Berlin - They don't have natural rhythm, that's a fact

I've seen some incubator enclaves. The nanny-congested vale between Clapham Junction and almost (but never quite) Balham, the IVF twins and triplets attended by geriatric face-lifted parents in Tribeca, the convoys of infants propelled triumphantly in cycle-trailers through Islands Brygge and Nørrebro. I've witnessed evidence of some pretty heavy localised breeding. I was told about Prenzlauer Berg... but blimey, they weren't joking, or even exaggerating for effect.

I wondered if I'd even get into the district without accompaniment by offspring. Had my excuses ready ('What can I say, I'm a Jaffa, feel sorry for me', etc), but there was no checkpoint at Tor Straße to keep out the unprocreative. This isn't to say that progress was unimpeded, for the pavements were alive with pushchairs, in fact the upper reaches of Schönhauser Allee were practically gridlocked with the things. Great pantechnicons of baby carriages, conducted forward with the assurance and sense of entitlement of an eighteen-wheeler with a Brinks driver.

Strange to see so many parents looking after their own children. I don't know what it's like in your part of the world, but round my way it's practically illegal for childcare to take precedence over one's duty to the workplace. What about the 'Hardworking Families' beloved of our politicians? The Economy! Won't Someone Please Think of the Economy!

Great kinder-columns form up out of nowhere and descend upon the local S- and U-bahn without warning. While British children are simply turfed out into the playground for twenty minutes every morning, each German infant is guaranteed at least one bout of terrorising public transport by sheer weight of numbers somewhere in the school day. There are so many of these chains of brightly coloured children that isn't uncommon to see one cohort halted on the pavement to let another pass, like trains at a junction. Even more remarkable, I saw one large group supervised solely by men. Men! No women about at all. Social Services'd be onto that like a shot back here. Also, so many children all the same colour.

The youth of eastern Berlin are so Weiß, they play Wagner on their Handys. Nah, it was death metal or something, but at first it's quite surreal (if not as deeply disorientating as the stairs being on the 'wrong' side of their double deck buses) to hear music by white people on that medium. This enables a comparison based upon which I can say that, forced through the tiny speaker of a Nokia 90210 or an Ericsson C3PO, whether in Harlesden or Hellersdorf, all music sounds sh-t. Which is presumably why the little sh-ts / Scheißen do it.

Peripheral note:
There are compelling arguments for and against several pluralisations of the word 'Handy', in the context of text that is otherwise English. I have chosen from these using the formula specifically developed by linguists for such circumstances (eeny meeny miny mo) and will not enter into correspondence on the subject.

Where did they get the name 'Handy' anyway? Makes the phone sound like an san-pro item, easily and discreetly toted around in the handbag. 'Mobile' has resonance of something developed to give hours of fascination to infants, which is appropriate. 'Cell' just sounds like a means of communication between prisoners, replacing the banging on the water pipe with a tin cup.

The French 'Portable', already fading from currency, brings to my mind's eye something the size of a house brick, and a Gallic yuppie (it is to the credit of Gaul that this is a contradiction in terms), yelping 'vendre!' into it. Or more appropriately 'Vendre pas, la bourse descende vite, mais c'est la double-heure de dejuner, et travail arret' (again, I shall not enter into correspondence).