GG Laurent

Nicolas Laurent has held court at a Marseille pétanque club for twenty years, a dockworker's son who inherited his father's boules, his corner of the gravel and his conviction that an afternoon without an argument is a wasted one. The pastis is ritual. The aim, despite it, remains excellent. Backgammon arrived by way of the club's card table and he plays it at the speed he throws: fast, loud, the cube turned before anyone opposite has finished thinking. What he cannot do is lose quietly. Two bad rolls and the commentary starts. Three and he is explaining to the whole table what has been done to him. And he will sit straight back down rather than walk away from an evening that still owes him something, which is how most of his evenings end. All of it happens at the cash tables, where an evening that still owes him something is an evening with chips still in front of somebody else. The one thing he does out loud that helps him is the pip count, which he announces as he goes, wrongly and optimistically, and nobody has yet worked out whether he is doing it to himself or to you.