At the invitation of Professor Emeritus Atsumu Ohmura of ETH in Zurich and his wife Andrée, Dr Gerd Ragette and I went to stay with them and their son Haruki for three nights at their house in Männedorf near Zurich. We first knew one another at McGill University during the 1960s:
While not in Alberta during the summer, or with Atsumu on Axel Heiberg Island studying glaciology,
we used to go hiking in the mountains of New England. The left picture below shows Andrée McClintock,
me and Heather Munro by a lake in the Adirondacks. The right picture shows Mount Ampersand in New York State,
typical of the small mountains we used to enjoy.
On 22 August 2011 we got together again after 40+ years. I was met by Haruki at Zurich airport, after a delay because I'd lost my glasses on the plane. Andrée lent/gave me a spare pair of hers. (I later lost these on the train going home.) We drank apple juice and elder wine and Black Label duty-free whisky (in my case). An Austrian torte from Gerd also went down well. Below the vineyards of Männedorf sparkled the lights around Lake Zurich as we took Poochi the pug for his evening walk. Originally Atsumu felt estranged towards this refugee newcomer to their home; but now they are very close. Andrée told us about her rural father from County Donegal in Ireland, who flew during WWII and then joined the Canadian Air Force, and her aristocratic French Canadian mother, who remained firmly married for many decades while never agreeing about anything.
On 23 August we enjoyed the mountains around Mount Rigi and Lucerne, travelling by train and boat.
The photos show Poochi, and me, Gerd and Atsumu at the ancient covered bridge in Lucerne.
I took some stereo-pair photos.
We got home in time for the preparation of Sushi - a large quantity which took Atsumu 2 hours.
Andrée had shopped for the ingredients during the day. Our guests were a brain surgeon and his wife
and daughter based locally and in California; we all ate well.
Andrée told of how a pickpocket attended her in London, as a result of which she was offered councelling.
That prompted me to tell of my problems with my neighbour at Thirlestane Court who assaults and slanders me at intervals.
After the most recent episode I attempted to get Surrey Police interested in his criminal behaviour
(documented in the Channel 5 TV movie "Banged up Abroad" Series 3, Episode 1). Two constables interviewed me for 40 minutes,
then my neighbours for exactly the same length of time. After that I was offered counselling; "No" I said.
Please let us visit, they insisted: No. Five days later I was having a shower after a short sleep at 4 in the afternoon
when there was a knock on the door. "Dr Booth". He slithered into my flat,
and I discovered that he worked for Surrey Police. "Here to help". Right, I said, I've got lots
of problems; while I take my shower, you could start by tipping the contents of my medicine drawer on to the floor
and putting everything back
until you come to a key which is hidden somewhere among all the medicines. When I emerged from my shower Dr Booth was
motionless, gazing at my father's books. Right, if you don't want to wait through my garbage that's quite understandable;
you can help me write deathless prose on my word processor; nobody reads it and maybe you can help with that.
But he didn't have time. "Disturbed, I'd say". "Right" I rejoined as I threw him out. Surrey Police seem to be run
by people remote from citizens, and the first consideration of ordinary policemen has to be to impress their managers
rather than accomplish anything useful. Andrée and Atsumu are third and fourth from the left in the photos, and I appear
looking excited at right in the second one.
Atsumu told us his story that evening. After graduating from McGill he was starting out at ETH and Andrée might be coming out from Canada to join him. He was a great skater, but abruptly suffered muscle failure. In the hospital he was told that all of his muscles were doomed, and that he had just a few months to live, so he became used to the idea of not having to worry about anything beyond June 1971. Then a doctor came along with a bright idea of transferring muscles from his behind to his heart; in the early months of 1971 Atsumu found himself among a large gathering of surgeons ready to operate. But then they found life in the heart muscles, and after much discussion of this exciting discovery Atsumu insisted that his heart be allowed to recover slowly without the major surgery.
Andrée left home to join Atsumu. "If you leave for Switzerland - never come back!" said her mother. They had endless trouble trying to get Swiss authorities to allow them to marry. Finally Andrée lost her temper with an official and stormed out of a meeting. Atsumu was very angry at her impatience, and they separated for ever. But then Andrée remembered that she didn't any more have a home in Canada ... and Atsumu was conciliatory, so they soon got married and had Haruki and two other children.
Next day it was time for Gerd and me to leave, and we took the train eastwards to Innsbruck. Gerd continued on back home to Vienna while I got off to join another train across the Brenner Pass to Bolzano, Italy, to visit the Ice Man Otzi.
The Hotel Regina in Bolzano is to be recommended, and the city is beautiful. On 26 August I walked up to Castle Runkelstein to see the architecture and frescos there. I met Hiroshi Hasegawa there, with whom I had breakfast at the hotel. He works for the fashion industry as a Color Planner. He wanted to meet Italians, but his English was useful for me.
That evening, after unsuccessfully looking for company for dinner among German speakers, I bought a beer to drink in a park, and placed it at arms length beside me on the park bench. Two boys were present, and I challenged them to kick their football at my beer from 15 yards range while I photographed them. They would get CHF5 if they knocked over my beer bottle before I finished the beer; the photo shows the closest they got. Afterwards I found loud music at the Irish Temple Bar, and persuaded a girl from Dusseldorf to dance. Among the large crowd the only other dancer was a disabled character who jumped out of his wheelchair whenever the music started.
On the train home on 27 August I took stereos of Wallensee from the same place as two days before, in different weather. At Zurich Airport I failed to recover the glasses I lost outbound, but chose a likeness from among 70 pairs in a tray of Lost Property (which came from a flight from Tel Aviv on 16 August). The sunset seen from the flight to London Heathrow seemed to show rather a lot of orange colouring compared with sunsets of the past.