A place where you'd see, nothing but sheep;
Have little food and little sleep;
Hide under your poncho, as the rain would pour;
A miserable place is Mauvalley Mhor.
I wrote that little verse when I was doing just that. Hiding under a poncho – and if you don't know what a poncho it's what Clint Eastwood as the man with no name wore and it that doesn't ring a bell you need to get out more.
The place Mauvalley Mhor is somewhere; I have looked for it on maps of Sutherland, which is right at the top of Scotland, almost as far as Cape Wrath which is the top on a slightly different peninsular and to the east of Jon-o-groats. But I can never find it; can't even spell it. The poncho was right over my head and I was huddled up with my knees near my face.
Somehow I was supposed to read a map to see the six, or was it eight, figure map reference where I had to be for a certain time either later on, or the next day, and the light was fading even though I was in the lightest and the latest part of Britain.
Aged just eighteen my eyes were at their most perfect, in later years they were 20/10 and up to ten years ago they were 20/15; at the moment they are 20/20 which is great for a fella my age, even though the left one has taken a hike. Very little sight in that one, now, but it still twinkles.
At eighteen I joined something called the SAS; I have written about it before, but at the time I had no idea what it was. My pal wanted to join and I went along for the craic. From the age of fourteen I had been in the army cadet force, which is slightly different from the schools version of the army cadets which is run by teachers. So before going on the course, which is what I was doing under the poncho, I had map reading skills, weapon training and with 20/10 eye sight I was a crack shot. Thinking back I would have had a shit job in the army – a sniper. What a nightmare that would have been.
We were stationed at Fort George with the Black Watch and had been in the wilderness for a few days. Don't ask me how many or even how many weeks we were there. We socialised in Inverness where I met a girl and when she spoke to me she was a cockney. Well I say cockney, she was from London. Everybody is a cockney if they're from London if you are from any other part of the British Isles but it's not strictly true. There is a church in east London, in Bow, in fact, and you have to be born within the sound of Bow Bells to qualify as a cockney.
Sometimes in Los Angeles, someone would not quite be able to understand what I was saying and they would say, 'I can't understand your cockney.'
But London is 567 miles from Inverness so the last thing I expected to hear from a beautiful girl was a London accent and I might have been wondering about her as I crouched under the poncho. I was worried about the rain going down the back of my neck. I wore an SAS grey beret which seemed to be keeping the rain from actually drowning me.
I was just what they were looking for, in the SAS, the exact size they want but my pal was over six feet four and they didn't fancy his chances. When you think about it, it's not surprising – too big for a racing car, a space ship, a comfortable parachute jump – just think about it. At the end of the course we had to join up and just like the story of the tortoise and the hair when Dan crossed over the finishing line he found Christy waiting there.
Not really there was no finishing line, or anything like that, but I was the lazy one. I didn't care that I was sleeping in the middle of a field when morning came I didn't want to get up – still like that now. But on the last day I found my second wind and passed with flying colours.
It was tough training but I was eighteen and, even though I smoked like a trooper, and drank with the boys, I was fit.
So if you come across a place that sounds like Mo Valley More, but looks more like, Mauvalley Mhor, let me know. I think Mhor means big.
The movie is still doing the rounds. The Chicago Festival contacted me last night so who knows.
Take a look:
