Eh, what?
I did this one the other week under 'Regrets'. Feel free to read it again, but I've got another one as well.

I first started back-packing/inter-railing round Europe when I was 16. I always travelled alone, because I'm a bit of a loner anyway, and also, I found it easier to meet new people and ‘be myself’ when not with people who knew me already.

I know some of you think “Be yourself” is dumb advice, but it is very hard at age 16 or 18 to be yourself, when the person you are is changing, developing whereas your friends' perceptions of you don’t. My friends saw me as shy, mischievous Che who didn’t have girlfriends – full stop (or – period, for you Merkins [by the way, I looked that up on Wikipedia the other day!!! Naughty.])

When I arrived at a Youth Hostel in the South of France, alone, I was Che the daring, intrepid adventurer, smoking roll-ups, reading Sartre, sitting on my own, listening more than talking. Gradually, I would join in, talk, be myself…and people liked me for who I was.

Now, I was in the YH at Frejus on the Cote D’Azur and got to know a few folks. One of them was very familiar looking and although he never admitted it, I’m convinced it was 1970s English actor Patrick Mower (this was around 1979), although he pretended he was French. He offered to take a few of us to a nude beach just down the coast and this was my first exposure (sorry) to naturism – but that’s another story.

At this time I was as horny as four rhinos in a Mexican stand-off, and spending much of each day on the beaches, then having to share a dormitory at night wasn’t helping. So…one evening, we were sat around talking when some bright spark suggested a late night swim. Now, I’d been chatting to a German lass called Enya for most of the evening, and when she agreed, I too said yes. “Here’s my chance,” I thought, “it’ll be dark, we’ll be thrashing around in the surf, who knows what’ll happen?”.

So imagine my utter dismay and disgust when a Yank called Eric put his arm around Enya as we made our collective way down to the beach. We all stripped down to cossies and did the usual splashing malarkey, but my heart wasn’t in it. Eric was all over Enya and when the rest of us trooped back up to the hostel, they remained on the beach for some time.

The very worst of it was that I KNOW she was keen on ME! She’d been flirting with me for a couple of days and when Eric ‘claimed’ her, she looked over to me, sadly, signalling silently to me that she was sorry, but….

Oh well….
(Che Grimsdale Best before:, Mon 30 Oct 2006, 15:08, Reply)