Arriving in the world famous San Antonio at 5am, it’s safe to say my first visit to the White Isle is not entirely what I expected. Foolishly imagining glamorous bars and beautiful people, the first person to catch my eye is a prostitute offering bargain blowjobs: “Sucky five euros”, she chants. She stands at the foot of the West End, a street from which she will probably get more business than is healthy for anyone, a dirty row of British bars with drunkards packed in shoulder to shoulder. People are stepping over (some stepping on) a young English guy taking forty winks on the floor.
While all this isn’t exactly painting a beautiful picture of my home for the summer, there’s one thing every conscious person on this street seemed to share; each one was in full holiday spirit and having the time of their lives.
The next few days brought disappointingly little tanning and huge quantities of CVs, as I thrust twenty or so into uninterested hands of uninterested managers. I saw one of them place mine on top of a pile of others that would pretty much reach my knee. It seems I’m one of many young sun-seekers trying to live the Balearic dream.
I tried a bit of ticket selling, and lasted no longer than an hour. Some guy called Jay or Jake or Joe sent me to go knocking on hotel room doors, and sell every club-night with €2 commission, and no basic wage. Frankly, I felt like a twat and I looked like a twat, and so did anybody who was going to buy €70 tickets off some anonymous person who has arrived at their door. If nothing else, I was rubbish at it and sold zero.
The next day I started selling laughing gas balloons in one of the aforementioned grotty bars. This was right up my street, having a shameless, harmless flirt with pretty damned horrid guys, and watching their merry faces as they inhaled the unknown gas. Balloons were €5, but €20 if they were drunk enough to mix up the notes or if they failed to notice I have a face as well as a pair of tits. Again, it was just on commission so it felt like my duty to rinse the vulnerable intoxicants of their hard earned holiday spends. Laughing gas is legal in Spain, legal to buy, legal to sell, but highly illegal to misuse. By this I mean that it’s sold for use in Starbucks for whipping cream, and probably, definitely shouldn’t be being used in balloons. Not that I knew this until my boss frantically told me to stash everything away as the girl doing the same next door had just been arrested. It’s a €2000 fine for the girl and for the bar. I had to stop selling the gas, and although the boss asked me back a couple of days later, the thought of calling my dad and asking to borrow two grand for bail is just not worth thinking about.
As it happens I ended up taking a ride in a police car anyway after doing some work handing out flyers on the beach. My latest boss had failed to equip me with a license, so I was whisked away by two undercover policia fighting serious crime. Good girls like me do not ride in police cars, so this was a pretty strange event. Despite my naïve shock that the seats weren’t padded and the windows didn’t open (for fear felons like me might jump out and make a dash for freedom, I suppose) the fact I was locked in a soundproof, bulletproof, criminal-proof taxi made me feel pretty damn badass. Of course, I was freed after my boss was presented with a hefty fine.
Anyway, that’s what’s happened so far, as well as a few free club-nights with the likes of Katy B and Judge Jules, a bit more sun tanning and very little thought about imminent exam results (only just remembered this).
Hope everybody’s having a wild summer. x
