(All pics Leysin, Switzerland, 1987-8, copyright Steve Sainsbury)
I was brought up in a rough part of LA in the 60s. The very idea of going abroad, even on holiday, was just a pipedream. Dawlish Warren was the best we could hope for. We were just ordinary folk, and we were to know our place.
The EU blew that mentality apart and the UK joined - at last - on 1 January 1973. I first got to travel abroad (as we used to call it) in summer 1976, taking advantage of an Interrail card. It was hard. I took food with me, cheese sandwiches, enough for a week. I went on my own of course, working class kids simply didn't go abroad. I slept on the trains, when I could. I started to see a bigger world, one that had been totally hidden from me by my protective family and peculiar community. I loved it. The foreign languages, the odd money, the colourful people. Their teenagers weren't like ours. They were outgoing and friendly and luckily spoke English.
Just five years on I did my first road trip round Europe with my brother, who'd managed to survive meningitis just a few months before. We did the south of France, Austria and Switzerland. 9 weeks of freedom. Fantastic and mad and so different from home. We did it again the following year. Then other stuff happened and the long summer trips stopped. But in 1987 I went away for four months in the summer, came home for a few months (catching the 1987 'hurricane') and then did a winter season in Switzerland. I made loads of friends from all over the world and got a hot summer followed by a snowy winter. Perfect.
THIS is what Europe's all about. This is what being in the EU is all about. Widening our horizons, getting more out of life. NOBODY is going to take that away from me!
I think this brush with madness will soon be history. We'll not only remain in the EU but embrace it much more. Joining Schengen will be a first little step, and I'm sure that will be the 'price' we pay for continued membership. ALL of us, not just the young or the educated or the rich, need to see Europe as our home and our opportunity. Perhaps our six months of madness will, in the longer term, be the thing that finally welded us forever to the rest of our continent ...
