I am not exactly recovered from yesterday’s outbreak of anxious feeling-sickness.
Tonight’s has been helped along by an enormous dinner of spare ribs and chips, followed by an unidentifiable concoction of chocolate, ice cream and whipped cream.
I suppose a little uneasy gurgling is hardly to be exclaimed at.
We have spent the entire day travelling, and we are in Rotterdam.
Rotterdam is the most astonishing city. There are people on bicycles all over the place, unexpectedly leaping out from the darkness, lightless and clad in black, as surprising as the advertisements on the lamp posts, at least some of which appear to be enticing the reader to visit brothels.
We have not visited any brothels, and most certainly would not consider it after the dinner we have just eaten.
In fact we are on board a ship.
This is not our ferry, which does not depart until tomorrow, but a colossal cruise ship. Regrettably, it has now been forever confined to barracks because it has been converted into an hotel. It is called the SS Rotterdam, and very magnificent it is too.
It must have been splendid when it sailed to places. There are lots of pictures of its glorious glory days in the nineteen fifties, being glorious and full of people clad in shorts, who all look like Marilyn Monroe and Cary Grant, laughing on deck in the sunshine.
It is still nice now, in a forlornly swallowed-anchor sort of way. Our bedroom has got portholes and a little sitting room, and cost a fortune because we discovered when we got here that unless you upgrade they make you have single beds.
We did not at all want single beds so it cost us an extra thirty five quid.
We have spent the whole day getting here. We started off in Poitiers, which is a longetty long way from Rotterdam, and Mark piloted us up the autoroutes at confidently breathtaking speeds. I had to keep my eyes shut practically all the way, because of everybody being on the wrong side of the road and because the instructions from the chap at Google Maps are all very well but really difficult when you can’t remember the difference between left and right.
I have occupied the journey with worrying about whether or not it is a good idea to move to France, and being none the wiser even now we are in Rotterdam and France is over. I do not know. I like the idea of sunshine and a swimming pool very much indeed, but I am quite used to the rain and tramping across the fells, and I do not know how I might feel. Also driving a taxi is a fairly rubbish career but it is my career, and even though it is more or less finished because nobody says Taxi any more, just Uber, I will be reluctant just to stop doing it.
Mark listened vaguely, occasionally interrupting to comment on some French driving idiocy, but did not say Gosh You Are Right Let’s Stay At Home. He said I Expect You’ll Be Fine Don’t Cut Me Up And Then Slow Right Down You Clown, so that was that.
We stopped to have a picnic on a service station. I had packed a thermally lined bag inside another thermally lined bag wrapped around with towels and put lots of frozen bottles inside it next to our picnic things, and everything is still cool even now, which is brilliant since it has been there since Monday.
We made a cup of tea with our little kettle and camping stove just as if we were really French people, who do that all the time.
We might settle in.
We will have to think about it.
