Lemon buff

More story. That's the end of chapter 7 and the middle section. Now onto endgame with 3 chapters and an epilogue.

Gradually everyone started to return from their respective breaks. Steve and Brooksie were the first, proudly holding lumps of the Berlin wall that looked no different from pieces of rubble collected anywhere. They were met by Jer replete on a diet of pulp horror, bottles of Stavropramen and bread, salami and cheese. Bread and cheese, main diet when touring, cripplingly constipating but cheap, plentiful and readily available. Luckily beer served as a kind of laxative. Later in the afternoon Little Legs arrived back, apart from sending postcards he had made himself useful and had picked up a starter motor from a scrapyard as the van’s was “dicky”. He busied himself immediately with the help of many other vehicle owners keen to share their expertise in, and history of, keeping crap vehicles going. The gig was a late one starting at 11, finish time, when everyone was too drunk or stoned to notice that there was a band on.
There was some nervousness then when Mo still had not arrived back at 9pm. The freewheeling nature of the band meant that most absences could be worked around,   sometimes songs were hastily taught to locals hours before gigs, other times additional musicians added and told to improvise. Nobody minded or seemed to notice too much. However the loss of a singer and Mo’s theatrics was a sizeable hole to fill. The band at 9.30 started to rejig the set, adding songs that either Jer or Steve could sing, some that would better serve as instrumentals and persuading a local they had befriended to rant some of his poems over the music ‘a la’ Blue Aeroplanes a band from Bristol they regularly gigged with.
“Well, it will have to do” said Jer a little nervously looking at the list of songs barely legible amongst the crossings out and rearrangements.
The band weren’t too worried, some of their best gigs being the most potentially disastrous, adversity truly being the mother of invention in their case. Mo, however, did in fact turn up. The first sign was a movement of people to the big window overlooking the area where the vans were all encamped. Then Mo arrived at the door looking dishevelled but very wired and with a mixture of triumphalism and fear on his face. He walked over to the table quickly sat down and muttered to the rest of the band
“Don’t say anything, just look like I’ve been here all evening”
“What’s going on” said Jer
“Nothing, well quite a lot actually but I’ll tell you later “
Just then three policemen arrived at the door surrounded by a furious coterie of elders demanding search warrants. Relations between Kopi and the police were generally very good, a blind eye turned towards the community as long as transgressions occurred strictly on the premises. In return the authorities were satisfied that a sizeable portion of Berlins “weirdos” were kept off the streets, not upsetting the increasingly wealthy population and tourists.
The police ignored the increasingly irate protestations raging around them. More people arrived, all eager to add to the complaints. Casting an eye over the room and towards the band sitting in the corner the police signalled intent to talk to them. However massively outnumbered they were slowly, firmly but gently, being moved out of the room and down the stairs by the osmosis like motion of the, by now, large surrounding mob.
All the band except Mo joined the crowd at the window to witness the crowd, amoeba like, inexorably moving the police back towards their car, in front of which sat the reason for their visit. Sitting parked askew as if abandoned very quickly rested a very small car covered in large pink triangles with the driver’s door open.
The band looked back at Mo who was now on the stage adjusting the mic and constructing something from cardboard and gaffa tape
“What?” he said
Much later on after the gig he told the whole story to the band and many interested members of the collective.
For many years he had been communicating with a band from East Berlin called “Rosa Leere”
As well as a band they were pranksters, part of the International Situationist  movement. Though no longer an official movement, dissolved in 1972, Situationism still inspired people to perform acts designed to challenge the capitalist status quo or nowadays any authority as evinced by Rosa Leere’s acts against repressive communism. The practical result of the theory or artwork sometimes manifested as ‘the spectacle’
“It’s something I am interested in, the use of art and culture as a protest” explained Mo
“Started with punk in 1976 with me, the art, fashion, attitude were just as important as the music”
“Ah so that’s what you mean in Spray gun ‘something masquerading as nothing’ sang
Brooksie
“Yes kind of, but I sing it in tune’”
Everyone laughed but they settled quickly eager to know what happened next. It transpired that a project to smuggle a Trabant out of East Germany and drive it around the Reichstag covered in Pink triangles had been planned for many months. Its function was to remind people of the less reported genocide of the gay community by the Nazis and to highlight current legislation in both East and West Germany which still, under law, made homosexuality a punishable crime.
Though not expressed explicitly by Marx Or Lenin homosexuality was considered not relevant to, or helpful in, the working class struggle. The soviet ruling class still considered homosexuality particularly gay men to be degenerate, something associated with the aristocracy or fascism. Interestingly fascist and capitalists leaders were equally contemptuous. To be a gay man then was to be reviled by all political doctrines.  
“It took ages to work it out but we managed to find a way to smuggle the Trabant through the border with a mixture of insider connections, bribes and mild blackmail. I don’t want to go into details”
he added mysteriously.  
“ The rest was easy just drove around and around the Reichstag, until the police finally twigged it was possibly more than just an idiot in a colourful car and started to try and stop me. Great chase, amazing how well ‘a spark plug with a roof’  can go when pushed”
“It’s probably near to blowing a gasket but the guys here will nurse it back to health” said Little Legs
Already the vehicle had been moved into a central location in the car park and had been the subject of much curiosity and admiration from everyone in the building. The petrolheads loved seeing this rarely seen East German icon, the LGBT community loved the narrative behind the spectacle, everyone else liked the notion of getting one over “the man”
“Anyway” continued Mo
“ I discovered a lot more from my friends about the situation over there and potentially of Prague”,
their next and final stop.