It seemed never to be quiet, at that time. We were on the move for sure, from cafe to cafe to bar to hostal to cafe around and around, radios playing loud in every place. Noise and radios, chatter and clatter and noise and songs on the radio. For some reason we had gotten superstitious about Nirvana’s cover of “The Man Who Sold The World”. It was on the radio a lot at that time, and everytime it came on we fell into a weird ritual heralding departure. First we had to listen in silence to the song all the way through. When it was over we would immediately stand and leave. That song was our cue to get back on the move. Once we were back out on the street we were guided by whatever we found out there. Most times we found nothing much and so bought a newspaper and sat in a park. But if we saw a red car we went to the next bar, if we saw a telephone box we had to look for a hostal. If we saw a junkie, we scored, if we saw a copper, we fled the town. And so it was that we found ourselves in Andalucia, by the side of the road, hitching down to Morrocco, we told ourselves. That was the plan, I think.

We got picked up by an inter-continental mega-truck just outside Cordoba, and we pounded the freeway like kings, high in the cab of this mighty ride. The road rose and fell for dozens upon dozens of miles through foothills and moorlands until after a few hours the road reared up and topped out at a roadside bar, and that’s where the trucker left us. Lorry drivers and travellers and holiday makers meandered in the wide carpark. I guess it was some vista viewing point across the mountain range. We sat in the bar drinking tap water until Nirvana’s cover of “The Man Who Sold The World” came on the radio.

That’s how we hooked up with a man in a red Mondeo, shirt sleeves and tie, suit jacket hanging inside the passenger door. He was clearly a business man or travelling salesman, he seemed grateful for our company. In fact he spoke incessantly, speaking over the sound of the car radio, except when a good song came on, then he would listen and do drums on the steering wheel. As I zoned him out, gazing at the grassy hillsides and wild mountains, I wondered what we were doing, where it would end, this compulsive running to the sea. And that is when I first heard Bob Dylan’s “One More Cup of Coffee” on the radio, although it would be many years more before I was able to name it. The road curved down around a peak, sweeping in down flowing loops, the huge rocky scree pebbled slopes of the mountain looming above us as the road bottomed out into the wide green-carpet of river basin. Bob Dylan and EmmyLou Harris sang on “One more cup of coffee for the road, One more cup of coffee before I go, To the valley below”. It was a message, an omen. We were tumbling down into the valley below, we were running free now, onto the sea, and the straits, to Morrocco.

Inevitably, as we approached Malaga Nirvana’s cover of “The Man Who Sold The World” came on the radio. We listened in silence all the way through the song, and then we asked Shirt-Guy to drop us off anywhere here. We landed by the big circular wall of La Malagueta. We watched the red Mondeo weave off into the early evening traffic and superstitiously headed for the next bar.