It was an easy day to leave (pun intended) and return to Europe. The weather was awful. In order not to offend anyone, I’ll just call it ‘very British.’ The alarm went off at 5 am. Fate determined that Linda had a job interview later today, for which she would have to travel. So she, Aramis and I got up at this same, ungodly hour.
We said our goodbyes and set off. As it was pouring down on us, Aramis snuggled up in his crate, happy that I had finally come to my senses and allowed him to sit in the car. Apart from a very long stretch of roadworks where we couldn’t go at full speed, the drive went smoothly. Until signs started flashing up saying that the A1 would be closed after Grantham. Awesome. We were on the A1. And would have been, all the way down to the M25, which is the (legitimately dreaded) ring road around London. A slight detour led us onto the M1, which brought us back on track, albeit with a 30 minute delay.
And then, London. Or its surroundings. Shortly before we had to leave the busy M25, not one, but two accidents happened, which brought everything to a complete standstill for a while. I was beginning to get worried. Check-in time with a pet is 90 mins before departure and due to the delay earlier we had already lost half an hour. Should we lose even more time, we would miss the ferry. Not great, as for our overnight stay I had booked a hotel in Reims, which takes another 2.5 hours of driving from Calais. If all went well.
We made it to the ferry terminal in time and as both passport and microchip controls seem to have gone quite out of fashion both on the British and the French side of this border, we were simply waved through customs and only very briefly had to stop at check-in. Interesting.
Once onboard, well-armed and stern-looking soldiers patrolled the ship. But instead of taking action against that woman chewing gum in an unforgivably noisy and disruptive way that certainly met all criteria for a public offence, they leisurely and sternly strolled back and forth. And somebody had lost their keys for their Toyota.
On a side note, not entirely void of personal interest: not a single tribe of ‘homo’ has ever evolved into a cultured civilisation of merit without developing a more or less elaborate set of eating manners. Yet, for reasons that sadly seem to evade a large number of individuals, eating behaviours that evoke, or even worse surpass, those of a pig, have never been part of them. Ever.
Incidentally, this also goes for chewing one’s fingernails. It is – and never has been – an attractive sight to behold an individual willingly destroy a part of their own body. Even more so, when the activity is performed by the way of one’s mouth.
By this time you may have begun to grasp how, before the vessel had even left its port, I wished, longed even, to be allowed to return to the car deck. I would curl up next to my dog, in the other compartment of his cage if necessary, and sleep through the rest of the journey. Blissfully distant from all the adults, desperately trying to keep up their trivial conversations despite the noise of the engines. Away from the teenagers roaring, debating (‘I’m not in any position to judge, but…’). Their register a single giant hyperbole. Their laughter leaving you with a ring in your ears. Down there I would be ignorant of the schoolchildren tearing madly, noisily, uncontrollably down the corridors. In brief, the crossing was so noisy, so LOUD as to trigger a headache in anyone who wasn’t part of this cacophony themselves.
Thick fog had veiled the rest of the outside world, as if we had all ended up on an even more sadist, because much more populated, version of Sartre’s play Huis Clos.
A look out of the windows did not exactly offer any promise of relief either. A lifeboat, so elaborately secured to the ship that not a hundred swords of the type with which Alexander severed the Gordian knot would have served to untie it, was leading an existence of irony on a ship connecting England to Europe. While everything and everyone, hooks and ropes, bags and shoes, jackets, jumpers, coats and t-shirts, items of furniture and lamps, carpets and curtains, glasses and plates, yes, even the passengers and crew, were bouncing back and forth on this vessel, the lifeboat seemed to be the only stable object.
In the course of time it must have assumed an inflexibility parallel to that of mussels living on the cold steel of a boat’s planks. There could not be any doubt that, in case of emergency, it would go down along with its mother ship and all. No matter what else would be rescued or help with the resuce, this bright red lump of plastic would remain stuck where it was, for better or for worse. Its determination to do so had become a principle. Visions of the Titanic began to rise before my inner eye.
We reached Calais just before three. As my audio book – still Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl – had come to a very implausible and unsatisfactory end (what a horrendously overrated book), I tried my luck with another recent German novel. I was not disappointed. Thees Uhlmann’s Sophia, der Tod und Ich is hilariously absurd, yet clever and as deeply ironic as Stuckrad-Barre’s Panikherz, which I had enjoyed listening to on the way up.
We arrived safely in Reims at around 6ish and will have a good night’s rest before taking on the last stage of our journey tomorrow.
The Adventures of Aramis 