SF. Pt.10. Rive gauche.

Over cups of tea in Fortes they talked about Rambling Jack Elliot and Derroll Adams and how Paris was the place to be. Simon and Arthur thought they’d give the Kerouac thing a try. According to the word in Finch’s Wizz Jones was already in Paris with his battered guitar, busking in the streets. Rod, who liked singing, wanted to see what it was like. Rough it a bit.

So with seagulls wheeling and English schoolchildren squealing the three of them embarked at Dover and disembarked a few hours later at Calais to have their passports stamped by taciturn French customs officials with guns. Guns! The officials were serious but Simon, Rod and Arthur couldn’t stop giggling as their passports were examined. Their first passport stamps! Later they saw a group of officials waving and pointing fingers at each other. ‘They are gesticulating.’ Said Arthur. ‘Mais oui,’ said Simon. ‘they are French.’

Arthur thought they should hitchhike but after about half an hour by the side of a rain swept road they walked back into Calais and took the train to Paris. ‘Ne se pencher au dehors’ said a sign above the window. Gare du Nord was easy enough but they nearly lost Rod on the Metro. He pretended to follow a group of schoolgirls along the platform. He got shooed off by a stern French nun. All good clean fun.

They got off the Metro at L’Odeon and found a cheap hotel just off Boulevarde St-Michel. The same area where giants like Hemingway, Joyce, Sartre lived, or had lived if they weren’t already in some unreachable Pantheon. Becket was there but they bore no credentials and would probably have been unwelcome even if they had. Truffault was making films but he didn’t need any scruffy English pseudo beatniks either. What they did run into was a motley collection of young vagrants some of whom they knew from places like Brighton Beach, Cornwall and London.….Wizz Jones and Clive Palmer who were busking in the streets of Paris for a living. They did Jesse Fuller’s ‘San Francisco Bay Blues’ and ‘Freight Train’ by Elizabeth Cotton mainly. An incredible two-piece string band that impressed Simon who saw it as the beginning of something. Arthur thought they were very brave.

At the Clignancourt Flea Market they supplemented their wardrobe with some slightly flaired jeans. Tres chic.

‘We can always use a bottler.’ Said Wizz.
‘What’s that?”
‘Someone to pass the hat. Getting money out of these buggers is an art form in itself.’
Simon said he’d have a go so there they were outside Notre Dame where Wizz and Rod started belting out the ‘San Francisco Bay Blues’ again. Rod and Simon began moving round the small crowd trying to drum up a few francs. Arthur’s job was to keep an eye out for les flics.

The crowd of bemused frogs got larger. Many were student types but among them there were a tall gaunt figure and a shorter more animated one with a beard. Somehow Simon knew they were Yanks. ‘We’re broke ourselves.’ Said the bearded one. The older one muttered something about ‘…reminds me of when I was working the hole with the sailor and we did not do bad. Fifteen cents on an average night…’
‘Between you me and the lamp post,’ said Rod, ‘If we’re going to get anywhere we need to get more commercial.’
‘Ever see a hot shot kid?’ asked the cadaverous-looking Yank. ‘I saw the Gimp catch one in Philly. Stop by 9 Git le Coeur sometime if you’re interested.’
‘Sounds a bit dodgy to me lads.’ Said Wizz.
‘Poofters.’ Said Rod.
‘I can feel the heat closing in.’ Said Arthur. Whereupon they scattered and found their separate ways back to a small bistro near L’Odeon.
‘I think,’ said Simon over a lait grenadine, ‘the time has come to hitch-hike south.’
‘You’re serious about this beatnik thing aren’t you?’
‘No not really. Just curious about what comes next.’
‘Think I’ll stay here for a while.’ Said Rod.

National 7 Blues. (with thanks and apologies to Alan Tunbridge and Wizz Jones.)

National Seven is a long weary road
But it ain't as long as a sigh
I'll forget about that girl as I
Catch the driver's eye

National Seven keeps you hangin' round
Sometimes you're standing there all day
But I know the folks are gonna' pay
Down in St Tropez

I’m standing here by the National September
Looking for a way to get out of debt,
Got no friends and no place to go
Won’t you take me somewhere in your Deux Chevaux.

The National Sept began at Porte d’Italie where the Metro line ended. Down through Orleans, over to Lyons sleeping in fields and bus shelters and thence to Aix and Avignon where things got warmer, and easier. In Cannes they spent the night in an old gun emplacement on the beach. Next day they walked along the Boulevarde des Anglais. On the terrace of a restaurant Pablo Picasso was enjoying a bowl of freshly picked raspberries, with cream. He was living in Mougins at the time working on a series of engravings with the Crommelynck brothers, Aldo and Piero, and things were going well. Braque and Cocteau had died recently so Pablo was thinking about life and death. But that was nothing new for him. He was wearing a blue and white striped French sailor shirt. He observed the two scruffy young men across the road with little interest.