Corsican fascists

San Francisco Pete and I were escorted to the border Venti Miglia after being deported. Me on 12 string and Pete with flute charmed some ladies in Nice and made friends with the local University crowd. One night we were sleeping on the shingle beach and thought we felt a gentle rain - looked up to see grinning frogs pissing on us from the boardwalk above. This pissed me and Pete off a bit! We took a late night dip in the Med to clean up and made our way up to the University which was still jumping. We met a group of students we'd befriended at the Kudu Club, a gig we played every time we inadvertently ended up in Nice. They arranged for us to crash in the kitchens for the night, sleeping bags, guitar and flute, waiting for the dawn, to sneak back across the border and make our way to Rome.

Midnight - blasted by a fire hose, smashed against the wall!!

Two gentle hippies: one sensible (Pete!) he ran and hid in the ladies toilet. Me, I ran out into the corridor in just my jeans and was confronted by a gang of thugs. (I found out later they were a political Uni faction - Corsican Fascists). Anyway, I charged into them and was stabbed a few times with the scissors they'd brought to hack off my hair. I bashed a few of them, then fled down three flights of stairs into the Uni grounds, a howling mob behind me, and over a huge fence..

God - I was scared.

Made it over the fence and into the foothills of Nice in just my jeans, with nothing. Oncoming headlights on the dusty track I was following gave me hope for a moment, but yep, there it was - a bloody French police car. Cop sees me in distress and locks me up for the night in a stinking cell. I was barefoot, jeans, no cash, so in the morning they gave me an old pervs coat to make my way back to Nice Uni., where I somehow found my guitar, passport, Pete and my revenge!!

We made it back to Rome a week later, smuggled in by some nice chaps with a camper van. They lent us their bobble hats as a disguise! Not a great look but it worked!"