"You're pooing and flushing like you've been here before," I continue to probe Andi as we mount bakelite plugs. "You too,” he laughs.

But yes, many months ago he was here for a few months. Back then he got off with a suspended sentence. This time it will probably be longer.

I try to find out if he wants to talk about it. "No, I don't feel like it." Instead he wants to know why I can sing those lyrics.

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"Being able to sing is relative," I fish for compliments. The one-eyed man is king among the blind. But yes, maybe there is something in my genes.

One reason is my biological father, whom I hardly know. According to my grandmother, who can play the harmonica, he played in a band long before I was born and is still touring the area.

For years I have been trying to get hold of an intact guitar. So far in vain. The guitars that I occasionally got for a few days were either borrowed or so broken that they were no fun to play.

Hoping to get a decent guitar from my father one day, I collected lyrics for many years. Mostly Neue Deutsche Welle and Udo Lindenberg, because his lyrics are damn brilliant.

Even as a child I secretly pushed my parents' record player to its limits and wrote down line by line what Frank Schöbel was singing.

And I sang along while I was washing in the bathroom at night, because the acoustics there were so wonderful that I liked to hear myself sing.

Over the years I built up such a repertoire that I developed a tic. Certain phrases in conversation act as triggers.

A line from a song pops into my head and I have to sing it, almost compulsively. As he noticed on our first evening. Do you want another rehearsal by Trio?

“Los Paul, Du musst ihm voll in die Eier hau’n (Come on Paul, you gotta hit him in the balls /

Das ist die Art von Gewalt, die wir seh’n woll’n (That's the kind of violence we want to see) /

Wenn auch nicht spür’n woll’n (Even if we don't want to feel it)” …

In the middle of the song, the guy with the book trolley arrives. Now I'm really curious.

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