33 Days: Day 14

DAY 14

More sun!  Pretty much a repetition of the day before...

Clement is at the beach again with the girls, we talk quite a bit and I am amused by his crankily friendly attitude.  New ice cream vendors arrive from Rennes.  In the evening, the town is blocked off for a weekly "pedestrian night" where they have lots of little concerts and a night market.  

 Sea, Sex And Sun

I am struck by the fact that everyone and their dog rely on songs by Brassens or Gainsbourg for a hearty part of their repertoire.  Apart from that there is some funny Breton music (a Breton being someone from Bretagne), it sounds melodically like Irish folk music but they're singing in French, there is an old man playing a Yamaha synthesizer along with this old franco/celtic stuff, pretty whack...

33 Days: Day 13

DAY 13

Sun on the tent; oh lord it's work.  Corsican Battle to get motivated, I can hold my own against Angela  now, she taught me the game in the first place so I feel proud.  Angela asks to be placed on a different beach today because she's not making money at the one where she works now and it's too big, meaning miles and miles of walking around with the stupid chariot.  We drop her off at a small beach where there are lots of families and a large campground nearby, guaranteeing a steady amount of traffic and what promises to be a better income.  I start work at 3:30 p.m., weird after all those days doing nothing to supposedly be working again.  I meet an American art dealer who lives in London and his mom, I think I scare them a little because my English-starved brain latches onto the conversation and I am practically sputtering I'm so excited to speak in my language.  

A young man accompanied by two beautiful blonde little girls buys ice cream from me and asks if I feel like conversing a bit when he hears my accent.  His name is Clement and he works in a small, quaint hotel on the island which is run by his stepfather.  

The girls are his stepfathers' daughters, part of his job is to babysit them in the afternoon and they usually want to hang out at the beach so he finds himself babysitting and suntanning at the same time, not a bad situation.  I finish the day having made 15 euro, not exciting but enough to eat for a couple days.  

Back at the campground the Korean/French couple change their tent placement and end up right next to us, it's strange to eavesdrop on their conversation, the Korean girl's French is so heavily accented I have trouble deciding if it's French or some new Euro-Asian conglomerate language, refreshing.  The two have a quarrel within an hour or two of settling in, christ not again....

Dumpster diving in the evening yields a beach chair, a nice iron skillet, and a brand-new reusable shopping sac.

33 Days: Day 12

DAY 12

No work, cool and cloudy.  We go to a local cookie factory to taste their wares and then watch a pirated version of Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels on Romu's little TV, dubbed in French. 

I find the film easier to understand in French than it was in English with all those trashy London accents.  We play "Corsican Battle", the card game which unleashed my whining the other day, after all it's my favorite card game and there is fucking nothing else to do.  

Gotta be a better way...

Reggae drifts in from all sides, everyone except for us at the campground has apparently brought a stereo and wants to share their amazing music far into the night.  I can't decide if my boredom will change into an "I'm on vacation" mentality or not...

33 Days: Day 11

 DAY 11

 

Death hangover holds me in uncomfortable tent bed until 4 p.m.ish, of course we don't work because the weather's icky.  Hangover is helped by neighbor's horrible hardcore techno + shit reggae, somehow time passes until 8 p.m. 

France loses the World Cup despite a ridiculous headbutt given to a cheeky Italian by Zidane (the badass on France's soccer team) toward the end of the match.  People honk and go crazy in town nonetheless, it is an island after all and there are a limited number of things to do.

33Days: Day 10

DAY 10

Do nothing until 4 p.m., this means the weather is still bad (?).  We go to Donnant, the biggest beach on the island, where there are waves and surfers, the whole bit.  The beach is packed and I can't see why we're not working today.  I end up going body surfing in the cold, cold ocean because I figure if I can't work then at least I can be battered around by the waves.  

Photographer's Page

We hitch a ride back home and participate in an 'aperitif party' with the other seasonal workers who are employed doing other crappy, tourism-related jobs around the island -- at least they're earning minimum wage though, from my present position that sounds like the high life.  Feeling glum and having a large amount of cheap alcohol at my disposal, I take pretty much whatever drink is offered to me and end up getting drunk off hard cider/carbonated wine/pastis/red wine/etc.  

Different country/blog...same phenomenon

Once I'm really drunk and Angela is slightly tipsy we go down to the town and dance around to a weird man with a guitar and machines playing covers of horrible French pops songs in a sort of one-man band situation, he is doing a concert on a little makeshift stage right next to the harbor for no apparent reason, O.K.  I go insane.  

More blog 'borrowing'

I start writhing around on the pavement and pretend to break dance even though I don't know how, trying to look as stupid as possible.  A guy comes up and hugs me.  We go up and pass out in the tent at some point though I don't remember having left the concert.

33 Days: Day 9

DAY 9

More shit weather but quiet without all the fighting next door.  Dumpster dive a laundry rack to dry our clothes on and say hi to the stray cat I met several days earlier, he seems to live in the area.  We cajole Romu into taking us to a little beach on the southeast side of the island, nice though Angela cuts herself on some jagged rocks when she is swimming and gets pushed against them by an incoming wave, she comes out of the water with bloody knees looking shocked but relieved.  We walk for several kilometers on the way bay before being picked up by a tourist guy in a rental car who looks seriously absorbed in driving or whatever he's thinking about and says nothing to us during the drive back to town except "goodbye!" as we get out of the car.  

At the campground we meet our new coworkers, a Belgian couple who have just arrived from the mainland, they seem cool and the dude even lived in Oregon for a year, making him the first European I've met who could tell me where Idaho is.  Romu buys us a pizza for dinner, I guess after five days where we haven't even made enough money to eat he feels slightly guilty and wants to remedy this.  

I feel slightly better when I learn he doesn't even have a camp stove and has been eating cold for a week straight now, but then again, he's been doing this for seven summers straight now and should theoretically think to bring something to cook on...feeling restless afterward I take a walk in the night, I go to the port and stare at the lights of the mainland, which twinkle and make me want to get off the island, even though I'm not really sure where I would go once I was off.

33 Days: Day 8

DAY 8

Bad weather that looks suspiciously like good weather to me in the afternoon -- meaning we don't work even though we think we should due to Romu's thoughts on the ice cream sales outlook for the day.  I don't get it.  

33 Days: Day 7

DAY 7

Bad weather hahaha, it's warm and I feel 3 raindrops in the course of the entire day and wonder what kind of weather is really necessary in order to sell ice cream.  I find a sailor's hat in the dumpster, unfortunately it's too small to fit comfortably on my big head.  

I meet another cat, this one's nice too though a bit mangy.  We hitchhike to a little town called Sauzon with another islander, the town is a lame tourist trap full of overpriced restaurants, on the way back we are startled by the fact that tourists in rental cars with 3 or 4 visibly empty seats have no inclination to pick us up.  

33 Days: Day 6

DAY 6

Still bad weather, I guess, though it doesn't seem so bad to me, we are told this is not ice cream weather.  I dumpster some semi-edible bread and gnaw on it as we take a walk to an ugly beach -- there are lots of unidentified wormy things in the sand and the water is a suspicious, bracky green.  Perhaps due to motor oil seeing as there are a quite a few boats docked a little ways out?  

Graffitti link

On the way back we take a route that follows the coast of the island and find an abandoned German bunker from World War II, lots of spooky graffiti,  a big open underground storage space for who knows what, I'm into it.  We meet a black cat as well a little farther down the road, it's real cute, lots of petting involved. In the evening Angela is tired ridiculously early (11 p.m., c'mon man) so I go for another walk, find myself on a little beach where I listen to the waves, a refreshingly clean sound after all the shitty reggae and hardcore techno the idiots around us in the camping are blasting at all hours of day and night.

33 Days: Day 5

DAY 5

 

Bad weather.  "Too much wind" says the boss.  We get a ride from Romu and go to a place called Le Point de Poulain, there is a lighthouse and dramatic cliffs, a little beach, all that good stuff.  

At the beach I watch a bunch of French people amuse themselves by throwing around a big dead crab and laughing as it shatters into pieces against the rocks.  We hitch a ride back with an islander who drives wickedly fast and has a bunch of what appear to be exposed fuses in his car dashboard...

33 Days: Day 4

DAY 4

Another sunny day, we go dumpster diving in the morning and find a bunch of celebrity trash magazines from 2004.  2 1/2 hours of work on the beach, no one there so I spend most of the time reading my book in Japanese (being in France is not an excuse to let myself go!).  Romu passes by halfway through this little work spree to tell me my cop sunglasses are too imposing and that I need to take them off when I'm touring around and look people in the eyes in order to motivate them to buy ice cream from me.  What a load of horseshit, if people want ice cream they'll buy it, so I wait until he leaves the beach and then put them back on.  

A group of people I know from the campground come and buy 30 euros worth of ice cream from me, cool though this doesn't translate into much money for me (20% of what I sell).  Back at the campground the domestic violence next door continues.  

They quiet down in the evening (don't know why, then again, I don't know why it started) and we all decide to go to the local dance club together, too bad we get there before midnight and find ourselves the only ones in a kitschy dance club on a small-ass island.  I dance anyway though I'm not drunk enough for it to be fun.  Angela participates a little bit as well, but Jacob and Julie just sit and try to look cool next to the dance floor with their cocktails, hard to do when there's no one to notice you looking cool.  We leave within an hour or two.  Back at the campground Jacob and Julie decide to have a loud fuckfest, we are serenaded by the sounds of their inflatable mattress making strange wheezing noises and an endless refrain of "oui bébé oui" coming alternately from Jacob, then Julie, then Jacob, then Julie.  I take a walk because I'm already starting to feel the horrible claustrophobia of living in a tent and this just socks it home. 

Upon returning Angela relates to me how the moment they finished fucking Jacob got a call on his cell phone and took it without any thought for post-coital cuddle time -- this of course rekindled the domestic abuse flame and they were having a nasty row in no time, at least it was only verbal this time, apparently.

33 Days: Day 3

DAY 3

Work commences.  Angela's plot to ask to work the best beach on Belle-Ile ($$) is thwarted by a fat, tan, competitive Belle-Ilois ice cream vendor who we later discover foots around the island on a moped like a gorilla in a cartoon.  He has a small, theoretically illegal stand (due to the law all vendors on the beach must be mobile, able to move at a moment's notice, and his stand is way too big for that) on the beach where he sells ice cream pretty much like ours but with a different brand name, soft drinks, etc. and makes a decent business so obviously he doesn't want us dipping into his profits.  Heated discussion ensues between him and Romu while all of us look on worriedly.  I don't really feel like leaving Angela there because I worry this fucker will give her shit (he has a lot of deadbeat-ish friends who hang around his stand and appear to have nothing to do besides harass another ice cream vendor should one decide to appear) but Romu assures us it will be o.k. and we leave Angela with her ice cream chariot, which has a big buoy-like thing attached to a metal frame with handles so that it can be pushed over the sand without too much effort.  I ask to be put on a smaller beach (less scary if there are less people to deal with, like I said, French isn't my native language) and find myself at a charming spot called Herlin, good sand and miniscule waves, perfect conditions for families who come to the beach with small children.  

In the end both Angela and I make practically nothing because there is no one there, the season hasn't really started yet.  I make the acquaintance of the lifeguard, David from Rennes, who has a really really red face and talks to me like we are both on some kind of sports team together, always trying to pep me up and giving me theatrical slaps on the shoulder.  I leave the beach at 6:30 p.m. and walk up the hill to the parking lot with no shoes since Romu assured me I wouldn't need my thongs on the beach and advised me to leave them in the van, on top of pushing the stupid fucking cart up the hill it's nice to have rocks stabbing into my feet.

33 Days: Day 2

DAY 2

A ferry to Belle-Ile... 

We check into a decent campground next to Le Palais, the main town on the island. There are lots of trees in the campground and we are given a camp spot with no shade whatsoever; upon discussing with the lady at reception that seeing as we will be living there for a month it kind of busts our balls to have a spot which leaves our tent uninhabitable for half the day due to sun exposure, we are told that since we are seasonal workers and our tariff is lower than the other campers, we have no choice and that "it has been decided" by the powers that be that it should be like this.  

33 Days: Day 1

DAY 1

Pack shitloads of stuff into bags, subsequently into tiny-ass TGV (the French bullet train) storage spaces...

33 Days: Prologue

The following is not mine in the sense that my decrepit hands and my dull mind are in no way skilled enough to have carried out such a task. 

In other words, I did not write it. No siree.

This collection of posts, thirty-three more or less, are the relaying of a story that has been passed along. 

Okay, here it is: