The Art of Longing

[1] Wait, John...

April 8th, 1982 — Gothenburg, Sweden.

Luckily Sweden wasn't very far away, and it was a country I enjoyed going to. The people were nice, I spoke a bit of the Scandinavian languages, and I was familiar with the lifestyle. I had spent two summers in the North of Scandinavia, working on photography assignments, which had been great fun. Yes, this was different, and even though Gothenburg wasn't really the north of Sweden and I was on a slightly different photography assignment now, I was looking forward to it.

If I was honest I didn't know very much about my assignment, it had been very last minute, two days earlier I had still been assuming that April and May would be quiet months, working at home in London on organising the next few months. But then I had gotten a call from an agency I sometimes worked with, telling me that they urgently needed someone to fill in as tour photographer for a rock band.

It had been a while since I had photographed bands and worked as a tour photographer, but it was always a nice contrast to my lonely nature photography assignments, so in a spur of the moment I had said yes. Why not? I didn't know particularly much about my task, I hadn't asked. There would be enough time to figure it all out on the journey and once I got there. There was plenty of time, and as long as I had my equipment, I didn't need much else. I booked a flight from London to Gothenburg where the first show would be, packed my belongings and now here I was, at the airport in Gothenburg, waiting for my suitcase before I could go through passport control and customs. And then I would have to get a taxi to the city centre somehow.

The whole ordeal was done with surprisingly quickly, and then I was out in the cold April of southwestern Sweden. April was supposed to be spring, but I had been able to see from the plane that the landscape was surprisingly white for a spring month. My spring jacket might not have been the smartest choice, but I couldn't change that now. Well, I could, I had another cardigan for underneath the jacket in my suitcase, but I wouldn't get that out now in the middle of the airport. I wasn't that sensitive.

As I walked out into the arrivals hall of the airport, I didn't get far before someone approached me.

"Excuse me?" A man asked, making me stop in front of him.

I stepped back a little, raising my eyebrows. "Yes?"

"Are you ... Eleanora Bennett?" He asked, looking at a piece of paper in his hands.

"Who is asking?" I replied, making sure I had a good hold of all of my belongings.

"I was sent to pick up the photographer, Eleanora Bennett. Are you her? Oh, I'm sorry, I should have told you, I work for Queen, here," he said, giving me some sort of ID.

Queen? I looked at his ID, and indeed, it proved what he had just said. Queen. "The band is Queen?" I had to ask, because I was surprised.

"Yes... are you really Miss Bennett? Shouldn't you know who you work for?" He asked, looking at me sceptically.

"Yes I am Eleanora Bennett, but I wasn't told the band's name. I got notified about this two days ago, and they didn't mention the name. Look, here," I said, getting out my wallet so I could show him my ID. "Eleanora Bennett, that's me. I have the letter I was given... here," I added, giving him the letter that proved I was in fact working for the band. "Oh... well. Yes. It does say Queen. I guess I didn't see that in the rush.." Well, this was the way I lived my life. After 34 years I shouldn't really be surprised anymore that this was usually how it went.

The man seemed a little amused, not that I blamed him. "Very well. Come on, let's go before it starts snowing again. These Swedes aren't very considerate of people not knowing how to handle this weather."