Prelude to an Overland Trip-1

 

By 1969, I had dropped in and out of many things. A year in an office, Thomas Cook’s travel agency, sending people to Spain, Portugal and Morocco. A further 9 months hitch-hiking to the places I had been sending them to, getting my first English teaching job in Casablanca, and my first (and only) repatriation after its disastrous conclusion. A year at Northwest Kent College of Technology studying French and English Literature, co-editing the college magazine, titled “Bhang!” and getting into trouble over that. A failed attempt at teachers’ training college (at the interview: “What books are you reading?” “Doors of Perception” and “Politics of Experience”…) A year in Folkestone for the purpose of “seeing snow on the beach”, in which I enjoyed the company of interesting people at the art college (including Aldous Huxley’s nephew) between doing a series of short-term jobs: book packaging, fired for being “too intelligent” – couldn’t resist reading the books I was supposed to be packing… pushing barrowloads of cement at dizzying heights in the construction of Dungeness Nuclear Power Station… and two weeks as a dustman, experiencing the endless world of rotting rubbish – fired after dropping metal dustbins which were too heavy for me to handle. Brick-stacking in a quarry, where I lost control of a fork-lift truck and demolished a ziggurat of breeze blocks; thence to the paper mills in Dartford, fired for joining a union… it was little wonder I had an urge to leave the country.

 

So it was that I fell in with fellow discontents Kelvin Ryder and Nick Gray in a scheme to drive overland to Asia. Others had done it. Granted, they had 4-wheel drive Land Rovers or at least VW campers, but they had done it. I read a book about it. We could do it too. We put our financial resources together and bought a used Bedford Dormobile confectionery delivery van for a reasonable sum (about 100 pounds). It was hospital green. We fixed it up and painted it white to reflect heat in the desert. This was important. We planned on crossing several deserts. Unfortunately, being a delivery van, the one thing it lacked was seats. We got an old back seat from somewhere, I don’t remember where. The back seat has faded in my memory for two reasons: I hardly ever sat in it, and its existence has been eclipsed by the sad drama of the front seat.

                            

The front seat was a problem. But then we discovered, only a few yards down the road behind my parents’ house, a derelict vehicle – tyres flat, scratched and filthy, full of years’ worth of old newspapers – but with a fairly serviceable front seat. Enthusiastically we set to work to extract the seat from the wreckage. It was the middle of a fine day, and we may have been singing as we clanged around with our spanners. Suddenly a woman’s head popped up over a nearby wall and she said (I remember this with absolute clarity) “Put that car down!” and promptly disappeared. We looked at each other in stunned amazement. Did that really happen? we all thought in unison. We half decided it hadn’t, or at least that it was an inexplicable occurrence, so we continued with our mission and removed the seat. We carried it triumphantly a few yards into my parents’ back garden.

 

We set it on the ground and marvelled at its quality – only one torn part which a bit of tape would fix. Then we noticed movement at the end of the garden. Blue helmets! We looked for an escape route at the other end of the garden. More blue helmets… surrounded! In a futile gesture, we tossed the seat into the only clump of nearby bushes. Maybe we could deny all knowledge of it? It was no use, we were caught red-handed, and marched off to the police station where we were interrogated separately by the aptly named Inspector Naylor, and intimidated with subtle threats of violence.

 

This was a disaster! We had a choice between pleading guilty to petty theft and paying a five pound fine each, or pleading not guilty, in which case it would be referred to a later court session. That would mean waiting around perhaps for months. We had quit our jobs and we were already on a tight budget. We decided unanimously to plead guilty “with mitigating circumstances”, those being that we did not intend to steal the seat. In court I addressed the magistrate, asking politely if anyone in their right mind would steal a worthless object from a derelict car in broad daylight only a few yards from their own house. The magistrate, a bad-tempered miserable old bag (excuse me for making personal judgments here) said: “But you did steal  it!” Had she hesitated, my next question would have been: “What would you think if someone told you to ‘put a car down?’”  But I know when I’m beaten.                                                                                                                                               

And that was that. Thus were the wheels of Fate set in motion! We paid our fines and left the country as soon as we could

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>> Continued to "Prelude 2" 

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