Snap and Scribble

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After writing briefly, the other day, about the time i sort of “met” Johnny Rotten, i started thinking about writing stories of some of the things i did years ago. There’s not much to blog about that’s particularly exciting in my life at the moment, and now seems as good a time as any to write down some of that stuff.

On at least a couple of occasions when i was in my early 20s, i spent a month travelling around Europe on an InterRail card. I can’t remember how much they cost, but they were reasonably cheap and with one of them you could travel by train anywhere in western Europe and Morocco for a month. They may have also been valid on trains through Yugoslavia and Greece as well, but i’m not sure about that.

One particular InterRail journey sticks in my mind more than any others. It was the summer of 1981 and i’d chucked in my job working as a computer programmer for Reuters, the press agency, in London. I bought an InterRail card and headed for southern Spain.

I don’t remember much about the journey – apart from standing in crowded train corridors for probably the entire length of Spain! Spanish trains were packed in summer in those days, with young British, Irish, French, Dutch, Belgians, Germans and Scandinavians – all on their way south to get some warm weather for a change.

I don’t remember if i stopped in Barcelona for a few days on the way or not. I may have done – i certainly went there a couple of times around that period. And i’m not sure if i went to Granada, either – somewhere else i went a couple of times around then, too. But i’m pretty sure it was that trip when i ended up having to spend about 8 hours at the railway station at Alcázar de San Juan.

InterRail cards were only valid on the cheaper services, but Spain’s Talgo trains – which were very modern, fast and comfortable – weren’t included. As far as i remember, there were two trains a day from Madrid to Algeciras – one Talgo and one slow train. They were about eight hours apart and, rather than hang around for eight hours at Madrid, i decided to try my luck on the Talgo.

Well, that luck only took me to the next stop, which was at Alcázar de San Juan – a few hours south of Madrid. There, i got thrown off – along with a few Belgians, who’d been trying the same trick. We had no option but to wait there until the next train came along – eight hours later. There wasn’t much to see and we ended up hanging around on the platform most of the time.

The only thing that really stuck in my mind about that place was the station PA system. It was obviously a bit broken and the tone that introduced each announcement sounded a lot like a rooster in serious pain!

Anyway, wherever else i stopped on the way south – if anywhere – i ended up at Algeciras, which is close to the most southerly tip of Spain. Ferries go from there to Morocco and i ended up catching one to Tangier, with the intention of travelling by train to from there to Casablanca.

But Tangier was the pits. From the minute we got off the boat, we were hassled, non-stop, by guys who wanted to sell you this or take you there, or just about anything they could think of that might make you part with some money. And there were more of them than there were passengers on the boat. The worst part of it was that the next train south wasn’t going to leave until many hours later.

At one point, i allowed a guy to take me on a guided tour of part of the town. This mainly consisted of taking me to shops where i was hassled to buy stuff. They were so insistent, it was very tempting to buy things just to shut them up and get rid of them. I’ve got memories of buying a fake silver bangle or something, at one place, for that reason. I gave it away some time later – when i got back to England, i think – but i can’t remember who i gave it to now.

In one place they sat me down and gave me a cup of mint tea. But i’ve always wondered if there was more than just mint in it – because i felt a bit weird after that, and not entirely with it.

I did one really stupid thing, waiting there in Tangier. Against my better judgement, i gave in to a guy who’d been hassling me for ages and ages to buy a block of hash off him. I didn’t want to buy it, but i’d had about as much hassling as i could take and he wasn’t asking very much for it, so in the end i gave him the money just to get rid of him. And then, of course, i was lumbered with the hash.

I got talking to a Dutch couple – Willem and Ellen – who’d been on the boat from Algeciras, and it turned out they’d done the same thing. They hadn’t wanted to buy hash, either, but just couldn’t take the hassling any more. We walked out of the station and, soon after, were accosted by three men who said they knew we had hash and if we didn’t give them all our money they’d tell the police and we’d go to jail.

Well, things had certainly got a bit more interesting!

In the end, we fobbed them off with a small amount of money and they went away – in the direction of the port. I told Willem and Ellen that we had to get rid of the hash straight away, as they were probably going to go to the police anyway. They were reluctant, having paid money for it, but i was quite insistent and we chucked both lumps over a wall at the side of the station.

Almost staight after we’d done it, the cop at the port entrance called us over. He said he’d been told we had drugs and he wanted to search us. We had to empty our bags and show him what was in our pockets, but fortunately there was nothing for him to find. Suitably stunned by our very narrow escape, we went back to wait in the station.

We all decided we’d had enough of Morocco now. Spain had been good and this dump just wasn’t worth the hassle. But there were no more boats back to Spain that day, so we were stuck until tomorrow. We decided to wait for the train and catch it south for half the night and then catch another one back so we’d get back before the boat left. That way we could sleep on the train and hopefully have a relatively hassle-free night.

We got off the train in the middle of the night at Sidi Kacem, a few hours south of Tangier, and not long after that we caught another train back north again. We went aboard the same ferry almost exactly 24 hours after we’d got off it the day before – and we were back in Spain a couple of hours later. That was my only first and last visit to Morocco!

Part two of this story will be along very soon…

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