This is probably a bit of a strange post. I had a very long talk with Peter Hammill some 25 years ago when I was around 20 and he around 40. I still had my hair then (black, very long) and was a very attractive woman. I also was still heterosexual back then; I turned lesbian after a dramatic incident which I don't wish to speak about.
Peter Hammill gave a concert at a very small venue in Worringen, a suburb of Cologne. It was called "Grevenbroicher Hof" and fitted 200 people at maximum, if at all. The concert was originally scheduled for early afternoon (around 2 or 3 PM; it took place on a Saturday or Sunday) but was rescheduled to the evening on short notice, which I did not know about. So I was there way too early. Since I was there by public transport (bus) I decided to stay and ordered something to drink. Then Peter Hammill came out and drank something too, and I decided to talk to him, but not in a "You Peter Hammill, me fan" way, just in a simple person to person way.
After we had talked for a while he suggested we should go for a walk, and I agreed. We walked northeast along the Alte Neusser Landstraße, a country road which stretches to the northeast in an almost straight line from that venue for a few kilometers. We talked about all kinds of things, but none of them directly Peter Hammill related. Indirectly yes; we talked about topics that interested both him and me, like mathematics, physics, Zen Buddhism, even music (but not music that he was directly involved in). There was some underlying sexual tension as well, but neither of us tried to make a pass at the other. He behaved like a perfect gentleman; he never touched me at all.
After a few kilometers we crossed the road and started walking back, still talking. When we arrived back at the venue he gave me a warm friendly hug which was not sexually related at all; it was just a friendly gesture. I had not looked at my watch, but from the distance we walked and the tempo we walked in it must have taken somewhere between 2 and 3 hours or even longer.
Believe it or not, I had almost forgotten about this. This is because I do not think of this as "how awesome - I had a long talk with Peter Hammill" but rather as "I had a long interesting talk with someone who incidentally was Peter Hammill".
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