Down With Being a Groanup

The New Romantic rang me awake this morning. "There's a yacht, he wants some crew. Sydney, two weeks and return airfare. Whaddaya reckon? He wants to know by lunchtime."
It was a bad start to the day. I fell back into my bed (after I'd given the New Romantic some choice expletives, at which point he said "Well, ask someone else and wreck their day too, will you? He needs someone by lunchtime.")
I'm a groanup now, dammit. I have responsibilities, y'know?

The last time this happened, I was seventeen and a half. The town jetty called me down regularly via that sea psyche telegraph, demanding I visit to check out who was catching squid or calling by from Mauritius. I was visiting friends with a cargo of shark and the Cockney Rebel was double docked with them.
"Come to Tasmania with us!"
"When?"
"Dawn."
"Okay."

Three weeks later, I sat on the docks at Hobart and contemplated my next move, with a sunburnt nose and empty wallet. I got a job barmaiding at a little town north (after a rather nasty hitch hiking experience with a Romanian wife-hunter willing to pay, who would not give up my backpack until I created a rumpus in a cafe where we stopped for a pie.) There's a whole lotta shit in this paragraph huh?

I got a job barmaiding at a little town north, collecting myself and some cash. "Do you know how to pour a beer?" "Of course!" Being seventeen and a half, my barmaiding experience was nil, but the beauty of youth saw me through. My first beer to pour, as the new star barmaid of this tiny town pub, was a Guinness. Nobody but the newly-supplanted local barmaid minded.

This morning's phone call woke me up. So naturally, I headed for the jetty.