Arriving to
board a car ferry is a great leveller.
You can travel the lengths of France and Spain, eat oysters, sleep under
the stars, drink your coffee from a bowl and be as affected as I love to be and
still, when you arrive at the Ferry queue and join the lines of roof boxed
cars, full of sweaty kids and fractious adults scrabbling around for the
passports you are what you are. An ordinary Irish person coming home from
holidays. Someone who is just the same as the mother in the next car who
brought her own tea bags and Superquin sausages. No better, just quite a bit more
pretentious.
No rules of
the road apply in this queue. Fathers sit without seatbelts with toddlers
taking the wheel. Chewing gum is handed out to barely weaned infants (all other
distractions in the car consumed miles ago) and people abandon their vehicles
to get the air and see what interesting car registrations were to be seen.
Behind us
was a sporty little BMW with a surf board strapped to the roof. Which said, I have been on a beach with
waves, probably near Biarritz. No big deal, just nine hours’ drive. In my nifty
little BMW. The driver sat looking not a little smug. I don’t know why, because
board or not, he was still getting on the Ferry.
“He looks a
bit like Lorcan.” I said.
My kids, now
feral from a few weeks on a campsite in their swimming togs and on a diet of
fizzy sweets and chocolate milk immediately started waving and called “Hey
Lorcan!”
He gamely waved
back until our more adventurous eight year adding “You asshole!”
We had been
travelling for five hours (one of which was spent doubling back to a rest stop
to rescue sandals I had left on the path.) You can imagine the conversation the
preceded that decision.
“Hang on,
who has his sandals?”
“You didn’t
take his sandals off? We were only there five minutes! Don’t tell me you took
them off?”
“It’s ok!” I
said, knowing it was not. “I know they’re in the car somewhere. Everybody look
around your feet!” The following search resulted in a stray hand knocking the
car DVD player lead, disconnecting it and causing National Lampoons European Vacation to stop unexpectedly. Now
everyone was upset and The Sandals were nowhere to be found.
My husband
reached for the French AA Road Atlas with the patience of someone who spent the
hours between nine and twelve that morning figuring out the Krypton Factor that
is loading our car with tent and belongings of a family of six. Among which was
sadly, only one pair of shoes for our three year old. And we turned back.
So when we
got to Roscoff neither of us had the energy to put together a coherent
reprimand to outline how shouting insults at innocent strangers is not ok. He had
been telling his brothers to sing zipadeedoodah out their assholes since Rennes
and we had’nt said a word. (Yes, it was
the movie, an altogether inappropriate choice for children. And one we would
definitely pick again. It really is very funny.)
So we
shushed him, slunk down in our seats and put up the windows. Our youngest
steered us very slowly towards the passport checkers, still waving in the rear
view mirror at “Lorcan”. And eventually,
we boarded the ferry.
