Gurriers (72 page)

I do know one thing for sure though: I was having a ball. If I had to try to put that unique feeling into words, the closest approximation I could come up with, though still a wild under-statement would be, “This is how my whole life should be!”

“Shy Boy, you still alive?” a familiar voice asked in my room but strangely also outside my room. “Shy Boy!”

I was slowly composing myself and becoming aware of my surroundings. I’m in a tent, I told myself.

“Yeah.”

“Come on, we’re all goin down to get some o’ this free grub for brekkie.”

“Yeah.”

“Will you be long?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you only say one word?”

“Yeah.”

“We’ll stay here for five, if you’re up by then, grand, if not we’ll header on. There’s a few joints goin’ round ou’ here also.”

I was up, dressed and out of the tent in thirty seconds flat. Not that this was any great achievement. All it involved was unzipping the sleeping bag, rolling over in the correct direction, unzipping the tent and then standing up. It had been so cold by the time I got my head down that I had just climbed into the sleeping bag fully dressed: coat, shoes and all.

As soon as I stepped out of the tent, Seamus handed me a two litre bottle of water, which was most gratefully accepted and guzzled from. While I quenched the terrible thirst that I had, I commenced assessing my general condition that morning. It was not good. My head was thumping with a hangover, but also suffering the after-E wooziness and a certain untangible blanket of numbness caused by the other drugs. My jaw muscles ached terribly, my throat felt like a roll of extra coarse sandpaper rolled tightly rough side in and the ever present pain in my neck muscles tortured me with an intense stabbing agony if I moved my head too quickly or in the wrong direction.

Every joint in my body felt as if it was about to seize on me at any moment. I felt physically exhausted and stiff all over almost to the point of bruising after my first ever sleep on the ground-sheet. Ollie passed me a joint and I dry retched after every drag I took out of it, but didn’t stop smoking, convinced that a cannabis cloud in my brain would help me to soldier on.

“Fuck’s sake, Shy Boy, you gonna crack on us or wah?”

“Nah, nah, I’m brand ne-waagh uaagh uaagh new. Any more wa waagh waagh-ter in that bottle, man? Cheers waagh waagh.”

“Okay, we all ready?”

“Oh Jaysus!”

“What’s wrong now, man?”

“Are you all goin’ to the food area down by the trees? I’ll have to meet yiz down there.”

The first murmers of laughter began as I frantically searched the top box for what was left of my toilet roll. These grew into giggles and titters as I found it and my dilemma became clear to all. As I sprinted my way once more towards the porcelain grail I could hear the whole company behind me roar with raucous laughter.

The crap, the bland ham sandwich and the large volume of water consumed helped me to pull myself together, enough to join the lads on the supermarket run.

Not everybody felt so healthy though. Only 12 of us gingerly
left the site, very much going against the traffic of the many arriving motorbikes. We got to the supermarket long before they took the beer off sale - a safety measure introduced with the intention of cutting down drinking and driving - and stocked up on beer, water, food, toilet roll, cigarettes and plastic spoons to do all of us the entire weekend. The free drink table was, of course, gone.

When we got back to the campsite we discovered that a kebab van had set up near us in an area that had been blocked off. When I commented to Vinno that we might have bought less food had we known that that was coming, I was assured that all of the meat that would be cooked at that van was certain to have worn a saddle while it was still alive.

Friday night was an even bigger session than Thursday, with thousands more party animals giving it plenty, as the arrival rate of fresh mayhem maniacs intensified. Our lot moved up a gear, guzzling beers, smoking joints, magic mushrooms and chewing acids, as if it was going to go out of fashion. We were, every one of us, revelling in our own blend of narcotic madness before the sun even went down.

Our French companions went through a phase of concern at the wild behaviour, peaking when Steve and Ollie brought an 8x4 sheet of chipboard from a trailer at the back of the kebab van and threw one corner of it on the fire.

There were six of these sheets on the trailer, obviously intended as flooring.

The kebab vendor only realised what was going on when he saw Seamus and Macker take the last one and followed them to the fire and saw them throw the first corner onto it. He was considerably less than impressed. He stood there giving out in a very loud voice despite the best efforts from all of our French friends to placate him until the Gizzard decided he had heard enough.

“Paddy, Dave, Gerry, giz a hand here.”

He was followed by the three that had been beckoned and then by another six to the side of the kebab van.

“Okay, boys, let’s rock this shop!”

They started to rock the van, which rapidly gained so much momentum that the wheels came off the ground as the van swayed from one side to the other. Everything in the van was thrown all over the place. The kebab vendor’s tone went from angry to pleading, as he implored the lads to stop.

From where I was standing it looked as if they were going to topple it onto its side just for the hell of it, but one roar from the Gizzard put an end to the pushing. He then grabbed the stunned vendor by the arm and marched him over to where I was standing.

The Gizzard was pale and sweating, his jaw seemed to move of its own accord, there was a stink of drink off him and his eyes were full of acid craziness tinged with the fury that the Gizzard did so well. I was even afraid of him as he approached me; I can imagine how the poor vendor felt.

“Shy Boy, tell this fucker that if there’s one more fuckin’ word ou’ of him tha’ fuckin’ thing is goin’ over.”

“I think he gets the-”

“TELL HIM!”

“Moins du bouch monsieur, oui?”

The poor man didn’t even verbalise his answer, just nodded emphatically.

This display of hooliganism seemed to actually allay the concerns of our French companions, as if it was an assurance that we were well able to deal with any trouble that resulted from our actions. That, and the fact that the water was kicking in.

When we were in the supermarket we bought them a two and a half litre bottle of water for themselves. Mad Tom put five acid tablets into it and Leo put in three ecstasy pills. They all had a great night with us.

There was only one other negative episode that night. Some drunken French bloke thought he was funny, grabbing at the bottom of our tricolour as it flickered in a light breeze. Then he thought he was at war when he was hit on the shoulder by a sizeable enough chunk of burning wood. After this, he thought
he was hard when he ran up the bank to see who had dared throw something so dangerous at him. Then he thought he’d better get out of there on realising who had, with Leo doing a much more dangerous “best scrapper on D wing” pose than I ever could, backed up by the complete tribe of wild looking drug fuelled Irish patriots giving him the hairy eyeball.

“Yee-aagh!” When Leo ran at him the French bloke, of course, turned and ran.

That night was another great night on the campsite. I felt more settled with myself and more comfortable with the amount of drugs I had taken: pretty much the same as the previous night minus the cocaine. I had also become accustomed to the never ending influx of bikes, the stench of fire everywhere, the muddy conditions and poor amenities.

As my accelerated heartbeat pumped the fire of much narcotic effect ever faster towards the brain, I felt as if I was a very real and vital part of this magnificence. It was marvellous.

I fondly recall a moment that I had to myself on the way back from the toilet - sadly the absence of cocaine did not correspond to an absence of diahorrea - when I was just within earshot of the lads, still quite a distance away from them though, due to the volume of the proceedings.

There was noise everywhere, of course and it was all merriment; shouts, cheers, songs and salutations among friends and strangers alike, but in that proud moment I became instantly and intensely aware of the very tangible difference between our noise and everybody else’s - the laughter. Nobody else laughs like the Irish.

This realisation stopped me dead in my tracks. For an indeterminate amount of time I stood motionless, straining to listen with both ears while tears of pride built up in both eyes. I never felt more Irish in my life as I did at that moment in that field in France while under the influence of that many drugs. The Irish: we’ll come to your party, out manoeuvring you while we make the most of your magnificent roads. We’ll introduce you to a level of alcohol and drug abuse that you never thought possible. We’ll cost you lots of sleep if you are unfortunate enough to stay
in the same hotel as us.

We’ll spike your water. We’ll burn the wood that you have carried a long way.

We’ll burn wood that you have other uses for.

We’ll get stroppy if you give out too much, making the transition to hooliganism all too easily.

We will not tolerate any disrespect to our flag or nation.

But we will always laugh and, most of the time, you will laugh with us.

When I got back to the campfire, inspired as I was, I did something quite odd.

I made my first attempt ever to dance a jig, in front of everybody around the fire with only crappy French music coming from the car to accompany me.

I fell so many times that once it took me a full 30 seconds of getting my breath back before I could add my hearty guffaws to the high volume laughter of my comrades.

The next time I awoke in my tent it didn’t feel so alien, but there was still something not quite right. It took several seconds for me to pinpoint that what wasn’t right was the noise. There had been constant motorbike noise all around us ever since we had arrived but something was different about today’s. Engine noise was everywhere.

Normally there would be nothing unusual about this except some of them were going very fast, much too fast to be moving around a campsite.

Then it dawned on me: the race!

This time I was up and out of the tent in 15 seconds, screaming in a panic at the other tents. “The race! The race is on!” I could hear movement from inside the tents, but nobody came out to join me in my panic. “Come on, were missing it, and I wanted to see the start!”

“What fuckin’ time is it?” someone roared from one of the tents.

“Ten o’clock in the fuckin’ mornin’!” from another.
“The race doesn’t start for another five hours.”

“And the hornet race is gonna be on before tha’ an all! That’s the hornets practising that yiz can hear.”

“Who the fuck is tryin to rob us of our sleep?”

It felt odd getting crap from a load of inanimate tents. I tried for a spoof based on the fact that none of them could see me, doing my best to disguise my voice.

“It’s me, the Gizzard “

“It is in its shite the Gizzard, ye fuckin arse bandit ye, Shy Boy!”

I heard a little giggle from another tent before, “Jeez, Gizzard, I thought you would have known better, the amount of times you’ve been here!”

“The Gizzard is still in his fuckin’ crib; it’s fuckin’ Shy Boy!”

“Now he tries to blame a virgin.”

“Fuck’s sake, Gizzard!”

“Yeah Gizzard, leave the kid alone!”

“Fuck yiz all, yiz cunts.”

“Since ye’re up, Gizzard, will ye go down an’ grab us a few sambos for brekie?”

“I am noh fuckin’ up!”

“Is Gizzard goin’ for grub?”

“No he’s not; doesn’t give a fuck about his mates!” I said.

“The Gizzard is still in the fuckin’ scratcher!”

It was always great to be around the lads when they were taking the piss out of each other. Standing alone in the midst of a load of tents containing the piss takers and the victim brought this enjoyment to another level. I tried to muffle my voice, as if I was still in my tent.

“Dave, is your knife in your top box?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“I’ve got grub in my box for breakfast. I’m goin’ to get up with the Gizzard an’ help him throw the munchies together for the lads.”

“The Gizzard isn’t fuckin’ up, yez pack of fuckin’ pillow biters.”

“Whatever Gizzard.”

The hornets were still practising when we finished breakfast so we went en masse through the nearest entrance to the closest bend of the track to us, the hairpin preceding the back straight. Shay delivered a lecture to myself and the other virgins about the layout of the track, the bridges over it and tunnels under it and how easy it is to get around, with a pedestrian lap corresponding to about a mile and a half walk.

I’ll never forget the way Vinno breathed in one time when a group of five bikes were nailing it away from the bend up the straight, deep and slow through his nose with his eyes shut.