Epic Escapes from Communist East Germany

FINALLY I'm getting my money's worth from German telly. Several of the channels are doing a season on life in communist East Germany. My favourite programme was one that told in detail how the "inner German border" and Berlin wall were fortified and how people managed to escape.

Outside Berlin the border consisted of a strip of grass several hundred metres wide with watchtowers overlooking a fence no higher than many people have in their back gardens. The problem was that the "lawn" was strewn with two million Soviet mines. One day, a pair of East German border guards spotted a group of West Germans at the fence. They strolled over and shared cigarettes and beer. They were only half-way back when ~ BANG! ~ both were blown up by a mine. The border guards, who were basically teenage boys in the year between school and college, hadn't even known the mines were there. The West Germans climbed through the fence and fearlessly ran across the mine-field and carried the injured guards back through the fence, where they took them to a West German hospital. Despite having attained "freedom", both insisted they wanted to be returned to their own country...

The best story was about a group of people who made their own hot air balloon, which flew them to within 600 feet of the border only to run out of fuel and crash-land. So they make another even bigger balloon and actually do make it to West German soil. Disney made a film about it titled Night Crossing.

I'VE DECIDED to give up the heroin yet again. I know you've heard this time and again. But I'm far too psychologically dependent on it because it's the only thing that raises my mood. Alcohol doesn't. I've had three drinks in the past three weeks ~ half-litre cans of Lithuanian Fizz brand cyder. I only used to buy it because they drown out the taste of alcohol with overpowering cherry flavouring.

I'm terrified I'll plummet right down to the darkest abyss of depression, because I've been feeling bad for a month now, and it's been steadily getting worse. Dr Lovelace said I seemed broadly the same as two weeks ago and today I probably was. But I felt terrible at the weekend and have too much experience of low moods to be taken in by a two-day, probably heroin-induced, improvement.

I know I'm going to feel like crap, but I just have to grin and bear it. I have to live the rest of my life without illicit drugs and I'm going to have to start some time. So that time might as well be now...