and what we did to look much older.
|
|
"It was the wait" the Wanderer said
|
"that done me in, made me a dosser.
|
After Venice, you might remember,
|
I worked in Ibrox's Bank of Scotland,
|
six months of short-hair, tie and suit,
|
saved nine pounds, spent three a week.
|
|
I'd got my place at university,
|
An English one, I felt good,
|
I
|
couldn't wait until September,
|
the bank-job was such a boob,
|
I wish I'd done something else,
|
I was such a stupid fool."
|
|
And so began a lengthy tale,
|
which in part I will retell -
|
about the Wanderer's
|
second trip
|
which in all took sixteen weeks,
|
which led barefoot to Istanbul
|
and changed his life for good.
|
|
|
THE SECOND TRIP
|
|
"The Ides of May, my eighteenth year,
|
with ninety pounds, I set off
|
down the A1 in a pick-up
|
in the back with two Yanks.
|
|
Eight that night dropped in Brixton,
|
I walked south to Blackheath,
|
I got a ride with Mister Quine
|
who thought I was his long lost son.
|
|
He let me stay the
|
night in Bekesbourne
|
in his Jacobean home,
|
I had never seen such wealth,
|
oak beams and Persian carpets,
|
leather uppers, crystal cabs,
|
paintings older than the house.
|
|
Mister and Missus Q were very nice,
|
they were lately from Mauritius
|
-
|
diplomatic service - ambassador she said,
|
home at last from foreign climes.
|
|
Oh what I'd give now to live
|
in quiet Kentish countyside!
|
|
Orange juice, toast and eggs,
|
Mister Q wrote his address,
|
I pledged to drop him a line
|
from someplace that he'd like.
|
|
That afternoon, down in Dover
|
I found my passport stolen!,
|
Or lost! I did not know -
|
Left in Bekesbourne? Dropped in Brixton?
|
