‘And your reasons?’ enquired Joey O’.
‘Well, it sounds like a mad dockland place full of gangsters and molls, and you could shoot into Monaco for a blast like Eddie said, but live with real people and not all those phoney rich pricks when you needed to get your head together.’ He looked at me for the briefest, turning to Eddie for opinion. Eddie had grown disinterested, already studying the riders for the next giddy-up ride. ‘Marseilles, yeah, that’s where I’d go right now – no passport, no bags, nothing!’
‘Right now, yeah, you’d go right now?’ Eddie had rejoined the chinwag, speaking through teeth still clenched around a small, blue plastic pen, his eyes glued intently to the TV screen above. ‘Well, if this wins, let’s go, right now, yeah? The Monaco Grand Prix is on this week and I’ve always fancied a bet on those nutcase car drivers. Anyway, it’s Lester Piggott in the next and, guess what, the skinny little fucker’s not even favourite!’
Killing to hit the road, I didn’t think he had the bottle. Off the cuff was usually me, but noting the seriousness in his voice I sat up. I hated horse racing, but if it could take me to Marseilles and the Monaco Grand Prix, then maybe it wasn’t such a nags ’n’ moneybags sport after all. Wanting the same commitment, Eddie asked for whatever change sat in our pockets. Holding back a pound for bus fares home, in case Lester had an off day, we raised almost twenty-nine pounds and watched as Eddie wrote out the race time, the name of horse and the amount that, in my mind, we were about to squander. Under starter’s orders I asked Joey O’ if the horse had a chance. Replying that with Lester you always had a chance, I took his words discerningly.
Soon as the race gun sounded, Piggott hit the front and, that’s where he stayed right to the finishing line. At 7–1 our own race to the Station was up and out of the blocks, as the lady behind the counter paid the readies. Bouncing outside, Eddie asked if we wanted a quick scoff. Answering for the two of us, I said, ‘No, fuck all that, let’s hit the road!’
With nothing except a tightly wound bundle of notes (two hundred pound) and three well-chewed biros, we jumped the first London train to Victoria, had a free nosebag in west London, where we left the restaurant faster than Lester’s horse, hopped aboard the night train to Dover, then Calais, bunking the boat from the white cliffs to the welcoming northern French port, and caught the overnight express to Marseilles, changing once in Paris. Reaching our destination, we were bedraggled yet, as happy as Eddie in Monaco, Joey O’ in the Caribbean, and me, in … well, Marseilles.
First impressions: it looked rough as Ken Dodd’s teeth on a no-toothbrush diet of Blackpool rock – even when it was dark. Booking into the shabbiest B&B, we jumped a taxi, telling the puzzled driver to take us to the nightlife. The first boozer we drank at we met Patrick Le Duveneh. Finding he spoke good English, we regaled him with our betting-office tale of Lester Piggott and the Grand Prix, and how and why we’d reached his Marseilles. Warning us it was a crazy place full of crazy characters, he added we were crazy so deserved to be there.
Next day Patrick sailed his small boat around the rugged hills and beaches of coastal southern France. Knowing a berthing friend, once our boat was tied-up among the many poseurs’ yachts docked at Monaco marina, we clambered the steep urban hills of the small city full of Machiavellian moneymen in search of a decent speck to view the show. Patrick told Eddie his permanently being sick over the side simply wasn’t worth the hassle: racing cars were cars that went by fast.
Thinking we’d fight for space on a hill full of anorak car mechanics to watch snazzy motors whizz past, we ended up on an apartment balcony of one of Patrick’s female acquaintances, Gypsy Francine. Here the cars did boringly fly by, and me and Joey O’ got drunk trying to look up Francine’s lacey skirt as she purposely stretched out her bronzed sprinter’s legs. The gold chain that lay upon her lovely brown melons looked like she was keeping it warm for the Lord Mayor of Monaco, till later she left it in the bathroom and we sussed it was a home-made set of curtain rings with an imitation gold medal holding a picture of Elvis in the middle.
We could’ve slept with the alley cats and well-fed Monaco rats and still thought we’d beamed down to the land of exotica. The fact we had some francs, a decent flock for the night, and were in the company of two real locals made it feel like we were Romany wanderers visiting the seaside on one leg of a lifetime journey. Though we were three young Liverpudlians, I knew moving about in an alien environment with what were to me, totally foreign people using strange mannerisms and language, made me happy as a well-fed Aborigine in the Australian bush. Coming from a city by the sea made any place with an ocean backdrop seem all the more alluring. Feeling like Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, set free and on the road to somewhere yet nowhere, confronting strange moments and characters on an hourly basis, meant not only mind-broadening education was taking place, but also an addiction to hitting the road was being fostered that I still turkey for to this day.
Returning to Marseilles next morning, Patrick showed us his treasured city. Listening intently, he told of Marseilles legend and fable, mainly originating from the boulevards and dock fronts. So many in fact that, I almost got collared and cuffed while bunking the train that ran the full length of France back to Calais, next day. My head, still chokka-block-full of travelling stories, almost stopped me travelling some more, as I failed to concentrate on the bunk-in-hand. Staring dreamily out the window, comparing my home town, Liverpool, to Patrick’s Marseilles, the French guard, opening the carriage door, asked for my billet (ticket) as I pretended to be sick by running past him to the stench-riddled toilet clutching my guts. Tailing me, he waited outside for fifteen minutes, till the train stopped at some lone-scarecrow Gallic town. Hearing him step from the rattler, shouting instructions to platform workers, I seized the chance to break out of my bog cell, legging it to the engine part of the train. For five or six hours, with the train rattling through central France, we played rail-track cat and mouse. Eventually chugging into Calais, I sped from the station with Inspector Clouseau bang on my case. Losing him in passenger traffic, I also lost my mates, not seeing them till ensconced back in Liverpool the following evening.
It didn’t matter. If anything, it was easier bunking long distance alone. And, listening to the engine mechanisms of the boat and train without the constant idle banter that young lads are prone to, allowed me time to devise a plan for my next jaunt and destination. Coming from Liverpool, it had to be football linked. Born and reared in a dockside city full of Footy Fanatics, it became my one-way ticket, my passport, my justification to hit the road. Having an Alan Whicker-sized hankering for voyage, they were football expeditions that always turned the ignition at Stony-Broke Street. Being a fanatic who required road trips as much as football, I defied the Jaffa Cake crumbs that lined my pockets to stop me from venturing out to see the world – especially when there was a scarlet-red jersey in town.
Truth be known, I must’ve bunked my way around the world, then tried the other route just in case I missed a stadium or two. Nothing to do with bragging or bravado, but the old Scouse cockiness definitely came in handy when boarding a plane to Germany with no passport or tickets at hand. Thinking of Bill Shankly and how he said he loved the Liverpool swagger made me think, like the Queen of Motown, that, ain’t no mountain high enough that you can’t climb, no country too far to reach and, in my own individual way, no stadium un-bunkable. Even when I had brass in pocket those pathetic allocations handed out by nepotistic, suit-wearing officialdom meant a ticket was always gold dust anyway. I had to take the pain of Cup final rejection away somehow. Having a jibbing-in skill honed over the most successful football seasons any team or its supporters has ever seen, meant that that skill, habit, or whatever you want to call it, was always going to come in handy for a fervent footy kid like me. No, not born of bravado, born of a need of drug-addict proportion to see how the other half lived, twinned with just as strong an addiction to be in attendance if a tiny white Liverbird was taking stage. In other words: a creature of my environment, born of necessity. If Shankly had said that, ‘Tommy Smith hadn’t been born, he’d been quarried’, then his words, the Mersey, the music, the city streets and the enormous wealth