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In the autumn of 1979, my 3rd form German class went on an exchange trip to Germany.

It made sense.

I was crap at German. I never learned, never did homework. And the only time I did revise for a vocab test, Ms Dring accused me of cheating.

So it goes.

So, in October 1979 we went on an adventure, to Germany.

I had no idea what to expect. A bit like Holland I suppose. But it was so much more.

We took a coach to Dover, then caught a ferry from Harwich to Bremerhaven, spending the nicht in couchettes, and acting like the hormone ravaged teens we were. Not much sleep that night, and chasing girls wrapped in sheets around the promenade decks.

It was something like a 24 hour crossing, and once we left Suffolk and explored the ship, the trill faded, and we were left with the fact that we were stuck here for 24 hours.. Only bright spot was the cinema, and that night was showing Death on the Nile.

I like a good murder-mystery, but this was awful. We all went in, and one by one we left before the end of the film.

We had no money for drinks, and were too young.

At some point we did fall asleep.

Next morning we awoke coming into port, and once off the boat we boarded a long train to take us the Hanover.

The train was made of sections, including a part that was going to Moscow, and filled with people dressed in long fur coats with ladies dripping in diamonds. The train stopped somewhere and the train was split, my friend Simon was on the half going to Russia and only just made it back to our portion. God knows what would have happened had the other half left with him on board.

After arriving in Hanover, we were introduced to our host families, and we went home with them. I was staying with Thomas and his parents, both of whom where chain smoking alcoholics. Which was interesting, but scary to see. I mean, my parents like a fag and a drink, but these were serious, and liver disease would take both Thomas parents within a decade or so.

One night they arranged a disco in their basement garage, and his Mother ranted when she came down to find Germans on one side and English the other. She was pissed as a fart. Meant well, but raging.

We also went to school with our hosts, attending a biology lesson where we watched a film of an autopsy of a heavy smoker. It made a huge impression, as everyone smoked. I was offered cigarettes on my first night, and declined. We were also offered schnapps, which i accepted.

And why not?

We went on an exchange trip to Burgwedel near Hannover. One day we went on a trip to Goslar and then to view the border between the east and West Germany; the Iron Curtain itself!

So, our exchange partners thought it a great idea to trespass over the border and have a look at the fence and mine fields beyond.

Yes, schoolchildren invade East germany!

Two guards came down on a huge motorbike whith the biggest gun I have ever seen to investigate this latest challenge to the glorious DDR.

So, we posed for pictures, and threw things onto the minefield.

The guards took our picture, the number plate of the bus we had all travelled in, traced the bus, and took the West German government to court and got all tourist busses banned within 2Km of the border, and got a huge fine as well.

All because of us.

I was sure I had a shot of the minefield and guards, but have lost them. This is all that remains, sadly.

After that, there was an official reception at the town hall, as as the first part of the twinning (again) of our two towns. It was all very serious.

We heard speeches, in German, and got bored. Then the food was brought out, and some of it was what looked like raw sausagemeat sandwiches. I don't know who threw the first sandwich, but soon the air was full of food as the mayors looked on, horrified. Next day the English louts were on the front page of the local paper, and our teacher, Mr Dyer was horrified.

One day, my friend and I got deliberately lost in Hamburg and had half a day wandering around the city centre, I went to buy Out of the Blue, and we tried all sorts of foods and drinks. Poor Thomas got the blame for losing us, whe we did it on purpose.

Did not make for a good atmosphere for a few hours.

I can say I learned no German those two weeks, but did appreciate the city and country we visited, and began a desire to live there, which the RAF granted a decade or so later.

Then there was Rocky Horror.

I can narrow it down to October 1979 and can say with some degree of certainty that it took place in Hannover on the Bundes Republik of Deutschland. Me and my schoolfriends were in Germany for supposedly an educational trip with what was hoped would be Lowestoft’s new twin town, Burgwedel. We were the first cultural visitors and we were determined to make an impression.

That’s not true though, we were just being us, and treated the whole thing as a holiday and for me the first time I had been away from home and my parents. Germany was an odd place; for a start it seemed compulsory that everyone over the age of 14 smoked, and my exchange parents offered me a cigarette soon after I arrived. I refused. They smoked, my exchange partner, Thomas, smoked, his friends smoked.

And then there was the language; I was never the most attentive student, and it fell on poor Thomas’ shoulders to do all the translating as I couldn’t really be bothered. I was too busy soaking up the culture and flavour of life.

I looked at his magazine, Bravo; mainly because there were lots of pictures, words to popular songs, but mainly because in one section there were pictures of barely dressed teens, and a topless girl was still a thing of wonder, and filled my thoughts. A lot. But the magazine had lots about music; a band in make up who spewed blood and ate fire called Kiss were everywhere. They were unheard of in England, or I hadn’t come across them. But in Germany there were huge, nearly as huge as the poster would be if you collected all 52 centre spreads from a years supply of Bravo and stuck them to your wall. On the other side was an equally huge picture of Village People; Thomas was a Kiss fan. To me it sounded like Slade riffs and poor rock, but they were huge. We both like Queen though, and through music we had something in common.

As a non-German speaker, day to day life in Germany for me was not easy; we went to school most days with our exchange partner, and I sat mostly confused through most classes. Some days we went on trips to various places in the area for some understanding of life in Germany. One of these trips was to the border with East Germany, and thanks to a transgression into DDR territory, we did manage to get all tourist coaches banned within a kilometre and a half from the border. But, we did not know that, nor was it our plan; we just followed our exchange partners and walked to the fence, threw things onto the mine field and twanged the wire attached to the automatic machine guns. We also posed for the border guards when they came down to take our picture. I do have pictures to prove all this happened.

And then there was the formal banquet given in our honour at the town hall. Quite who threw the first roll is unclear, but the food fight was quite spectacular and the reporter and photographer from the local paper made it the front story. Oh dear.

So, after about 10 days of being in Germany, Thomas asked would I like to go and see a film? Hmmm. The choice was a film I hadn’t heard of and Alien. In Bravo I had seen pictures of it’s star in her knickers, a scene from the film, and something in me wanted to see more.

Of the film.

Ahem.

But, it was the unheard of film that Thomas and his friends wanted to see; and so late in the afternoon we boarded the tram heading for the centre of the city. As we entered the edge of the city, strangely dressed people with pale make up and dark glasses got on only to jump off and run through dark alley. They seemed excited by something, I wondered what.

We arrived at the cinema only to find hundreds of the strangely dressed people before us, jumping up and down and throwing rice.

How strange.

We paid our entrance fee and went into the cinema and found chaos, people shouting, throwing things and dancing. I noted there was no music. The lights went down, the projector fired up and a pair of bright red lips appeared on the screen and then they began to sing.

“Michael Rennie was ill, The day the earth stood still.”

And so the Rocky Horror Picture Show began. I sat stunned at what was on the screen; I had no idea such a thing existed or had been made. People shouted questions at the screen and the dialogue answered them. Rice was thrown, water pistols fired. What I thought of the film, I can’t remember, the finale of the film did make an impression; Little Nel’s nipples showing over her corset certainly did.

We went back to Thomas’ house in the dark; shadowy figures ran off into the city and night. And in time my memory dimmed of that night.

Years later, back home in Suffolk, I grew up, cinemas closed and my town slowly died. News came of a small theatre in town trying to start a film club, and the first film was to be something called The Rocky Horror Show. Showtime was midnight; I thought I’d go, but why on earth would someone want to show a film at midnight?

When I arrived the place was packed to the rafters; like in Germany people were dancing in the aisles, rice was thrown, and when the house lights went down there were whoops of joy. I had remembered something about the film from Germany, but the realisation that people made a hobby of going to see the film in these midnight shows was an amazing one. I loved it, although, sadly, I was not one of the ones who dressed up, but I did take along rice, water pistols and Bounty Bars. I guess I must have seen the film dozens of time in the cinema in the next ten years. I loved it, I went to the opening night of a revival of the stage play in London, but nothing will beat the experience of that first time, and seeing the film with hundreds of others having a party.