It came in 1992, a great holiday with my mates from school after the first year of A-levels. Memorable in so many ways, when Guy decided to fight Drex after hearing "Street Fighting Man" by the Stones. The introduction to Marlboro cigarettes in the red packet, cool. And the girls from Manchester.
Guy heard the tune and suddenly had been taken over like some CIA mind experiment. Drex was throttled. We all laughed.
The south of France was a great place to be at that time, from cycling to Frejus, skinny dipping with the Swedes and DJ Jackpot playing shit euro house. The immortal phrase "One, two boogaloo" was uttered. What a DJ.
However, it was the experience in the water that was pretty horrific. I was swimming around with Nick, who was superb in the water, me less so. We noticed a speedboat was going around pretty erratically but a distance from us. But this boat was going haywire, something was wrong.
Anyway, it started coming towards the beach. It was out of our ground, that was until it hit a buoy and immediately veered into our little area. Nick was quick and went left, the boat hit another buoy and came directly towards me.
Probably 10 yards away in a flash, and I dived under but it was shallow. I rolled over and saw the blades go past my face. The bough (bottom of the boat) went across my back.
I surfaced and Nick grabbed me. I was screaming and shaking wildly convinced I had been cut by the motor blades. I was assured I hadn't and was carried to the beach.
My memory then lets me down and remember hardly a thing. Nothing after the incident I recall at all. Apparently a Dutch girl had been killed as the boat hit the sand. Poor woman, just starting out in life. It could have been me too.
We learned that a kid had jumped in and tampered with the controls, and he was clinging on for dear life as the speedboat was doing 80mph around the bay.
We hitchhiked to hospital and of course I had no medical insurance so my mum got a nice medical bill on a pink slip I recall.
I couldn't even ring her to tell her as she'd be too worried. That night I even went out for a drink but after two I had to go back. A nice girl Pippa from Devon stayed with me and looked after me.
I guess I didn't really have the chance to think of what happened as the next day it was holiday as usual. I didn't have time to dwell on it as my mates were insistent on getting out and getting hammered. Maybe it was a good thing?
It probably effected me later on life without realising. I've spoken with Nick about it only recently as he was telling his kids about it.
I was inches away. The strange thing for someone with anxiety, big incidents like that I seemed to handle. Pathetic little things I don't and they become huge.
I'll always have Port Grimaud.
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