The treecutters

This morning, early, they started again with more chainsaws, more men, and a noisy tree-mincing machine. It was gobbling up their cut branches and boughs and spewing a stream of sawdust into a trailer. It was snowing, hard.

I went over and tried talking to two of the men, one with a chainsaw and ear-muffs, the other more senior, with a luminous orange jacket. They couldn’t hear me at first so I had to shout.

“A house,” orange jacket replied.
“What kind of house?” I persisted.
“A house. With a roof,” he said.
The fucker. He knew what I meant.
“Do you want to buy a house or what?” he sneered while ear-muff guy sniggered.
I went off, went around, began taking pictures.
Orange jacket soon came over.

“A camera,” I replied as I took his picture.
He pulled out his phone, rang someone, began speaking hurriedly.
Another guy in an orange jacket came over.
“Stop that,” he said with his hand trying to block the lens.
“Why?” I asked. I was on the footpath.
No answer.

I decided the walk the scenic route home – just in case. Sure enough, when I looked back, I could see an orange jacket following. I didn’t hurry and neither did he.

“Do you want to speak with me?” I asked.
He was still on the phone, and put his hand up as he backed away across the street.
When I walked back I could see he was still looking to see where I was going. I took another scenic route, doubled back, and made it home, unseen.

But Berlin’s track record is poor in this regard. More likely they’ll be “exclusive” apartments aimed at rich investors who’ll leave them empty as they wait for the market to catch up with their speculative investments, thus contributing to the problem new properties are supposed to be solving. So ist Berlin, Wowereits Berlin.
Why wouldn't they want to have pictures taken of what they're doing? Maybe I wouldn't want to have my picture taken, but I wouldn't care if someone took a picture of my work.
ReplyDeleteUnless it's something shady I guess.
That's what I thought!
Deletewell, even if it's not shady, you know, ES IST VERBOTEN. ALLES VERBOTEN.
Deletehaha i love the fact that you took photos of the guys too
Delete