make the most of our final full day in Berlin.

Bright and early the next morning, the friend who was very kindly hosting us during our stay developed serotonin syndrome and had to get to hospital urgently to stabilise her vital signs before it got worse. I escorted her to the same hospital and, in perhaps the funniest moment that happened to me all weekend, the triage doctor double taked at me when he saw me standing outside the doors, not unlike Bruce Willis’s immortal all-timer of a double take at 2:34 in this scene from Death Becomes Her.

“I’m fine,” I reassured him as he stared at me in horror. “My foot is fine. I’m just here to escort my friend.” But do you know what, it’s nice to really get to know a specific area of a foreign city when you visit. It makes you feel less like a tourist and more like someone who’s actually familiar with the place. The reason we’d gone to Flughafensee in the first place was because we’d swum there the year before, and we liked the idea of going back to somewhere we knew and loved. Now I have the same relationship with the emergency room of the Verchow Klinikum, and that’s not to be sneezed at. Perhaps if I’m back at the Berlin Fringe next year then I’ll be sure to look in on all my friends there and hear their news. I will also be sure to wear shoes when walking through a random wood. Every setback is a useful lesson, I find.

PS My friend’s vitals stabilised and she was ok. I am now immune to tetanus and will be scheduling a few late-night performances of a show in Edinburgh during the Fringe where I stab myself with rusty nails for a full hour, because they can’t do anything to me. The rat tail maggot passed its exams with flying colours and is now a successful entrepreneur.

A Quick Plug – Now that we’ve done our first ever international Eggbox show at Berlin, it’s time to start looking ahead to our next show on home turf, which is back at the Pleasance on the 10th of November! As ever, we’ll be showcasing a programme of amazing short films and live readings of brand new scripts. Lineup to be announced but it’s always a great show and tends to get busy, so do book ahead.

A Cool New Thing In Comedy – Oh God, I’ve no idea. As usual at this point of the year, everything comedy-related feels very Edinburgh Fringe-centric and I’m in the midst of helping seven different shows to get ready for their runs, so the last thing I want to do is look up some other comedy news. Maybe this week I’ll just use this section to say “Go and see loads of good stuff at the Edinburgh Fringe, I guess?” but it feels a bit like a cop-out.

Book Of The Week – Transcription by Ben Lerner. He’s back! I love this guy so much, Leaving The Atocha Station is still one of my all-time favourite books to this day. This one is about a writer who has to interview his mentor but accidentally breaks his phone just beforehand so is unable to record their conversation. It already has loads of fascinating stuff to say about screen addiction and focus and presence and I just love everything this guy thinks about.

Album Of The Week – Foreign Tongues by the Rolling Stones. I find that the Stones’ new music has been ruined for me by a review of the last album that described it as “Music for middle-aged dads to listen to in their car as they drive around slapping the steering wheel,” and that’s such a hard image to get out of your head once you’ve seen it. But this is fine. It reminds me a bit of Van Morrison’s baffling mid-2010s run of multiple hour-long albums of covers of old jazz standards, in that your overwhelming response listening to it is to think “This doesn’t really need to exist.” But it’s nice to hear the boys still doing their thing.

Film Of The Week – The Odyssey. I didn’t enjoy this as much as I wanted to given how much I love the story, but it absolutely nails the third act. The first two acts are extremely rushed and I cannot forgive them for taking Scylla, one of my favourite monsters since childhood, and making her into six long grey tubes that are onscreen for about ten seconds. But as I say, everything about Odysseus’s actual homecoming is really well done. Probably should’ve been two movies. Also contains certainly Christopher Nolan’s best-written wife character to date, although the bar for that is in hell.

That’s all for this week! Let me know what you think, and if you enjoy the newsletter enough to send it to a friend or encourage others to subscribe, I’d really appreciate it. Take care of yourselves until next time,

Joz xx

PS Feel free to send me a tip on Ko-Fi if you enjoy my work and would like to support me to keep making it!

PPS We spent a chunk of the rest of Sunday at the Berlin Botanical Gardens, which has this excellent set of stepping stones to let you live out your Indiana Jones/Tintin/Agent Arthur’s Jungle Journey fantasies:

Click here to go back