Andy and Dick

At the end of my first year at Sheffield, I was told to go to Geneva and work on the experiment there. I was living in an old Victorian house near the university, sharing with five others, one of whom (Ken, he of the urine sample saga) I have written about before. Another was Simon, who coincidentally had landed a position in Milan teaching English as a Foreign Language, so we decided we would drive over together. This was quite an epic journey to undertake in my Renault 12, which had seen better days.

We set off very early one morning, and drove down to Dover to catch the ferry, and from Calais we headed off to Geneva, via Paris and Dijon. I can’t remember the details of the journey, except long stretches of empty roads across middle France, lined with trees, which could be driven at exciting speeds. Did we do the journey all in one go (about 1500km)? I don’t remember, but I think so.

I remember arriving in the centre of Geneva, at Place Cornavin, and parking the car. I’d arranged that we could stay with a friend I’d met at a Summer School the previous year, called Andy. Andy was a long-haired, hippy-looking individual, who was about as easy going as you can imagine, and I liked him a lot. He was working on a different experiment from me: his was searching for hyperons, whereas mine was looking at photoproduction. I had only a vague idea where Andy lived: somewhere just over the border in France, in Haut St. Genis. After phoning him up and getting directions, we set off again in the Renault, heading out through Servette, through Meyrin, past CERN, and then across the border into France, and then to St. Genis.

Just as we passed through the village, the road started to climb, and the Renault died. It just sputtered and died, and we coasted to the side of the road.

We got out, and peered under the bonnet. I knew far less about cars then than I do now, and all I could tell was that the engine hadn’t disappeared. We sat disconsolately on the boot, and discussed what to do. This was well before cellphones, and so we were faced with hoofing back to St. Genis and finding a telephone.

Just then a car appeared coming towards us. It pulled over, and a Frenchman got out: a tanned, handsome, and athletic looking bloke of about thirty. If he’d been about a foot taller he’d have been seriously hunky, but in fact he was quite short.

I can’t remember the exchange, but I know he didn’t speak any English, and neither Simon or I spoke much French. When he saw the address I had written down on a scrap of paper, his face brightened. He went to his car, opened the boot, and brought out a tow rope, which he attached to the Renault, and then to his. And off we went: towed up to Haut St. Genis, arriving at Andy’s house a few moments later. It was great!

It transpired that the guy who had helped us was a local fireman, and Andy was shagging his wife. I doubt he would have been so helpful had he known. Her name was Martine, and she was profoundly sexy in that indefinable French way: she had short blond hair, angular features, and never wore a bra, and so her breasts were constantly jiggling about and oscillating in a most hypnotic fashion.

In addition to Martine, the other person in the house when we arrived was Dick. He, like Andy, was from Bristol, and he had come to Geneva many years before, to work on an experiment, and had basically never returned. He had no job as far as I could tell, and quite how he supported himself was mysterious, but I’m sure had something to do with drugs. Dick was a Lovely Person: he had a huge fuck-off beard, and he spoke softly, gently, his eyes twinkling. He was always smiling. Nothing perturbed him: everything was wonderful, and mellow, and cool. An archetypical hippie, he was a real pleasure to be with – he was so laid back he was essentially horizontal.

The house they lived in was a huge 1970s built ranch-style edifice with many rooms, and a massive sitting room, that was dominated by a large open fireplace in which logs always seemed to be burning.

Anyway, the next morning, Andy and I took Simon down to the train station in Geneva, and put him on a train to Milan. That’s the last I ever saw of him: I’ve not heard from him since, and that would be in 1981. Andy and I went across the river to a car parts shop in an ancient and run-down building. It was called Victor Merz – I just remembered that! And Victor sold us a new alternator for the Renault. What is puzzling me as I recall this is how we knew the alternator was bad? I have a vague notion that Dick knew about cars, so maybe he had diagnosed the problem. Moreover, I am sure I didn’t install the new one: who did that? Perhaps I, too, was so mellowed out by the company of Dick and Andy, not to mention the heady smoke that was permanently wafting around, that I was wandering around doing stuff in a daze?

And that was about it: the Renault was repaired, and a few days later I moved out of Dick and Andy’s house, to much inferior accommodations I prefer to remain vague about for the moment.

But while I was in Haut St. Genis, there were a couple of French girls who were often there in the evenings, smoking pot with Dick and Andy in front of the fire. One was blond haired, the other brown haired, and they were both rather attractive. In retrospect I am sure that the brown haired girl (I wish I could remember her name, Sylvie?) was hitting on me, but I was young and naive, and slightly scared of them both, and British, that I did nothing about it. They were always giggling when they were looking at me. One evening in particular I remember this Sylvia coming over and sitting very close to me on the sofa, as Dick looked on with his benevolent smile, and Andy downed his twentieth beer of the night. To my lasting shame and regret I did nothing to reciprocate the gesture. What was I thinking? What was I afraid of? I have no idea, and it has rankled with me ever since, as these things do.

A couple of years later, I saw Sylvie and her friend at the Clemence in Place Bourg de Four, the trendy night spot in old town Geneva. I was completely tongue tied, and suffered the humiliation of being giggled at again.

What became of Dick? The last I heard was that he had eventually returned to England, and lived in a caravan in woods just outside Bristol. He had been nicked for possession, and went to prison for a while. Shortly after he came out, he died tragically, although I don’t know how. RIP Dick. As for Andy, I have lost touch with him, but saw him five or six years ago, which is how I know about Dick’s demise.

Addendum: I searched around and found that Victor Merz went out of business in 1996. Some details:

Firma:
Victor Merz SA en liq. par suite de faillite
(CH-660.0.079.961-9)
Domizil:	Rue du Stand 31
1204 Genève
Lageplan Lageplan |  weitere Firmen

Status:	gelöscht
Löschdatum:	10.11.1999
Rechtsform:	Aktiengesellschaft
Kapital:	CHF 100'000
Sitz:	Genève (GE)

Zweck:	Administration: 1 ou plusieurs membres

The Ba-Ta-Clan

Check out the neon in old town Geneva, and the Ba-Ta-Clan strip club next to the spaghetti restaurant:

[Not my photo]

I’ve been in the Ba-Ta-Clan a couple of times, quite a while ago. A friend of mine was very keen on the place, and seemed to spend most of his evenings and nights there. He was a small, quiet chap with lank hair and a wispy moustache. He looked anaemic, and he chain-smoked Muratti Ambassadors with a trembling hand. A couple of the girls who worked at the Ba-Ta-Clan he called his friends, and he was always encouraging me to go along with him of an evening.

Frankly I didn’t fancy the idea: I had no idea what sort of place it was inside, and I didn’t really have any desire to dip into what I felt was a very seedy pastime. Besides, I was a student and had very limited financial resources, and I suspected that it would be expensive. I was right: when I finally did accompany my friend he had to first of all pay a significant fee to get in, but once we were in, the drinks were astronomically priced. I can’t remember exactly now, but I think they were around three or four times the price they were in the rest of Old Town.

When we entered I was very conscious of how dark it was. This made it seem quite small inside. Up at the front was a stage with garish lighting. The body of the room was filled with small round tables and bistro style chairs, whereas at against the walls were more comfortable booths with burgundy velour upholstered seats situated around a table. The place was relatively empty of people, although the air was filled with smoke, and so it was hard to see clearly.

A blond girl was dancing: I remember she had a lot of sequins on her and she seemed to sparkle. When she finished she came over to the table we were sitting at. (I should note that there was no nudity involved in her dance routine). “Bonsoir, Crease!”, she said in a thick French accent (my friend’s name was Chris) and sat down. Then another girl came over: I think she was blond too. Then there began some bizarre ritual involving buying these two girls drinks. I don’t remember the details, but it wasn’t just a question of “What would you like to drink?”, it seemed more like a negotiation in which Chris tried to persaude them to have the most expensive drink, and they would banter with him about it being too expensive. You know the type of routine “Have this”, “Oh no, I couldn’t possibly, “Go on, really”, “Well, I don’t know, maybe I’ll just have a beer”, “Don’t be silly … have the Champagne”, “Oh Crease, you are so naughty” et cetera.

Since the conversation was all in French it was a little difficult to think of much to add (my restaurant French was excellent, but making smalltalk with buxom French dancers in sequined costumes was challenging, to put it mildly – “Votre costume – c’etait fabrique ou, exactement?”). So I sat mostly in silence for quite some time. Since Chris was paying for everything, the two girls paid me no attention whatsoever anyway, which I was quite relieved about.

After about an hour of heavy Muratti smoking, Champagne drinking, and listening and watching the two girls coo and fuss over Chris, while a series of similarly sequined individuals pranced about on stage, I decided it was time for me to leave, which I did, leaving Chris to his fate. I strongly suspect he never did more than just sit there buying them drinks and basking in their mock affection of him. I think that affection was something he was sorely missing in his life.

So that was a wash. I think I went back one other time a year or so later, and it was pretty much the same story.

An interesting aspect of the social dynamic was that these two girls who were Chris’s “friends”, would often get on to the “X” bus that I took downtown at the end of the day. They would get on in Meyrin, where they lived, and were probably on their way to work, as I was coming home from my work. And every time they would look straight through me, as they got on, without any flicker of recognition, despite the fact that I easily recognised them, and that of course they had spent an hour or more sitting face to face with me in the recent past. It was as if, because I hadn’t bought them a drink, I was irrelevant and thus invisible. At least that is how I interpreted it at the time.

Woefully Behind

I am woefully behind on my LJ reading. I’ve missed just about the whole weekend, what with the excitement of the tree, and the cackling over the tubes. The week has now started with a colossal amount of male cow excreta flying around and I am weaving and ducking to avoid it. I feel a major rant post coming on in the fine tradition of LJ. But not tonight, Josephine!

At the end of the week I will be travelling to Salt lake City. This always fills me with dread because it means I can’t get a decent cup of coffee from the moment I leave the airport until the moment I return to it. Come to that, I can’t seem to get *any* coffee. Nobody drinks, nobody coffees, nobody teas, nobody smokes, nobody has any vices at all other than hunting Elk and Malibu and Moose. I will be regaled with hunting stories along the lines of “And there he was, a bare twenty yards distant, a magnificient Moose, his head held aloft, sniffing the crisp morning air, his massive antlers quivering in the breeze, and so I shot him.” To which my response is usually “Oh. Where can I get a cup of coffee?”

Then, at the end of the next week, I will be going to Pittsburg. I have no idea what to expect from Pittsburg other than chilly privates. At least it will be an excuse to wear some of my winter gear (although I may leave the crampons in the cupboard).

And then …. and then and then and then and then and then and then at the start of December I need to go to Geneva. And then we are going to Florida for New Year, and then I need to go to Boston for GlobusWorld in February, and then what? I dunno, maybe I will ask to go on the next Shuttle launch as a scientific instrument.