Friday 24 October 2014

Long-awaited invasion


This is the avatar I have chosen for H.I. when I write on a forum pretending to be her and not Tom Stephenson. It's rather charming (as my German friend, T1, would say) don't you think?

It doesn't fool anyone because they all know it is me, and when I write as myself, my avatar is Father Jack so there is definitely no confusion.

Both images encapsulate the essence of me and H.I. - one being the quintessence of femininity and the other a stark reminder of what can happen to a man when he lets himself go.

The other dear German friend arrives from Bremerhaven this weekend to stay for a while, and this will be about the 15th visit to Bath he has made over the last 20 years or so.

The first time he came, I was living in a tiny cottage in a small village just outside Bath, and we all had to sleep in the same room.

This was the first time I met him and I - understandably - thought he was T1's latest boyfriend, so I put them in the same bed. Both of them didn't sleep at all, because we had all gone to the local pub to eat and drink, then drink some more and, although I have no recollection of it, they told me that I snored louder than anyone else they had ever heard - all night.

In the morning, T2 took me to one side and quietly informed me that he was not - like T1 - Gay, and requested his own bed for the next night.

T2 spent about 15 years studying to be a dentist, not because this is how long it takes in Germany (though it is quite a long time), but because he kept failing one particular exam due to running out of money. He was supported by his 'extreme-rich aunt' for the whole of this period, and is now a very good and popular dentist in Bremerhaven.

T1 has been a graphic artist for many years, starting off as a Marxist and eventually graduating to a Catholic lay-priest, doing the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela on the way. Outwardly, he doesn't seem to have changed at all, other than wearing a small, silver Coquille St Jacques around his neck in the place of the Hammer and Sickle.

He is still as obsessed with the Eastern Block as he was before the wall came down, but now you can buy all those Russian sub-mariner's watches for peanuts, whereas before they were exotic and mysterious.

T1 lives in Hamburg, where I first met him when he was assigned as my helper for the theatre company I worked for at the time. Occasionally, a Soviet Navy ship would berth in the harbour there, but the sailors were not allowed to leave the ship and visit the Reeperbahn as generations of sailors had before them, so T1 would have to hire a rowboat and pull up alongside them to exchange gifts and trinkets, all the transactions carried out in broken Russian. How he lusted after those sailors.

The salt water laps up against both of their lives - T1's access to it is down the broad beginning of the Elba river to the Nordsee, and T2's practice is right on the docks of the old Fish Harbour.

The U-Boat bunkers in Hamburg still stick out of the water like jagged islands, having been bombed out of existence in WW2, but - like the Flak-Towers - are too solid to completely demolish and forget.

The 100 year-old fish-packing factories in Bremerhaven were the only buildings not to receive direct hits in 1943, but now they are all restaurants that specialise in fish, rather than processing and packing them. All that is done on board the factory ships these days, so is already packed in ice when it comes back to the ice-factory. The ice factory is still working though, and it is amazing to watch it disgorge tons of white slush into the boats via a huge overhead conveyor.

T2 used to live in a small apartment over his practice next to the harbour, and one day he had T1 around for lunch on the open-air balcony.

T2 took the plate of seafood to the table where T1 was gently sleeping in a chair, then went inside to fetch his own. In the few seconds he turned his back, T1 had woken up, eaten the entire plate of food, then gone back to sleep again.

He woke him up, astounded at the speed he finished it off before returning to his nap, but T1 had no recollection of having eaten anything.

They looked up to the roof to see a huge Gull staring greedily at T2's full plate...

16 comments:

  1. I am very glad that T2 is not the dentist, because a Hamburgian acquaintance of mine is a gay dentist, partner of my lovely friend who is a graphic artist - the dentist practicing at the outskirts of Hamburg, because he fears an outing would scare patients away.

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    1. He shouldn't fear on that account. Dentists are pretty good at scaring people away anyway - gay or straight.

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  2. I can't follow this. I have no urge to phone you today. I think you are a robot who writes a blog.

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    1. He IS on holiday; the Hattattattattatts are writing this, I know their style.

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    2. Darling Cro, how clever of you to find us out! Was it the absence of the 'c' word which gave us away?!

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    3. EXACTLY, Jane (or Lance, or both). I could tell your puritan style anywhere.

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    4. I have no hesitation in saying fuck off.

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    5. We would hardly call ourselves 'puritan', Cro - we enjoy life far too much for that!

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    6. Just to get a little practice in, we are going to attempt to write a post in the style of you, dear Cro. While the cat's away, the mice will play!

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  3. I learned of Bremerhaven as a shipbuilding center. I've always been fascinated by almost any sights of manufacturing or building things and shipbuilding is a whole other scale of movement and materials.

    Your multi-strand pearls add an air of old world style.

    Enjoy your time with T2. Shared history can be make the present a continued adventure.

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    1. There is still one massive boat shed now, which flashes and bangs all night. The main heavy industry is wind-turbines. They build the biggest in the world there.

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  4. I cannot comment on this post as to my mind you are still on a Blogging Break.

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    1. Darling Mise, we have taken over for a couple of days whilst Tom 'gets his head together', as they say. We think that in this context, 'Blogging Break' sounds a bit like '****ing Break', though we would never use that expression, of course.

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  5. Do you realize had you quit in a snit you would have swelled with repressed opinions to the size of a hot air balloon and be floating over the Balkans by now. (Weather does move from west to east, I believe.)

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    1. That's the only reason I released the valve, Joanne.

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