My old boss Klaus was hired to overhaul the cheap and cheerless vegetarian restaurant beneath the 'Free Art School' in Lottum Street and make it as chic as budget would allow. I struggled for months trying to translate his ideas for an 'industrial', turn-of-the-century kind of a thing, but never quite succeeded. On the opening night I thought the place looked like a posh waiting room at an exotic train station. There was jazz on the grand piano and people stood around uncertain as to how to tackle all the greasy finger-food while an excitable black cook from New Orleans ran in and out of the kitchen to hit on some seriously gorgeous German ladies in evening gowns. I got on well with him. He confided in me once that he had killed his best friend on a hunting trip in incredibly stupid circumstances. (Sadly, he didn't last long at stiff old Kid Creole.) In keeping with tradition I invited the hungriest of my pals to the 'do' and I guess we enjoyed ourselves immensely. I thought it amazing that nobody had snagged any bits of skin or jacket on the rusty iron-work which ran around the walls up to waist level - credit due again to designer Klaus. We had driven out of Berlin to select items from a builder's junk yard, including old doors and some massive metal piping made from ship's cable. It was coated in flaking cream paint (which we left as found, above) and installation was a nightmare for one or other of the Polish slaves. (I came back from this wonderful scrap yard with an ancient miniature pump organ, hoping to earn enough on the job to pay for it and still solve my rent and living riddles). Typically, I only really got the bit between my teeth towards completion, when I finally knew how the place would look. I went scavenging regularly, for sheet iron mainly, and am ashamed to have acquired some excellent material from the chill-out garden behind a local squat bar. These were four squares of deep-moulded angular ironwork, perfectly rusted, which may once have belonged to an enormous ventilation system. They were just the job to finish off the front of the bar (merely seen as a brown mass in the photo below). Looking back, I probably should have left them in the mud where I found them.