Then, there was a 40 years later. It was on 19 May 1971, the day after that night outside Lenin’s house in St Petersburg. We were on a schooltrip to Russia. We did not know what these years would bring, but we knew we would be involved. The way you know everything when you are young. When we turned from the photographer, looking into the future, by the fountain outside the admiralty in Leningrad, we heard the roar of the cascades, and I heard two hearts that had begun to beat at the same rate.

Now there’s also a 40 years later. But my youth’s certainty has given way to a hope, and if I’m honest, a doubt that I will remain the next 40.
My heart though, beats still at the same rate, and perhaps it is so that two hearts beat better than one, and that the heart we have together can keep up the next 40 years. When sharing souls we dont care so much about whose heart it is that keeps it alive.

To return to a place and a feeling after 40 years, provides a perspective on eternity. Time has not stood still, but it has shown that anything and everything can happen. Everything and nothing can be changed. It is two hours more here than there, it’s gravel where there was grass and grass where there was gravel. The ferrie benches on the seventh deck has been changed from soft wood to a little rougher plastic, but the sun is still there, the warm wind is there, sea, sky, nearby. The sounds are still there, and the scent of love. The scent of her. The sent of You, Yvonne.