OUR MAN in EUROPE: dave delacroix: part 44: Days of Wine & Moses

Part 44:   Days of Wine & Moses


So BLOW ME!... So blow me over! You find me in Baden-Baden (so good they had to name it twice), German Spa & Casino mecca, immortalized by Dostoyevsky in "The Gambler"...and curious to walk in that genius's footsteps and experience those grandeoise, hallowed "temples to, er...Chance", I break out my dinner jacket and cleanest apparel, stash my guitar & wheelie-bag in some bushes, await an elegant "arriving" party of gambler-socialites-revellers, insinuate myself into the throng and pass on, IN, determined to score a free aperitiff & lose a good 10 euros!

Yup! I got the fever. I'm a player!

So BLOW ME over!... Where was I?....in the palatial casino, shimmy-shammying and I run into the Count, Stefan Van Der XXX (from Denmark) who in some long ago, grandiose Hotel on the banks of Loch Lomand (Scotland), we had met and played together as children, way back then...in the days of Moses...but HAD in fact kept in sporadic touch throughout our shared millenia.

Both now considerably older, he now the head of a sprawling family, I was invited to the nearby, lavish Hotel "Platinum" to sup & reminisce.

Count Stefan (I just call him Steve-0!) had followed in his dad's diplomatic footsteps (his "alter" had been the Dannish Ambassador to the U.K. back in the 1960's) and were both BE-mused to note that whilst HE had taken "the high road", I was - leastways presently - happy to navigate the alternative, a'la that bonnie Scottish tune: The Banks of Loch Lomand... (He was) Ever toothy, anaemic looking, a child blonde, his hair now raw silver and balding.
...I recall he had a beautiful younger sister; alas, she had passed away quite young.

(A moments silence)

We adjourn from the gaming throng to smoke panatellas and sup vino (Petrus something) and he has sway enough to secure us a private room in the hotel so as to carous the night away.

Back in the days of Moses my OWN parents were Scotland-mad and would drag me up there from England 3 or 4 times a year, B & B-ing it, sometimes lodging at reasonably extravagent places, as when I met the child-Count Steve-0! (and his sister) by the mystic and picture-esque Loch Lomand; a "Highland must-.see!"

I recall we spent a good 3 magical days together in that faraway time, playing pirates, Jacobites, hide & freak (always, with his sister). We were a Clan!
I had recently bought - in John O'Groats - a tartan-hilt "Scottish" dagger (a Skean Dhu); the clan's prized possession...
(Made in Sheffield)
But we got pretty good at throwning it around, as we were 3 (reasonably rich) lonely kids, left wild in the hotel grounds and surrounding woodlands.

When my parents decided to continue their Highland tour, Count Steve-O & sister remaining AT the Loch hotel for the summer season, it was a sad affair; I, waving from the back of my dad's sedan, Count Steve-O, dewey-eyed, his sister, outright bawling!
Everyone was torn apart...

....As now...the sun "comming up", lighting our all night conference-banquet room, ashtrays smouldering, the scent of fine claret, a hotel bee cracks a tall window using a hook on a pole, the windows, meters high....though Count Steve-O and my own responsibilities, separately calling, and AGAIN to say "goodbye"...and missing a MUCH LOVED sister, our eyes, bloodshot, yet steeled towards this new day.

Some Goodbyes kill you, and then kill you again: but ALL so softly.


c 2010 our man in europe/dave delacroix/Meerbusch-Lank/germany/march 21