Getting a job at a well-known watersports centre in a hot, sunny and windy holiday destination? No problem. Surviving shit banter, predatory female clients and an endless onslaught of mosquitoes? More difficult – this is the Secret Diary of a Windsurfing Instructor.
Week 2: Right. So it turns out my skin doesn’t much like absorbing sun cream. It’s not as if it comes off easily – it just sits there, resisting my best efforts to rub it in, resulting in me strolling down to the beach plastered in swathes of white streaks.
No big deal you may think – everyone has to wear the stuff and we all look a little silly when it is not rubbed in properly. Unfortunately I also happen to be naturally olive-skinned, which has only ever been an advantage, until now. From the very first day I’ve found that leaving a residual layer of cream on top of the nicely tanned base leaves my legs a decidedly unattractive shade of purple, much to the amusement of my colleagues. Cue beach hut banter, which ranged from the initially tentative; ‘What is wrong with your legs?!’ to; ‘Mate your legs look like they’re going to fall off’. To which I replied, ‘Your Mum’s purple.’ Classic. All credit to them, it was several days before they unanimously agreed upon the both witty and relevant nickname of ‘Avatar’. I was being compared to a Disney-born CGI cash cow, and was I proud of it?
Of course I was. It turns out that acquiring a nickname is a rite of passage on the beach. To be new and nameless is to be invisible, and any name, good or bad, is the ultimate form of welcoming into the fray. Besides, it could be worse – I could be the guy they called Two Pumps because, well, I’ll let you use work that one out yourself. Answers on a postcard (or in the comments section of course.)
Out here there is only really one bar-cum-club that serves as the only the place to go for both clients and instructors. With its monotonous drone of repetitive dance music ringing in my ears after just a couple of weeks, it was pretty clear that something had to be done to spice up the nightlife. During one particularly stale night, myself and my roommate approached the revered spot that was the DJ booth. In a rush of spontaneity, we relieved the regulars from their duties, and soon we were spending entire nights out manning the decks.
Whenever I mention this to folk back at home the typical response is, ‘What, so they’re letting you choose the songs that come on?’ as if we were on some kind of glorified jukebox. The idea that it’s just a case of ‘picking a few club songs’ pretty much disintegrates after a five hour stint in the booth, but it’s not even trying to fill several hours with banging tunes without repetition, hesitation or deviation that’s the challenge.
Admittedly when we first started we were pretty happy-go-lucky in our approach, but all too soon we became aware of the constant pressure on the DJ to come up with the goods every night. Any proper DJ (i.e. not us) will tell you that the audience is a highly sensitive and needy beast which requires a great deal of care and attention. Before you can start cranking the real bangers, the atmosphere needs to be gradually built up with less aggressive tunes. It’s a very delicate procedure that I started to visualise as an extended form of foreplay between us and the rest of the club. Although, this may have been something to do with the fact that the potential for schmoozing is very limited when you’re cramped up in a tiny box with a computer, miles from the dancefloor. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt, it’s that if you don’t schmooze, you lose. But anyway. So when some loud mouth frat boy rolls up to the booth with a request for some god-awful generic US hip-hop, it was never going to go down well. Despite my insistence that it would (might) get played later at a more suitable time, the douche didn’t quite seem to grasp the concept of ‘waiting’ and persisted;
‘Man, people are gonna love this one, I promise you!’ Really?
‘Nah nah dude, it’ll totally go well after this one!’ Really?
If you ever find yourself in this situation with someone in the future, I urge you to stop at this juncture. Regrettably, the joker in question didn’t seem to pick up on the warning signs, and on his fourth successive visit in as many songs, I snapped. ‘Request this,’ I shouted over the massive tune I’d just dropped, and dropped trou. Fully.
‘Whoa, ahh man!’
‘Are you jealous? I’d understand – I’m jealous and it’s mine…’
‘Brah, I don’t know about you but I’m not into that kinda thing. Like I’m sure that how you get your rocks off but that’s not for me man’ (leaves).
For some reason he didn’t come back, which was a shame as I was literally just about to play his song. Maybe.
