Random Memory #11

I once spent 3 months on the North Frisian island of Föhr (Erskine Childers' The Riddle of the Sands takes place thereabouts). Lying on the beach watching German people fall off windsurfers while (through some fluke of the atmosphere) getting the BBC World Service on my Walkman and listening to an interview with Sunil Gavaskar. Hearing sonic booms from Danish F-16s. Talking to two rastas in Föhr's only nightclub, Erdbeerparadis. Realising the only three books in English on the hotel's bookshelves were 1984, a Pan anthology of tedious ghost stories, and a sumptuously bound copy of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. Germans asking me, sternly, what I did all day and when I replied, "I'm writing poetry/a novel/a history of the Kwakiutl" suggesting I should walk around the perimeter of the island as it was only 82 km sq in size. Discussing bottle-screws with a Hobie Cat sailor. Days spent on very cold beaches, even in summer, reading Dashiell Hammett and Jim Thompson and David Goodis.