Behind the Words: Lac Leman

This is obviously very silly. It is a mock-mock-heroic poem written in a bar in Lausanne commemorating the night I got utterly arseholed, fell in the lake and irreparably buggered up my ankle.

I was about 20-years old, visiting a friend studying abroad in Lausanne. We had a day and a night on the wine, most of which I can’t recall. The last thing I remember with any clarity is trying to get a tram to drive us somewhere we could buy more wine. Yes, a tram. Those things fixed to their tracks. It was that kind of night.

We got some wine but not a corkscrew, so we smashed it open on a rock. Obviously. We went down to the lakeside, pouring wine into our mouths from this jaggy broken bottle until I slipped on a seaweed (lakeweed?) covered pipe and pitched into the lake, narrowly missing my face with the bottle.

Long story short, my friend had to carry me home. His home was a room rented from a nice Swiss lady who was not happy. I could no longer walk and had to cut my interrail trip short. My friend got evicted a week later. Not my finest hour but from such events comes great poetry. Or doggerel at least. Not all literature has to be deep, poignant and compelling. Sometimes it can just be silly, light and knowingly dumb, which this most certainly is.