Ibiza 1983 (4)

Ibiza 1983 

(4)

A few days later, in the middle of the following week, and the day before the ferry to Alicante that Colin and the Merc' were booked on was due to sail, he picked Nina and I up from the finca about 5pm, just as the shops were reopening after siesta, and drove us to a travel agent's in Es Cana, so we could buy tickets to get on the same boat. They told us that for foot passengers, there was no need to book in advance, and just to turn up at the ferry company's offices in Ibiza Port the following day at least a couple of hours before the sailing time, which was around 9pm. We duly returned to San Carlos and had a lovely farewell dinner with friends under the vines at Las Dalias, with lots of 'hasta el proximo' toasts. Sadly, circumstances conspired, as they say, and that next time was not to be for seven years, but the gap between my visits has rarely been more than a year since.

So, fast forward twenty-four hours or so, we arrived at the port in Colin's car nice and early and adjourned to a bar, where I ran into a couple of people I knew who sold Colin a piece of hash for the journey. I think this must have been when the foreboding set in, though we didn't know it, as it turned out to be the only piece of rubbish hash I'd scored all summer. After a couple of beers, we located the ferry company offices and queued up at the ticket booth to be told the ferry was full. I think what had happened in Es Cana was that they had no franchise, or made no money out of selling foot passenger tickets, and thus just fobbed us off. I had espied a book of tickets behind the glass though, and the stakes being fairly desperate as Nina and I were potless, when the lady behind the glass turned round to address a colleague, I thought quickly but recklessly, grabbing the ticket book and tearing off a handful. Needless to say, the lady spun round at the crucial moment, and the Guardia were called. They didn't arrest me, just took the tickets back and, when we explained the situation, said there was nothing we could do but go away and return the following morning to board the daytime ferry, which was to Valencia, not Alicante. 

This being far from an ideal solution, we conferred with Colin, and agreed to try stashing our bags unseen beneath his stuff in the Merc's roomy boot [trunk for the American reader], and us lying down on the floor in the back under a blanket. I expect the Guardia had radio'd through but anyway, as Colin drew up to the checkpoint, the ferry official immediately opened the back door, whisking the rug off with a flourish, like a toreador. The good news in all of this is that the authorities, quite rightly, do not wish then or now, to detain troublesome tourists or visitors, but rather just to get them off the island at the earliest opportunity. Quite rightly, as it goes, though we were not chavtastic rabble rousers, just two hippy types who'd run out of money — nonetheless that still put us firmly in the undesirable category. Obviously, the Guardia Civil officers that attended Incident No. 2, were the same pair that had attended Incident No. 1. This was the first, and thankfully still — to date — the only, time I have ever been pistol-whipped. 

Our adventures on the high seas having been thus forestalled in dramatic Boys' Own style, they dragged us off to a small office in the port, where they confiscated our passports, thankfully without checking the validity of mine in the name of Martin Woloszczuk. Mind you, I don't suppose two people making the most unsubtle attempt ever to board a ferry unauthorised was high on the Interpol list. The Guardia then told us to return to the ferry company offices in the morning, buy our tickets to Valencia, and then present ourselves at the Guardia office in the port with said jiminy crickets, and they'd return our passports. They added a stern warning not to get into any more trouble in the meantime, though I think we'd had more than enough grief for one night. Colin had meanwhile been turned around on the entry ramp, and made to queue up again, meaning that by the time our little fracas had ended, he was one of the last vehicles to board the boat, which was just drawing up its anchor chains and puffing off. We could see him on the bow end of the deck, and I yelled to Colin to wait for us in Valencia, where our ferry would dock about 5pm the following afternoon. I'm sure Colin must have had other clothes with him, but that night he had on the same striped T-shirt and shorts as the night we'd met at Bobby's and, with his white shorts and white legs — he wasn't big on sunbathing — silhouetted against the twilit sky, he gave me a thumbs up.

More than a trifle nerve-racking was how I might describe the next twenty or so hours. We had barely any money, just enough for a couple of beers dragged out through the night hours, a coffee in the morning and, after getting the tickets and retrieving my false passport, a couple of warm beers, some water, and a sandwich that would have done British Rail proud, on the boat. The boat was packed, mainly with Spanish families consuming vast amounts of food and drink, and the air was really close inside. They had a tiny swimming pool on deck, which was also packed, but in which I remember trying to do a few lengths to tire myself out enough to have a kip. You'd think I'd have been spark out after spending all night wandering around Ibiza Town, but realise I'd only met Colin a few days earlier, and although I had a lovely vibe off him, I wasn't at all sure if he'd wait around for us for a  whole day. Coupled with this, he'd made it clear to me that he wanted to drive without any overnight stops right up to Calais, so as to make as much profit out of the boat delivery job as possible.Valencia is only about 100 miles up the coast from Alicante, though thankfully in the right direction; however anyone wanting to drive overland from the Costa Blanca to Calais without passing Go obviously aims at more than 100 miles in a day. I consoled myself with the thought that Colin had what I thought was some decent hash, so he could pull over and chill out as and when, or so I was hoping. He had all our stuff in the motor too, and we had nothing but the thin summer clothes we stood tiredly up in, so there was a fair bit of nail-biting trepidation involved, as to whether Colin would be in Valencia to meet us.

Nina spent the ferry ride outlining to me a proven, but singularly unappealing, Plan B. A few years before she had gone on an abortive smuggling mission to Andalusia, with our friend Big Bill Z., and an old Belfast cohort of Wee Johnny's called John Brennan, where they'd been despatched by an unseen mystery man to retrieve a parcel of dope, supposedly the size of a telephone kiosk, buried on a deserted Southern Spanish beach. Such is the myth of which Howard Marks books are made. [Incidentally many years later Nina went on a legalise cannabis march with Howard Marks in the West End —it was a cold wet day and she told me they filtered off from the demo' and went down the pub at the earliest opportunity.] On this expedition, her and Bill had been waiting for weeks in a pension in Estapona for a call from a guy called Enrico, who was supposed to have liaised with John Brennan in the solo 'beach party', following which they were to organise the shipment. They too had little funds and whiled away their siesta hours playing the game of lying perfectly still for as long as possible. When the call finally came, they were instructed to make their way to Madrid, where Nina was to wait on the steps of the Prado for this guy, within a certain daily time slot. Meanwhile, being unable to settle the bill at the pension, as they hadn't been wired any money, they had to break into the unfortified hotel safe and steal their passports back, which the pension had held as insurance, a common enough practice. Nina told me she sat for the same two hours for days on end on the steps of the Prado, until one day a guy looking as gangsterish as you like in a white suit, and with an old English sheepdog on a lead, turned up and identified himself, only to say it was 'all off' for now, leaving her and Bill high and dry. They therefore had to hitch, and partly walk, back to England through the Pyrenees, with virtually no money and only a denim jacket between them for warmth at night. You can see why Plan B. did not appeal.

I need neither a heart monitor to tell me how fast my heart was racing, nor the photograph I never took, to recall my joy, relief, and confirmation of how true to his word Colin was —there was never a man truer — as the ferry chugged into Valencia, and I saw his striped T-shirt with outstretched arm waving on the dock, as I shielded my eyes from the afternoon sun on the ferry prow. Apart from the swiftly imparted bad news that the dope was useless, it was all good news. We were soon on the road, and the green Mercedes powered its way into France shortly after nightfall. We were famished and I can still taste the crisp frites with homemade mayonnaise Colin bought us from a roadside caravan in the hills above Perpignan. Colin informed me that he was going to avoid the trunk roads, and thus the tolls, by taking the more circuitous route that guides you all the way from Marseilles, through central Paris, to Calais, which is denoted by a green arrow on roundabouts etc. He gave Nina and I the job of looking for the green flash, as we called it, at every roundabout or junction. Meanwhile Colin was keen to chat, in the interests of staying awake as much as anything else, and we bonded whilst talking of many things: not shoes and ships, but primarily a discovered shared love of Django and gypsy jazz — I'd only heard Colin strum a few chords, and was as yet unaware of his extraordinary talent as a jazz lead guitarist —and religion, Colin being a very spiritual man, and devout, though his devotion to what or whom was sometimes unclear. In over a quarter of a century I never got to the bottom of it, but whatever it was, it was the rock that got him through hard places after whatever had happened to him in New York.

Hardly crucial to the story, but interesting because you can't imagine such a thing happening in England, is that about 4am Colin, on approaching a garage that was closed for the night, it not being a busy stretch of road, said he'd thought he'd pull in and get a couple of hours' rest whilst waiting for them to open, as we were low on gas. I asked him if he'd rather press on if he could, to which he said that he would. My minimal French being better than both my minimal Spanish and Colin's non-existent French, I suggested I'd knock them up, as it was apparent the owners lived upstairs, and they could only say no. Madame duly appeared at the window in her dressing gown, and could not have been more accommodating, coming downstairs immediately and insisting on filling the tank herself. Colin asked if I could get some oil too, and she ushered us into the shop, which was also a small café, and asked me what ratio of oil we needed. The necessary translating being done, she asked us if we'd like a cup of coffee as we had a long journey ahead. We'd just got the lady out of bed, for goodness' sake — as I say, jamais en Angleterre!

Off we went again, and by the time we hit central Paris — which as I say, on Colin's chosen route was unavoidable — it was morning rush hour, horns blaring, and the game of 'find the green flash' quickly upped its ante at the Arc de Triomphe. After going round a few roundabouts, in a roundabout way, a few times, we duly emerged back on the road North to Calais. Martin Woloszczuk embarked and disembarked the ferry without causing any undue curiosity, and by early evening I was back in the mansion flat in East Twickenham, and on the yellow wall-mounted pay phone — in what we called the hall but strangely enough was like an entrada in a finca, in that it was a central room the front door opened into, with all the other rooms off it — to call my mate in Kingston and pick up a bag of gear. By the time Colin came round a week later to share the roast chicken dinner Nina had made to thank him for the lift, I had been to see the lovely Dr. Dally in Devonshire Place — who I think quite admired me for trying to knock it on the head as much as I quite admired myself — and got my injectable methadone plus Valium prescription back, and was more grounded, or so I thought. I showed Colin some of my teacher, Alf (Fred) Palace's 'secret' Django arrangements, which he made me swear only to share with 'family', and thus began twenty-five years or so of blissful gypsy jazz, were it not for the occasional  contretemps, as we were both quite highly strung; our guitars however, had exactly the action we wanted and the music they made together is woven into my history.

I used the Martin Woloszczuk passport but twice more, in the February and April of the following year, when I joined my pals The Decorators on a couple of French dates. I shared a flat with Joe Cohen, the sax player, Mick Bevan the singer and rhythm guitarist, and their girlfriends in Churchfield Road, Acton, down the road from Lionel Bart as it happens, though I was historically more a lifter from shops than a picker of a pocket or two. In the February, the band had already left for Paris and Nina and I were sitting in the flat chatting with Joe's girlfriend Bareen — now an eminent surgeon, but then at Charing Cross Medical School — and she said she missed Joe and was thinking of surprising him, and did we want to come. Well, why not? The jolly old cardboard fake passport still had a few months to run, and I may as well get my full one pound's worth, after all. Our friend John Perivolaris who was Greek and rich, the latter being particularly handy, said he'd come along too. [John had a lovely sports car, the bonnet of which I was draped over, clad in black leather jacket and white rocker scarf — a myopic Gene Vincent — for a photo in Sounds music paper a few months later.] I had two good friends in Paris, who I didn't think would baulk too much at my unannounced arrival, as its was only for a night or two. So once again, there I was back in the Paris morning rush hour, this time ringing my dear friend Segs from The Ruts, then resident there with his partner Violon, with whom he was in a band. Violon answers — Segsy's gone to London for a few days! As my mentor Bill Major used to say: the luck of the nine blind bastards — and what luck did they have, blind and bastards? However my friend and other amazing gypsy jazz colleague Mark Sullivan also lived in Paris then, and he was home, as luck would have it, and in Clichy as it happens, where Henry Miller spent some 'quiet days'.

In the evening we met up with the band and the others and I compèred and supported The Decorators at their gig at a venue called Les Bains Douches, a former Turkish baths, which had none of the décor changed, candlelight twinkling and reflecting off the water in the marble baths, very Oscar Wilde or Walter Benjamin, just with a bar and stage installed. The following day we went for a mooch around Paris, including a visit to Shakespeare & Co., probably the most chaotic bookshop I've ever been in, and the church of my namesake, Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, which appears in Nightwood by Djuna Barnes, possibly my favourite novel ever. I had been in that church once before, as a boy on holiday with my parents, when my father had told me, because of my name, of the legend of the eponymous saint, as told by Flaubert. It was a bitterly cold Saturday afternoon, and John kindly lent me his lovely Chesterfield Crombie to combat the chill.  It was at least two sizes too big, but I was nonethelessless grateful. John is a great photographer, and I have a picture he took of me wearing that coat, with a traditional French white wedding coming out of the church, confetti in the air, the groom sweeping the bride off her feet, and me looking pinched but stylish, quiff to the wind. The band had another gig the next day in the South, and Nina and I caught the train with John to Calais. We strolled through customs at Dover but, to my horror, there were two CID doing spot checks the other side. They were all over us like the proverbial rash, but the passport stood its test. I made contact with John recently after a 35 year interval, and learned he is an academic residing in the Western Isles.

In the April, The Decorators were again across La Manche, doing a show in Paris at a different venue, and one in Rouen. Mick Bevan rang me and said they were already there but the guy who was supposed to bring some strings and sticks and stuff and do their sound had let them down. They could do their own sound, he said, but would I pop round to Ginger Baker's studios, Acorn Studios, where they rehearsed, bring the peripherals, and I could then compère and support again and have a hotel room, etc. Ginger wasn't there, else I'd have tried to pick up more than just the drumsticks, as I had a sneaking suspicion that Mick's master plan was to tap me up for some methadone, rather than a craving for my not inconsiderable performance skills. No matter, I had some for him, we played two cool gigs, and when I got back to London, I went back to being me again. Albeit a me that was still half-heartedly wanted by the police; very half-heartedly as inter al., I did plenty of gigs, had a  private prescription, and worked as a postman for a year, all as me. The next passport I got was not until 1988, a real one in my real name. I think it was Howard Marks that said you can go anywhere in the world without a passport [yogi and other holy men do] but you will be making life very difficult for yourself.