Young Winstone by Ray Winstone

Author:Ray Winstone [Winstone, Ray]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Canongate Books
Published: 2014-10-09T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

THE PROSPECT OF WHITBY, WAPPING

It was partly going to Corona that pushed boxing into the wings. But the gloves were also coming off as far as drinking was concerned, and they were already long gone when it came to girls. I didn’t give the boxing up for good. I would put the gloves back on and return to the ring for two more fights a couple of years later, but that would be my Elvis in Vegas phase.

In the meantime, the discipline I’d learnt at the Repton helped keep me out of some of the scrapes I’d probably have got into otherwise, but not all of them. One incident which has stuck in my mind, for reasons which will soon become obvious, was when I went away for a few days with a mate from drama college called John Walford. His mum lived with a French Basque geezer in Andorra, this strange little tax haven in the Spanish Alps who are one of the few teams England can usually be expected to beat in the World Cup.

Now, the Spanish and the French Basques don’t tend to get on with one another particularly well, but I wasn’t too bothered about all that. I was too busy sliding around the place in all this moody ski gear – basically a pair of jeans and a woolly hat. One night we went to a club that was up on the top of this mountain. It was full of Spanish and French, not mixing particularly well. You know that feeling when you walk into a room and you can just smell the trouble that’s coming? This was one of those.

The French fella we were with was some kind of karate expert, and when it all eventually went off he started really putting himself about, karate-chopping everyone. If I’d had a choice I probably wouldn’t have been on his side, but I didn’t have a choice because all these Spanish geezers attacked us. In that kind of mass tear-up you basically just end up hitting anyone who’s near you who you didn’t come in with. We’re dishing out a few good clumps, but we’re taking some as well.

What you don’t want in that situation is for someone to take things up a level, and John’s mum’s boyfriend pulling out a gas gun and shooting the geezer next to him in the chest with a flare was never really going to calm things down too much. The other guy went up like a human torch. Although he was alright in the end because everyone jumped on him to put the fire out, I had to get John’s mum and throw her under the table to keep her out of the free-for-all that followed. At this point, the Old Bill – or the Vieux Guillaume as the French call them – arrived, and whatever language we were speaking, this was definitely a ‘stoppo’.

We all sprinted out the side door, Johnny’s mum and the French fella jumped

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