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 my daughters..
I recently came across two other moving tributes to our dear Roland Bannwart, he is forgotten by noone.
Beautiful Rider.
I still cry