MY LIFE. ©
Chapter 37 - "Ashes to ashes?"

Sometime in the early 70s, the few caravans left in Gib were allocated parking facilities at the back of what used to be Penelope's nightclub. Today it's the Mediterranean Restaurant.
There was not much there, just empty space and I remember at most three, maybe four caravans parked there, and were mostly empty. But the owners would rent them out to young hippies who were glad to have some cheap shelter for the weeks or months they stayed in Gibraltar. The easy contact between Gibraltar and Morocco kept attracting them to come here and take the Mons Calpe to Tangier every couple of weeks for their supplies of marijuana.
This was not the weed that you will see nowadays. This was naturally grown weed unadulterated ….. and very cheap! One kilo sold in Kenitra for about £20 …yeah, tokers … eat your hearts out LOL.
Today the hybrids that are being grown are 10 or 20 times more powerful and, in my mind, excuse the pun, rather dangerous, as well as much, much more expensive. If you remember the "Bryant & Mays" boxes of matches, one box of matches full of grass with selling in the street in Gib for 10 shillings (10/-) .... OK, OK... 50p in today's money.

If you knew how to roll very slim joints (called "Biafrones", a cruel nickname reflecting the very thin, starving people in Biafra at the time) you could get 6 joints out of that. No wonder Hippies loved coming to Gib!

And hippies loved "Loons”!  … didn’t we all?

At old TEO, I had the full selection of colours and sizes of these totally basic bell-bottom trousers with just a zip and a button, no pockets, no bet loops and with wide flared leg cut. Everyone used them, guys and girls. Cheap, easy to wash …..and stylish (at the time). Together with Tie Dye tee shirts and tops as well as Caftan shirts, add a string of beads, this was how we youngsters dressed. This this was the beginning of the unisex look in fashion…. que chulo no? Come on, we ALL thought so.

Those of us who have lived through the 60s and 70s will boast that we had the best youth years of any generation …. despite a closed frontier!
It was when incredible fashion clothing, music, art and Jesus sandals exploded…. and weed was cheap. Not just that but a proper Drug Squad had not yet been established by the Police in Gibraltar. It made it relatively safe for nightly drives up the Rock comprising anywhere between 10 and 20 cars, for a "smokerthon". 8-track music tapes playing Santana, Moody Blues, Beatles and in my car, Leonard Cohen whose lyrics and poems influenced my own to this day.

OK ... you get the picture?

At that time I made friends with a young couple living in one of those caravans, Brian and Dawn. Many were the nights when, after dropping my girlfriend, I would go over to their caravan for a quite few hours of mellow music and relaxing smoke. Sometimes alone, others with another guy or two, my new girlfriend, as was the case one Saturday night with Sue. She was sultry barmaid from the Spinning Wheel in Horse Barrack Lane. She claimed to be a witch, “But a good one Dave, don’t worry!”
Me, worry?
With 3 or 4 joints already shared, minimal clothing (it would get very hot un the caravan) and the lethargic passion a good ‘high’ tended to bring on … why worry?
”If you worry, you die. If you don’t worry, you still die, so why die? Just worry”?
Cheap philosophy …but a philosophy non-the-less.
Also, Max, a lifetime friend of mine joined us that evening.
 We took some soft drinks and a couple of big apple pies, baked at a takeaway in Main Street, opposite Hearts Boutique. The couple who run that made the best apple pies in the world, chip butties and assorted sandwiches and the usual takeaway stuff. When the "munchies" set in, which they always do after a couple of hours and smoking, we would go to this takeaway which stayed open well into the night and buy one or two or even three apple pies and cokes. As it happened sometimes, their next best clients were policemen on night duty, so caution was always in order. There was no Drugs Squad as such, but Policemen are not stupid. They knew something was going on, just not sure of when and where it was happening.

"Hi, two apple pies and 6 Cokes, please"

"Hot apple pies coming out now!"

And on some nights, as we waited, the lady who worked there with her husband would casually chat to us:

"Not a good night to go up the Rock tonight .... you know,
Levanter and all that ...."

Marvellous lady she was! She really took care of her clientele.
This meant that cops had gone in for takeaways themselves and had talked about going on patrol up the Rock! We knew then we had to find another place, a safer place for that night.

Anyway, back to Brian and Dawn, Max, Sue and I and their caravan.

Brian's brother had died in England a few months before this and was cremated there. He loved the sea and his last wish had been that his ashes be tossed solemnly into the Mediterranean. That was Brian's mission in Gibraltar although he had been here for at least 2 months and the brass urn where the ashes rested was still the caravan, complete with a plaque bearing his name, on a shelf next to the joss sticks and the hookah. It didn't bother us and it's certainly didn't bother Brian who occasionally had stoned-out, one-way conversations with his brother in the urn!!!

A nice couple, young and easy-going; with Dawn the easy-going noticeable in her dress, or lack of much, while in the caravan.
Sue was an unknown quantity to me. Dark, gypsy looking, piercing eyes that had me hooked on her despite my intuition that we did not share the same hygiene values, as the need for some medication a couple of weeks later proved. And Max....

Max was rather a quiet guy.
Not a hippie by any stretch of the imagination, still dressing rather square, but with a passion for wearing Swedish clogs! Meticulously epicurean, he would "Bogart"* his joint and not share it with anyone; nor would he take a toke from anybody else's. He was less than comfortable in the caravan which would never have made it to the Ideal Homes Magazine! Nor did he speak much come to think of it, until he was stoned out of his mind! I had never seen him so far out as that night in the caravan.

*(“Bogart” In honour of Humphrey Bogart, always with a cigarette… Song from the film Easy Rider … “Don’t bogart that joint my friend, pass it over to me” Term used to describe a person who would keep the joint and not share it around))

Brian and Dawn were on one bunk, Sue and I in the other and Max sat on a Moroccan puff going glassy eyed when he said:

"Winnie the Pooh!"

It was so incongruous we all started laughing. Max finished his joint and waving his arms theatrically started reciting one of the Winnie-the-Pooh books by heart!
We were so stoned!
We were enthralled.
We could not believe he had memorized this. I certainly could not and I had known him all my life. If you can imagine a smoke filled, joss-stick scented, candlelit, small caravan, with an urn of a dead man’s ashes, four out of five of us  only half dressed, and Max melodiously telling us all about Pooh Bear, Eeyore, Tigger, Piglet...and all they got up to.

It was surreal!

It was also unexpected fun.

A one-man gig, a most incongruous one-man gig, to an audience of four who applauded and encouraged him story after story.

Max today is in the happy hunting grounds, rather earlier than expected. He was by no means a toker, in fact that was the first and only time I had ever seen him smoke weed. But he enjoyed himself twice as much as his audience did

Max, I will never forget that night, man!

As the night wore on it was time to split. We opened the door and windows to clear the air and Dawn lit fresh joss-sticks.

Sue and I gathered our clothing, we all said our goodbyes to Brian and Dawn and made our way home. But just as I was going by the Public Market, I heard the Police Jeep driving down Waterport Road, turning round La Fuente del Capullo and coming to a screeching halt next to the caravan!

It was a raid!

We had luckily managed to get out in time ... but what of Brian and Dawn? Max and Sue sensibly did a runner. I stayed back in the shadows to see what would happen. It was like watching a silent film unfold in front of me. If anyine reading that has ever been stoned he/she will understand this “seeing-through-a-fog” feeling.
Our hosts we taken outside and handcuffed. At least three cops went into the caravan and started a search. There was no way they could miss the bag of weed still inside.

10 minutes, 20, 30..... at last the cops came out of the caravan shaking their heads and shouting at Brian and Dawn who kept their cool or were just too stoned to argue. The cops brought out the hookah, but it was clean. We had not used it. They brought out a few bags but there was nothing other than a couple of booklets of ZigZag cigarette papers. They brought out the urn and I saw from their gestures Brian explaining what it was, showing them the plaque with the name and dates of birth and death of his brother....
Finding nothing incriminating the Police took off the handcuffs and finally drove away leaving them to tidy up their caravan.

I went back to see if they were alright.

"Hey Man, what happened?"

"Heavy shit Man, heavy shit!"

"You OK?"

"Yeah...  yeah ...its cool"

"Find anything?"

"Nah! ... My brother saved us!" said Brian.

Dawn giggled ... "Yeah, he sure did!"
"What do you mean?"

"Brian plonked the bag of weed into the urn as soon as we heard the Cops coming."

"Yeah, I saw one of them come out with it" I said

"I told them it was my brother's ashes which I had to take down to the sea."

Dawn dipped her hand into the urn and rummaged around the greasy ashes of her brother-in-law inside, till she found the plastic bag of weed hidden there.

"His brother loved to smoke too, so I am sure he will not have minded keeping it safe for us!"

"Saved by the dead …..right on David?"

I looked at Brian and had to laugh.....
Those were the heady days of a mis-spent youth.
When we made love, not war; we praised Timothy Leary, whoever that guy was, and the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and we wanted out of Vietnam … not that Vietnam meant much to us in Gib.
It was the start of the crumbling of the ethics and standards our parents had brought us up in.
Are we any better for it?
Much to my regret, I do not think so.