A Gambler Born and Bred 10

Thank God for France

In April, I caught a flight to Nice and then took the train to Antibes.
Once there, I went to the campsite that a friend had told me about and met some other Brits. As it happened, we’d all arrived on the same day. After a few drinks, we decided to chip in to rent a caravan together.
It was a lot of fun to be had, but we all knew that we were there to find work on boats and going for the same jobs.
After a week, I found a job on HM Charisma as a live-in deckhand. I worked hard, scrubbing the deck, sanding and varnishing the woodwork and generally putting the deck in order for the coming season.
The day before the first set of holidaymakers were due on board, the captain ran off with the cook, who was the bosum’s girlfriend. All plans were put on hold and I was told that I’d have to find another job.

By this time, I had a French girlfriend in Antibes and an English one in Juan Les Pins.
I had set up an account with Barclays and I often went there to see for myself that I hadn’t taken out a penny. This was all down to the absence of fruit-machines.
When I arrived in Cannes, the fifth boat I asked for work gave me a job. They thought I was American.
It was a beautiful three-master called Shenandoah and everyone on board was French.
Living conditions were far better than on Charisma. We ate lobster and fillet steak and I was allowed to use the moped to go and see my girlfriends in Antibes and Juan Les Pins.
OK, the work was hard, sitting on a piece of wood and being hoisted up to the tops of the hundred-foot masts to scrape, sand and re-varnish all the way down to the bottom, but I was probably the happiest I’d ever been. I could survey all Cannes from where I worked. Who else could do that?

I bought myself bright, colourful clothes and drank cocktails at the Bar Crystal in Juan with my English rose or 1664 at the Green Lady in Antibes with my French tart and the lads. There was no need to think about fruit-machines. They didn’t even enter my head.
I lost my job for some reason. But that wasn’t a problem. I walked off and two boats down, I was given another job.
This time, I would be a real deckhand and galley-boy. The boat was booked for a charter in three days and I learnt the ropes with Brian and his wife, the English owners of the Jolly Joker.
They were really nice people.
Unfortunately, my French tart gave me a dose of the clap and I only realised after setting off.
My penis became red and inflamed. It needed scratching. I put shampoo, soap, salt, anything I could find on it, but the itchiness wouldn’t stop.
I shared the front-lower quarters with the cook, a good-looking English girl who I think fancied me.
I’d have gladly obliged were it not for my ailment. When we arrived at Ajaccio on Corsica, I told her and she burst out laughing. She walked me to a doctor who gave me an ointment to put on my dick.
The person renting the boat was a well known football club owner and his wife flirted with me every night when I brought their supper.
He was a rude man, though, and I disliked him.
I threatened to leave when I bumped into the crew on Shenandoah in Puerto Cervo. They told me to leave ‘the English pig’ and I regret not doing so. They said I could join them right there and then. Shenandoah’s owner, a Swiss prince, was elsewhere in the world and they were just going from place to place aimlessly. They all smoked strong hash, which was an added bonus.
I knew that I was needed on the Jolly Joker and declined their invitation. Brian kept telling me that the man renting the boat always gave big tips to his staff, and this had stuck in my head.
Once we’d done the figure of eight around Corsica and Sardinia, we were on our way back to the mainland, so I told Brian that I’d leave after docking. He was good about it.
The English pig gave me $250 as a tip and I thanked him under my breath. He’d been so demeaning and rude to me in front of his wife and guests. What a twerp he was.

I took the train to Juan Les Pins and met with my English Rose, who I’d missed so much.
I went to hold her but she hit me hard in the face. She was crying.
I’d left my bag with her while I was on my charter and she’d read my diary. She hated me, but we ended up making love on the beach.
Things weren’t the same, though, and when she went off for a charter (she was a cordon bleu chef on a boat), I was left to look for jobs and digs in Antibes.

To make matters worse, my French tart had started seeing an English guy and they hung around the same bars as me. She tried to get me back when he wasn’t around, and I went with her a few times, wearing a durex, but the game was up.
By August, I felt homesick and found a flight.
When I went to the bank to take out my money, I found that I’d saved over a thousand pounds.
Mum would be so proud, I thought.

I was happy to be back home. Mum seemed well and had found a very well-to-do boyfriend. I gave her a hundred pounds, which she tried to give back to me, but I would have none of it.
‘I owe you much, much more than that, Mum,’ I told her.
‘You don’t owe me a penny,’ she replied, with a tear in her eye.
By the end of my first week back in Guildford, I’d spend all of my hard earnt cash on fruit-machines and put myself down for a place at Guildford Technical College to do an HND in business studies.