Maria and Billy.

I'll forever be begging your forgiveness for my laziness but prior to starting this blog, I used to put my little ramblings on Facebook.  Here's one from a couple of years back...

Lived on the ledge of a cliff beneath the ancient, ruined fort along the eastern edge of Cassis.

I stayed with them for a week. Maybe more.

Billy was an army deserter. He'd been stationed in Northern Ireland.

On patrol with his squad one day somewhere up there (I knew nothing of the six counties then, much less now), a kid ran at him throwing rocks. Someone from his unit fired and ripped half the kid's neck out. As Billy put it, they were the longest seconds of his life as the boy died - blood flowing like a river - in his arms. Questions written all over his dying face. First leave he got, Billy took the ferry to Boulogne and never looked back. Except for the nightmares.

One day we lifted some items from the small hyper-marche up the back of Cassis. I hid a large bottle of Johnny Walker under my greatcoat, which I wore in spite of the Mediterranean heat. That night we drank but Maria was very sick, through lack of decent food. Practically everything we ate back then was scavenged from the large skip bins out the back of the markets. Sometimes, we'd return like the proud, stupid savages we were with an octopus that we'd manage to grab from the tidal pools on the rocky shoreline. Billy would cook it all up with a small buried stove he'd dug into the soil and rock. A trick he'd learned in the army. It gave little or no smoke.

Maria was shivering through the nights, in spite of the mild high summer weather. I'd given her my tattered greatcoat but it didn't seem to help - although for some reason, it made her revise her opinion of me. Billy said she just didn't trust strangers but I knew better. A lot of women didn't like me back then. A lot of men didn't like me back then, either. Who'd go back to being twenty one?

Don't know why I mention it all.

But Billy and Maria, if you two lovebirds are still under that fort, grimy and mad with hunger, alcohol and mistrust, know that this madman is sitting, drinking a civilised cup of coffee half a world away and thinking fondly of you now.

Paint it black.