How to Hitch-hike using Visualisation
Part 2 of: Iggy-pop-the-music-machine-london 1978-79
Link to part 1 - Iggy Pop, The Music Machine, London 1978
… with my finger metaphorically still on my map, I leave the squats, my Music Machine friends, Iggy Pop, Tiny and the gang, my squatter family, Gail, Grey, Steve and Louis Eugene, who would not long after stow away on a boat to Australia …
I flip out of England by Seaspeed to Calais
There were different ways to travel to Paris from London in 1978. There was the night ferry which was practical but more expensive, or directly from Dover/Folkstone to Calais.
I hitch down to Dover Port
and get the no-longer-existing hovercraft, the Queen of the Channel, which slid us over the sea to France and was like riding on a caged blow-up mattress. It was heroic, and now historic, and leaving for somewhere so far away, I was free from all that London dust and hullabuloo. Thinking back on it all, it was also hard work being so young with no where particular to go. But, before I embark on how to hitch south, I want to tell you a little bit about the English Channel - La Manche as it is called in French, due its sleeve-like shape.
FACT:
It is a branch of the Atlantic Ocean and it is no ordinary sea. It is wild, dark and deep with hundreds of years of history of sea fights and wars. It is well known to us English and French as being unpredictable, unreliable, cold and dangerous; and today, as I write, it carries the small boats making the desperate trips to freedom from war-torn countries. In 2022, 45,000 migrants crossed its iced currents where 1,939 people died on their mission; a watery grave of thousands. It is also the busiest sea channel in the world with around 500 vessels crossing each day.
There is also the legendary landmass Doggerland which exisited above ground in 6500–6200 BCE. Now submerged under this vicious ocean, international teams continue to investigate this sunken landscape which once connected England to Northern France. They want to discover how we evolved from hunter-gatherers to farmers, and, in the end, will find out we are really all one,
Brexit or not!
In le Pas-de-Calais
I find a truckie who is going near Paris. I remember the smell of his truck-cum-home, cigarettes, garlic and syrupy lemon Eau de Cologne. On the floor are some magazines about the death of Henri Curiel, an Egyptian, left-wing Jewish activist who had been killed in Paris. The driver tells me he had met Henri not long before his assassination. He also speaks with passion about Bobby Sands, a member of the IRA, then once in the Maze prison, became a leader of the Irish Republican Army. Sands I do know about - he has not yet died from hunger-strike - one of the hall marks of the Thatcher government.
These two names rolling from this elderly driver’s mouth gives me, in my youth, a passion to follow Sands’ story. Sands would finally die in 1981 after 66 days of hunger strike.
I do not remember the truckie’s name, yet Henri becomes my main character in a short story I write while on this journey - The Balochi - about a stranger from Balochistan who falls in platonic love with Henri, a long distance driver, from a tiny village in northern France.
It is set in 1978.
The truckie drops me near the Bois de Boulogne,
in the heart of Paris, which fools with its forestry; and by night the forest becomes a playground for the multitude of sex workers, lovers and clandestines. Here I meet Sami, a vagabond from Wales. He has lived rough for a few weeks in the dense woods. Hitching has rules, first come, your pitch. Sometimes guys like to hitch with women, sometimes not. Sami is generous, he shares his pitch with me.
We get a lift in a pig truck, effortlessly, all the way to Lloret on the Costa Brava in Catalonia. Sami is a romantic soul whose mother lives in this fishing village, up on the steep of the bay, overlooking the pitch-blue-sea; a place I only remember for the bobbing fishing boats and the fisherman’s wife, a statue which looks out over the seas in memory of those lost sea folk. It is here, at her feet, Sami tells me ‘If you want something enough you need to visualise it. He gets me to practise the perfect hitch; a cool person kind enough to take me wherever I need to go. “Visualise the perfect outcome.” He tells me. So I practise.
Sami then takes me to the end or beginning of Lloret, depending on which way you enter it, and sets the day in motion.
(This photo could be us 45 years earlier.)
A car stops,
my first solo-hitch is with a young couple who shout above the loud music, BARCELONA. The last thing I remember of Sami is his lovely voice singing Suzanne by Cohen till the car takes me out of sight.
The couple do not speak to me. The young woman has hair which glistens in the sun like diamonds; she is really in love, something I have not yet experienced. She keeps her hand on her man’s arm the entire journey, and looks at him so tenderly. I am beguiled by them.
It is not a long lift, only past Barcelona. They stop me by an orange grove.
My visualisation works and I hitch successfully down along the coast. Sometimes I jib the slow train. Jibbing is easier in Spain than France as the trains stops at each village or small town. When you see the inspector you know you will have time to hide in the toilets and jump train when it stops, which is why I spend many hours in forlorn and lost stations where it appears the style for station masters is to have tiny wee birds in tiny wee cages which they sing to. These birds can sing any tune you want them to. One rotund and happy master explains (I understood with my bad Spanish) he buys them, teaches them to sing, and sells them later.
A profitable pastime.
I eat tortilla everyday,
large slabs cut from a huge egg-potato-onion cake; drink water, wash myself and clothes in the railway stations, hanging them to dry on my rucksack. Sleep is easy. Gardens at night are the best, peaceful and safe. As you get closer to the south the smells are incredible, orange blossom - azar - scream at you through the heat. This is flacked with a far off soundscape of dogs barking, church bells, trains clanking and Flaminco playing on the small transistors the station masters have glued to a table lest someone steals them.
I finally stop in Malaga
at a campsite that touches the seafront. I have little money left and can afford only one small slice of tortilla a day. I wait for some money to be wired to me. I remember it was 50 pounds, this would last me almost till I got back to the UK.
The campsite, Torre del Mar, is amazing. I manage to get away with not paying as I sleep just outside the boundary, on the beach, and the owner lets me use the showers and small shop. Most campers are hardened travellers setting off to North Africa, or have come from India. Many simply live here for most of the year. No controls, no visas, no fuss and no frills. There is also no hot water in the bathrooms, and a basin to wash clothes and dishes in. Basic, simply that. Basic.
It is in the campsite I meet a Spanish stray who is going to be put down by the owner for being a pest. An adolescent pup, ebony black, with over large feet and goofy ears. I name him El Macho - The male. We become inseparable, and this bothers the owner, so, I know it is time to leave.
To get lifts you need to walk from tent to tent, and finally I find one to Algeciras with two Americans in their Kombi van. Tom and Judy, whom I still call Tom and Jerry, who never went back to the States from that journey.
From here we will go over to Ceuta-Morocco on the boat.
I have the strongest memory of Ceuta, the Spanish held, Moroccan border. Spain has sovereignty, yet Morocco does not recognise the sovereignty in Ceuta nor Melilla. In the 90s, Spain built fences around their boarder.s Last year a tragedy struck on the Melilla boarder where about 37 people died after around 2,000 Sub-Saharan African migrants and refugees attempted to cross from Morocco to Spain on 24 June 2022. (Article from Amnesty International. 2023)
In the blistering 1978 heat,
mile-long lines of cars wait to go through customs, Tom, redhead, redder in the heat and getting cross with me and El Macho for holding them up, yells at everything and everybody. It is hectic. Lorries full of produce, while officials shout at some kids who are playing between the foot passengers. Runaways from Spain and France, hitchers and hippies, Moroccan families and women piled back-high with wares bought in Spain, shuffle around in unobedient lines. Moroccan customs officials are mean to all of us, standing tall and handsome in this minute slice of Spain, like a tiny melon slither, falling in North Africa.
We are finally searched. Tom has to literally empty the entire contents of the van. He and Jerry-Judy eat macrobiotic foods and the official takes great delight in opening up each packet. Tom objects, so he has to open them all up. We watch Tom and the official juggle anger, we wait in the shade; we do not speak.
This is my first entry to a world closer to my biological roots then England has ever been, and I love it.
We camp the first night in Tétouan. I sleep with El Macho in my tiny tent. For the first time he sleeps all night next to me.
Tom and Jerry leave us the next day at a campsite on the outskirts of Fez. They are heading along to the desert, then across to Algeria. Though I have never seen them again, we kept in contact. Tom became an incredible, inspirational chiropractor in New Zealand.
The campsite did not last long as the owners did not like El Macho. We are kicked out after our first night and sit on the pavement waiting for something to happen. I have no idea where we can go, other than sleep rough on the beach, when 17-year-old Nadia Oudrhiri sees us and invites us home as she needs help with her English. I end up staying for six weeks, teaching her English in exchange for sharing her bed in their lime-walled home, with a tiny courtyard and well.
A family of three boys and one girl, like my own family. Nadia and I cuddle up together and our nights consist of gossiping in French about boys and how her parents want her later to go to Spain, to marry a cousin who is working as a Maitre D. “Il est donc inutile d'étudier, hein ? So no point in studying, huh.”
I often go with Nadia to school. No one seems to mind. El Macho is free, I only meet up with him at night. He is totally disciplined in his vagabondage. I later learn he spends most of the day in the Bazaar by the meat sellers.
(Video by Taryn Elliott - Pexels)
I don’t regret not visiting the Qarawiyyin mosque and the twinned streets that lie behind, and I never get to see the main sites of this ‘Holy City of Morocco.’ I become engrossed with the everyday life in and around the Oudrhiri family. Also, as a sudden extended member of the family, I have to follow family protocol. No wandering around alone.
Monsieur Oudrhiri works for local government and Madame Oudrhiri stays at home and keeps their tiny home spotless. She teaches me how to make her Tagine, and bread and the most delicious tomato and cucumber salad, rich with coriander, sea salt, garlic, and lashings of thick, Moroccan olive oil. I still make it this way today. I also learn her way to wash and rinse the dishes, three times, and seven, if there has been any pork involved.
I have inherited a new family. It is wonderful. Especially as my biological father is Lebanese-Muslim. There are smells, sounds and feelings I do not have to learn, they are already in my DNA. The fact I also look Moroccan helps. I belong, and dream of life forever in this close, closeted, sometimes suffocating, caring family.
There is political conflict.
I recall soldiers patrolling everywhere. There are constant curfews and blackouts, and at night the men gather in the street, sipping mint tea and talking about Morocco’s claim to the Sahara. But we are young, Nadia and I, and go to the medina where we meet her classmates in a milkshake bar, and dance and laugh, and fall in love. Life is colourful, hot, spicy and hopeful in comparison to the violence beginning on London’s streets.
I have letters from home. I am not really interested in politics, only in the music scene. I know that Iggy Pop is going to be playing a European tour in the spring of ‘79, so I plan to leave Morocco in early winter. I am happy, in this very different culture. I adore it, and know, like music, it will not let go of me.
The day comes to leave. I leave El Macho with a friend of Nadia’s, Toz Toz. I cannot turn back that one last time as I walk to the bus which will take me Tangier. I think of him often. I loved him deeply. I still love him. He lived with Toz Toz, a long and happy dog life, that I do know.
The Oudrhiri family come to wave me off. I still have no camera, but the memories are there in notebooks and in Kodak Technicolour in my mind. Nadia pressed against the bus window, crying, me crying, promises made to write each week and to send fashion magazines to Madame Oudrhiri so she could re-create the styles and sell them to her friends. These promises I keep, till the day I get no more news. I later hear from Toz Toz that the house has been demolished and the family moved to a modern complex. Nadia is married and living in Sevilla and preoccupied with her new life. No telephones, no internet, name changes, address changes. People disappear,
memories do not.
I do not hitch back home, I have enough of my 50 pounds left to take a bus from Sevilla to London Victoria Coach Station. This is luxury. The only thing is I have no idea where I will go. But I have three days to think about it all …
I come back to Iggy Pop in the next Soaps & Sagas newsletter, and to that “winter of discontent” when the British Labour government collapsed, and the arrival of Thatcher came in, 1979.
So, enjoy your weeks ahead in this strange, unusual time that we are all living in. I am very thankful to you for reading my work, as this supports me, motivates me, and yes, to carry on.
Soon, very soon, in fact, I have given myself a launch date which is the 21st September. I have my new Substack ready for those of you who are interested in venturing into the world of documentary filmmaking. I am also launching my UDEMY online course. For more info:
Click picture to bring you to the website
Many thanks
Jeanne
I’m going to need more on Doggerland--what a fascinating excavation that could be!
"chiropractor"... We met in one of their clinics; I've been hitch hiking thousand miles as a teen; (trying to draft a list of things we have in common ;) )
I'll read this over again, several times. As usual, the fascinating writing of a film maker.