Gurriers (71 page)

After five unbearable minutes during which the queue didn’t move at all, I came to the conclusion that something had to be done. I looked around to determine if there was a dark place that I could run to and deposit my load, but the campers and their fires and their never ending arriving comrades were pretty condensed around the amenities. I was considering going back to our camp, or somewhere near it, to make my mess in the ditch when I happened to catch, out of the corner of my eye, the last girl that had been queuing for the ladies loo entering the neighbouring Portakabin. That meant if another girl came out, there would be a free bowl. Bearing in mind that the girls wouldn’t be doing all their pissing elsewhere and only using
the Portakabins for a shit like the blokes, I left the queue and started ambling my way towards the ladies.

There was an attendant covering both Portakabins, sitting on a deck chair at a small folding table that was placed roughly equidistant from the two doors. He was a middle-aged, over-weight man who seemed to have a pretty relaxed demeanour. There was a bucket containing some cleaning products and a stack of packs of toilet rolls on the table beside a small wicker basket containing coins. Apparently one advantage to his job was that he got to sell strips of toilet roils to patrons that had come unprepared for a franc each, generating something along the lines of a thousand per cent mark up on the paper.

I caught his attention as I broke away from the back of the queue, heading roughly in his direction. I was still a good bit from him when addressed me.

“Du papier pour monsieur?”

I delayed a little before revealing to him that I had half a roll in my left hand, doing my best to delay the penny dropping about the reason for my movement. It dropped soon after that.

“Monsieur – cette est suilement pour les femmes,” he said, informing me that it was just for women.

I decided to act dumb. “Bon soir. Vive Le Mans.” My answer was to make sure that I sounded like a foreigner who spoke very little French.

He moved the table from him to facilitate whatever blocking move he would deem necessary. “Monsieur, c’est interdit!” He told me in a stern voice that it was forbidden.

A truly gorgeous French girl could not have timed her departure better for me. I was in the door when he was half way to it. I felt as if the poor slow man deserved some semblance of explanation from me.

“Ma derriere - c’est une emergency.”

He stood at the Portakabin door shouting angrily in French while I got myself positioned and released the beast. Of course, the queue full of French men got in on the act, shouting along with the attendant at the queue skipper. I was just so relieved to
get the crap out of me that I just sat there shouting “ma derrier” over and over again, wishing that I knew the French word for hairy to put between ma and derriere.

As it happened, I caused a mini revolution because during the course of my visit I heard several French men – under vociferous protest from the attendant – invade the bowls in the ladies.

The attendant gave me a load of verbal abuse, as I came out off the Portakabin, which didn’t phase me one little bit with me being in the world of sheer ecstatic relief and all, but one of the bigger, bolder looking French - a giant of a man in full leathers at the front of the queue, roared something that I didn’t understand but presumed to be insulting followed by “roast beef.” Everyone laughed at his comment.

I don’t know if it was the occasion, the company I was with or the combination of alcohol and cocaine, but I was having none of this. I glared straight into his eyes as ferociously as I could and assumed the same fighting stance as I had seen Daymo adopt in the local when drunkenly declaring himself to be “the best scrapper on D wing.”

Every muscle in my body was clenched, particularly jaw, neck and shoulder; my arms were locked straight but away from my body at a slight angle, as if to increase the range of blows that I might rain down upon whichever victim I chose to pulverise and my feet, the left slightly to the front and the right slightly to the rear, exactly the right distance apart for optimum balance with me up on the balls of my feet and my toes to maximise my height and readiness to pounce.

It looked scary as hell when Daymo did it. Hoping for a similar effect I took a deep breath and roared at the top of my voice, “Je ne suis pas Inglese, je suis IRLANDAIS!”

There was a horribly aching moment of silent uncertainty before the giant’s features softened into a smile. “Irlandais! Toutes les Irlandais est fou. Beaucoup du Guinness, monsieur. You like to drink?”

“Jamais,” I replied, which meant never.

A stunned moment’s silence preceding me pointing at him
with a loud laugh; he laughed back before we exchanged hearty handshakes and I was on my way, wondering what the fuck had possessed me to adopt such an aggressive demeanour when so isolated. I was happy to deduce to myself that it was because I felt no threat from these foreign revellers, and rightly so, as they should never feel threatened by me or mine because we all knew where it was at. We were all cool and all was well. It was party time!

The route to the jacks had been, and always was actually, a high speed, mega emergency dash past, through and over all obstacles between me and the porcelain grail. It was a wonderful contrast to be able to take my time on the way back to our camp and soak in as much of what was going on in this wonderful place as possible. Mostly, of course, it was bikes. Bikes of all makes, all sizes, all ages and all conditions.

The vast majority were sports bikes, very few of which were as they left the factory. The French love to spend money on after-market bits, pipes, shocks, handlebars, brakes, wheels, seats; practically every part of a bike that could be changed to suit a person’s taste. I even saw one bike - an old gixer - that had, had every single engine bolt changed to fancy Allen key bolts in a metallic purple to match the flashy paint job. In retrospect, it could well have been that the flashy purple paint job was done to match the fancy engine bolts!

I nearly got knocked down by an old Kawasaki Z1000 that was tearing around the campsite. I saw the light coming towards me and I stood back to give him space to get between me and the other revellers. What I didn’t see - and what should also have had a light on it - was a bathtub that was mounted on a frame and a third wheel that was welded onto the bike as a makeshift sidecar. A bathtub sidecar!

I suppose I wouldn’t be injured too badly had it hit me, just scooped into the bath and taken away. I managed to jump out of the way anyway and actually met the owner on Saturday (or it might have been Sunday - the days sort of blended into each other as the session went on) and advised him to get a light on the outside of the bath to avoid injuring somebody. He gave me
an answer in French that I didn’t understand, but I would guess that I was told to fuck off. At least he didn’t call me roast beef!

As I wandered towards the illuminated beacon of the biggest flag on the premises (all the different areas in France have their own regional flags which were flying over a good proportion of the different groups of tents - all dwarfed by our tricolour which was all the more obvious because it had a street light shinning down on it), I came across a bunch of six French bikers struggling to unload a pallet from a trailer that was attached to a big old Peugeot estate car. They were struggling because on the pallet was a huge (to my untrained eye) car engine. Intrigued as much as good natured, I lent a hand to steady the load, as it was put to the ground. When I was being thanked for my assistance I took the opportunity to enquire as to the purpose of the engine. A very young looking French biker who looked like his leathers had been given to him by Santa Claus, made me wait a moment and then started babbling to his friends so quickly that the only words I could make out were ‘roast beef’?

A cheer behind me diverted my attention to some nut-case who was parking his bike by burying the back wheel in the mud with a wheel spin then, boom blem blem blaaam blaam! The engine - with no exhausts attached - fired up and nearly burst both of my eardrums while answering my question: it was there to make noise. The kid that I had asked gave me a thumbs up with his left hand while pulling on a wire, which was obviously originally attached to the throttle. I returned the gesture and continued towards our flag with my ears still ringing from the original explosion of sound.

I was only a couple of rows of tents away from our camp and my ears were almost back to normal when I managed to distinguish some English being spoken, like a little island in the ocean of French dialogue. I just had to investigate. It was a group of six English in three tents huddled around a small fire in great spirits. They seemed older than average for this place and their bikes were all classic English: two Nortons, three Triumphs and a BSA. I checked my coat pockets to make sure that I had everything I needed with me to make a joint before barging into
their firelight.

“How’s it going, gents? All enjoying the festivities so far? What a place! Nice bikes! Jeez, it’s great to hear people speaking English, my brain is melted tryin’ to speak French. D’yiz mind if I sit down?”

My approach made me wonder about how much cocaine I had taken. Anybody would think that I’d been in France on my own for months, not on my way back from the jacks to a big bunch of mates that I could actually see from here!

The English were friendly and polite and liked a smoke, so I stayed with them for a social joint before continuing on my way, with them promising to come up and join me and my mad friends for a session - a promise that they kept the following night.

“Brother Sean, I thought we’d lost ye there, man!”

“Just havin’ a ramble, soaking up the sights. This is something else this is!”

“Here, get on the outside of this.” Before I knew it Paddy had popped an E into my mouth and an open can of beer into my hand.

Fuck the consequences, I thought, down the hatch! I took a big swig of beer before handing back the can.

“Here, Shy Boy! You didn’t get any o’ these yeh. Grab a handful!” Gerry approached me with a lunchbox almost packed full of withered mushrooms. We had spoken about this on the boat on the way over.

Gerry, a big fan of magic mushrooms, went picking them in the Wicklow Mountains every Saturday and Sunday during the mushroom season - late August through to early October. Every year he got a load to specifically enjoy with everybody in Le Mans.

It would be rude not to pinch a couple of fingers full from the proffered container, galloping towards the tent as I chewed them to get a beer to wash them down with. While I was in the tent, I made a huge packed joint to share with those who had shared their narcotics with me, realising as I did so that it was now actually very cold indeed. I nestled as close to the fire as I
could before sparking up the joint, spilling some beer from my can in the process.

“Shyboy,” someone said from the seat of the car, which had been pretty much commandeered by the lads at this stage. “D’ye want a line of this?”

“No thanks, Vinno, I’ve had all the shits I want for one day.”

“Here, Shy Boy, you never goh one a these?” Mad Tom handed me an acid tab. “Don’ be worryin’. I brought over enough for us all to have one ev’ry nie on the campsite and then a few left over. There’s eighty o’ these babies stashed on my bike. Go on, have a wrestle with yer sanity, man! “

“Wrestle with it? I’ll have the shite well and truly kicked out of it by the time people are finished giving me drugs! Cheers, Tom, down the hatch. Have a drag outa that.”

“Don’t mind if I do, man!”

I took a long swig of beer and then lost myself gazing into the centre of the fire while doing a rough tally in my head of all the narcotics that I had ingested in the previous hour or two: hash, cocaine, ecstacy, magic mushrooms and acid.

As the narcotic induced quickening of my heart became obvious, I had a miniature battle against panic, which I won by replaying Vinno’s speech about drugs and how the effect depends a lot on the state of mind a person is in when the drugs kick in: “You’re much more likely to have a bad trip when yer scared o’ yer shite of wha’ y’er takin’, man. Try sayin’ yippee when ye do drugs!”

“Yippee!”

“Whats tha’, Shy Boy?”

“This is the fuckin’ business, Dave!”

“You betcha, brother. An’ this is only the bleedin’ start of it!”

The rest of that night to me is more like a rare feeling than a collection of memories; a feeling to be fully relived when triggered off by whatever and to be longed for whenever not triggered off, much the same way as a smell might trigger off some childhood memories.

I stayed at the fire drinking and smoking joints for what must have been an hour (judging by the amount of cans drunk and
joints made and smoked). By then I was well and truly flying, kicking, mashing, mangling and everything else.

Suddenly, I was on my feet and away on a ramble, oblivious to the calls of my comrades yelling at me to come back. I saw a lot of strange things that night. To this day, I am not sure whether I had any hallucinations or if they were real. I was sure it was the drugs when I saw a load of people with wild animal heads prowling among the trees, but saw the same people with the same wolf-head costumes at the start of the race on Saturday. I think I remember being given out to by some French bikers for puking on their fire but I don’t have any recollection of puking anywhere.