[Acrylic-bob]

I am, at the moment, having my senses ravished by Sir Charles Mackerras' interpretation of Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier. Is there any more sublime moment in music than the second act trio? I don't think so.

Anyway, it got me thinking, as you do, and as I was wandering along memory lane it occured to me that I must have lived before. And not only that, I am half convinced that I lived in Vienna. You will say that I am mad or have had far more gin than is perhaps good for me, and were I you I would probably say the same thing...except....except for a rather odd ocurrance.

It happened that, some years ago, I concieved a longing to travel. Having just completed my degree and being of that sort of footloose age I packed a few belongings and my passport and off I went, just like that! No preparation or planning. The vaguest smattering of German and French and my wits was all I had. I first tried Paris for a couple of months and hated it. I could not get out of there quickly enough. Nice city, but criminally wasted on the French! Desparation made me hop on the first train out of the Gare de l'Est and it was only as we reached the Franco- German border at Strasbourg that I discovered that I was on my way to Vienna!

The train journey took all day and most of the evening and I ended up in Vienna in the middle of a summer thunderstorm at ten-thirty on a Sunday evening. Vienna, tired of waiting for me, had already gone to bed.

Most people would panic at being disgorged, alone, into a foreign city at that time of night. I, on the other hand, felt anything but panic! One of the strangest feelings came over me. I knew exactly where I was. I did not need a map and did not consult one. I stepped into the quiet streets with as much confidence, nay more, as I would into the streeets of Accrington. I knew where I was and where I was going! And within minutes I was checking into an hotel. I later discovered that arriving, as I did, in the middle of the annual Vienna Festival I would have been lucky to find a park bench for the night much less a hotel room.

I stayed in Vienna for six months, and fell in love with the place. But it was a familiar, comfortable, easy love, sort of like meeting an old lover after a considerable interval of time. There were many instances of this feeling of ...what...deja-vu in the succeding months. And I do not think that I have ever felt more at home anywhere than I did in Vienna. There were two streets which seemed to fill me with a gentle melancholy whenever I felt drawn to walk along them; Kartnerstrasse and Furstengasse. Odd streets, There was meaning of a sort there but, I think that I was not yet ready to contemplate it.

Anyway, that is part of my story. Does anyone else have a similar story to relate? Has anyone been hypnotically regressed? Or perhaps someone would like to subject my tale to freudian analysis?????