Home from Home
During one of our almost traditional September jaunts to France, me and Rupert found ourselves wandering around the sea front one day. It was kind of small and windy, and the waves didn't look inviting, and we had nothing really to do.
It had to be groms. Nobody else would live like this. We knew that they would be living on food scavenged from the bins around the back of the local supermarket. They would be spending what little money they had on very cheap french beer, or 3 franc bottles of wine. They would smell, and have not washed in months, but every night they would be slobbering over the sensibly aloof and impeccable French girls at the Rock Food. They would be living in the time honoured style of surf-mad groms the world over, except these particular groms seem to have acquired an immobile car to live in, which they had probably paid somebody an extortionate fee for. Someone who knew what a grom would put up with rather than have to go home.
Me and Rupe both said the same thing: " I bet Barbie had something to do with this."
The car seemed to have created for itself its own little eco-system of leaking oil, board wax, decomposing pants and rust, and it surrounded itself in a puddle of scumminess. Passing locals were looking at us like we had somthing to do with it, so we quickly stepped over the half fallen-off bumper and carried on down the beach.
A couple of years later and I found myself in France again, with Barbie (Stu) and Tim. We were on our way back from a couple of days debauchery in Moliets, when the conversation turned to Barbies own near-legendary summer of scum when he was ostensibly working on Moliets campsite. He mentioned a blue Sierra that he and Unlucky Rob bought for €60...
"The one that was parked on Hossegor sea front for a whole summer?"
"Yeah, how did you know about that?"
..and the whole story came out.
Unlucky and Stu had bought this Sierra for what probably seemed the bargain price of €60, but the seller had conveniently forgotton to mention that if you actually tried to drive it anywhere it immediately filled up with exhaust fumes and killled you. Since Stu was getting fed up of being pulled over by the police for driving with his head out of the window, the car was used to bung any crap that requried storage, or to sleep in on those drunken let-me-just-go-to-sleep-I-can't-unzip-the-fucking-tent nights. The car was gradually festering on abuse, leaving Unlucky and Stu with a problem as to what to actually do with the thing.
Cue the groms.
The Challobrough groms: Desperate to stay in France, broke and feral, the blue Sierra was a gift at 25 quid. They could tow it down to Hossegor, keep their stuff in it, sleep in it, and generally treat it like their home from home. What more could a hairy-palmed alcholol-infused surf-crazed grommet ask for? Not to mention conveniently solving Unlucky and Barbie's problem at a profit. Everyone was a winner.
At the end of the summer, Barbie was back in England and bumped into the Challie Groms, and conversationally asked what had happened to the car. The groms said it had steadily fallen to bits where it was, helped along by some creative vandalisim from the Plymouth boys, until it reached the state me and Rupe had come across it. One day, after a nice surf, the car had gone. The groms had been evicted.
Wondering what had happened to their shelter and all their possesions, they bumped into Tim who'd seen the whole thing. While the groms were happily pulling into some nice French barrels, the road had been closed off and the bomb squad had been called in to investigate their home, just in case ETA had gone downmarket. After the army had been satisified that the strange smell was just unwashed groms and not Semtex, the police turned up and towed the wreck away, while the groms carried on in the shorey, oblivious to the whole thing. Defeated, broke and homelsss, they'd had no choice but to head back to England.
A week or so after Barbie had been talking to the groms at Challie, the police turned up at Barbie's mum's house. It was Interpol. Yes, Interpol really does exist, and they wanted to know if the owner of a blue Ford Sierra lived at this address. Stuart's mum came to the same immediate conclusion that me and Rupe had in France, and wondered what Barbie's involvement in this saga was.
When Stu and Unlucky sold the car to the groms, they hadn't concerned themselves with legal niceties like ownership papers. Who needs all that paperwork? So when the car had been nearly blown-up and towed away, it still belonged officially to Barbie and Unlucky.
Thinking fast, Barbie gave the Police Unlucky Rob's address, and let him deal with it, while yet another page was added to the dossier at MI5 that surely must exist on Barbie.
By Jon
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