A Gambler Born and Bred 11

It was strange, playing the machines after so long.
Once I’d started playing, one part of me said that I could walk away from them; that was all I had to do. The other part of me said that I had to play to recover my losses or not.
No matter how good my intentions, my actions spoke louder. I had to play.
My sick mind told me that if I get it over and done with and lose the lot, I can start again. That’s how mad gambling is. Only when I’d lost the lot would I be in a position to think about how to get more money from somewhere.

The course was quite fun, especially the marketing side.
We had to create an advert for a new product and my team went with an idea of mine; a fictitious radio station called Radio Strand.
I did various part-time jobs for money and carried on playing fruit-machines and partying.
A friend had moved to London and I would stay at the weekends, driving up in my Austin 1100 with no reverse.
In the summer term, we took our first year exams and I went off to visit my sister in Boston.
I knew then that the only way I could save up money was by giving myself a target to leave the country.

Sara and her family had moved to Boston when John, her husband, was offered a job with good prospects and an excellent pay package.
I went to New York first and stayed with a friend, Simon X, who was selective doorman at Nell’s, a posh nightclub.
He showed me around and I found a job at an all-night diner at Chelsea meat market. I didn’t want the job, though, so I took the opportunity to go and visit my sister and her family.
They found me a job as a house-painter and Nigel, the friend that I visited in London that year, came over and stayed with us.
One day in Boston, I met a gorgeous girl and she introduced us to a friend who ran a driveaway firm.
After two weeks, we’d given up the painting job and were driving along Route 80, California-bound.

I’d received a letter from college that I’d passed the exams but failed two modules of course-work. They sent me two projects that I had to complete if I was to be readmitted in September.
One was about Stolports (short take-off and landing airports) after the introduction of City Airport in London, and the other was a complicated project on how the Nazis funded their war effort during the second world war.
Keen to stay on the course, I’d look out for small aircraft and signs for airports along Route 80.
I found about five and asked for as much information as possible, which they gave freely.
In those days, America was still America; not like now.

We had a wail of a time in California, snorting coke, fucking women and taking in the sights.
I was caught drunk-driving and was ordered to pay $20,000 after a night in the cells.
I took a flight back to Boston and asked John, my brother-in-law, about the Nazi project.
He suggested that I enquire at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
With my English accent, I explained my task and was invited to meet someone there who could help.
On the twenty-somethingth floor, I was given tea and smiles and about two-hundred pages of information on how the Nazis funded their war effort.
The papers suggested that a large proportion of the money that went to killing Jews and dividing Europe was funded by the Rockefeller brothers (Jewish) and, wait for it, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
I was aware that the Jewish community ran 85% of American wealth at this time (it’s now 99%) so I assumed that, back in the 1930’s, after the depression, they had already made their mark in America.
I couldn’t come to terms with this information.
It meant that the rich American Jews had financed the Nazis’ holocaust against their own people.
I’d always felt sorry for the Jews. All I could feel was contempt and confusion.
How could they have done this to their own? It was like inviting your brother over for tea, asking him to fetch something from the garage, locking the door behind him and gassing him to death.

When I got back to college, I handed in my projects feeling like James Bond.
I was a day late back, though, and they expelled me. I appealed against the decision but they wouldn’t have it.
I asked my business environment teacher if I could have my Nazi papers back but he said that he’d lost them.
There was nothing left for it. I had to research more into the Nazi war effort. I enquired at all the main broadsheet newspapers, telling them that it was for a college project, but none of them would give me information.
I went to the Daily Mail’s offices.
At reception, I was asked to wait to see a member of their staff.
When he arrived, I stated my case and told him about the Federal Reserve Bank.
‘Do you have the papers?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I replied. ‘My college lost them.’
He seemed sad, and sighed through his nose.
‘Look, mate,’ he said, finally. ‘The world’s a weird place. You scratch the surface and it eats at you, yeah?’
I nodded with tight lips and drawn forehead.
‘Just ask yourself who owns all the newspapers in Britain. Then let it go. Nice to meet you, mate.’
He gave me a hardy pat on the shoulder and wandered off.
I rushed off to the library and investigated the ownership of British media and found that the Jews had gobbled up the lot.
From way back, as far as the second world war, they had cornered the influential media market.
I was furious, livid, enraged, dumbfounded.
Something had to be done. I talked to friends about it, but they nodded and said ‘so what?’ or just looked at me as if I was mad. They took life on life’s terms. They didn’t question life; it just happened.
‘Like shit!’ I told them.

Delving deeper, I could see myself getting deeper and deeper into trouble. I wrote a 1000-word article and sent it to all the editors of the broadsheets, hoping that they might publish my findings.
I didn’t get a single reply.

I flitted from dead-end job to dead-end job down in Guildford, but, again, all my earnings went down the gullet of a fruit-machine. I wanted to live and enjoy my life, but nothing could tear me away from the machines. They were worst than drugs. At least when I did drugs, it was with friends and I felt a sense of freedom.
With machines, I was a prisoner, constantly trying to claw my way out of their grip.

That winter, I took a flight to Geneva and hitched to Val d’Isere.
A friend was working there and could put me up while I looked for work. A keen skier, he was washing-up at a chalet during his year-out from university.
I found a job at the workers’ bar, Annabel’s, and it was a doddle.
All I had to do was turn up after dinner and work the bar for five hours.
I was given a room in the staff quarters of a chalet, but there was no free lift-pass and hire of skis.
I didn’t care. I could get up late, saunter down the high street eating a yoghurt, visit my friend, play backgammon for a while, read, watch French TV, steal from shops, smoke hash, eat some supper, go to work, get pissed and then visit a late-night bar to see if there were any ladies around, and go to bed, with or without one.
Ski yoghurt was the closest I got to skiing.
Tell a lie; I used to go on the nursery slopes and through the foresty bit at the bottom of the tunnel, imagining I was James Bond (at about six mph).
The air was so clean that I gave up smoking cigarettes.
Then the season ended.