Arrival
And the crossing ends some time later, as the already-red are read the riot act in a virtual rep email and warned to stay out of the sun even though they are on their hollibobs, but it’s too late anyway, and they trapse off with their luggage and vomit-covered children, leaving Shirl to arrive on her island and contemplate the get away from it all-ness of the place.
Here she is. On her island.
Heaven on earth.
Well, a concrete landing stage crammed with mopeds trying to get on as passengers disembark, some to be met by a host with a piece of card, others left to fend for themselves. Shirl’s booked through Booking.com and she has to find her own way to her accommodation, so she ignores the calls of ‘Oi, need a room love?’ that were once, ‘Hellos, lovely loydy, I have very special price for you, you come this way, yes?’ and sets off. She fights her way bravely through the next wave of over-ripe sunbathers trying to leave for the airport, the trucks trying to get on the ferry, the couple having a very public tongue wrapping contest, and the lothario calling ‘I gunna miss you’ to the weeping teen girl who doesn’t know he’s actually calling ‘Ah, gamisu,’ which translates roughly as what the couple having the tongue wrapping contest will be moving onto shortly. (My dad would have used the phrase, Foxtrot Oscar. I’ll leave that with you.) Valiantly, Shirl puts her head down and her heart up, and battles through the throng to leave the teaming quayside and make for the town she can see across the bay.
To get there is a walk, but she’s on her new adventure, and besides, it ain’t Liverpool, is it, love? No, it’s one of the busiest yet narrowest roads she and her fellow escapees have yet encountered. It leads her beside the sea where fishing boats are tied up to furry rubber tires, and where a machine is driving piles into the water, hopefully to widen the road because she was nearly knocked in the water by a Mercedes. On the other side, meanwhile, steps run up the side of a steep hill, and house lines of bedraggled refugees waiting to be processed, papered, sent elsewhere to wait for years before being sent to another country that can’t or won’t care for them. And then comes the bus, which leaves only sideways standing room on the water’s edge and a cloud of fumes that brave Shirl takes as part of the experience. She gasps for water and finds it warm, before soldiering on towards the town where the road finally widens a little. Her fellow Jarrow Marchers filter off in various directions, and Shirl is left alone to make her own way. Undaunted, she uses her phone to find directions.
Google Maps says there’s a road right beside her, but it’s clearly the sea… Oh, the arrow thing is meant to point that way… No, still wrong because the ‘road’ is made of stone steps. There’s an alternative route just a little way along, but there, she finds the same, and on examining the landscape, she realises her accommodation is at the top of the hill. Further investigation reveals the bus that avoided her is the one she should have been on, and the last Mercedes has just left. It is now midafternoon, and too hot to walk, so she waits for a taxi. It is now early evening, and she’s still waiting for a taxi, but as it’s clear none is coming, she sets off up the hill on foot and instead of following Google Maps, she asks a local and is far more successful.
The Accommodation
As the saying goes, ‘The best reward often lies at the end of the stoniest path.’ There, at the end of a very stony and steep path, she finds her Booking.com accommodation. However, this is a real building, and not an AI-generated wish-list of what isn’t on offer, and only vaguely resembles what was advertised.
Hey ho!
Her virtually unassisted assistant has sent an email that reads, ‘The key is in the door,’ and she smiles at the quaintness. What was advertised as one thing is actually a trad village house by the looks, painted up in blue and white, with shutters and everything. There’s even a round, metal table and two uncomfortable wooden chairs outside, oh, and how lovely, a bougainvillaea around the door. Thinking it perfect, she steps into…
Ikea.
Or a waiting room in some municipal building.
Flat, boring, modern furniture in what looks like fake beech. A sink with no plug, a fridge with no door on the ice box and something dubious in the veg tray. There’s a sofa which looks like her one at home, another table cunningly camouflaged in the same beige wood as everything else, and a set of shelves holding ornaments so random and useless she wonders why bother. The stone-effect floor bears an arbitrary rug whose only purpose is to send angels who don’t fear to walk on it straight to their orthopaedic consultant, and there’s a side table sporting seven remote controls with one battery between them.
Through an arch at the back, she finds a nondescript bed, and a wardrobe that houses an iron but no ironing board, a mousetrap but no mouse (tiny mercies come to mind), and a spare pillow with no case. Luckily, there’s an air conditioning unit because the apartment is as hot as a blacksmith’s armpit, but to use the much-needed accessory involves a charge of half her holiday cost again, so she opens the window to look out onto the sweeping views of next door’s washing. At least they still use cloth nappies, which Shirl rather approves of; not for her the three-ply, allegedly absorbent sheets containing sodium polyacrylate and throwaway plastic. Let the holiday begin.
Continues tomorrow…
