CB and I kept our relationship secret, or at least we didn't tell anyone, preferring, as you do at that age, to let people guess, gossip and find out in their own time. We spent every break from rehearsal in bed, returning to either her or my place in the evening to continue our exploration of each other's bodies until work reared its head again the following morning. It was hedonistic bliss: we talked, drank, smoked and made love until we decided to start the whole cycle again. I was 26, and heaven had arrived on a plate.
One evening, the night before a public holiday, we went for a pizza and spent the time in the restaurant writing erotic messages on each other's hands and arms. At midnight, we decided to go to the railway station and take a train somewhere. The destination didn't matter. The only train leaving Koblenz that night was for Munich, so we decided to go via there to the Bavarian Alps. It was a ludicrous idea, but logic could wait. Curled up in each other's arms we got to Munich at 8am, had breakfast and took a connection to Garmisch-Partenkirchen at around ten. Little did I know, but this day was to be our last together.
Wednesday, 9 March 2011
Tuesday, 8 March 2011
Back to work with sweaty ballerinas, September 1988
Actually, that doesn't sound so bad, does it? The only downside was having to invent all that music I mentioned in an earlier post.
I got back to Koblenz to find, mercifully, my flat in one piece. Things instantly got even better when I found out that L had come over with Chris's girlfriend for the beginning of the season and was keen to take up where we'd left off. So take up we did until we could take no more and she had to go back to the UK. A few days later I was sitting in the canteen and one of the ballerinas, CB, came and sat opposite me. We'd known each other for a year but had never really spoken that much. In any case, I wasn't on the conscious look-out for a relationship at work, so this chat was purely social and pleasant. Or so I thought at the time.
CB and I chatted for ages until they decided to close the canteen, so we left, talking, and I walked her home, where she lived with her boyfriend, who worked at the theatre. Turning round, I went home and thought no more of it.
CB started to seek out my company and it was clear that there were problems within her relationship. Nothing dramatic, just the usual stuff that people in their mid-20's have to deal with when they find their feelings changing. In the end, a friend and I helped CB move into her new flat, we stayed for a beer and went home. CB said she'd probably be coming into the centre for a drink and might ring my doorbell. Fine, no problem. She was gorgeous, but I never thought she could be interested in me.
Around midnight, my bell rang. I let CB in. She came up the stairs and told me she was terribly tired. I went to pull the sofa bed out in the sitting room and came back to ask if she'd like a drink before turning in. This was when everything changed. She was already lying naked in my bed and wondered how long I was going to be before I joined her. My head was literally spinning; I'd never been with anyone so beautiful. All the Koblenz ballerinas were incredibly feminine with fabulous bumps and curves; the ballet master liked his women to be sensual and he'd certainly done me an incredible service. We slept for maybe two hours, but I, for one, wouldn't have minded if I hadn't closed an eye the whole night. This was the start of an amazing, life-changing month with CB. No, it didn't end well; how could it?
I got back to Koblenz to find, mercifully, my flat in one piece. Things instantly got even better when I found out that L had come over with Chris's girlfriend for the beginning of the season and was keen to take up where we'd left off. So take up we did until we could take no more and she had to go back to the UK. A few days later I was sitting in the canteen and one of the ballerinas, CB, came and sat opposite me. We'd known each other for a year but had never really spoken that much. In any case, I wasn't on the conscious look-out for a relationship at work, so this chat was purely social and pleasant. Or so I thought at the time.
CB and I chatted for ages until they decided to close the canteen, so we left, talking, and I walked her home, where she lived with her boyfriend, who worked at the theatre. Turning round, I went home and thought no more of it.
CB started to seek out my company and it was clear that there were problems within her relationship. Nothing dramatic, just the usual stuff that people in their mid-20's have to deal with when they find their feelings changing. In the end, a friend and I helped CB move into her new flat, we stayed for a beer and went home. CB said she'd probably be coming into the centre for a drink and might ring my doorbell. Fine, no problem. She was gorgeous, but I never thought she could be interested in me.
Around midnight, my bell rang. I let CB in. She came up the stairs and told me she was terribly tired. I went to pull the sofa bed out in the sitting room and came back to ask if she'd like a drink before turning in. This was when everything changed. She was already lying naked in my bed and wondered how long I was going to be before I joined her. My head was literally spinning; I'd never been with anyone so beautiful. All the Koblenz ballerinas were incredibly feminine with fabulous bumps and curves; the ballet master liked his women to be sensual and he'd certainly done me an incredible service. We slept for maybe two hours, but I, for one, wouldn't have minded if I hadn't closed an eye the whole night. This was the start of an amazing, life-changing month with CB. No, it didn't end well; how could it?
Monday, 7 March 2011
September 1988 - July 1989: Introduction
I'll get around to writing more fully about this year, but it started with an electric love-shock, a hedonistic high I don't think I'll ever experience again (nor want to, probably), an abyssal disappointment, then a fortuitous encounter in Vienna followed by a seemingly wasted trip to Hamburg and a triumphant return to the UK which lasted all of seven days. I loved this year, it had everything to get every brand, colour and consistency of juice flowing, and flow they did. I'll never forget this particular year, my springboard to what really mattered.
Friday, 4 March 2011
Summer 1988
We got to London in C's Peugeot 206, but not before I'd inadvertently thrown the map out of the window on the Belgian motorway system. This was before we got lost in Brussels.
It turned out to be the summer that shaped the next twelve years of my life, as I was contacted by a big producer of musicals to maybe take part in an upcoming foreign production of The Phantom of the Opera. They gave me a ticket for the London production and I instantly knew what direction I wanted my professional life to go in. No more ballet piano for me come the following summer; I was going to hand in my resignation as soon as I got back to Koblenz (you still had to give ten months' notice, hence the forward planning). C and her recently-arrived boyfriend managed to get a couple of standby tickets and felt pretty much the same way as I. Our instant, simultaneous love for this form would prove to have legs...
Apart from pottering about London, we all took a trip out to Stonehenge and visited Salisbury, the beautiful city where I spent most of my first six years, my bedroom overlooking the cathedral. We tracked down 96, Exeter Street but our other address, 48, Culver Street, had been turned into a multi storey car park. I calculated that we must have parked pretty much where my bedroom used to be, as the view through the windscreen rang more than just a few bells.
Stonehenge had started becoming Elf 'n' Safety conscious; cordons were up and 'Though Shalt Not' was written on quite a few walls. I still remember it as a three-year-old, when we were able to run over and play on the stones as if it were Druidworld. Now, I gather, you aren't even allowed within twenty yards of the things.
Back in London, I got an invitation to a wedding. A gay American friend from college was getting married (for obvious reasons). He was there with his companion, she was there with her boyfriend, and I met someone called Elsa. Slightly older but oozing charm, erotic and, yes, sex, we got to know each other a lot better very quickly in one of the spare rooms. High on the atmosphere and the forbidden fruit I felt I was going to explode. One of Elsa's virtues was her complete absence of morals once she'd taken her clothes off. I couldn't phone her, as she was married but how I wished I could have. She went on holiday soon after; by the time she'd returned, I was back in Germany.
Someone else I met at that party, albeit completely platonically, was a former fellow student from the RCM called C...She was going off to Turkey to sing in a nightclub for a few months and promised to call on her way through Germany. She never did, and only about a year later did I find out why when our paths crossed in Vienna, an encounter which sealed the prelimenary steps towards musical theatre I'd just made a few days previously, but that's for a later post.
It turned out to be the summer that shaped the next twelve years of my life, as I was contacted by a big producer of musicals to maybe take part in an upcoming foreign production of The Phantom of the Opera. They gave me a ticket for the London production and I instantly knew what direction I wanted my professional life to go in. No more ballet piano for me come the following summer; I was going to hand in my resignation as soon as I got back to Koblenz (you still had to give ten months' notice, hence the forward planning). C and her recently-arrived boyfriend managed to get a couple of standby tickets and felt pretty much the same way as I. Our instant, simultaneous love for this form would prove to have legs...
Apart from pottering about London, we all took a trip out to Stonehenge and visited Salisbury, the beautiful city where I spent most of my first six years, my bedroom overlooking the cathedral. We tracked down 96, Exeter Street but our other address, 48, Culver Street, had been turned into a multi storey car park. I calculated that we must have parked pretty much where my bedroom used to be, as the view through the windscreen rang more than just a few bells.
Stonehenge had started becoming Elf 'n' Safety conscious; cordons were up and 'Though Shalt Not' was written on quite a few walls. I still remember it as a three-year-old, when we were able to run over and play on the stones as if it were Druidworld. Now, I gather, you aren't even allowed within twenty yards of the things.
Back in London, I got an invitation to a wedding. A gay American friend from college was getting married (for obvious reasons). He was there with his companion, she was there with her boyfriend, and I met someone called Elsa. Slightly older but oozing charm, erotic and, yes, sex, we got to know each other a lot better very quickly in one of the spare rooms. High on the atmosphere and the forbidden fruit I felt I was going to explode. One of Elsa's virtues was her complete absence of morals once she'd taken her clothes off. I couldn't phone her, as she was married but how I wished I could have. She went on holiday soon after; by the time she'd returned, I was back in Germany.
Someone else I met at that party, albeit completely platonically, was a former fellow student from the RCM called C...She was going off to Turkey to sing in a nightclub for a few months and promised to call on her way through Germany. She never did, and only about a year later did I find out why when our paths crossed in Vienna, an encounter which sealed the prelimenary steps towards musical theatre I'd just made a few days previously, but that's for a later post.
Early 1988 to summer.
The rest of my first German season pottered on quite pleasantly: boat trips on the Rhine, the odd train trips up to Köln and down to Frankfurt, lots of socialising and the occasional visit from friends from England. The end of the season proved to be quite interesting, though...
One of our dancers, a Brazilian called J..., received a visit from his sister. She was a photo model, and not because she was classically beautiful. She had an extraordinary androgenous look and could have been a man or a woman, depending on your own perception of her appearance. She was absolutely delightful and struck up a friendship with B, one of my direct colleagues; a friendship which, predictably enough, ended up in the sack. This was curious, as many suspected B of preferring his own gender, but maybe the Brazilian model's look satisfied his curiosity and desire to conform at the same time.
A little while later, she left. B then struck up a relationship with J..., the brother. He insisted it was platonic, but no-one was fooled, nor did they care. Things came to a head when the sister announced she as coming back to visit B at the end of the season, in early July...
In the meantime, plans were afoot for the Theatre Open Days. B and I were to supply the accompaniment to a performance of La Cage aux Folles (seriously) on two pianos; there were to be public song recitals, open ballet classes, the lot. I was marked down to play for the ballet on stage and to accompany a baritone in a lunchtime concert. This would have posed no problem had I not made the acquaintance of L, an Irish girl visiting a friend in the orchestra at that time.
Her friend was a percussionist, a great bloke from North London who had taken time out from the LSO to get a bit of continental orchestral experience. He, his girlfriend (a friend of L's), L and I went for a pizza after the performance of La Cage. Much wine later, L decided it would be a good idea if I walked her home. Being the good Irish girl she was, she'd brought a bottle of Jameson's whiskey with her to Germany, just in case they'd never heard of it in Germany. We set about finishing the bottle then celebrated nakedly until about 8am, at which point I had to get up and prepare for the second Open Day. Still dressed in my DJ and black tie, physically destroyed and hung over, I ran back to my flat to find the music I needed for the ballet class and subsequent recital. Playing in front of 500 screaming schoolchildren at 10am when you're still blind drunk with one eye closed so you can focus, is no fun. Believe me. Concentrating so hard that you hit the right notes in the right order makes you sweat like a pig, you're dying of thirst and you just wish that everyeone would just go away and leave you in peace so you can go and curl up in a ball in bed. It went OK, though, but there was also the matter of the Schubert recital to get through. A strong coffee in the canteen didn't help matters; it just seemed to send the Riesling and the Jameson's on one last triumphant lap of honour around my body. In front of 300 people, I closed my right eye and struck up the first bars of Der Wanderer...Since that day, I've never touched a drop before having to go on stage.
The best was still to come, though. The second Open Day was also the last day of the season. I was leaving for England the next day with my American neighbour and wouldn't be back for six weeks. J... was living with B across the road but his sister was coming and didn't know about the love triangle that had sprung up in her absence. J asked if he could spend the night on my sofa before he and his sister headed back to Brazil for the summer. No problem, I said, but you'll have to be out by nine, when I leave for England with C. Deal.
There was a little party at B's place after the evening concert. The two Brazilians were there, J... leaving earlier with my spare key so as not to go mad with jealousy, seeing his lover fondling his sister. L showed up, too! I was really happy to see her and she came home with me around midnight. Two sweaty and moist hours later, my doorbell rang. It was the Brazilian model, seeking asylum from B's lunacy. He'd confessed everything to her (after they'd made love, of course) and she, appalled, went off to look for her brother. They shared the sitting-room sofa while I crawled back to my Emerald beauty.
The only thing was, I needed to leave at 9am the next day. L, J and his sister were still out for the count and couldn't be roused. In the end, I left notes for them all, telling them where to leave the spare key and reluctantly closed the door behind me on three people I hardly knew, fast asleep in my flat that I was now basically leaving open for six weeks while I went abroad.
One of our dancers, a Brazilian called J..., received a visit from his sister. She was a photo model, and not because she was classically beautiful. She had an extraordinary androgenous look and could have been a man or a woman, depending on your own perception of her appearance. She was absolutely delightful and struck up a friendship with B, one of my direct colleagues; a friendship which, predictably enough, ended up in the sack. This was curious, as many suspected B of preferring his own gender, but maybe the Brazilian model's look satisfied his curiosity and desire to conform at the same time.
A little while later, she left. B then struck up a relationship with J..., the brother. He insisted it was platonic, but no-one was fooled, nor did they care. Things came to a head when the sister announced she as coming back to visit B at the end of the season, in early July...
In the meantime, plans were afoot for the Theatre Open Days. B and I were to supply the accompaniment to a performance of La Cage aux Folles (seriously) on two pianos; there were to be public song recitals, open ballet classes, the lot. I was marked down to play for the ballet on stage and to accompany a baritone in a lunchtime concert. This would have posed no problem had I not made the acquaintance of L, an Irish girl visiting a friend in the orchestra at that time.
Her friend was a percussionist, a great bloke from North London who had taken time out from the LSO to get a bit of continental orchestral experience. He, his girlfriend (a friend of L's), L and I went for a pizza after the performance of La Cage. Much wine later, L decided it would be a good idea if I walked her home. Being the good Irish girl she was, she'd brought a bottle of Jameson's whiskey with her to Germany, just in case they'd never heard of it in Germany. We set about finishing the bottle then celebrated nakedly until about 8am, at which point I had to get up and prepare for the second Open Day. Still dressed in my DJ and black tie, physically destroyed and hung over, I ran back to my flat to find the music I needed for the ballet class and subsequent recital. Playing in front of 500 screaming schoolchildren at 10am when you're still blind drunk with one eye closed so you can focus, is no fun. Believe me. Concentrating so hard that you hit the right notes in the right order makes you sweat like a pig, you're dying of thirst and you just wish that everyeone would just go away and leave you in peace so you can go and curl up in a ball in bed. It went OK, though, but there was also the matter of the Schubert recital to get through. A strong coffee in the canteen didn't help matters; it just seemed to send the Riesling and the Jameson's on one last triumphant lap of honour around my body. In front of 300 people, I closed my right eye and struck up the first bars of Der Wanderer...Since that day, I've never touched a drop before having to go on stage.
The best was still to come, though. The second Open Day was also the last day of the season. I was leaving for England the next day with my American neighbour and wouldn't be back for six weeks. J... was living with B across the road but his sister was coming and didn't know about the love triangle that had sprung up in her absence. J asked if he could spend the night on my sofa before he and his sister headed back to Brazil for the summer. No problem, I said, but you'll have to be out by nine, when I leave for England with C. Deal.
There was a little party at B's place after the evening concert. The two Brazilians were there, J... leaving earlier with my spare key so as not to go mad with jealousy, seeing his lover fondling his sister. L showed up, too! I was really happy to see her and she came home with me around midnight. Two sweaty and moist hours later, my doorbell rang. It was the Brazilian model, seeking asylum from B's lunacy. He'd confessed everything to her (after they'd made love, of course) and she, appalled, went off to look for her brother. They shared the sitting-room sofa while I crawled back to my Emerald beauty.
The only thing was, I needed to leave at 9am the next day. L, J and his sister were still out for the count and couldn't be roused. In the end, I left notes for them all, telling them where to leave the spare key and reluctantly closed the door behind me on three people I hardly knew, fast asleep in my flat that I was now basically leaving open for six weeks while I went abroad.
Tuesday, 1 March 2011
The rest of that first year.
As provincial towns go, Koblenz was a good place to start learning how to be a foreigner. I only got abused once ("Come over here, take away our jobs etc blah") and that was in a late-night chip shop, but one character from the theatre should have had a monument in his honour. Let's call him Georg (for it was he). He's dead, now, and good riddance. Georg spoke German and Italian ("Such a fine race, the Italians, until they lost the plot") and only warmed to my nordic appearance once I'd proved I could speak fluent German. Georg was a Nazi of the old school and made no pretence to hide it. On April 20th, 1988, Georg came into the canteen before morning rehearsal with a broad grin on his face. I asked him how he was. 'Wonderful, young man. And do you know why? Because today is HIS birthday! Listen young man: this morning, I got up at seven o'clock, put on my old uniform, stood in front of his portrait in my sitting room and proclaimed "Happy Birthday, mein Führer!" What a man, what a leader! This country has been going downhill ever since his demise, young man. The fact you are here is evidence of that!' This last part was said half-jokingly, but let's stress the 'half' part of that, shall we? Georg died a few years ago, presumably enjoying a send-off by saluting, leather-clad Übermenschen like you see in Santiago and Buenos Aires from time to time. RIP, you old bastard.
George Bush Snr. in Koblenz
I can't remember whether it was in my first or second year in Koblenz that the then President of the USA, George Bush, came to town. My American neighbour, beside herself with excitement, dragged me along to witness hoards of serious, Ray-Banned Secret Services aides jogging alongside the Leader of the Free World's limo before the man himself climbed out and held a speech about, well, I don't really remember that either, to be honest. The event was held at the Deutsches Eck, the north-facing promontory where Rhine joins Mosel and host to a splendid spiked-helmet-type monument whose inscription reads: "Never Shall the German People be Divided, Should you Remain Honest and True". The flat-topped mausoleum lookalike used to be crowned with an equestrian statue of Kaiser Wilhelm. The Americans, though, on the last day of World War II decided to revert to playground behaviour, trained a cannon on it and blew Kaiser Bill half way to the Lorelei. A petition was already in place in those days to have him replaced with a like model. Years later, a Düsseldorf businessman put up the readies and gave his horse a leg up to regain his rightful place in German history.
All this took place in the run-up to the fall of the Eastern Bloc, Reagan later exhorting Gorbachëv to 'tear down this wall' while Honecker put his fingers in his ears and went 'lalalalalalalalala', organising massive celebrations in honour of the DDR's 40th anniversary. Not two years later, sitting in a squalid East German café just over the border from Lauenburg an der Elbe, did I remember all this as I looked at my sugar packet which proudly proclaimed communism's 40th anniversary on German territory. The Wall had fallen, collective euphoria was still high and the East Germans didn't know whether they were coming or going, as evidenced by the fact they found my dented, ten-year-old BMW the height of urban chic ("Äh, geiles Auto, Mann!")
Bush's appearance in Koblenz was strategic and symbolic. Mighty international European waterway meets slightly lesser international waterway where effigy of former central European Emperor got his balls blown off by a transatlantic cannon of peace. Military intelligence had it that borders were going to be opened and a new Europe would emerge, so where better to appear than a rather ugly monument which by night becomes THE gay meeting place in Rheinland-Pfalz? Sound illogical? Not when you consider the de facto capital of Europe is now Brussels, and if you're not happy with the Old Bailey's decision you can always take it to Strasbourg.
All this took place in the run-up to the fall of the Eastern Bloc, Reagan later exhorting Gorbachëv to 'tear down this wall' while Honecker put his fingers in his ears and went 'lalalalalalalalala', organising massive celebrations in honour of the DDR's 40th anniversary. Not two years later, sitting in a squalid East German café just over the border from Lauenburg an der Elbe, did I remember all this as I looked at my sugar packet which proudly proclaimed communism's 40th anniversary on German territory. The Wall had fallen, collective euphoria was still high and the East Germans didn't know whether they were coming or going, as evidenced by the fact they found my dented, ten-year-old BMW the height of urban chic ("Äh, geiles Auto, Mann!")
Bush's appearance in Koblenz was strategic and symbolic. Mighty international European waterway meets slightly lesser international waterway where effigy of former central European Emperor got his balls blown off by a transatlantic cannon of peace. Military intelligence had it that borders were going to be opened and a new Europe would emerge, so where better to appear than a rather ugly monument which by night becomes THE gay meeting place in Rheinland-Pfalz? Sound illogical? Not when you consider the de facto capital of Europe is now Brussels, and if you're not happy with the Old Bailey's decision you can always take it to Strasbourg.
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