Song(s) of the Day # 4,124 R.E.M.

 

When I was 19, between A Levels and university I had a gap year. I didn't want to go to The University of Sussex or Brighton Poly as many of my friends chose to do. I wanted to be my own man if I could. Forty years on I probably still do. I got a temporary job in the W'H.Smith's in Richmond coming up to Christmas 1984. I worked in the basement punching price stickers onto boxes for others to put out on the shop floor shelves. I had a good time there Spent a lot of the money I earned on records. A lot more on beer. in the pubs of Richmond, Twickenham, Kew and Teddington I was happy. In the way that you only are at that age. Priveliged. Moving into life.Becoming myself.

In January I took a set of trains and travelled with an English girl of my age from Leeds to Locarno Switzerland. When we got to the Swiss border we met a German girl and a Danish girl who were going to the Casa Locarno to start work too. In a guest hotel run by the Swiss Council of Churches as a unique tool of reconciliation and fellowship.

 The German girl whose name was Franziska was reading a copy of The Name of The Rose. The Danish girl I fell in love with over the next six months. I won't tell you her name to protect the innocent. We were probably all reading books. Smartphones did not figure in our consciousness. When we got to Locarno we took a funiculaire up the steady Alpine slope to the Casa Locarno in Monti where we were going to live and work for the next six months.

There were a few people waiting for us. The Hotel Director Miss Keller. A girlish but very attractive woman in her late thirties or early forties who had a chatty, vivacious manner and a sense of fun. A lot of charm. A slightly nervous laugh.

There was the houskeeper Haki another Swiss German, a wiry woman who showed us the ropes and put us through our paces. She smoked like a chimney and chattered relentlssly. She was unbelievably  tough but underneath kind and deeply protective I realised with time.Always had a cigarette on the go

There was also a tall friendly German guy named Holger who I became friends with almost immediately. Sensitive guy. Good guitarist. Reader. A sweet Danish girl called Sigrin with a lovely smile and a s[pt of excema. They worked with us for a month before heading back to their families. Cleaning the hotel. Preparing it for guests. The Swiis way. 

I can't remember what I brought with me. I think I carried everything in one of those backpacks with stiff aluminium back support and a basic supply of clothing which I supplemented with collarless shirts which I bought in the cooler emporiums of Locarno during my time there. They reminded me of my musical hero, Peter Buck the guitarist for R.E.M..

But I did bring a C-90 cassette with me. Yellow TDK, It had Reckoning on one side.Murmur on the other. I was playing the albums ragged. I lent them to Holger who roomed along the corridor from me until he headed back to Tubingen where he lived. He loved the albums. Said he thought Murmur was stronger than Reckoning. He came back to see us  a few months later and a brief, significant spark  blossomed between him and Franziska. My heart beat faster for the Danish girl next to me in the photo here.. I never told her. When I got on the train with the English girl to go back home she got onto the train compartment threw her arms around me. And we held each other. A moment I'll never forget. As long as I live.

Holger meanwhile. I visited in Tubingen the next year. I met his family. Good Christian people. He visited my family in England. A few years later in the early Nineties I was in Germany. My mother called me on a Sunday. The police had just called them. Holger had taken a ferry from Kiel where he had just graduated as an English teacher. Took another train from Harridge and travelled down to Beachy Head. Threw himself from the cliff on the coldest night of the year.

 He had my parents phone number in his pocket so the police would call them. His father flew over to England to identify Holger's body. I imagine nobody in his family ever fully recovered. These experiences leave the deepest scars. For me still too. Best not to think about it. 

Now I'm at Air B & B in the countryside in Denmark staying wuth Agnes another of the Danish girls I met and worked with and shared the richest experiences during my six months in Locarno, forty years ago this year. Yesterday Helle and Henny, the other two Danish women I met and worked with during my time there drove across to see us and we spent a few precious hours together discussing our memories, our lives since. The world we live in.We all had incredible, unique stories to tell. It was time well spent.  Life is the great adventure. The great road. Murmur and Reckoning the albums that still spin ni my head as I approach my sixtieth birthday and my nine o'clock online class approaches..... .'The pilgrimage. Has gained momentum...'