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Brown should have said the government will not, and cannot, stop house prices falling. The stamp duty holiday is a bad mistake - all too characteristic of the prime minister. It's an expensive way to entice first-time buyers into negative equity, as all predictions are of steeper falls in house price. That money - maybe £600m - would be much better spent letting councils buy homes to keep a roof over the heads of families whose own homes have been repossessed - and buying cheap properties for social housing.

This is part of Polly Toynbee's article today calling for the Labour Party to get rid of Gordon Brown. I've not trabelled as far as Polly has on this: yes, there needs to be an abrupt change in the government's approach, and if it takes a new leader to get it, then I want one too. I've not yet seen that kind of new leader, though. It may be Miliband, but unless he starts talking about new policies, we won't know. But I certainly do agree with Polly about stamp duty, as I wrote a month ago:

I'm not convinced that any subsidy for the housing market is sensible: even schemes such as the special one for key workers seem to me likely to have a marginally inflationary effect, and the heart of our housing problem is price inflation. Except for those people who will go into negative equity, house price falls should be welcome, and the government should do nothing to try to prevent them. So I think tax breaks to prop up the market are a mistake.... A Labour government should simply be trying to help those at risk of repossession.

Mr Clarke offers no alternative policies to address the political nightmare of governing in an economic downturn, the main source of Labour's unpopularity. There is no point replacing a leader if the successor is pilloried for presiding over precisely the same economic gloom.

Those who want the removal of Mr Brown have three obligations. First, they must spell out in detail how they would deal with the external factors that have derailed Mr Brown's leadership, in particular the credit crunch and the soaring price of oil and food. Second, they must outline their policies for the future and how they connect with a party that is meant to be on the centre-left of British politics. In fairness to Mr Clarke he has done that in articles and lectures. Third, they must demonstrate they can build a coalition of support that gives Labour a chance of winning the next election.

This is Steve Richards, writing in today's Independent. I agree with most of what he says - but not on the credit crunch and oil and food prices. These are in effect political invariables: neither Brown nor any successor can wish or wave them away, and there's no reason why the person with the best plan to tackle them is necessarily the best person to lead Labour into the next election. Rather, it's a leader's broader positive political vision that qualifies him or her to be given the chance to grapple defensively with the economic storm.

I think he's generous to Clarke on his lecturing, too. I can't claim to have followed what he's been saying assiduously - but what I have seen and read from him on future policy has tended be be pretty uninspiring technocratic stuff or apple pie, like talking about the importance of prioritising housing or of tackling climate change. What's needed is on a higher level.

Clarke is right: Brown must do better. But how?

Leo Reynolds/CreativeCommons

Things are collapsing around Gordon Brown. First, last weekend, Alistair Darling broke ranks and took his own brutally honest line about the economy; now Charles Clarke, writing in the New Statesman and in BBC interviews, has called for him to raise his game dramatically within months, or else step down. In a way I take Darling's intervention more seriously because it signals division right at the top of government about how to handle the economic storm currently buffeting Britain. Clearly Darling thinks the government has failed to show it feels people's pain or that it really gets how tough things suddenly feel for almost everyone. He's decided to let them know he's aware of the full measure of their difficulty whatever his boss might say. This reminds me of Norman Lamont back in the early nineties, the way he felt cheesed off by having to take the brickbats for an economic policy he never really believed in but which was imposed on him from Number 10. Darling must feel much the same thing. But back to Darling later.

Charles Clarke's warning is stern, dire, grim - all those things. And I agree with him completely that Labour, rather than lapsing into fatalism, ought to do something urgently to try to avoid a crushing defeat at the next election. He's right that things cannot go on like this - or if they do, that Labour risks not only being in opposition but being politically annihilated. I think he may feel, like me, that Labour's whole future is at stake. It sounds OTT, I know, but it's not. Gordon Brown could be the last Labour Prime Minister unless he does something to shore the party up now. But the question is, what should he do? John Humphrys said in his radio interview with Clarke this morning on Today that his proposals were woolly, and he's right: Clarke has offered no hint of any actual policy change or initiative that could restore the government's standing, only saying it needs to improve its performance and, by means of an analysis of the Blair years in his New Statesman article, implying heavily that Gordon Brown is to blame for almost everything that went wrong in Labour's first decade. That's not good enough. Those who agree with Clarke's concerns, like me, have a duty to say what the government should do now - not just talk about personalities.

The government needs to become more political, more ideological, and less managerial. Whatever one thinks of Tony Blair, his government without doubt shifted public debate to the left. Not in any old-style 1970s sense of stirring up militancy (though there are some hints of that in the public sector) or a desire for nationalisation, but by bringing state-funded and state-sponsored welfare services to the centre of people's concerns, together with personal rights at work. If you're in any doubt about that, look at the things David Cameron says: he knows he'd be against the grain of British opinion if he made Thatcherite noises about privatising things, cutting provision and making people work harder. What many people thought Brown would offer was a more intense focus on these themes - a more bread-and-butter, traditional home-front Labourism - than we'd had under Tony Blair in his last years, together with the application of clear principles favouring the less well off and the deserving. But after a few months they found out that was not what they were getting at all. Quite apart from his ditherings over the non-election, Nothern Rock and all that, what has damaged Gordon Brown is the widespread perception that he's lost his moral compass, or perhaps never really had one. That's why the 10p tax band muck-up - Brown's last act as Chancellor - was his first and worst mistake as PM.

The way to recover is to rediscover the principles Brown's supporters thought he had. He would do well to put less emphasis on foreign and security affairs and on the terrorism and civil liberties agenda - he should leave those things to his ministers. Nor should he bog himself down in the detail of financial management he's used to from the Treasury. His job is to give to all the government's work the social theme of equality and fairness. There's an economic war on, he should be telling the public - there's no point in his pretending times aren't tough, or in my pretending he can wish away the "economy, stupid" mess he's in. But to put it in crude political terms, he needs to blame the rich, the banks and big firms for where we are now, so as to deflect blame from himself; he needs to align himself clearly with ordinary people, and the Conservatives with those same rich people, banks and firms.

So: a windfall tax? I don't know about that, but he should publicly comment on energy firms' pricing policies and use the threat of intervention to influence them. He should be financing additional public spending through taxes on the better off - and must never repeat the blunder over the 10p rate. He needs to do more to help those threatened with repossession - though in my view he should have done more for them instead of the stamp-duty sop he gave to first-time buyers, as though they really exist and as though it'll make any difference. It won't. Something he could have done for those at risk of losing their homes is to set up some sort of "mis-lending" Ombudsman to whom people can appeal if they think they were lent too much, too recklessly - and to make an order by him binding on the courts so that they cannot order possession. He should publicly call on firms to ensure social equality in their price structures - the poorest, using meters and keys to pay for their energy, should pay no more than others, for instance - and punish firms if they don't come into line. And he should help the public finances by raising the ceiling on national insurance contributions so that progressively, the better off start to pay a fair share of their incomes in social charges. An imaginative solution is needed to Britain's pensions crisis - it needs to be developed now. Young people's lives could be made fairer and brighter by changing student finance so that debt is repaid by public service, and housing supply could be increased by raising both council tax and inheritance tax on second homes.

In a way I'm inviting him to put on a big red wig and become Barbara Castle for the next eighteen months: not everyone would like it, but then by trying hard to be liked by everyone so far Brown has brought himself and his government to the brink. A stiff dose of passion and purpose would be risky, but risk-taking is what's now needed.

Will he do anything like this? I doubt it. I think he's to cautious and too tactical a politician for that. I'm not sure he's capable of making the weather, except in a bad way. In which case, Clarke's right - Brown should go. I can't see him doing that either, though.

As for Alistair Darling, Brown may be tempted to swap him with David Miliband, thus neutralising the man who's behaving in the most threatening way at the moment. But could that possibly work? If I were Miliband I'd find a way - any way - of plausibly turning that down and leaving the government, and that would potentially set off all sorts of bangs.

I came back to a vicious diatribe against my play, Her Naked Skin, in the papers. Having a production on always feels as if you've been in a boxing match: no external bruising, but sharp internal hooks and punches. But I find I'm beginning to care less about the jabs, which implies I'm entering a state of either Zen or monomania.

This is Rebecca Lenkiewicz writing in the New Statesman about her family holiday in Cornwall, and its end. I think she must mean this piece in the Guardian by Viv Groskop:

Her Naked Skin has been portrayed as a political play, an exciting new feminist piece. It is neither of these things. Instead, it is a play about a doomed - and, frankly, unbelievable - upstairs-downstairs lesbian romance, played out against a suffragette backdrop....  The next three hours follow the increasingly cliched romp between two fictional suffragettes: the youthful Eve Douglas (Jemima Rooper), a cor-blimey machinist from Limehouse, and the middle-aged Lady Celia Cain (Lesley Manville), a plum-in-the-mouth aristocrat desperate to escape her husband and children. The play seems to forget it ever had any politics. Yes, we see the prison conditions the suffragettes endured, the tensions between husband and activist wife, the rows in the House of Commons. But at no point does anyone attempt to explain why these women wanted the vote so badly they were prepared to risk their lives for it.

I agree with Viv Groskop, and I think it's a bit much for Lenkiewicz to call this a "vicious diatribe". As I said in my review, my problem was the play's general lack of depth, and the fact that we never got underneath what we think we know about the suffragettes, or to understand their motivation.

Class, ethnic and faith segregation are the most damaging reasons why the Accord coalition needs to prevail. But consider too the craziness of creationism now taught in many more schools than before. Homophobic bullying is worse in faith schools - hardly surprising since most sects preach that gay sex is sin, in Islam one punishable by death. Stonewall found 23% fewer gay pupils able to tell anyone about their sexuality, and least sex education in faith schools. All religions were founded on women's inferiority. In Islam what women wear is a battle-flag of identity, in Catholicism governing women's fertility is the die-in-the-ditch issue. The state can't protect children from pernicious views and doctrines at home - but it has a duty to protect them in state schools.

So writes Polly Toynbee in today's Guardian, which also has an editorial piece on religious schools along the same lines supporting the Accord Coalition, which is a new campaign arguing that religious schools should not be able to recruit either pupils or teachers on the basis of faith.

I've always been a bit embarrassed about not quite knowing what I think about religious schools. On the one hand, I'm an atheist and secularist, and don't like the thought either of religious indoctrination of children or of social segregation. On the other, I'm very aware if the failings of state education and think that genuine diversity (that's diversity used in the original sense rather than that of current political jargon) in education might help bring standards up. I'm not completely convinced by what Polly Toynbee writes: while I accept her point about there being a differnec ein social background between pupils in religious and other schools, a rate of 17% of pupils entitled to free school meals is not radically dofferent from 25%. Something in me suspects that driven teachers of all kinds - mad, bonkers teachers, even - whether Christians, black power activists, separatist feminists or masculinists who think boys are somehow oppressed in today's society should be given a chance to show whether they can produce results with kids, results in terms of academic success and in terms of behavioural standards. So I sometimes feel troubled that I'm not as certain as some of my secularist friends that religious schools should just be abolished. I console myself with the thought that they're not being politically realistic: opposing the existence of religious schools is as practical as opposing private schools. banning them just ain't gonna happen.

But it must be said that the main current risk in this area is the snowballing number of religious schools, and the increasing stridency of religious claims over religion, whether that be claiming a right to teach creationism, as I believe some schools amazingly do, a right for pupils to wear religious clobber or a right to discriminate in all manner of ways in hiring staff. While I can see the point, once you accept a school can be a Catholic school, of accepting that it should be able to recruit at least a preponderance of Catholic teachers. Further than that, however, things should not go. That still leaves me not quite in accord with Accord, which, it seems to me, religious people can pretty fairly characterise as a campaign to deprive the concept of religious schools of all meaning. I'd rather see all religious schools compelled to take some non-religious staff and pupils, to teach evolution by natural selection as factually correct, to prove that they do not discriminate on grounds of sex or sexuality and to prohibit any special religious clothes for girls.

I very much agree with Accord that (as they imply is now the case) religious schools should not be able to hire dinner ladies or caretakers on grounds of religion: that suggestion is outrageous.

The 2008 Carnegie Challenge Cup final

On Saturday I was kindly offered a ticket to the Rugby League Challenge Cup final - a fabulous ticket, actually, in one of the prawn sandwich boxes that dominate all major sporting arenas these days. I manged to get this offer though because it seems no one in corporate England wanted to come to this game; they're all slaves to the money-vampire soccer, I suppose. So, the undead not filling their posh seats, there were vast acres of space for crashers like me. I even managed to get free beer, which was quite a blag I thought. This was my first Challenge Cup final for eighteen years. I used to come here most years for some time; from 1975, when Warrington failed pathetically to live up to my ten-year-old wish for them to win, in spite of John Bevan's early try, to 1980, the famous all-Hull final. After that something strange happens: I can't recall exactly when I wasn't there, except for being certain I was there to see Castleford beat Hull KR in 1986 and to see Warrington disappointed yet again in 1990. Odd, isn't it, how aging makes you forget what's more recent rather than the old stuff. I can still see Bevan saluting to the crowd after that 1975 touchdown.

This used to be a great sport, and a great final. Certainly the Challenge Cup is the best trophy sport has to offer, I reckon: it's a proper Victorian cup, more elaborate than soccer's FA Cup and much more substantial that any modern trophy. Worth lifting. But I've despaired a bit for rugby league in recent years. The game I grew up with and played half-decently as a schoolboy became boring, I'm sorry to say, in the 1990s, not because of any effect of aging this time - I've never gone off the game - but because of money. A couple of years of success from Wigan - who ten years or so before had been a joke, a team everyone knew they'd beat easily, and who'd once been relegated - and their crowds swelled, they recruited all the best players, and won this cup eight years in a row. If I remember right, they won the league most of those years, too. It wasn't fair, not fair in that childish way that makes you go off the game and go in to watch telly instead. I have to admit I got sick of it. It wasn't just watching Wigan win all the time. It was all the time knowing they'd win. In 1990 for instance, we turned up hopefully and Mike Gregory scored for Warrington, but I think very few people really believed we would beat Wigan that day.

The ludicrous thing is that even Wigan didn't make money during those years of dominance: they paid out so much in players' wages that they had to win everything to balance the books. Since then, there's been a little improvement. There's now a salary cap so that in theory at least one team can't bag all the best players. I wonder, though, what tricks are used to circumvent this rule. While there's no longer a monopoly on success, there's certainly an oligopoly, with St. Helens and Leeds the top two sides. St Helens have now won the cup for the last three years, and have topped the league for the last three years, too. They're currently top of this year's superleague, with Leeds in second place. So rugby league is still not free of the curse of predictability. It's also, ludicrously, turned itself into a summer game to fit the Sky Sports schedules. The idea of rugby as a summer sport seems to me laughable I must say. Only the rubbishness of the last couple of summers has made sense of it.

So I took all that baggage with me to the game, hoping for a real match but expecting Saints to steamroller Hull. Well, it wasn't quite like that. Saints did indeed get off to a good start, with an easy try for Gidley and a soft one from an inerception by Meli. Hull seemed overawed and flat-footed - there was little energy or movement from the line when Hull had the ball, and too often they played one-man rugby. Either that or the acting half-back's only option was to hand the ball to someone who looked unenthusiastic about driving for yards. This was in marked contrast to what Saints did on the ball - they always had options, or seemed to, with more than one man running on to a pass at speed. But Hull plugged away gamely and just about kept themselves in the game, till an immense piece of luck - an interception by Yeaman and a long-range score bringing them, astonishingly, within four points. Hull scored again and led at one point, and with a quarter of an hour or so to go it looked possible they might just sneak this cup in spite of being the clearly inferior side; St Helens, though, had one or two more tricks to play, and came out well ahead by the end. This turned out a much better game than might have been expected - Hull had an awful lot of luck and this could easily have been a pasting.

So I came home a bit encouraged about rugby league. And yet. Much more needs to be done to stop money and the short-term irrational interests of clubs from keeping this sport down. It could be so much stronger - but never will be until its competitions are much more open and the full enthusiasm of all its big audiences is roused, not just in St Helens and Leeds but also in Bradford, Castleford, Warrington, Hull, Salford, Halifax and Widnes. My plan would be to have central salary negotiations, agreed with the rugby league, so that a player would be paid the same whatever club he moved from or to (with the richer clubs subsidising the system if need be), together with a rigorous audit system that pursued and prosecuted - for fraud - any club making illegal payments or giving unusual perks to its players. I know this all sounds somewhat draconian and interventionist, but then in the North we're not afraid of intervention; and this sport has shown itself so vulnerable to the distorting effects of money that a strong system needs putting in place.

One last word in praise of St Helens: they, unlike other clubs, have not chosen a stupid infantilised name like Leeds "Rhinos", Castleford "Tigers" or (God help us) Warrington "Wolves". If you ever see a Wolf in Warrington, a Tiger in Castleford or a Rhino in Leeds, please let me know.

Tricia Ward/CreativeCommons

The woman painting her name onto the bottom of the ticket is Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska, who it seems will be John McCain's running mate in November. I don't know anything more about her than anyone else outside Alaska - she seems to be a social conservative on issues like abortion, I'm sorry to say, to have independent views on energy and a reputation for integrity; and this recent poll suggests she certainly has serious political ability. As running-mates go, she could be quite an effective one.

There's something quite obvious about Palin, though, which is the real key to this appointment. As I said before, Barack Obama's boring selection of Joe Biden left the door widen open for McCain to pick a woman. It's got three aims, this. One, to surprise people by bringing on board someone new and interesting, and disturbing the image of McCain as a dull old man. Second, to close the "progress gap": while electing Obama would be a massive step forwards for America in terms of racial equality, electing the McCain/Palin ticket would also be pretty historic; so McCain has made this less of a choice between progress and statis than it was before. Third, this is specifically aimed at those women who supported Hillary Clinton as much because she was female as because of any policy commitments. If any of them are sceptical about Obama and up for grabs in November - and I and I guess John McCain reckon there are quite a few - then this gives them a reason for voting Republican.

Obama should have picked a woman himself, and given McCain the choice between apparently tokenistic tit-for-tat and grey-suited male nostalgia. The danger for Obama is not that he will scare the horses; it's that Obamamania will run out of steam or for some reason fail to fly in November in the way it did in February. The big stage in Denver last night may make it look a great week for him - but actually I think he's going through a dodgy patch.

A short visit to Kreuzberg

watz/CreativeCommons

I don’t really know Kreuzberg: somehow my visits to Berlin have never taken me there, I suppose because I spent time in the old East and have always kept going back there. I’ve no reason to go on this visit, except to have a look around, and a walk along another stretch of the Landwehrkanal, a short on from Kottbusser Strasse to the Böcklerpark. And then to Oranienstrasse – not to be confused with Oranienburgerstrasse, the one I keep going on about, which is a quite different place. East Kreuzberg, I guess I was in.

Everyone will tell you that Kreuzberg is where Berlin’s ethnic minorities live, and indeed they do. This is a massively racially mixed area, but the main influence is of course Turkish: every other shop seems to be a Turkish grocery or café, with men outside sipping tea and most probably talking nonsense, and many, or most of the women are wearing headscarves – fun, colourful ones for the most part. What you don’t see though is any sort of face-covering veil here, which I think suggests that the Turkish community in Germany, even if non-secular and consciously Islamic, is less receptive to extreme versions of Islam than, say, the Pakistani community in England. That sort of thing seems to have little purchase here.

Apart from the ethnic mix, Kreuzberg is a very aggressively alternative part of Berlin, which is something I must admit I find hard not to satirise. As I sat making notes for this post, behind me in the Bateau Ivre bar a young woman types at her Mac, a copy of a book called Classic Marxism open beside her. The men to my left are sharing a tin of tobacco, those to my right, two men of a certain age trying to look younger with long, dry hair (not that I’m against that: I need not to be) and slack, deep-folded faces roll their own from a packet of some other brand; on the other side of the road, a shop called the Hanf-Haus (‘Hemp House”) sells I know not what, but I think I can guess, roughly. Back in the Böcklerpark, a group of youngish adults sat on the grass surrounded by any number of kids; one of the women wore a woolly hat, I noticed, and one of the men was tapping on a little drum – like a tambourine but without the jingles. And there’s not one, but two radical bookshops within a short walk.

Just two more things I’ll mention: just before I left, a young couple walked past me on the pavement in pretty tame but very black and attention-seeking bondage gear, while behind them a young woman drove past in a motoring school car. She was in a headscarf; her instructor one of those hard-face middle-aged Berlin blondes with curls. I could really get to like Kreuzberg, I think, but I can’t take it completely seriously.

The graffiti gets me down a bit though, I must admit: some of it is worth being called street art, yes, like the piece I've used here. But like all graffiti, most of it's crap.

Berlin's Tiergarten

possessus/CreativeCommons

It’s another very good park. Perhaps it’s because it was Wednesday when I was there, perhaps it’s because all Berliners are away on holiday or perhaps Berlin is just like this, but there seemed to be at least as many people tending the Tiergarten yesterday – weeding, sweeping, digging things up - as there were enjoying it. But it was good to see they’re looking after it. The south-eastern quarter of the Tiergarten (I mean the big bit, south and east of the Siegessäule) is quite varied: Bellevue Allee is as straight, broad and grand a formal avenue as you could want, but you’ll also find windy little ways and green shaded walks in there, as well as Liegewiesen. In some parts of the park you’re asked not to walk on the grass (near the flower-beds of the Luiseninsel for instance, where they really do seem to have attracted butterflies, as they claim – that part is protected by gates to keep rabbits out, too). Although whether the Berliners actually obey these orders is another matter: there are signs prohibiting barbecues, too, but also evidence here and there that this rule is not always kept. In other parts however you’re positively encouraged to get on and flop as much as you like. A Liegewiese is a field for lying down in, so if you see that sign you know you’re okay. I especially liked the big one with the bench round the tree.

The Tiergarten is a bit like Central Park, it struck me as I walked around it. It’s not as important in Berlin life as Central Park is in New York’s. It’s smaller, too, and if anything it’s even more difficult here to get away from the constant sound of traffic. And the Tiergarten is pretty flat. One thing this park has that New York hasn’t, though, is lots of old-fashioned signs telling you what path you’re on in, written in fabulous gothic fraktur script. I’m easily pleased by typography. 

The south-eastern quarter is less interesting in a way – there’s not so much space to lounge around in and the paths are less varied – but to offset that, the walkways are more relaxed and shaded, and the views over the Neuer See, where people row boats aimlessly, are very nice indeed. Something that puzzled me here was what all the people were doing standing around (they all seemed to have shooting-sticks, or whatever the name is for the modern equivalent of those contraptions, but weren’t sitting on them) in groups of two or three, holding hands, talking, apparently under the supervision of some group-leader, hugging sometimes even. Was this some sort of religious demonstration? A form of therapy?

Keep going along the Grosse Weg in this part of the garden and eventually you cross a bridge to your left to head through the Schleuseninsel where the lake meets the Landwehrkanal, or doesn’t, quite – I couldn’t tell. Near there (just by the bridge over the lock – behind the blue building) you’ll find a fun little Biergarten, the Schleusenkrug. What a terrific institution these places are! Go up to the window and ask for what you want – it’s self-service – then find your place on a seat or bench among the Germans. This was one of the few places, perhaps the only place in Berlin where I heard not one foreign voice, as I sat in the half-shade drinking a Berliner Weisse – mit grün. That’s a very Berlin drink, if slightly touristy – a light sort of beer flavoured either with raspberry (mit rot) or with Waldmeister, which I think is woodruff although to be frank I've no idea what that is even in English.

Toll der Tiergarten! as a small boy might say in a German language book for learners. It’s excellent. Give yourself another view on the water as you head back towards Berlin Mitte by walking along the banks of the lake (under the fabulous vintage or vintage-style lamps – the Germans are much better than we are at convincing replicas) or along the Landwehrkanal, which will give you a free mini-look at the Zoo.

Sophieneck, Grosse-Hamburger-Strasse

parklife (with permission to transform)/CreativeCommons

I’m so, so angry and frustrated that I can’t show you the pictures I took of this place, because it’s my favourite pub in Berlin. You find it in the Scheunenviertel, the streets north of Alexanderplatz and Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse, just a few minutes east off Oranienburgerstrasse (which I know I keep going on about). Sophieneck (nothing to do with a neck - it should arguably be written Sophie'n Eck) means Sophie or Sophie's corner, and it’s on the corner where Sophienstrasse meets Grosse Hamburger Strasse, where you’ll struggle to buy a hamburger of any size.

What can I say about Sophieneck? In winter you enter through the main door, pull back the thick curtain and face the bar, slowly discovering the atmopheric interior; in summer people sit outside, or stand smoking now – although it’s a one-room bar and so I think could allow smoking again following the Constitutional Court’s ruling that applying the smoking ban in its current form to one-room bars is disproportionate, it’s chosen to stay non-smoking on the inside – and you enter from the side if you like. What never changes is the warm but clear light from the low green lamps hanging, almost as though it were a library, over the tables and from the candles all around. This pic, if a bit festively wintry compared to the way I saw Sophieneck last night, gives you an impression of how it feels.

andedam/CreativeCommons

You sit at any of the collection of apparently scraped-together, worn wooden tables and chairs with which the place is furnished, some with leather green or red upholstery. The cornered two-seater with the iron bits is my fave, by the way. On all the walls are vintage metal advertisements, for Schultheiss beer, Gold Dollar cigarettes, Ricard, Leibniz-Cakes, Tetley’s Ales even, and Kathreiner’s malted coffee. That used to make children gesund und kräftig, apparently. And look up at the gorgeous green beading – is that what you call it? The bit where the ceiling meets the walls, anyway, is painted with carved bosses or motifs (can you tell that I struggle with architectural vocabulary?) and is very much in place here.

The only thing that could possibly improve it would be to do away with the music which is just noticeable in the background, though not always, to be fair. If they did that, Sophieneck would be the best pub in the world. As it is, though, it’s damn good. The food is perhaps solid rather than brilliant – I had (and took a photo of – grrr!) a nice Kassler last night, mind, with sauerkraut and potatoes.

It’s a fine, fine place, and if you like pubs you’ll love it. It has a website, too, with a couple of pictures I’m glad to say and a sort of impressionistic panorama thing.

UPDATE: I've realised it's the fact that they cook meals that means they can't use the one-room pub exemption from the smoking ban. Silly of me to have overlooked that.