Page 150 - Exile-ebook

150 AN EXILE OF THE MIND CHEAP WINE AND PAELLA 151

court that day, Nicole, in her Québécois
French, pleaded poverty to the judge
to no avail, and the last of our money
was spent on a new tyre and a fine.
We arrived in Calais and not a
cent between us for the crossing to
Dover. Unused pounds sterling were
kindly donated to us by a busload of
German tourists returning from a
London trip. It was enough for the
ferry and a decent meal.
As we arrived in London, black
smoke erupted from the camper’s
rear in deafening blasts. We had
miraculously motored 11,000 kilo-
metres without breaking down.
The camper was cheaply sold to
Azenhas Do Mar on the coast of Portugal. another traveller and we found work 1969 poster of the rock musical.
and a place to live. Nicole as a French
above and we felt the chill rain to bark at straying sheep skittering translator in the ‘Square Mile’, and I extra for the Peter Sellers’ movie, The
flooding in where the roof had been. down stone-flagged lanes. in Soho with my nose amidst books Magic Christian. He told us about
The pop-up rooftop had blown clean In the devout town of Fátima, at the British National Bibliography. actors flubbing lines deliberately in
off to sail over a Spanish hedge the site of Catholic miracles, pious Scented oak panelled the walls this black humour comedy to ogle
and bellyflopped in a field, intact. worshippers crawled to the and sprays of roses pushed through 88 galley slave girls, naked from the
Luckily we were able to put chapel on bloodied knees the plaster on ornate ceilings in the waist up. And Nicole and I to ogle the
it back before the camper for sins committed, past nine-room apartment we rented on cast of the rock musical, Hair, naked
filled with water. and present, and per- Kensington High Street. A shared from the waist up and down at the
In an exotic cobble- haps to collect a key for luxury with ten others of cosmopolitan Shaftsbury Theatre. Paul Nicholas
stoned village in the the Pearly Gates. mix. We took the Virgin’s Wing with jumped from the stage onto the lap
hinterland of bewitching Portugal, With funds fast dwindling we left its racks of servants’ bells no longer of a mortified Nicole who could only
a symphony of bells jingled on the Portugal and sped across Spain and clamouring on their curled springs squeak, “Ooh la la.”
woolly necks of sheep scampering France into Switzerland where one for sweet tea, scones and finger And far away in the night sky,
alongside shepherds wielding long of our tyres, worn to the metal, was sandwiches for ‘above stairs’. Neil Armstrong had just left his
wooden staffs. A sheepdog rushed spotted by a policeman as we slept. In One of our flatmates worked as an footprint on the moon.