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Still the same - the innocents being slaughtered in the Holy Land, Blunt thought, while wrestling with a tie and checking the clock,nervous about being late for his first day at training. Not being latewas all that was left of army discipline. Plenty of time. Another mug of tea and a fag before he left.He was told the next posting was to be Northern Ireland. No. That was enough. Seven years a soldier and now 22, it was time to moveon and besides, the Royal Irish Rangers had taught him the wrongnessof the Orange. He would not let himself be party to suppressing thecivil rights of British citizens. Even if those citizens did not wish to beBritish. With four years left on his contract he purchased hisdischarge. £200.00 it cost, all saved while in Cyprus. GenerousCyprus giving him time to try and repair a shattered heart and save.
Now what? Adjustment to a new life-style, one that you choose yourself, proved difficult for him. His references had all beeninformed by the army. In and out of jobs, mostly driving lorries.You could do that then - walk out of one job one day and intoanother the next. Never settled, never satisfied and still looking for love.
Eight months after leaving the army he met up with Jim in Colchester,
an old army friend who had saved the £200.00 by 'working his passage'
- becoming so obnoxious and irresponsible that even the Army tired
of him and threw him out.
These were the acid years.
His first trip had been before Cyprus while still in the army. If they'd
only known. The fellow squaddie who had first turned him onto
marijuana had eventually been arrested by the Special Investigation
Branch for possession while stationed in Germany. He was Court
Martialled to 6 months in Colchester Military Correction Centre.
What chance acid?
It was purple haze. Never to be forgotten. Woolwich Common's
trees leafless branches became prismed peacock fans, foxes - people,
people - birds, cars - poisonous beetles that scared him for a
moment. Eat your heart out Disney, anthropomorphism has never
been so real or so bright or so technicolour. A millisecond of
movement contained an eon of light. Space time had shifted and
Infinity laid bare her secrets. He didn't remember them after he came
down. But the vivid, vibrant emotions, the vibe of belonging, the
communality with Gaia remained and drew him back.
Blunt had been spoilt. The purple haze was sold as mind enhancing,
time expanding and his first trip would be the best he ever had. The
worst would be in Colchester. Bad black acid from the Student
Anarchists. They had a philosophy of sorts. Play mind games. A guy
called Dido Plum, original name something else, common and well
used like Pat Williams or Paul Jones, told him a consignment of acid
would be arriving.
“Good stuff. Just what we need for the festival at the University. A
friend of mine is bringing them. She usually acts as Mother to those
on bad trips.”
Dido had been involved in the organising of the festival. Blunt
remembered it as crap. Held in the underground car-park. Badly lit.
Dingy. No colour. No purple haze. No relaxation. The bands weren't
playing together. Discordant noise and arguements came from an
invaded stage. What few people there were, trippingly mistook the
drums as a call to battle. It was a downer. Blunt left without seeing
the 'Mother'. Wandered the streets of Colchester through the night,
all orange neon and monochrome reflected in the pavement puddles.
Head down asking the pavement “what?” And “why?” Why had such
an abject festival been organised? What was the meaning to its
failure? Why were Anarchists into bad black acid? Why put
Strychnine in acid when it makes you shit? Why had he dropped black
acid?
There was no mind enhancing here. Just unstructured introspection
and trivial cul-de-sac diversions. No optimism that can help unravel
the mysteries he encountered each day, to understand them then
time an intervention for benefit. It was more the pessimism of
meaninglessness. Black acid as an existential metaphor for student
anarchy.
Blunt, Jim and Dido decided to go to Morocco for a smoke, do some
travelling at the fag-end of Hippiedom, most of which Blunt and Jim had
missed for Queen and Country. To follow the sun and head south out
of the dismal grey light, the daily drizzle and decaying post-war
optimism. He dumped his job and started hitching . To Marrakech
accompanied by Crosby, Stills and Nash. And Dylan. Chasing
authenticity.
Dido had applied for a driving licence in the name of Left Black-Boot
and had been duly issued with it, which he proudly showed anyone
who scoffed. Did the same for his passport, but this time in the
name of Dido Plum. Odd the ways of anarchists and bureaucrats.
He split at Calais saying three had less of a chance getting lifts. They
couldn't fault the logic, so they parted promising to meet at a
cafe/rooms in the pink city's medina.
Jim didn't make it. They lost each other in Paris and didn't meet up
again for six months. Jim had decided to 'borrow' a moped and ride it
to Marrakesh syphoning petrol along the way, but typical of Jim,
thought that a detour through Andorra from France to Spain might be
fun. Unfortunately border guards don't like fun. They impounded the
moped as unroad-worthy, fined him and sent him back to France on
foot. Disheartened and skint he headed north toward the dismal light
and drizzle.
Blunt's first lift on his own out of Paris was a disaster. A cruising
queer picked him up then dumped him in the forest at Fontainebleau
for refusing his advances. He wanted to kiss again - but not so
desperate that a man would do. Refinding what looked an empty road,
feeling soiled and scared he started walking, hitching again. At least
he was still heading south.
A 2CV was the first car that passed after two hours. What? It
stopped? Amazing. A couple from his generation offered a lift.
Maybe they felt empathy with his wounds and recent fear from inside
the car as they went past. No. So obviously very much in love and
desperate to share their joy. Even with a complete stranger. One
who would not kiss again for two more years. Still going south they
took him home and cooked savoury pancakes to share, then made a
bed for him to sleep. They talked long in franglais, the hand signs
cutting through air and misunderstanding. Giggling about their loves,
serious about their fears, energetic about their hopes. The following
morning the lovers took the beneficiary of their love for each other
to meet one of their mothers who laughed with affection at his
fractured french. Then onto ice-skating for an hour of which the less
remembered the better. By lunch-time they had taken him 80km down
the road toward Lyon, stopping at a Routier where their love for
each other convinced a truck driver to take the beneficiary of their
love for each other all the way to Lyon. He loved them then and has
cursed himself regularly ever since for losing their names. He still
says “Merci. Je t'aime” when he remembers them. He felt his
journey had finally begun.
Eight days to hitch from Calais to Marseilles looking for a ship to
Algiers or Tangier or Casablanca. The boat? A road dream. He had
no boat skills what-so-ever, so no boats. Britannia rules the waves?
Nope.
He spent the night at Marseilles train station trying to sleep. He was
woken at 4am being kicked by somebody with an idea to roll him,
whoever it was soon ran when they saw his speed to standing and the
knife. The love/hate relationship with France was tipping out of love.
At Perpignan he gave up hitching, knackered, and caught the train to
Algecires at fascist Spain's base. Some set jawed faces with overfeed
jowls and brainless eyes under funny tricorne hats, scrutinised his
passport and ticket on the train. Sneering they handed them back
then set their brainless eyes to intimidating another passenger.
Guardia Civil they certainly were not. If he had laughed at their funny
tricorne hats, he felt they wouldn't have been to pleased.
He had to change and wait for two hours at Bobadilla, a big rail
junction in a small town on the Andalucian plain west of Granada.
Fields of dry white soil rolled for miles, white dirt roads and
white-washed houses dazzled in the cold, bright and huge light. A
scene by Sergio Leone. Wine, sausage and bread from unfascist and
friendly smiling shop-owners, replenished his ideal of Spain.
The train from Bobadilla to Algecires was exhilarating. From the
plains to mountain gorges by slow stopping train. A slow descent
along galleries cut in sides of precipitous mountains with vertigo
inducing views across valleys and the cascading rivers below. Great
viaducts, testament to the building skills of the Spanish and English
engineers, crossed rivers running fast over and around boulders and
rocks. White water - a canoeist's adrenalin dream journey shooting
rapids to the sea.
A group of Muslim men on pilgrimage to Mecca, on the Hajj, had
joined the train at Ronda. Ronda, a name drenched in history and
blood. Another time and another land where three words collided.
Bible, Torah and Qur'an.
In 1492 Isabella's Spanish Inquisition was twelve years old and
headquartered in Ronda. It's reason for being launched was working,
forcing the Jews of Spain to convert to Catholicism, leave or be
branded heretic and roasted on the spit. A millenia of glorious
achievements in medicine, law and finance: Ended. And the Sephardi
were wandering. Catholic anti-semitism has a long history
Also, in 1492, Isabella and husband Ferdinand finally conquered
Granada and brought to a close 800 years of Moorish rule across
Spain. 800 years of glorious achievements in algebra, astronomy and
architecture, and thats just the 'A's: Ended.
The Moors staged their last uprising here, at Ronda, in 1570. Some
say the revolt was engineered by a successor to Isabella, Philip II, as
excuse to make it the turn of the remaining Moors to be forced to
convert, leave or be branded heretic and roasted on the spit. He was
also a bit skint and needed to make money after his cruel campaigns in
the Netherlands to punish heresy and the birth of the Protestant.
Pieter Bruegel saw it all. Catholic anti-anything has a long history.
A bit of a year for Spain 1492. The catholic fundamentalist Isabella,
inaugurator of the Spanish Inquisition and the torch, devourer of the
Moors and the Jews, confiscator of lands and wealth, funded
Columbus' historic journey from some of the proceeds. Pity poor
Pope Innocent VIII, the Blood-Soaked One and Isabella's mentor, he
died in 1492 and missed the riches Columbus secured. The new Pope,
Alexander VI - the most spectacularly corrupt of the corrupt
Borgia's - was as happy as Isabella in his stead. Lands to steal in the
Americas and millions of more souls to convert or be branded heretic
and roasted on the spit.
By sword and gun and crucifix, Christs gospel has been spread,
And two thousand cruel years have shown the way that Jesus led.
The heretics burned and tortured,
The butchering bloody crusaders,
The bombs and rockets sanctified that rained down death from
Heaven.
They followed Jesus, they knew the answer,
All non-believers must be believers,
or else be broken.
Stand up for Judas Leon Rosselson
The pilgrims invited him to join their prays. They certaining weren't
descended from the Moors of 1570, but were they scions of the
Moroccan mercenaries brought to Spain by Franco to kill a fledgling
democracy?
He declined the invitation citing agnosticism but talked with them after
their prayers about Islam, Christianity and Judaism. The morality of
forced conversion, expulsion and the spit. Secularism and inclusive or
exclusive institutions. Their English was excellent. He heard the
words Sunni and Shia for the first time. Discovered that Islam had
bizzare sects like Wahhabi who believe that every reform of Islam for
the past 1200 years is a heresy and should be repealed. Forget 1200
years. Christianity and Judaism have nutty sects like this, mostly in
America and Israel, who want to return to a mythical purity they think
they see in a literal interpretation of The Book. Their Book. Their
Word.
There was no resolution to their discussions when they parted at the
base of Spain with handshakes and respecting 'other'. No, their
parents weren't part of Franco's mercenaries, but Spanish who
supported the Republican Government during the civil war. They
converted from Catholicism to Islam. Odd the ways of religion and
history.
A packed ferry from Algecires to Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on the
Moroccan coast. Bit like Gibraltar to the British, but don't tell the
Spanish that. They tend to go off on one.
Every little piece of space seemed to have been filled by the time he
boarded. The car and lorry decks were full. Mostly lorries heading
for Tangiers or Casablanca or beyond, loaded with cars and
spare-parts, steel, fridges, TV's, everything. Everything but
oranges. The affluent hippies twee VW camper was there of course.
All the cars seemed to have boots, seats and roof-racks pilled high
with who knows what. They belonged to Moroccans heading home
from their jobs in Spain, France or Germany. Bringing back goodies
for the family. Or just smugglers. Most travellers were foot
passengers.
He finally found somewhere on deck by the bow to park himself. A
group of American back-packers were taking up a lot of space, but
with a little persuasion, reluctantly and suspiciously made some room
for him. He offered round sausage, bread and wine but they were
reluctant and suspicious again. Why are the Americans he had met on
the road so bloody paranoid?
Dido was in Ceuta. He bumped into him on his way to its border with
Morocco.
“Wow, far out, to much man. Where's Jim?” Asked Dido extending
his hand and sounding like a 'head'.
“Lost him in Paris but hope to see him in Marrakech. When did you
get here?” He said taking Dido's hand, pleased to see the first face
he recognised in eight days.
“Three days ago and each time I've tried to cross the border the
Spanish say no. No seems to be the universal language of border
guards.” moaned Dido.
“Probably the only word in their vocabulary.” He responded and they
both laughed.
He crossed the border at the first attempt. It was a wise move not
to be seen together by the border guards. The bus to Tetouan would
be another hour at least so he sat to wait in hope for Dido to cross.
The guards changed and Dido took his chance and made it.
The bus ride to Tetouan was an eye-opener for Blunt. Packed with
Moroccans and twenty minutes down the road it was stopped by the
Customs Police on a shake down. Clump. They came on board to
search for contraband. Are all Moroccans smugglers? On the bus it
seemed so as a hectic shovelling of feet joined the noise of shouting
and abuse. Goods were hooked with the skill of rugby forwards under
seats and along the length of the bus to the back, and back again in an
attempt to escape tax. Contraband with a mind of its own soon had
the Police pissed off. A full bus with 50 people on board was to much
to deal with and they soon gave up. Some goods were taken but
judging by the grins as they proceeded most got through. Scored.
After dodging the aggressive attempts by young men to be their
'Guides to Tetouan' at the bus station, Blunt and Dido found a hotel
in the Medina. Dilapidated but clean and cheap. After a shower, the
first for Blunt since being the beneficiary of a French couples love for
each other, they went to explore this city the inhabitants called 'The
White Pigeon'. The medina was small but exquisite. Its narrow lanes,
lined with stalls was just big enough for two people to pass. Blunt was
to find out that in any Moroccan medina you will never find just two
people passing when six will do. A mad jostle full of noise. The
intimacy a stark and welcome change from the chill distance of the
English in an English city. It seemed impossible that anybody could see
the stalls and their wares on sale, let alone haggle to buy. Tetouan's
architecture had quite rightly been praised, it is stunning but the
effect of the gray-white monotone of the buildings subdued Blunt's
curiosity to explore the steep stepped residential side-lanes.
Sweet mint tea at a street side cafe was a relief after two hours
exploring and bouncing off the knots of people. It gave time to read
and reflect on the history of this pretty city. Founded in the 14th
Century then destroyed by Castilians chasing pirates, but refounded
by the Moors who escaped from Ferdinand's and Isabella's blood
soaked Spain in 1492. Some of the Spanish Jews, the Seraphim fled
their persecution and made it here. Ronda and Granada's loss was to
be Tetouan's gain. The religious tolerence that was the hallmark of
Moorish Spain was transplanted to this old pirates lair and a city of
learning grew. Two-hundred years of Morocco's 'Golden Age'
followed.
From 1912 to 1956 Tetouan was the capital of the Spanish
Protectorate of Morocco. It wasn't a quiet occupation. The Rif Wars
from 1919 - 1926 were barbaric. Savage massacres led by Franco
subdued the Berbers in the end. Franco taking a dozen Berber heads
on pikes back to Spain. His religion and his politics both medieval.
Ten years later he took the knowledge of suppression he had learnt in
Tetouan, along with his Moroccan Mercenaries, and applied them to
killing the Spanish democrats.
They only stayed the one night in Tetouan. The following morning
they started to hitch from the city's outskirts. Immediately got a lift.
A clapped out Ford with four passengers, roof rack piled and tied,
boot open and full, had stopped. The inhabitants insisted that Blunt
and Dido get in. Somehow their back packs and sleeping bags were
forced into the boot and they were crammed in the back seats. The
car and people were going to Marrakech. Sort of.
The detour was via Khatama and the Low Atlas. The driver of the car,
a slim elegant man in his early forties wearing a mud coloured jalaba
kept up a constant stream of French accented English. Repeatedly
turning his head to talk to Dido and Blunt then having to swerve as his
passengers pointed and roared, “Danger ahead". Roads more black
hole than black top and erratic drivers everyone. Scarry but
everybody was smiling as the joint circulated.
The driver was a dope farmer. Took them to his farm for the night
and produced some Khatama treble zero for an after dinner smoke.
Food, chat and smoke for the men while the boys wrapped weights of
dope in sellotape ready for export. The women and girls were
elsewhere but that hadn't registered with Blunt, he was so smashed
so quickly that he flaked out. Oblivious.
They left the farm the next morning heading for Fez and onward to
Marrakech. The farmer had an air of disappointment about him as
Dido and Blunt left, but neither had enough money to buy weights of
dope nor the inclination to be dealers. They started hitching again and
walked for miles without a lift. It didn't matter though, the beautiful
mountain scapes with the fields across valleys covered in swaying
Cannabis Sativa, kept them high. The breakfast joint helped.
One lift and they made Fez late in the evening with only time to find a
bed and crash. Their tiredness still didn't stop them being hassled by
English and American travellers for dope when it was discovered they
had spent a night in Khatama. It seemed that everybody believed they
were dealers not travellers. They had already heard rumours of Fez
being full of narks and that Moroccan gaols were where people rotted
and starved. Blunt and Dido both thought 'fuck this', and caught the
early morning bus to Marrakech. Blunt slept most of the way. He had
over-done the treble zero the last few days. When he woke they
were on the outskirts of Marrakech with Dido enthusing about the
beauty of Morocco that Blunt had missed.
They found their lodgings with the help of a young boy touting for
work as a guide at the bus station. Farouk, no more than 12, cocky
with his excellent English. Blunt was always amazed at other peoples
ability to be multi-lingual. He could never keep a word in his head for
long unless English, never mind the syntax, cadence and
colloquialisms of other languages. 8% was the highest mark he ever
achieved in French tests at school. The school kicked him out of
German lessons. And then there's Farouk. Fluent in English, French
and German, and with his mothers tongue, Arabic to rap with in the
union of 12 year old guides. All of it picked up off the tourist and the
street. No formal education but a family's necessities the discipline.
The lodgings were in the middle of the medina, an address given by an
acquiantance in Colchester, and without Farouk they would have been
lost. But they had to pay him off. Both Blunt and Dido were planning
to explore the medina on their own. Deliberately get lost and find
their way around by mistake. They had no itinerary, except some
unthought through hippie dream, a quest for some cannabis Nirvana
where different, more humane rules applied, or chasing the romance
in the way letters speak “Marrakech” or “Samarkand” or “Zanzibar”
or “Hindu Kush".
The lodgings were 20p a night and it showed. Five windowless brick
sheds on the flat roof of a cafe. Each for four at a pinch. A concrete
roof/floor and no beds. Sleeping bags would have to do for concrete.
The toilet and wash room were basic and functioned.
For Blunt the first full day in Marrakech was spent in an opium haze.
He'd got ill and thought it was from drinking contaminated water. What
a pratt. An ex-medic not thinking of basic health care! But in reality it
was the first serious relapse of his multiple sclerosis making itself
known. Though it would be another thirty years before he realised
what it was. Other travellers staying at the cafe offered him a cure.
Opium Tea. It stopped the shits but he only remembered a little of
the first day. Dido looking after him as they got lost a few times.
They found Jemaa El-Fna, not hard to miss. The city square where he
managed to eat some soup between the waves of opium induced
euphoria and what he thought was salmonella nausea.
The Jemaa El-Fna became the stop for late lunch. 10p for a bowl of
soup and wedge of fresh absorbant bread. A pouch of Kiff - 20p. It
was idyll. The square was always full of people in knots watching
jugglers or listening to musicians and storytellers, dodging fake
healers and Sufi beggars - the Fakirs. A stage, raucous, ribald and
bright, with the medieval Pink City and white Haut Atlas as backdrop.
Jerusalem and Marrakech, Blunt was enthralled by these cities and
their medinas. For him it was the people that made them luster,
shimmer dramatic, and each and every one without a tinge of Sinbad
or Ali Baba. The Western view of the 'Orient' as exotic and
dangerous, as 'other' immersed in bad and sin, was myth
masquerading as ideology which on contact lifts and dissolves as mist.
All the external difference be it skin, dress, culture or language
cannot disguise or suppress the universal human condition. That
mundane need to work, to eat, to grow, to know and the
extraordinary emotions we share and bring to bear in attempting the
mundane. It would be another twenty years before Blunt encountered
Orientalism and the insightful clarity of Edward Said. As he read he
was reminded of things he never knew but had seen.
Blunt's money didn't last long. He didn't have much to start with and
had tried to be frugal, but he still had to leave the magic after two
weeks. The only job available for a European was dealing and that was
no job at all. By far to treacherous for Blunt. He and Dido split at
Casablanca bus station. It was thirty years since Ingrid Bergman
walked into Rick's and Sam played it again for Ilsa. Romance no longer
draped the foggy city. Casablanca was drab and seedy within its
poverty. It was only a film after all.
Dido had a enough money to last another month having done an
insurance scam. Winning reparations from the 'man'. Peanuts really.
But it gave him more time. Blunt though caught the bus to Ceuta,
heading north to the drizzle and the dismal light determined to earn
enough to journey again.
Six months after leaving Marrakech and arriving back in the land of
dismal light and drizzle, Blunt had made enough money, or what he
thought of as enough money from driving a truck for a cowboy firm,
to start a new journey. This time though he bought some transport.
A 1956 Bedford Ambulance that had been converted with bunk beds,
cooker, storage came up as 'Lot 40' at a car auction. £55 and Blunt
had it. The travelling by foot had been fun, but getting caught outside
at night in the wind and the rain had a way of leaving one feeling itchy
and unwashed. Looking dangerous. Liftless.
He met up wth Jim in Colchester again. Jim was up for travelling
again. They had a good laugh over their respectivce experiencies the
last time they left. No itinery again. Just a vague idea that they would
work their way around Europe for a while. Be anywhere but England.
They spent a few days sorting out the ambulance, drinking, sharing
smokes and acid with old friends.
Liz and Pippa, apprentice Earth Mothers to giggley and girlie to sustain
the role, cadged lifts to the south of France. Pretty women always
won Blunt and Jim. They wanted to join some of the student
anarchists who had left Colchester a few months before. Liz had been
chasing a German to love and heard he was with them. Pippa wasn't
sure why she came, but spoke dreamily of metaphysical poetry, myth
and Cyprus.
The journey from Calais to Montpelier across the Massif, top speed
35mph was uneventful except for the scenery and Jimi Hendrix. They
played All Along the Watchtower again and again and again. Driving
the girls wild. Hendrix had made the Dylan song his. The definitive
version adopted by Dylan.
Jim's trick the last time he was in France proved useful. They
syphoned their way south with fuel from French cars at night.
With money from parents, or saved from paying no rent while
squatting and working, the anarchists had bought an old olive grove in
the hills behind Montpelier. The olive trees had been killed years
earlier by a late frost never experienced before or since. It had a
clear, cold brook from a spring which cascaded through rocks into a
pool. An ancient spring that had only ever stopped once, frozen the
night of the Big Frost. The land was cheap, only thought of as dead
olive grove.
Blunt would see Claude Berri's Jean De Florette and Manon Des
Sources fifteen years later and remember the pool made by cold,
clear spring water. Wondered if the anarchists had built their houses,
were still there, not the victims of some malicious, devious thief of
their land who looked like Daniel Auteuil or Yves Montand. And in
Part 2, getting peasant justice in the quise of Emmanuelle Beart.
Revolutionary Marianne - symbol of France.
A week after reaching the olive grove Blunt and Jim decided to go to
Germany and look for some work. Money was running short. There
were no jobs around the hills north of Montpelier except grape
picking and the season was some months away. Liz had found her
man and decided to stay. Pippa still spoke dreamily of Cyprus, not
disabused by Blunt's tales of soldiers and murderous disputes between
Greeks and Turks. She came with Blunt and Jim until a fork in the
road said choose, 'Geneva or Strasbourg?' With a grin and a flirt
she started hitching, heading Geneva and all points to Aphroditi, her
myths and dreams still intact.
At Strasbourg, Blunt and Jim were stopped by the German Border
Guards, held for hours as the ambulance was searched and the both
of them stripped. It must have been the dress, long hair and beards
that made the guards suspicious. Nothing was found but the
demeanour of the guards didn't change. They were still surly and
disrespectful but they let them through, not having found the seven
acid tabs.
Stuttgart was where they were heading, looking for work. They
found something within twenty-four hours. Kuchen helfers on an
American Missile Base just outside the city. Cleaning pots and pans in
a military mess hall and, unlike doing the job as punishment when in the
British Army, getting paid enough to save another stake. Good fun
while it lasted.
The Americans they met were absolutely nuts, some of their antics
frightening.
All ranks ate in the same canteen unlike the British Army's strictly
enforced class divisions of Canteen, Sergeants Mess, Officers Mess.
American Officers queued behind Sergeants behind Pfc's. But in the
politic of things, all Ranks in the US forces still know their place.
Coffee was brewed in a 50 Gallon industrial quality vat that everybody
drank from.
“It's true.” Jim said the first time he saw it, “Every American drinks
coffee.”
“Ye. Where's the tea.” Was Blunt's reply, eager eyes searching.
“They threw it into Boston harbour.” Jim shot back.
They both curled up and roared. Upset the Sergeant Chef until it was
repeated to him, once they had stopped their corpsing. He could see
there was something funny there but couldn't quite grasp it. The first
English he had met, so put it down to an English thing and pointed out
the tea bags. PX ersatz 'English'.
Both Blunt and Jim stayed away from the coffee vat. The story they
heard that night ensured it.
One morning a disgruntled, irresponsible and nihilistic Draftee had
spiked the coffee vat with LSD. The only people not tripping were
those on duty waiting to be relieved. They had to do another 24hr
duty straight off and were lucky not to be tripping themselves with
fingers on buttons. The first of their relief had left the canteen with
coffee for them as he had been doing all week, started hallucinating
before he got there and dropped the coffees, seeing in the cups an
active volcanoe's smoking caldera drawing him into a conflageration.
His mind cracked, dissolved and his duty vaporised. In the canteen
chaos reigned amongst the screech, the laugh, the cry, and the dumb
in their fear and their dread. A few, experienced in the use of acid
thought it a flashback at first, but then understood what was
happening to them, went with it and tried to enjoy or organise order
out of chaos. Most though were lost. Some would never recover.
It was supposed to be a rule, probably the only rule in the acid
community, that everybody had to know that they were, on their
own volition, dropping acid. Not to let people know was to act like
the CIA.
The perpetrator was back in America within 18hrs and in the hands of
the said same CIA. Claiming,
“I was only doing what you had done with LSD. Giving it to
unsuspecting Americans through the fifties and sixties. Experimenting
and testing subjects to destruction.”
They buried him somewhere, in a jail or a sod.
Blunt had thought the Orangeman who burnt down the church in
Cyprus was fucking nuts, but this was a different league again. They
had better be careful with their LSD. It is never the time for a hard
rain. Odd the ways of acid, the CIA and coffee.
The soldiers barrack rooms were segregated. Black people here.
White people there. A microcosm from stateside. A fractious and at
times murderous atmosphere as the ghosts of slavery still worked
their way through the American psych. He and Jim had been invited
back to one of the black GI's barrack rooms by Moses for a smoke of
some real sweet weed.
“Red dirt marijuana, ” He had called it.
“And other tastes.” Blurted Blunt, “That's only in a book by Terry
Southern, the smoke of ones dreams. You mean it exists? The stuff
that knocks cows out, exists?”
“Yep.”
“Wow. Far out. Too much, man.” Jim was grinning, high on
anticipation and sounding hippiefied like Dido. A year out the army
and having the language already.
Moses was short, wiry and fast as a mongoose but relaxed about
race, confident in his skin. He smiled a lot, even when elbow deep in
grease. He could be sharp though, sharp as a blade if felt
disrespected. Some of his barrack room mates were very hostile to
white people being in their sanctuary. The only place they could be
without having to think of their colour first, put on their 'face' to
meet the Man. The one thing that let Blunt and Jim stay and finish
the joint was that they were English. A curiosity not met before.
To be examined and the English be judged on their racism, by the
attitude and the words of just two. They would fail it of course.
Some will always set their standards to high for dialogue, safer in the
castle of their skin. White people have been doing this a long time,
some are practised in it to the point of 'common sense' and deny any
worth just because of skin. Blunt first started to put together an idea
here. Put into words something he had half understood when
embarrassed by the casual racism of Guards Officers in Kenya.
'It was a waste of time criticising someone for the colour of their
skin. Something people can't change. If your going to criticise
anybody then do it on the basis of their ideas, beliefs, attitude and
actions. Somethings people can change.'
He was trying to paraphrase what had already been said.
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation
where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but the
content of their character.”
It would be a while before Blunt realised he had been paraphrasing
Martin Luther King's “I Have a Dream.” Jim mentioned it a few
months later, but by then what he had thought an original insight had
become a permanent way of seeing.
He had only ever caught snippets of 'I Have a Dream' on the news,
always to busy running out of the house to be with friends not family.
He must have heard it before, must have but lost it, forgot it in the
fuzz of adolescence or later in the haze of smoke and acid. The idea
but not the context buried deep and called up now. 'No matter', he
thought. 'If you think you've come to something important on your
own, not with the help or intervention of others, it will have a
lasting effect irrespective of how long it takes to be disabused of your
own originality.'
The canteen work was wet, greasy and boring but the camps
entertainment wasn't to bad. Not counting the coffee/acid, the camp
had a bar, a sports field and a twice weekly cinema showing new
releases from the States. The screenings were always full.
Blunt and Jim saw Executive Action here, here of all places. This was
not the film of the Warren Commission's report on Kennedy's
assassination but Mark Lane's riposte, Rush to Judgement. The film
pointed out the glaring inconsistancies and contradictions in the
Warren report; no record or note of Oswald's interrogation by the
Dallas police; the impossibility of 3 shots being fired in the time
frame by one man with the weapon found; films that indicate Kennedy
was hit from different directions. An engrossing conspiracy thriller
where Oswald's the patsy and Americas military/industrial complex the
conspiritors.
The scriptwriter was a member of the Hollywood Ten, Dalton
Trumbo, a victim of McCarthy's witch hunt, but who refused to be a
victim despite a year in jail and blacklisting. He kept writing, speaking
to truth but under pseudonymes till fighting his way back. Spartacus,
Exodus and Papillon are on his scriptwriting CV. Blunt saw the power
of Executive Action in the ordinariness, the everyday routine and
banality of the conspiritors. 'Just like anyone, really,' he had thought.
Burt Lancaster led as the practical, ordinary businessman. A planner,
a mover. Like the Watergate conspiritors (working its way out at
the time of the films release), a clean cut, ordinary type.
The arguement used by Lancaster and Robert Ryan (whose last film
this was to be) to win potential conspiritors amongst the political
establishment, was that the Kennedy clan would become a dynasty.
The three brothers would each become President, rule until 1984. A
bit of a stretch to the credulity of conspiracy, Blunt thought, trying
with difficulty to be clinical while watching.
Some of the audience covered their eyes crying, “NOT AGAIN, ”
“NOT AGAIN, ” as Kennedy's assassination was replayed. America's
collective tears from that day in Dallas, still being shed and the pain
still raw ten years on. As the credits rolled the soldiers clapped,
whistled and left nodding, mumbling. “It could be true. It could be
true. Truer than the lone, mad gunman idea.”
That was a different time, things have changed Blunt thought as he
got his fare from his pocket to pay the bus driver to go and learn how
to drive a bus. Then America and the world was a more plural place.
Americas soldiers and her people were able to see or hear or read a
different point of view. Now since the attack on the World Trade
Centre - “Your with us or against us” - plurality and a different
point of view have been made treason.
Watching the street go by through the window of the bus on his way
to training, Blunt's remembering hooked a tangent. Went off
searching a memory about Mark Lane's subsequent investigations into
the assassination of JFK. Only a few years ago he had picked up a
remaindered copy from a big pile of 'Two Men in Dallas'. In the book
Lane places George Bush Sr in Dallas on that conspiracy hatching day.
Papa Bush has always denied it. But what is not in doubt according to
Lane, is that Papa Bush, a rich oilman and Republican hawk, had links
to, and could have been an operative in the CIA at the time.
President Ford, the beneficiary of Nixons disgrace, appointed Papa
Bush Director of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1976. Odd the
ways of dynasties, witchunts and Hollywood.
The fun Blunt and Jim were having on the missile base was about to be
cut very short. They went to a local German bar for a drink and to
see if they could score some dope. Chuck had joined them as guide
and contact. From South Dakota, he was a barrell-chested man with
the biggest biceps and shoulders either had seen on someone so
short. 5ft 7in with the chest of Bonanza's Little Hoss and a
lumberjack down to his shirt. He worked the Blacks Hills National
Forest before his draft.
Chuck had noticed a well known dealer at the bar and assumed he had
left some dope in his car. They went to have a look. Pay dirt. 6
ounces of Khatama treble zero. They got away with it or so they
thought.
The next day Blunt and Jim got a lift by jeep to the main American
base in Stuttgart. A massive facility home to 20, 000 troops and
headquarters of their south German command. They looked a bit out
of place. Hair down their backs and beards down their chests
attracted a bit of attention. The American Military Police stopped
them on the same premise as the German border police at
Strassbourg. They looked different. Other. Put guns to their heads
and searched them. Jim like the occassionally pratt he could be had
1/2 ounce in his pocket. That was it.
Some redneck Sergeant got a bit upset and exposed his post-Vietnam
paranoia,
“Even the Brits are selling us out now.”
He tried to rough them up while they were still cuffed, but an officer
intervened and dismissed him.
Word got back to Chuck sharpish, but not sharpish enough. He was
caught at the missile base trying to find and save the rest of the stash
in the ambulance.
The American Military Police didn't keep Blunt and Jim long. They had
to hand them over to the Germans, their jurisdiction not stretching
to British nationals, though they would have liked to have buried them
for a few years.
A period of interrogation and interpretation followed. What could
they do but tell the truth and they both did separately. It didn't stop
them being held on remand for four months while the Police tried to
establish a case against them of drug smuggling.
The first two weeks were spent in Stammheim prison in Stuttgart.
Blunt was placed in a cell with an Italian armed bank robber, a
German bag snatcher, a Yugoslav without papers, and a Turk who
didn't know why he was in prison. All awaiting trial. The Italian had
some English and helped in the introductions. His military training
kicked-in and barrack room discipline became the order of the day.
The only way to rub along in a confined, highly restricted environment
with people he didn't, and would never really get to know.
Mostly alone in his language he started writing, writing poetry,
searching for meaning. He discovered here, in this prison and wanting
to write, that writing is a process of learning. He revisited those
poems ten years later and binned them, considered them juvenilia,
but they had served a purpose at the time. They maintained his
knowledge of self. Kept his dignity intact against the de-personalised
prison's attempts to make him other.
Stammheim was West Germany's highest security gaol. Blunt was told
on his second day in prison that on the top floor, in hyper-security,
were the Baader/Meinhoff gang, aka The Red Army Faction. One of
Europe's most notorious urban terrorists.
He had read the stories, seen the aftermath of their actions on the
TV news and toyed with the idea that they were the way forward.
Could make the times change. The RAF clones; Italy's Red Brigades,
America's Symbionese Liberation Army and Britain's deformed clone,
the Angry Brigade were creating havoc, weakening the fabric of their
societies. Or so it seemed to the journalists sensationalised by the
spectaculars.
The reports didn't correspond to reality as Blunt knew it. People still
went to work, carried on with their daily lives. The only ones
directly affected were those unluckily at the scene of a spectacular or
those whose family were targetted and killed or kidnapped. The rest,
the mass were one step removed and just saw it on the TV news,
disgusted at the carnage. It wouldn't stop them going out to work the
next day.
The RAF and their ilk may sloganise against the state in the
romanticised language of anarcho-syndicalism, but they still committed
murder. Despite this they became a sort of attractive alternative for
some in the middle-classes of the baby-booming generation,
especially those alienated from their country's history and who could
see the drab monochrome, the stultifying nature of “real existing
socialism” in the East and didn't want, had see the daily murder
committed in Vietnam by the West, and didn't want. A bi-polar world
with neither pole humane used as lame excuse for inhumane acts in
the name of humanity.
Secular fundamentalists, useless and fucking nuts he would tell people
later in his life. The only things they succeeded in doing were to scare
away the very people they professed to represent from involvement in
political activity; criminalise legitimate dissent and demonstration in
the eyes of those they professed to represent; the shit from their
fan tarring all progressives and in the secret necessity of their
organisation, took life and death decisions that excluded the people
they professed to represent from any involvement in the decisions.
Anti-democratic. Elitist. Reactionary not revolutionary.
The RAF and their actions strengthened the secret apparatus of the
State, introduced new laws undermining the assumption of innocence,
the rights of lawyers, and Turkish Gastarbeiters are still kicked to
death on German streets.
Blunt would only think like that later. His romanticism nearly got the
better of him at the time. He wanted to enjoy the authenticity of the
'danger' tag that could be gleaned from such close association with
notoriety, despite not actually meeting them. As if being in gaol for
possession wasn't an authentic enough 'danger' tag.
From his cell he could see over the perimeter wall the brand new
court house being constructed for the Baader/Meinhoff trial. The only
way into the dock of the court was via a tunnel from the prison. The
dock itself was totally enclosed in bullet-proof glass. Seperated from
the judge and courtroom. So successful had the exaggeration of the
threat from the RAF been, that the establishment were able to build
a state of the art court house capable of exhibiting prisoners as a
different species in a cage.
For two weeks Blunt remained in his cell, sharing a communual toilet
and washing facilities. The most difficult thing to come to terms with
was the stench when anybody crapped. He didn't think it would be
that hard to crap in public, in full view of his cell mates. But it was.
'Anally retentive' took on a whole different meaning for him.
The first time Blunt met up with Jim again was in a holding cell waiting
for transport to another prison. They had a good laugh, pleased to
see each other. It helped each of them in dealing with the worry of
their situation.
Half a dozen prisoners were waiting. Prisoners know how to wait. A
black American was amongst them and wanting to talk, scrounge a
smoke. Barry, a GI, had been done for raping an 18 year-old German
girl he met in a students bar. A young woman trying to distance
herself from her parents Nazi history and he rapes her. Throws her
back into the comfort of her parents and confirms their stereotype of
non-Aryans. He was being transferred to Heilbron to serve the
remainder of his time. Waiting for another 6 years. He didn't question
the 8 year sentence, stuck his hands up and said “Guilty". He had done
it and couldn't explain why. He said once that he was getting a bit of
his own back for all the slights he had had from white women. He didn't
believe that. Not one moment did he believe that, but he wanted to be
accepted in the macho ethos of the men he was sharing a cell and
waiting with.
The waiting time in the holding cell left a lot of space for talking. It
got around to music after the reasons for incarceration, the curses
against bad luck and corrupt police were exhausted.
Barry was a real conspiracy theorist.
“Jimi Hendrix didn't overdose deliberately, no way man. He was
killed because he was a successful black man, like Malcolm X and
Martin Luther King. Janice Joplin the same.”
“Hang on man.” Jim jumped in to explain the obvious. “Janice Joplin
was white.”
“Yeh man. But she said she would fuck with anybody. Even black men.
They killed her for that. Funny how both her and Hendrix overdosed.
Heh man?”
Jim came in with another conspiracy theory of the establishment
against their generations music,
“Dylan's motorbike crash wasn't an accident. That queer Nazi at the
head of the FBI, what's his name? J. Edgar Hoover. He tried to have
him killed for his lyrics. Dylans music changed after that. The songs
of protest and criticism started getting rarer”
“Yeh man.” Barry's conspiracy theories were being listened to at last
and he started riffing on the theme.
“I heard Hendrix play 'Star Spankled Banner' at Woodstock man.
One of the few who stayed to the end. His sustain and feedback were
the aural equivalent of the bombs dropping on Vietnam. That's why he
was killed man. He used the national anthem to condemn the war in
Vietnam. Yeh man, that's why they killed him.” His voice trailing off
into sadness, the defeatism at the root of conspiracy theory near
overwhelming him.
Blunt said very quietly, “Kennedy's assassination was enough
conspiracy for me.”
Barry might be playing a riff, but it was a well practised riff. He had
done 2 years of the 8 year sentence, the first in solitary with only his
thoughts. He explained his predicament to himself, his solitary time,
by the white mans conspiracy against the black man. History was full
of it, from the slave trade to today. The lynchings in the Amerikan
south and the dime-stores? - they're selling postcards of the hanging.
White peoples shame, their loss of dignity and respect becomes a
cultural artifact to be passed through the mail to friends, extolling
their satanic virtues. It takes conspiracy to lynch and conspiracy to
profit from. And the white man becomes the Devil.
In the depths of his solitary, Barry revisited many memories, chewed
over the old, cold, forgotten events and words of his life. Forgotten
by most, including himself till solitary. Barry came from Watts. In
1965 his father had physically stopped him leaving the home and joining
the 'uprising' as Barry thought it then. His father had insisted it be
named 'riot'. His father probably committed his greatest act of love
for his son, saved his life. Imprisoning him at home for 2 long weeks
keeping him off Bone Street and away from his 'friends'. The
majority who died during the Watts Riots were young black men.
Barry's frustration and anger at not “getting back at the Man”, had
shut his ears against what his father said at the time. He had said a
lot in the two weeks that saved his son's life.
It took two months, a chunk of time out of a solitary year, to
remember it, get past the caracature of the school janitor, always
chasing words in that bookshop-cum-coffeeshop on Bones till it was
burnt down in the riot. The white owned general store next door was
the target of the mob, but the fire spread to the black owned
bookshop. The good get razed along with the perceived bad in riots.
He had ranted at him, screamed, “Coward.” Said, “Your scared of
the Man. Just a scared janitor buried in books, dreaming, thinking
your as smart as the teachers.” Expressing the gross
anti-intellectualism of the street.
His father had shot back, “Better than being buried on Bones.”
He told him about stuff from his time when a boy in the twenties and
thirties and the war.
“The years were hard and rich Americans invented theories to blame
the poor, the black, the disabled and the Jew for the Depression.
Harry Haiselden, Leon Whitney and Madison Grant were the high
priests of American eugenics. Adored by the KKK. So successful had
their propagandising and campaigning been that states were adopting
eugenics legislation and forcibly sterilising those they thought
defective. The forced sterilisation of black men and women was even
being done up to a few years ago. Their rich supporters, the
financiers of their views were labelling the poor, the black, the
disbled and the the Jew as, “bacteria”, “vermin”, “mongrels” and
“subhuman". So reknowned had Grant and Whitney become they even
received fan mail from Hitler. The whole of his Mein Kampf is based
on their inhumane theories and he thanked them for it. And it led to
factories with conveyor belts for killing in the concentration camps.
“I met white men in the war in Europe who could see that the
politicians had set up poor white and jewish people the same way black
people have been.
“The Nazis were defeated but it hasn't stopped some of the rich still
thinking like it. Those involved in the riot confirm their racist ideas
to others. Spread their filth. And if more black men are killed,
buried on Bones, they will think 'so much the better'. The riot
doesn't affect the rich, they're protected by the distance money can
buy from here. All it does is destroy our own neighbourhood and
young black men.”
All the years of reading, the acquiring of words and meaning were
dragged up to fuel the struggle to try and save his sons life. Convince
him of the futility of riot. That you lose more than you gain. That
The Man can live with riots. Explosions of rage won't threaten him
nor will the self-destruction of poor peoples neighbourhoods weaken
him.
Barry spat at his father, “Fuck them. I don't care what they think.
Why should I. They fucking hate me anyway. I'd rather be dead out
there having had a go than stuck in here with a coward.”
“Don't you think I want to be out their. Taking my revenge. This
isn't about macho posturing. Our dignity as a race is at stake here. I
will not allow you to become what the racemongers and hate
merchants think we are. You will not become the black shadow to
their mirror image.”
His father turned and left his room locking the door behind him, the
window had been grilled over a few years before to deal with a spate
of house robberies, leaving Barry trapped with his anger and Oedipal
hate.
He hadn't realised till in solitary that his father was a working class
intellectual stymied by poverty, race and time. He couldn't thank him
now. He had died soon after the riots, killed in a drive-by shooting.
Barry was sad he was pleased his father wasn't around to hear his son
was a rapist, had become what he had tried to stop him becoming.
He had another six years of waiting before he could start redeeming
himself to the world.
The transport to the new prison was a death trap. Two rows of six
cells with a central aisle. Each prisoner was locked in a seperate cell
in the truck. A 2' 6” x 2' 6” x 6' upright tube with a folding seat and a
darkened and barred window 6” x 6". In the solid door a small
peephole. No seat belt. The two hour drive to Heilbron was where
Blunt developed his claustrophobia.
Heilbronn was an old prison built of granite blocks and seemed to be
full of non-germans. Blunt and Jim were seperated again but this time
it only lasted a week. They were put into a four man cell sharing with
a white american called Bob and an East German escapee picked up
for shop lifting.
The cell was paradise compared to Stammheim. It had an enclosed
bog.
After a few weeks, Barry heard a rumour about Bob and passed it on
when they were queuing at the library . The word going around was
that he was a stoolie, was put into the cell to gain information or
make it up to help with his forthcoming trial. He was facing 2 years
for fraud with a pregnant wife on the outside. Blunt and Jim's story
was true so they couldn't change it. A fews weeks later Blunt lost it
with Bob the Stoolie and hooked him. Knocked him flat but before he
could inflict real damage Jim intervened. Bob the Stoolie was moved
from the cell within the hour. The prison authorities didn't want a
damaged asset.
There was a wide selection of books in English in the library,
reflecting the dominant langauge of the gaol. The Librarian was in for
life for murdering his wife. Blunt felt funny asking for books from the
first murderer he had met, but asked all the same.
The first book he took out was 'Nausea' by Jean-Paul Sartre, the
intellectual guru of the year of '68 in France. Blunt was half way
through the book and comparing it's brooding alienation with life in
gaol when the book gave up. Some enterprising lag had cut a half inch
deep box out of the centre of the book to use it as a hide for passing
contraband. In his prison naivette Blunt hadn't thought of checking.
Whether the con who did it knew or not, he had made Sartre's
existential angst concrete. Blunt hasn't finished the book to this day
and probably won't. Nausea's time for reading was then not now.
The time in Heilbronn went slow. Blunt and Jim, though on remand
took some work making chairs in the prison factory. A contractor
had done a deal with the authorities to use the prisoners to finish
cheap metal tubed chairs by weaving plastic tape around the metal for
the seats and backs. Boring repetitive work that ripped the hands.
They were paid a pittance and the contractors made a fortune, but it
allowed them a few luxuries from the prison shop like tea to replace
the gaol's ersatz coffee.
After four months in gaol they finally had their day in court. The
police had spent the entire time trying to make a case against them of
smuggling, even putting a nark in their cell. And who should be at the
court on that day, sitting with the prosecution - none other than
Bob the Stoolie. There to lie probably. The big suprise in the court
though was Blunt's parents. His mother had received a letter in
German with Blunts name in it and every other word said 'Die' -
German for 'the'. She thought he was dead until it was translated.
His lawyer asked him who they were and when Blunt told him, “My
parents”, he was on his feet addressing the Judges. No juries in
Germany but a panel of Judges. The Judges were well impressed that
parents had come from Britain and immediately suspended the trial
and called a meeting with prosecution and defence in their chambers.
They sat talking with Blunts parents for an hour while the prosecution
tried to convince the Judges that their case and their witness were
true. The parents had come over the week before for the trial and
were staying at Blunt's sister's in Hannover - she'd married a
squaddie who was stationed in Germany.
Bob the Stoolie stood on his own, worried and glaring.
When the Judges returned they handed down a 3 year probation and
expulsion from Germany. Their defence had convinced the Judges that
their statements when originally arrested were true, that they stole
the 6 ounces from a dealer. The clinching arguement came when he
forced the prosecution to produce the paper work of the strip search
at the border which they were holding back. Odd the ways of parents
and German bureaucratic efficiency.
Blunt and Jim were returned to the prison for a week while the paper
work was sorted out. German bureaucracy is efficient but like
inefficient bureaucracies, slow. They both made sure that the
rumours about Bob the Stoolie were confirmed. That he was named
for what he was amongst the friends they had made there. Bob the
Stoolie was never returned to Heilbronn prison, but transferred to
another to continue his fraud, his debasement to the Man and his own
lack of self-esteem. The title 'Stoolie' followed him where ever he
went, finally catching up with him in Karlsruhe where he was stabbed
with a shard of glass that was snapped off, leaving 3 inches in his liver
and a pregnant widow.
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