Bahama Boyz

Nick Hughes

Description

London, 1970s. An East End boy stumbles into the world of casinos as a trainee croupier at the Playboy Club London. A time of glamour, excitement and sexual freedom, this new world allows the working class urchin with dreams of adventure to discover a life and horizons he never knew existed.When his new life takes him to Nassau, Bahamas, to work in the all-male bastion of Paradise Island Casino, the lunacy reaches a whole new levelThis rollicking good tale, packed with laugh-out-loud moments, will have readers remembering when times were innocent enough that mischievous pleasures were forgiven. Take a nostalgic romp through this hilarious and heartfelt debut novel.

Sujets

• Gran Londres
• Greater London
• Nassau
• Grand Londres
• London

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 17 décembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781838597641
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Copyright © 2020 Nick Hughes

The moral right of the author has been asserted.


Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.


Matador
9 Priory Business Park,
Wistow Road, Kibworth Beauchamp,
Leicestershire, LE8 0RX
Tel: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]
Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador
Twitter: @matadorbooks


ISBN 978 1838597 641

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.


Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

There are so many people I would need to thank for helping create the memories and the actual production for this book. I will stick to three.
My dad Alfie Hughes who instilled in me the need to never stop dreaming and never to shy away from taking a different path, and also much later how to be a good dad.
To the many characters from my youth, adolescence and young manhood whom without there would be nothing to write about and this book wouldn’t exist. I’ve changed many of the names to protect the guilty!
And finally to the Bahamas. That stunning, magical place that at the time of finishing this book has suffered so greatly through hurricane Dorian. I am sorry I didn’t write more of your wonderous beauty that still exists today in the islands and the people.
Contents
Prologue
Life before becoming an astronaut

An accidental career
Bunnies and seafood don’t mix
Goodbye London, hello Paradise (Island)
Early days
The cockney crew and other characters
The arrival of Tommy
The Grand Peepers Society
A couple of lessons learnt
The Brussels have landed
Transitioning from Vicky Park boating lake to the big pond
And even more characters
The Italians
The quick trip home
Not all were mates
Rosey
Leaving Paradise

Playboy Club
Swinging London
1975
Prologue
Life before becoming an astronaut
17 black. 17 black – I willed it to be the winning number with the otherwise disinterested vacancy of an over-egotistical twenty year old working in the greatest casino in London, disinterested in everything else that was occurring in my immediate vicinity whilst the little white melamine ball spun round and round the roulette wheel.
There I was, Nick Hughes, dice dealer, resplendent in my blue shirt, bow tie and fancy waistcoat, a top tier croupier relegated to dealing at a roulette table on the casino VIP level of the Playboy Club, probably the most high-profile club in London and definitely the biggest moneymaker in casino history thanks to oil-rich Arabs looking for a good time outside of the strict confines of their home countries and religions. I was waiting for the ball to drop after I had spun it as hard as I could. It was 1975 and I was willing that ball to drop in 17 black, the only empty number so that all the punters would fuck off and leave me with an empty table so at least I could chat to the cute little trainee croupier bunny who was nervously waiting to ‘chip up’ – pick up all the colour chips – once I had cleared the table layout of all losing bets. If that turned out to be a waste of time then at least I had Terry Mahoney as the inspector to cheer me up. All tables had full tuxedo-wearing inspectors, those promoted from the dealer ranks to oversee and double check that all on the table was correct. Mostly they sat there as bored as us dealers and, as in in all walks of life, most were decent sorts, some were great mates and a smattering were complete pricks. Mahoney, however, was extra special and was always entertaining to be on a table with.
He was a riot and made any enforced banishment to the ‘haddock tables’ (blackjack and roulette) tolerable, at least for one night. Also, I was surrounded by other dealers, mostly bunnies, which was a nice break in some ways from the all-male dice pit. But admittedly, I was a little pissed coz I was a dice dealer not a fucking roulette dealer. In the hierarchy of London casinos the dice guys were the top of the totem pole and (I’m ashamed to say now) even though all of us started as roulette or BJ croupiers, we looked down on all the dealers of blackjack, roulette and even baccarat as ‘haddocks’, a dice term for people still learning to deal the real and only game – craps, also known as dice.
Let me explain some basic principles of the casino world at that time: people who worked the gaming floor in a casino were not normal people. I mean they, the blokes at least, came from all walks of life: educated, working class, a few well-to-do and more than a smattering of East End baraboys like me – all types and in all shapes and sizes. The girls, on the other hand, were picked for the looks and the glamour they radiated. This was especially the case at the Playboy in the ’70s. The bunny had to have a look, the look. Dripping sexual charisma but unattainable, pure eye candy but with a certain distance that said look but don’t touch. Well, that was the idea if not always the reality. The girls came for the prestige, the glamour that came with being a bunny. It was akin to being a Victoria’s Secret model today.
The guys? We came because we were looking for something different, had tried various careers but had failed to fit in, who couldn’t settle into a normal job, and of course the opportunity to have a workmate with gigantic boobs wearing the most sexy and, at the time, iconic of outfits that showed their figure to perfection. That being said, it soon became for us not the main focus. When you are all thrown together working antisocial hours, the glamour, although never quite disappearing, was replaced by the common ground of normal people getting along as mates in a far from normal environment.
For us guys, the attraction to be there was simply because it wasn’t a run-of-the-mill occupational path and mostly we didn’t gel into normal life; we were looking for something different, and in those days we were almost all to a tee a character! We had to be; it was an odd job to want to do and most times you worked those very antisocial hours which threw everybody together for social events because when we were in our free time most ‘normal’ people were sleeping. Having said that it was bloody hard to get into in the first place, with a lot of interviews and testing, even though no formal qualifications were required or expected. So many applicants were nomads from other failed career choices and many times slightly rebellious souls that found it hard to fit in to a normal work environment. Being a croupier in London’s West End at the Playboy Club definitely wasn’t a run-of-the-mill occupation in the mid-’70s.
Look at it like this. No one aspired to be a dealer, most fell into the job by accident and the school’s career advisor definitely never had it on their list of professions to consider. Let me explain it better – when you are born, your dad didn’t hold you up in the delivery room and say, “One day this boy will be a croupier.” Dependent on the individual background, maybe a doctor, a lawyer, a tradesman, even a docker like their old man, but never a dealer in a casino. So people who gravitated towards this way of life were looking for something different, were someone different; and as these jobs were almost never advertised but mostly passed on by word of mouth, characters were attracted to the position and they in turn introduced other characters. It was a great place and time to work in gaming, London in the ’70s, and during a complete sexual revolution going on in still-swinging England.
I had recently moved to Battersea, as being just about to turn twenty-one it was time to cut my live-in ties with Mum and Dad, and although the old man was used to me bringing home girls once in a while and doing my best to have a bit of hanky-panky on the living room sofa while my parents were asleep upstairs – and hopefully my older and untrustworthy brother Tommy was too, rather than listening at the door – I was now in the world of bunnies, so not many of them were into hearing my dad shout down, “Oy, whatever the fuck it is you’re doing down there, pack it up. I gotta be at work at five in the morning.”
My dad, Alfie Hughes, was a character in his time. A huge man physically, and also in his presence whenever he entered a room. As big as he was, it was his heart that was the biggest characteristic of all, it was solid gold and he was my true hero and best mate. He was a respected person in the East End and that was not earnt by his size but by the way he treated people. He was kind and courteous, especially to women and children. He had a strong idea about being a man, a correct man. He detested bullies or anyone who ‘took a liberty’, especially with someone weaker than them. In his youth he was a fighter but only when he had to be. Nevertheless he definitely wasn’t afraid of ‘having it on the cobbles’. As they would say in the East End, he was a ‘straight runner’. That doesn’t mean he was staid in his ways, nor that he was an angel.
At one point just after the war,