Dating Islam's daughter - Netherlands Travel Story
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Title: Dating Islam's daughter
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Delft Where will the carpet take us next? But perhaps we need to look a little deeper into the pit first. A few vignettes to aid the understanding. Case studies in nomadness. And love. (Oh, the things we do for love!) Dover. Six days a week in the tent hire company. Tuesday evening. 6 p.m. Free until Thursday 8 a.m. Tom and I head for the pub - (without passing go, or collecting 200 pounds). Beers slip away with insouciant ease. And by and by, I become maudlin, or ired and emotional in the Private Eye euphemism. It is barely nine o'clock and we are already three and a half sheets to the wind. (Six pints on an empty stomach tends to have this effect.) I have been droning on about Sibel for the last half hour, like the proverbial record stuck in the groove. Finally Tom tires of my sorry-for-oneself monotribe. Stop whining about your girlfriend. If you miss her so much, fuck off and see her. Tom is not a man to mince words. (He probably doesn't even know how to.) I can't. You know I can't. Then shut the fuck up and have another beer. Beer is served. Tennent's Special - guaranteed to scramble the few remaining brain cells. I continue to brood. Tom shuffles off to siphon the python. A rogue ganglion fires. And I slip anchor, Passport, Passport rattling in the back of the brain. Passport, please. It is 4:30 a.m. in Zeebrugge. I have only the vaguest recollection of how I got here. (Hercule Poirot might perhaps be able to tell me.) I proffer my passport, wondering just slightly as to why there is a triangular clip taken out of the top right corner of the reassuringly solid black cover. Who is this?, the man guffaws. Confronted by a photograph of myself taken at the age of 5 in a Kingsway supermarket in Lagos, I realise my mistake. It's me, I mutter without deep conviction. It doesn't look like you. Through bleary eyes I considered the close-cropped 5-year-old smiling beatifically inches in front of my nose. My hair now halfway down my back, I have little alternative but to agree that what I see bears scant resemblance to the all-too-solid me here present. Various convoluted arguments on the continuity of personal identity slop about in my grey matter; but sufficient sense lingers to realise that this fellow is unlikely to be impressed, nor even amused by garbled versions of Part 1B of the philosophy tripos. Better to play it straight. But it is me though...... Don't waste my time. He scrawls something on a slip of piece and staples it into my pathetically invalid travel document, thrusts it back at me and barks. You have twenty four hours to get out of the Benelux countries. If not you are arrested Avez vous compris? Too bloody right I had. 24 hours. Benelux. Excellent. I stagger off into the Belgian dawn not a little happy, even a bastard of a hangover not enough to dampen my blazing ardour. For I am on a mission. A mission of love. Within minutes of lancing out my thumb I am upon my jousting steed. Carrying the good news to Ghent and the nether lands. I ride my dream horse ululating the various names of God in undiscovered languages. Communing silently, and o too joyously, with myself. The extradition order now allows me carte blanche to enter Holland; for the being time; by 8:30 a.m. Amsterdam is bypassed, and by ten I am in Delft deftly deposited. And I have not come to purchase earthenware. Eventually I figure out how to use a Dutch telephone, though for all the ineptitude of my attempts I would possibly have had quicker results at learning to fit a Dutch cap, for the instructions printed in English were to me no more than Double Dutch. As the connected tone comes through, I sense a frissonof delicious anxiety at the thought of having to speak with her father, the dreaded Turk, Kazim. Was there ever a more murderous sounding name? Relieved, I hear her voice clearly on the line and splutter into life with one of my less earth-shattering opening lines: Hi, it's me. Julian, where are you? Quite near. What do you mean? I mean I'm here. In Holland. Where? Here. About half a kilometre away I think. I found a street map. What? You're here in Delft. Yep. But.....but you know I can't come out. Why not?, I asked already knowing full well the answer. Kazim the Turkish anaesthetist had locked her away in his tower. Indefinitely. My father's here. There's no chance. No chance at all to get out. Such are the tribulations of having a Turkish girlfriend with a father of unswervingly conservative, Islamic protectiveness toward his daughters. How can he get away with such mediaeval tyranny in the latter half of the twentieth century? What a horrible bastard. And sundry similar thoughts ran through my head. But I've just hitch-hiked halfway across Europe to see you. (Nothing like a little exaggeration to press one's case.) Call me back in a couple of hours. I'll try to escape for a few minutes. We finally met at four o'clock or thereabouts. I had prayed hard all day to the god of beer in Delft's elegant central square, and now I was rewarded for such single-minded devotion. Even though she was chaperoned by her sister, I was in seventh heaven. The fact that her sister thought I was a total idiot did nothing to dampen proceedings. Ten blissful minutes later it was time to get going. Sibel had to get back into purdah and this infidel pariah had to get back on the road if there was to be even a fighting chance of reaching the Belgian coast before nightfall. On the way to the outskirts of town I may not have been walking on air, but I was most certainly dancing. Not three minutes after prodding out my thumb I was trucking again, rolling along the autobahn bound for Antwerp. The Dutch lorry driver spoke fluent English so we piffled away the miles, or rather kilometres, talking mostly football - a verbal encounter between Liverpool and Ajax Amsterdam. Riding in the cab high above the road in a 40-ton(ne) HGV, powering along with a 180 visual sweep across the flatlands of southern Holland in the late summer afternoon sun, drunk as a god. Seeing that all was good. And entertaining realistic hopes of making the 9 o'clock ferry out of Zeebrugge. Which would allow a few hours of sleep before the morrow's weary travail. (Ferries leaving at three hour intervals in the summer season meant that failure to hit the 9 p.m. sailing would mean the midnight boat and precious little kip ere the morn.) At the time of this experience I had no inkling of the fact that this mechanised rolling ecstasy was a premonitory foretaste of a desire that has obsessed me all these last eleven years beyond the Easternmost shores of Asia. Here in Japan a burning need has grown. A need to ride 'home' to Europe, across the vastness of Central Asia, horseman of my own apocalypse. To be my own golden Mongol horde. To trace my own inner silken road. To Bokhara. To Khiva. To Samarkand. To nowhere. In order to be not what I am now. To be Prometheus unbound. To be Theseus unravelling the internal labyrinth, rather than Sisyphus condemned. To leave Xanadu forever, abandon Alph in search of aleph 0. To drink the milk of Paradise. Ruud - (for rudely we are back at the narrative) - dropped me at a slip road just short of Antwerp - the wrong side of the city for good hitching, but the best he could do. Having walked around the roundabout to the point where another road offered opportunity to rejoin the motorway, I once more jabbed out the stumpy digit. Ten minutes later and only 3 vehicles had passed. The first two drivers had studiously ignored me; the third made the familiar French gesture of a downward-stabbed index finger, expressing the sentiment I'd love to fucking run you over. A further half hour trickled by and still nothing doing on the slip road, whilst traffic was visibly streaming by on the main highway itself. Needs must take a chance. Knowing full well that it must be against the law - I didn't need to be Hercule Poirot to guess that - I strode out beyond the end of the feeder road, on to the hard shoulder of the motorway itself. Hoping that some mad bastard in the inside lane would take pity on me. And sure enough, abracadbra, within moments a horn sounded. From somewhere behind me. I swivelled hopefully to find myself looking at a dark blue vehicle, housing two impeccably dressed men. In dark blue. Oh dear! Les Pigs! The Belgian gendarmerie. Split second decision. I do not speak French,nor Flemish, nor indeed Walloon. Monsieur. Ca c'est interdit. Absolument interdit. C'est contre la loi. I give my best innocent smile. Sorry. I don't understand. Quickly, they make me understand. One piglet points back to the slip road and says, OK. The other pig - this one being too gargantuan to warrant a cosy diminutive - points to where I am standing and produces a pair of handcuffs from the rear seat of the car. The aforesaid manacles clearly not being of the plastic variety once to be found in a Jamboree Bag, I find myself momentarily stumped. Then, somewhat half-heartedly for I hardly expected approval, I pointed to a field behind the crash barrier on the hard shoulder. Handcuffs are dangled Damoclean in my direction. I surrender and begin to traipse back to legal ground. After watching awhile to ensure I have retreated far enough, they back up the road, the larger of the porcine fellows throwing me a scowl as they pass, and disappear whence they came. Hopefully back to their sty. Elementary cat and mouse psychology suggests they will be back, the question is - sooner or later? The opening bass riff of Born to Go rumbles in the cortex, and I realise that I need my next motion injection - decidely the sooner the better. My worshipping at the altar of beer has given me a Dutch courage which has yet to wear off. I half sprint, half skip back on to the speed fix conveyor belt and begin hitching in earnest. In case the gentle reader is unfamiliar with the noble art of the thumbed lift, let it suffice to assure that it is indeed a skill allowing of greater or lesser degree. (A lazy hitch involves a nonchalant, vague waving of hand with little or no urgency and may involve one in a protracted wait; the longest to date having been three days, when Peter - a villain who crops up elsewhere amongst these pages - and I, sojourned happily beside the autoroute at Aix-en-Provence, alternating periods of lackadaisical effort with endless games of cribbage, accompanied by numerous litres of plonk and chunks of batard liberally smeared with marmalade and jam. An extended festering in the sun, a propos of nothing better to do than delight in not being in a hurry. And at night to lie curled up in plastic emergency bivouac bags in the ditch at the side of the road. With abundant snails and the full moon for company. And divers nightcaps. And dawn libations.) But this was no time for a picnic, and so I was hitching hard, almost frenziedly, using every guile and ploy available. Performing in the best tradition of Marcel Marceau, eyes pleading, hands, arms and shoulders called into action in this strolling passion play. An impromptu rendering of Richard's despairing, A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!, with Flanders standing in for Bosworth field. An almighty screech of hydraulic brakes like the dying scream of some stallion in the final throes rends the air. We're in business. A finger points ahead up the hard shoulder and the massively restrained juggernaut judders to a halt 200 metres up ahead. I hare up to the already open door, leap up into the cabin and we are away before I have even had time to slam the door. For an instant I wonder if I have been kidnapped, but reason tells me our man just wants to keep his licence - he too not desirous of the handcuffs. (Or so I thought at the time.) The usual preliminary exchange of destinations was delayed a few minutes till we had put a healthy distance between us and the scene of the crime. As it happened my luck was in; he was headed for Paris the good news being that he would be able to drop me just beyond Ghent, from where I could make a beeline northwest for the coast. Conversation then gushed in spite of the limitations of my French - the only area of that language in which am deeply versed being obscenity, his colloquial speech, mildly slurred and with no concessions on speed. But we had one thing in common that needed no verbal exposition, since his cab smelt unmistakably like my breath. Every truck driver I had ever talked had told me that drinking while driving is absolutely out since one's licence is one's meal ticket, without which drinking is likely to be off limits all of the time rather than just part of it. To this day Jean-Pierre remains the only pissed long distance driver I have encountered actually behind the wheel. I was slightly surprised but far too grateful to worry. After all, if he hadn't been an ale-head, he probably wouldn't have rescued me. Aimez vous Jupiter?, the question came like a bolt from the blue. Fuck. This man is seriously out of it methought. Off the planet. Pelican? Holy Jesus. A bestialist to boot. Pelforth? I gave an audible sigh of relief. Ah, oui...... moi, j'aime beaucoup toutes les bieres. Seemingly seconds later the hydraulics pulled us out of orbit with alarming rapidity. It seemed the decelerative forces might crush us, but we survived re-entry unscathed. Only to blast off again immediately. Jupiter, three large glasses of which in double quick time had both of us losing our slender grip on the solar system. Time to get going I thought, bit I wasn't calling the shots. Two more extragalactic brain boosters followed to complete the refuelling procedures. Then we were off again, in hyperdrive and no messing. Jean-Pierre pilot extraordinaire launched our ship straight out into the third lane. And there I was, rocketing out of control in a hurtling death machine tomb with a maniacal Frenchman. (Well, I suppose one has to make the most of one's day off.) Mercifully our breakneck velocity meant that he deposited me before the anaesthetic had had any chance to wear off. With a valedictory salute he vanished into the Monza lane again. Gone. As swiftly as had arrived. Forever. Since he surely must be dead by now. I disembarked in Dover at 5:15 the following morning, snatched a couple of hours sleep on a friend's floor, and at eight on the dot reported for duty at the camp hire centre. Where, first things first - a cup of distinctly non-alcoholic tea. Good morning young Julian. You reek of sex. Leave it out John. Do you have any idea how many sleeping bags I sniffed yesterday, Julian? (Hired sleeping bags when returned to the depot had to be inspected for damage. John had appointed himself chief for this duty and would religiously nose all the incoming bags for feminine juices and stains, the olfactory memory of which might serve to enhance his regular masturbation sessions which took place throughout the day.) No mate. Fackin' thousands son. One of 'em......the scent was that fresh I...... .......had a big wank. I completed the sentence with effortless ease having been through this conversation and close variants many times before. Exactly, 'ow did you know? I know you John. The camp hire company where I was temporarily employed for the duration of the summer season was a subsidiary of Townsend Thoresen ferries, the cross-channel passenger shipping giant. It was no secret that the place was a supposed drying-out option for those loyal company servants washed overboard by the temptations of a never ending flow of alcohol on board ship. The company here was crude, congenial, and invariably pissed. Far more pissed than any of those out to sea. The crew, to a man, five sheets to the wind. Enter Tom, he of the foul mouth. Where the fuck did you go on Tuesday night? Holland. Piss off. You were shitfaced mate. I went to Delft. Bollocks you did. You were probably blacked out all day. John interjected some nonsense about Dutch caps, the state of my nether lands and windmill jobs - whatever that may be. I was tired. Shut them up. All right. I was shitting you. I stayed in bed all day and jacked myself in to a coma. Good lad, Julian. Do you want to sniff that sleeping bag?
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Delft Where will the carpet take us next? But perhaps we need to look a little deeper into the pit first. A few vignettes to aid the understanding. Case studies in nomadness. And love. (Oh, the things we do for love!) Dover. Six days a week in the tent hire company. Tuesday evening. 6 p.m. Free until Thursday 8 a.m. Tom and I head for the pub - (without passing go, or collecting 200 pounds). Beers slip away with insouciant ease. And by and by, I become maudlin, or ired and emotional in the Private Eye euphemism. It is barely nine o'clock and we are already three and a half sheets to the wind. (Six pints on an empty stomach tends to have this effect.) I have been droning on about Sibel for the last half hour, like the proverbial record stuck in the groove. Finally Tom tires of my sorry-for-oneself monotribe. Stop whining about your girlfriend. If you miss her so much, fuck off and see her. Tom is not a man to mince words. (He probably doesn't even know how to.) I can't. You know I can't. Then shut the fuck up and have another beer. Beer is served. Tennent's Special - guaranteed to scramble the few remaining brain cells. I continue to brood. Tom shuffles off to siphon the python. A rogue ganglion fires. And I slip anchor, Passport, Passport rattling in the back of the brain. Passport, please. It is 4:30 a.m. in Zeebrugge. I have only the vaguest recollection of how I got here. (Hercule Poirot might perhaps be able to tell me.) I proffer my passport, wondering just slightly as to why there is a triangular clip taken out of the top right corner of the reassuringly solid black cover. Who is this?, the man guffaws. Confronted by a photograph of myself taken at the age of 5 in a Kingsway supermarket in Lagos, I realise my mistake. It's me, I mutter without deep conviction. It doesn't look like you. Through bleary eyes I considered the close-cropped 5-year-old smiling beatifically inches in front of my nose. My hair now halfway down my back, I have little alternative but to agree that what I see bears scant resemblance to the all-too-solid me here present. Various convoluted arguments on the continuity of personal identity slop about in my grey matter; but sufficient sense lingers to realise that this fellow is unlikely to be impressed, nor even amused by garbled versions of Part 1B of the philosophy tripos. Better to play it straight. But it is me though...... Don't waste my time. He scrawls something on a slip of piece and staples it into my pathetically invalid travel document, thrusts it back at me and barks. You have twenty four hours to get out of the Benelux countries. If not you are arrested Avez vous compris? Too bloody right I had. 24 hours. Benelux. Excellent. I stagger off into the Belgian dawn not a little happy, even a bastard of a hangover not enough to dampen my blazing ardour. For I am on a mission. A mission of love. Within minutes of lancing out my thumb I am upon my jousting steed. Carrying the good news to Ghent and the nether lands. I ride my dream horse ululating the various names of God in undiscovered languages. Communing silently, and o too joyously, with myself. The extradition order now allows me carte blanche to enter Holland; for the being time; by 8:30 a.m. Amsterdam is bypassed, and by ten I am in Delft deftly deposited. And I have not come to purchase earthenware. Eventually I figure out how to use a Dutch telephone, though for all the ineptitude of my attempts I would possibly have had quicker results at learning to fit a Dutch cap, for the instructions printed in English were to me no more than Double Dutch. As the connected tone comes through, I sense a frissonof delicious anxiety at the thought of having to speak with her father, the dreaded Turk, Kazim. Was there ever a more murderous sounding name? Relieved, I hear her voice clearly on the line and splutter into life with one of my less earth-shattering opening lines: Hi, it's me. Julian, where are you? Quite near. What do you mean? I mean I'm here. In Holland. Where? Here. About half a kilometre away I think. I found a street map. What? You're here in Delft. Yep. But.....but you know I can't come out. Why not?, I asked already knowing full well the answer. Kazim the Turkish anaesthetist had locked her away in his tower. Indefinitely. My father's here. There's no chance. No chance at all to get out. Such are the tribulations of having a Turkish girlfriend with a father of unswervingly conservative, Islamic protectiveness toward his daughters. How can he get away with such mediaeval tyranny in the latter half of the twentieth century? What a horrible bastard. And sundry similar thoughts ran through my head. But I've just hitch-hiked halfway across Europe to see you. (Nothing like a little exaggeration to press one's case.) Call me back in a couple of hours. I'll try to escape for a few minutes. We finally met at four o'clock or thereabouts. I had prayed hard all day to the god of beer in Delft's elegant central square, and now I was rewarded for such single-minded devotion. Even though she was chaperoned by her sister, I was in seventh heaven. The fact that her sister thought I was a total idiot did nothing to dampen proceedings. Ten blissful minutes later it was time to get going. Sibel had to get back into purdah and this infidel pariah had to get back on the road if there was to be even a fighting chance of reaching the Belgian coast before nightfall. On the way to the outskirts of town I may not have been walking on air, but I was most certainly dancing. Not three minutes after prodding out my thumb I was trucking again, rolling along the autobahn bound for Antwerp. The Dutch lorry driver spoke fluent English so we piffled away the miles, or rather kilometres, talking mostly football - a verbal encounter between Liverpool and Ajax Amsterdam. Riding in the cab high above the road in a 40-ton(ne) HGV, powering along with a 180 visual sweep across the flatlands of southern Holland in the late summer afternoon sun, drunk as a god. Seeing that all was good. And entertaining realistic hopes of making the 9 o'clock ferry out of Zeebrugge. Which would allow a few hours of sleep before the morrow's weary travail. (Ferries leaving at three hour intervals in the summer season meant that failure to hit the 9 p.m. sailing would mean the midnight boat and precious little kip ere the morn.) At the time of this experience I had no inkling of the fact that this mechanised rolling ecstasy was a premonitory foretaste of a desire that has obsessed me all these last eleven years beyond the Easternmost shores of Asia. Here in Japan a burning need has grown. A need to ride 'home' to Europe, across the vastness of Central Asia, horseman of my own apocalypse. To be my own golden Mongol horde. To trace my own inner silken road. To Bokhara. To Khiva. To Samarkand. To nowhere. In order to be not what I am now. To be Prometheus unbound. To be Theseus unravelling the internal labyrinth, rather than Sisyphus condemned. To leave Xanadu forever, abandon Alph in search of aleph 0. To drink the milk of Paradise. Ruud - (for rudely we are back at the narrative) - dropped me at a slip road just short of Antwerp - the wrong side of the city for good hitching, but the best he could do. Having walked around the roundabout to the point where another road offered opportunity to rejoin the motorway, I once more jabbed out the stumpy digit. Ten minutes later and only 3 vehicles had passed. The first two drivers had studiously ignored me; the third made the familiar French gesture of a downward-stabbed index finger, expressing the sentiment I'd love to fucking run you over. A further half hour trickled by and still nothing doing on the slip road, whilst traffic was visibly streaming by on the main highway itself. Needs must take a chance. Knowing full well that it must be against the law - I didn't need to be Hercule Poirot to guess that - I strode out beyond the end of the feeder road, on to the hard shoulder of the motorway itself. Hoping that some mad bastard in the inside lane would take pity on me. And sure enough, abracadbra, within moments a horn sounded. From somewhere behind me. I swivelled hopefully to find myself looking at a dark blue vehicle, housing two impeccably dressed men. In dark blue. Oh dear! Les Pigs! The Belgian gendarmerie. Split second decision. I do not speak French,nor Flemish, nor indeed Walloon. Monsieur. Ca c'est interdit. Absolument interdit. C'est contre la loi. I give my best innocent smile. Sorry. I don't understand. Quickly, they make me understand. One piglet points back to the slip road and says, OK. The other pig - this one being too gargantuan to warrant a cosy diminutive - points to where I am standing and produces a pair of handcuffs from the rear seat of the car. The aforesaid manacles clearly not being of the plastic variety once to be found in a Jamboree Bag, I find myself momentarily stumped. Then, somewhat half-heartedly for I hardly expected approval, I pointed to a field behind the crash barrier on the hard shoulder. Handcuffs are dangled Damoclean in my direction. I surrender and begin to traipse back to legal ground. After watching awhile to ensure I have retreated far enough, they back up the road, the larger of the porcine fellows throwing me a scowl as they pass, and disappear whence they came. Hopefully back to their sty. Elementary cat and mouse psychology suggests they will be back, the question is - sooner or later? The opening bass riff of Born to Go rumbles in the cortex, and I realise that I need my next motion injection - decidely the sooner the better. My worshipping at the altar of beer has given me a Dutch courage which has yet to wear off. I half sprint, half skip back on to the speed fix conveyor belt and begin hitching in earnest. In case the gentle reader is unfamiliar with the noble art of the thumbed lift, let it suffice to assure that it is indeed a skill allowing of greater or lesser degree. (A lazy hitch involves a nonchalant, vague waving of hand with little or no urgency and may involve one in a protracted wait; the longest to date having been three days, when Peter - a villain who crops up elsewhere amongst these pages - and I, sojourned happily beside the autoroute at Aix-en-Provence, alternating periods of lackadaisical effort with endless games of cribbage, accompanied by numerous litres of plonk and chunks of batard liberally smeared with marmalade and jam. An extended festering in the sun, a propos of nothing better to do than delight in not being in a hurry. And at night to lie curled up in plastic emergency bivouac bags in the ditch at the side of the road. With abundant snails and the full moon for company. And divers nightcaps. And dawn libations.) But this was no time for a picnic, and so I was hitching hard, almost frenziedly, using every guile and ploy available. Performing in the best tradition of Marcel Marceau, eyes pleading, hands, arms and shoulders called into action in this strolling passion play. An impromptu rendering of Richard's despairing, A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!, with Flanders standing in for Bosworth field. An almighty screech of hydraulic brakes like the dying scream of some stallion in the final throes rends the air. We're in business. A finger points ahead up the hard shoulder and the massively restrained juggernaut judders to a halt 200 metres up ahead. I hare up to the already open door, leap up into the cabin and we are away before I have even had time to slam the door. For an instant I wonder if I have been kidnapped, but reason tells me our man just wants to keep his licence - he too not desirous of the handcuffs. (Or so I thought at the time.) The usual preliminary exchange of destinations was delayed a few minutes till we had put a healthy distance between us and the scene of the crime. As it happened my luck was in; he was headed for Paris the good news being that he would be able to drop me just beyond Ghent, from where I could make a beeline northwest for the coast. Conversation then gushed in spite of the limitations of my French - the only area of that language in which am deeply versed being obscenity, his colloquial speech, mildly slurred and with no concessions on speed. But we had one thing in common that needed no verbal exposition, since his cab smelt unmistakably like my breath. Every truck driver I had ever talked had told me that drinking while driving is absolutely out since one's licence is one's meal ticket, without which drinking is likely to be off limits all of the time rather than just part of it. To this day Jean-Pierre remains the only pissed long distance driver I have encountered actually behind the wheel. I was slightly surprised but far too grateful to worry. After all, if he hadn't been an ale-head, he probably wouldn't have rescued me. Aimez vous Jupiter?, the question came like a bolt from the blue. Fuck. This man is seriously out of it methought. Off the planet. Pelican? Holy Jesus. A bestialist to boot. Pelforth? I gave an audible sigh of relief. Ah, oui...... moi, j'aime beaucoup toutes les bieres. Seemingly seconds later the hydraulics pulled us out of orbit with alarming rapidity. It seemed the decelerative forces might crush us, but we survived re-entry unscathed. Only to blast off again immediately. Jupiter, three large glasses of which in double quick time had both of us losing our slender grip on the solar system. Time to get going I thought, bit I wasn't calling the shots. Two more extragalactic brain boosters followed to complete the refuelling procedures. Then we were off again, in hyperdrive and no messing. Jean-Pierre pilot extraordinaire launched our ship straight out into the third lane. And there I was, rocketing out of control in a hurtling death machine tomb with a maniacal Frenchman. (Well, I suppose one has to make the most of one's day off.) Mercifully our breakneck velocity meant that he deposited me before the anaesthetic had had any chance to wear off. With a valedictory salute he vanished into the Monza lane again. Gone. As swiftly as had arrived. Forever. Since he surely must be dead by now. I disembarked in Dover at 5:15 the following morning, snatched a couple of hours sleep on a friend's floor, and at eight on the dot reported for duty at the camp hire centre. Where, first things first - a cup of distinctly non-alcoholic tea. Good morning young Julian. You reek of sex. Leave it out John. Do you have any idea how many sleeping bags I sniffed yesterday, Julian? (Hired sleeping bags when returned to the depot had to be inspected for damage. John had appointed himself chief for this duty and would religiously nose all the incoming bags for feminine juices and stains, the olfactory memory of which might serve to enhance his regular masturbation sessions which took place throughout the day.) No mate. Fackin' thousands son. One of 'em......the scent was that fresh I...... .......had a big wank. I completed the sentence with effortless ease having been through this conversation and close variants many times before. Exactly, 'ow did you know? I know you John. The camp hire company where I was temporarily employed for the duration of the summer season was a subsidiary of Townsend Thoresen ferries, the cross-channel passenger shipping giant. It was no secret that the place was a supposed drying-out option for those loyal company servants washed overboard by the temptations of a never ending flow of alcohol on board ship. The company here was crude, congenial, and invariably pissed. Far more pissed than any of those out to sea. The crew, to a man, five sheets to the wind. Enter Tom, he of the foul mouth. Where the fuck did you go on Tuesday night? Holland. Piss off. You were shitfaced mate. I went to Delft. Bollocks you did. You were probably blacked out all day. John interjected some nonsense about Dutch caps, the state of my nether lands and windmill jobs - whatever that may be. I was tired. Shut them up. All right. I was shitting you. I stayed in bed all day and jacked myself in to a coma. Good lad, Julian. Do you want to sniff that sleeping bag?
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