Roli Crete
The first thing which I remember about him was his
voice. He was maybe the first German-Swiss that I has ever properly met and
spoken to at length. Generally I considered myself able to quickly work out
where someone was from from only a few seconds of conversation . He kind of sang
in a beautiful way. He always looked at you as he spoke and carefully considered
both his words and your reactions. He would sit there, with glass in hand, and
kind of slowly mete out morsels of speech to you, using ones name as other
people used an intake of breath. The problem was that I would
swiftly become so mesmerised by his subtle intonations and concentrate
more upon his diction than his content...
anyway, several times it came to
pass, particularly on a full moon, when we would celebrate our fading youth,
that Roli and I would find ourselves outside, a bit drunken {sic} the night
would be dark as, well, just dark and I would push him along the seafront
in his wheelchair until we got to the beach proper; then it would be hard- those
of you who have pushed a fully loaded wheelchair across a sandy beach will
understand just how difficult this can be. well in driving deep train tracks
through the sand we would reach maybe 10 yards from the sea, then I would hike
him up in my arms, and staggering like a drunk man with another drunk man in his
arms we would make it to the sea .he was a fish man I can tell you that.
straight into the water and all was solved in the solution that is the sea.
we would scud out into the night sea as the stars peppered the sky with beauty,
rolling onto our backs like a couple of demented seals we would bark at the sky
and the Libyan sea would echo with our futile cries....
It was many years later that I really listened to the song Tambourine Man
and the last verse just kind of screamed out to me about those moments with
Roli, we were truly "far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow" out there at
the bottom of Europe and even further we would try to do anything to escape the
banality of life that not only had we moved to Europe's most isolated point, but
then we staggered drunk to hide out in the midnight sea, I truly loved the man..
I could write much more about Roli, who sadly died last year and how I wished I could have told him how much I loved him, how I wish that he had met our daughters..
I recently came across two other moving tributes to our dear Roland Bannwart, he is forgotten by noone.
Winged Heels
Beautiful Rider
I still cry.