NOTES
There are no notes for this chapter yet. Some of the notes on other pages are based on info YOU send me. |
Now that I was king of my own tiny dosser domain at last, I began to throw my weight about more than ever with the volunteers (though I trod carefully at first with the hostel residents). I gave even Arnrid and Sidge plenty of work to do when they visited, and stood around watching them do it. I once subjected Arnrid to a lengthy tirade after she had played a practical joke on us by screaming loudly when alone with Sid in the cellar. |
| It was after the latter incident that Sidge and Arnrid decided I needed a break. They mistook (badly) my growing sergeant-major attitude, often boosted by alcohol of course, for irritability. They actually believed that I was cracking up under the strain of setting up and running the hostel and the Sunday free meals. They put this forward as the reason for inviting me to accompany them and Anne Hawkins (one of the Regency Square students mentioned briefly in Chapter 50) on a trip to Switzerland in July. Anne had become very interested in the teachings of Krishnamurti. Every Summer, Krishnamurti held court near the village of Saanen in the Swiss Alps, and large numbers of people gathered there to attend his lectures. |
| Anne, Robin and Arnrid had by now sat their finals and left university. They decided to go together to Saanen, after which Sidge and Anne (who seemed to have become a couple) would carry on hitching around Europe, while Arnrid hitched back to England. It's possible that I was invited to accompany them to Saanen as much to provide Arnrid with a hitching companion for the journey back as to give me a break from the imagined rigours of running the hostel. The plan was to go by rail from Boulogne to Basel, then to hitch to Saanen from there. Very low rail fares across Europe were available to members of the Students' Union. The three of them were prepared to pay my fare, provided I also went on a student ticket. The fact that I was not a member of the SU was no obstacle. One of the hostel volunteers worked in the student travel office of the University and he provided the illicit ticket. |
| The few clothes I had were all falling apart and there was nothing in the jumble that came close to fitting me, so Anne gave me a pair of her jeans (she was of roughly the same build as I - tall and thin). I mention this gift of the jeans because she had inserted great scarlet triangles in the sides of the legs, especially for me, to convert them into the flares that were becoming fashionable. To say the least, this garment added to the already noticeable nature of my appearance. Arnrid lent me a rucksack. |
| As explained in the previous chapter, I had as yet only three residents in the hostel. I left Ken in charge of the shop and Sid and Carol in charge of everything else, although volunteers were to be let in at any time to check up on things. They were also to carry on with the Sunday meal sessions. When the great day of my first ever trip abroad arrived, the four of us hitched to Folkestone and got the ferry to Boulogne. The others were visibly amused by my obvious excitement as the ferry left the harbour. They were from families in which travelling abroad was fairly routine. My excitement and nervousness grew as we disembarked in Boulogne. The train itself (bound for Milan) was extraordinary to me. The catch with the cheap student tickets was that you could only travel on the slow trains. They had wooden-slatted seats, moved slowly and stopped at every village. People would get on the train with a couple of live chickens and get off at the next village. I think the journey to Basel took about 18 hours. Unlike the others, I was unable to sleep at all. |
| Immediately upon arrival in Basel, I came exceedingly close to being run over because I looked left instead of right. We got a tram to the outskirts of the city and began hitching. It was hopeless while all four of us were hitching together, so we split into pairs - Sidge with Anne, me with Arnrid. Sidge and Anne then got a lift straight away and, as it later turned out, got to Saanen very quickly. Arnrid and I still had great difficulty, and could only get short lifts, with long waits between. Eventually we reached Bern and walked right across the city. I still have a very sharp mental image of a coachload of Japanese tourists, every single one of whom, on my side of the coach, was pointing a camera at me. I don't think I've since had so many lenses pointing at me simultaneously. Say "Bern", and all I see is a flock of camera lenses with an identical grin behind each one. |
| On the other side of the city, lifts became even scarcer and we had to spend a couple of nights in the remotest spots we could find, sharing a space blanket that Arnrid had brought with her. Arnrid slept well enough, but I stayed wide awake, worried by every little noise. In part, we were delayed by Arnrid's insistence on stopping at a lake. It was a shallow lake with remarkably clear water, in which many people were swimming. Arnrid announced her intention of joining them, and insisted that I should do the same. I protested that I couldn't swim, but this was not accepted as an excuse, as the water was so shallow. For some reason, I had a pair of swimming trunks with me, and we changed behind some trees. Once in the water, Arnrid declared that she was going to teach me to swim - a hopeless ambition if ever there was one! It was alright while she was holding me up, but I sank like a stone as soon as she let go. Eventually she became exasperated. Arnrid exasperated was not a comfortable experience. She went for a long swim while I watched from the shore, then we got dressed and continued with our journey. |
| Somewhere along the way, we heard that men had just landed on the moon. Arnrid was excited by this news and expected me to share her enthusiasm. I said it was a terrible thing that the human race had escaped from its cage, and expressed the hope that insurmountable obstacles to further space exploration would be encountered, preventing us from spreading beyond the moon. Besides, I added, the space race was all about superpower domination and nothing else. Arnrid, who had not a single political bone in her body, was appalled by these sentiments. Eventually, she announced that hitching with me was too difficult. She was going to go it alone. Of course, within minutes of starting to hitch separately, she had got a lift, but my progress became even slower |
| At last I arrived in Saanen and somehow found the others. They were a bit tetchy with me because I had taken a couple of days longer than they had to get there - they had been imagining me hopelessly lost. |
| As I remember, we had two tents between us, pitched in a wood outside the official camping area. I think Anne and Sidge had one tent and Arnrid and I the other. It was typical of the relaxed attitudes of the era that no-one would have assumed anything from the fact that we happened to be sharing a tent. There were a lot of tents in this unofficial area, but no sanitation. A walk through the wood was therefore a disgusting experience, which contrasted extremely with the obsessive cleanliness and tidiness of this Alpine village. No doubt this was one of the reasons why the annual Krishnamurti invasion seemed somewhat unwelcome. Getting served in taverns and cafés was not easy. "Long hair no good!" was a common response. (Sidge also had flowing locks, as did most of the other Summer invaders). To the further irritation of the locals, there was a rather yobbish fringe element, mostly Dutch, who tended to get drunk every night and roam the streets and woods looking for trouble. |
| After a couple of nights we went off in the dark in search of a more private camping place. By torchlight we found a strange expanse of grassy level ground, apparently devoid of other tents, and pitched camp there. Early next morning we were woken by the sudden roar of a jet engine. I poked my head out of the tent just as an incredulous Swiss Air Force officer arrived and began to rant. We had pitched our tents at the end of an airfield runway! Sidge, rather typically, refused to hurry with the packing, so we very nearly got arrested by the military. |
| We went for some wonderful mountain walks, but there was also Krishnamurti - the reason, as Anne kept reminding us, that we had come to Switzerland. I allowed myself to be dragged along to one of the lectures, but I was already unhappy with what I had earlier read of his teaching. The idea of truth as a 'pathless land' unreachable through any belief system or organized political (or indeed religious) activity, was anathema to me at that time. In fact, the general popularity in the late sixties of the idea of seeking a better life, even enlightenment, through inner reflection appalled me. It seemed downright immoral, as it meant making peace with, or at best ignoring the status quo, which of course had to be destroyed. Where was the justice, the street-to-street fighting, the end of the profit-motive? I was astonished that no-one, apparently, could see the irony of this man's denouncing, to his huge audience of doting and mesmerized middle-aged women, all gurus, spiritual leaders and organizations. |
| I was very pleasantly surprised therefore when someone, during questions from the floor, asked K: "What organization erected this marquee, are you its leader and how much do you earn?" K.ignored the question but it was repeated. Upon the third time of asking, K. thumped the table and walked out. It was the end of the lecture for that day. I was delighted, but the brave or foolhardy questioner was getting a rough ride from the fans. I steadfastly refused to attend any more of the lectures. Actually, the life-story of Krishnamurti is a fascinating one, and I recommend that you read about him. |