Graham wouldn’t have believed what had happened either, nor would he have believed what hadn’t happened. In fact, he wouldn’t even know what had happened, because it had turned out the Bob Marley was a coffeeshop.

He remembered a trip to the zoo he had made when was in school. It hadn’t been a huge zoo, but they had had quite a few monkeys. Ranging from chimpanzees, to some ring-tailed lemurs, to itty bitty things called pygmy marmosets. He started giggling at the thought. Tiny monkeys! Monkey monkey monkey! He started giggling a bit more. Monkeys were funny! Why didn’t he have a monkey? They were funny, and everyone would enjoy the sight of a tiny monkey sitting on his head. Even Miranda! If he had a tiny monkey, and trained it to sit on his head…
“Excuse me, sir?”
The train of thought about monkeys stopped, and utterly vanished. Someone was talking to him! This was important! Something important was going on! What was happening?”
“Sir?”
“Erm… yes?”
“Your cheese toasty is ready.”
A cheese toasty! He was hungry! A cheese toasty was a delicious idea! At that point, there was nothing he wanted more in the world than a cheese toasty in front of him, and him eating it!
“Do… do I eat it here?”
“If you want to, sir. How is your skunk?”
A skunk! He didn’t have a skunk! What the hell did he… ooh yeah, the weed, silly me!
“Its splendid, my friend.”
“You got enough for now?”
“Plenty.”
And he did have plenty. He’d only smoked pot a handful of times at university, and it hadn’t been as much fun as this stuff. It made his brain happy. His brain was sitting on a beanbag made of a Jamaican flag, feeling so happy it was unreal. He couldn’t quite remember why he’d ended up in here in the first place. Something to do with directions. But now he was here, it was all about smoking up a fat…
“Sir, your cheese toasty?”
Cheese toasty! Cheese toasty delicious!
And so it was. If he had been back in England, it wouldn’t have done much to excite him, but in Holland, stoned royally off of his face, he couldn’t have been happier if he’d been served the finest filleted steak, served off of a virgin’s backside. The cheese toasty didn’t stand a chance. It simply vanished, and was quickly forgotten.

* * *

Graham had not been quickly forgotten by the man in the head shop, however. This was not to his advantage, as the two senior policemen sitting across the table from him were very interested in what he had to say.
“I’ve told you all time and time again, I don’t sell drugs, I don’t advocate drug taking, I just sell these things, and what people choose to do with them is up to them. Not my business.”
“This is not the issue, Mr Winterton,” exclaimed one of the policemen, “although perhaps another time we might want to discuss why selling smoking paraphernalia inherently condones smoking. What we’re interested in hearing about is a certain package you received two days ago.
“A package? You want to know about packages, talk to the Royal Mail. I understand they have an international business based around delivering them.”
“But it wasn’t the Royal Mail who delivered this package to you, was it sir?”
“I’ve told you, I don’t know anything about any package! What’re you doing interrogatin’ me about something I don’t know, when there’s smackheads and rapists wandering round Hull as we speak?”
The two police officers shared a quick look, and the second policeman took up the interrogation.
“Mr Winterton, we have photographic evidence of a known felon visiting your place of work this Friday, and delivering a package matching a description of the one we are searching for. He claimed he only knew it as a bag of fish, and he had no idea what was in it. Much the same as you claim.”
“This individual,” continued the first policeman, “was tried last thing last night, and I understand has been sent down to HM Prison Hull for, how long is it?”
“About seven years, if I’m not mistaken.”
“That sounds about right. And he genuinely had no idea about this package. If we find out you are withholding information about it…”
The policemen let this thought trail off into thin air, allowing Winterton to stew for a minute.
“Anything you’d like to tell us, sir?”
“Well, I did have a package that fits the description you gave me.”
“Did, sir? Did have a package?”
“However, a man came yesterday to take it…”

* * *

That same man had taken a lot of something else as well. He no longer knew how he had gotten wherever he was, where he was going, but he did know how to rip a fat bowl of bud, and he had decided to go through his wallet. So far, the results were not particularly interesting. A debit card and credit card, each with colours on them. Apparently, there was money on them, although he couldn’t see it. A green driving license with the letter L on it. He couldn’t drive a car, therefore he didn’t know what he was doing with a drivers license. A red and blue card with a National Insurance number on it. Did that mean he was paying to insure the nation? And which nation was he insuring? Would he have to pay if it got lost or stolen?

A Tesco Clubcard emerged next, but was not very interesting. A very old student card, from the University of Manchester, and an ID card from work. He studied each of these in turn, as if he’d never seen them before. And they were all very interesting, except for the fact that they weren’t.

What we all need, he thought, is a piece of card, saying “I AM STONED”. This would tell everyone in the world how stoned we were, and how awesome being stoned is. It could also make rolling paper appear out of thin air, and could be torn up to make roaches out of! And what about having a car made of chocolate?

Chocolate. He was hungrier than he’d ever thought he could be, and somehow, he’d started thinking of chocolate. It was the Dutch that made chocolate, wasn’t it? Or was it cars they made? No, it was the Ukrainians who made cars… Ukrainians sounded like aliens. Was there an entire race of people who were aliens, living in… wherever Ukrainians lived. Ukrainia?

And so on. Having never smoked a large amount of weed before, Graham had taken the approach of a gigantically fat man learning to swim by jumping into a lake. Doing all this while exhausted and hung over was like the fat man wearing lead boots and carrying a piano. Eventually, the tiredness, THC and general despondence got to him, and he fell asleep. This was not something the people running the coffeeshop approved of, so he was, fairly politely, asked to leave.

“Where am I?”
“You are in a coffeeshop, and we need you to leave.”
“Why?”
“Because you are falling asleep.”
“I’m tired!”
“We know, but you cannot sleep here.”
“Well, where can I go to sleep?”
“Where are you staying in Rotterdam?”
He had to think about this one, and only responded when asked again.
“I don’t know!”
“Do you have anywhere to stay?”
“I don’t think so.”
“There is a hotel down the road, go left, and walk until you see a big duck. Go in, and they’ll have a room. Now please leave.”
He picked up his stuff, and somehow set off. This was even more difficult than he’d have imagined, even if he had the capacity of mind to imagine anything. His brain had a pulse. The entire road had a pulse. And wherever he looked, everything looked slightly like a duck. There were ducks in the windows, people looked like ducks, without looking any less like people, and the air even seemed to quack ever so slightly. Every duck seemed to be watching him, and he wanted nothing more than to hide from all the ducks. Except he couldn’t do that, until he’d found the biggest duck of all, and gone into a hotel next to it. He swayed, he felt like he was walking through treacle, and time seemed to stretch like a piece of chewing gum caught between two people on trampolines. Duck, duck, duck, duck, everywhere he looked, he could think of nothing but ducks. And yet, he could not stop looking, for eventually, he would find…

A large statue of a duck, in the middle of a crossroads. It was quite large anyway, but to Graham’s mind, it loomed as large as a mountain, only shaped like a duck. So somewhere about here, there was a hotel. He looked around, but being stoned made the language unreadable. He sat down, and looked around, slowly considering the problem that now he had sat down, it would be next to impossible to stand up again.

And at some distance away, he saw a sign that could have said “Hotel”, but might not have. It was enough for him, so with the sound of ducks echoing through his head, he staggered towards it. Closer inspection made it out to be the “Hotel Van De Eendmening”, which made no sense. But it said hotel, and hotels had rooms, so he staggered inside.

“Hallo, kan ik u helpen?”
“Whaaaaaaaaaa?”
“U sprekt Engels?”
“Uh?”
“Can I help you, sir?”
Which would make perfect sense, but the two lines of Dutch had done horrible things to Graham’s head. He hadn’t understood a word she had said, and therefore he simply couldn’t understand her, even when she switched over to English.
“Do you speak English?”
“Yes, can I help you?”
“I can’t understand you, but I need… a room!”
“Yes, how long for, sir?”
“No, a room! Where you sleep in!”
“I know, sir, but how long do you need a room for?”
“Can you find someone who speaks English?”
“I can speak English, sir.”
“Yes, English, can you find someone who’ll speak it.”
Giving up, the poor woman on the desk went to find the manager. He was a middle aged gentleman, used to the English, but inexplicably not understanding the mind of the stoned man.
“Can I help you sir?”
“Yes, I couldn’t understand your woman there just now.”
“She was speaking English, sir.”
“That’s no English I’ve ever heard. I need a room, my friend.”
“Certainly sir, how long for?”
“…I don’t know. How long can I have one for?”
“Hmm, we’re almost completely booked, sir, there’s only one single room left, and only for two nights.”
“I’ll take it, here’s some money, I’m going to bed.”
And with that, he slapped the remains of the hundred euros on the desk, and staggered off to where he thought the lifts were.

Very shortly afterwards, he staggered back.
“Sorry, I’ve no idea where I’m going.”
“Quite alright sir. (Adrianna, show this stoned idiot to his room).”
The girl who had tried to serve him winced.
“(Sir, do I have to?)”
“(Everyone else is at lunch.)”
She sighed. She always got stuck with the mad people.

* * *

This was an assumption shared by the two special agents in Hull’s main police station, after they had finished interviewing Mr Winterton.
“So some random guy turns up in his shop yesterday, takes the package, and buggers off? That doesn’t make much sense.”
“It does, in a twisted kind of way. This individual we’ve got a description of sounds like someone out of town, and not one of the usual suspects. This thing seems to be big enough that they’re taking risks to make sure it gets there.”
“So what is this elusive package we’ve spent three months tracking?”
“I don’t know much more than you. It apparently came across from America, and its something terrorist cells in mainland Europe have been trying to get hold of for months, maybe years. These Dutch people normally deal in more… unusual imports, but this one’s going to make them a fortune if it goes through. By the look of it, if we capture this package, it will damage this Dutch group, a number of European terrorist organisations, and… I don’t know.”
“You seem to know a lot more than me about this. Why didn’t I get a briefing like that?”
“Not sure.”
“If I didn’t know you actually didn’t know, I’d put this all down to politics and think someone was messing me around.”
“Could still all be politics. I had to do a lot of prodding to find out even that.”
“So you do know why I didn’t get that information?”
“Oh shut up, you know now.”
Before they could have a rather unhelpful argument, the phone rang. The agent who knew what was going on picked it up, listened for a second, then  put the phone down.
“They’ve got the photofit for this guy together, let start our investigation. We’re running out of time quite badly here.”

“Bit much to get used to”, smirked Dave, pulling his seat forward to let Graham out. Graham said nothing, being quite thankful for all the help he’d been given, but still not happy about being half-deafened for the sake of hearing 50 Cent played at thirty times the pain threshold. He hopped out, and looked around for a bit.

Hull Docks, as far as I’ve seen, isn’t particularly exciting. If you’ve seen a commercial ferry port, you’ve seen pretty much everything you need to. After enduring Pies’ declarations that last night had been “the most awesome night there’s ever been, ever”, and reminding him he couldn’t remember any of it, he let the two lads get back to sponging off of the government, and wandered if he was going to meet anyone vaguely normal on this trip.

I was quite looking forward to writing a couple of hundred words about how Graham had packed his passport in the other bag, and the royal buggering Passport Control at the docks would give him as a result. However, that’d pretty much kill the novel, so thankfully, Graham had his passport on him, got through Customs alright, and was left with very little to do for most of the afternoon. He wandered around, and looked at the boats, but this got very boring very quickly. There wasn’t anywhere to drink, there wasn’t anyone to talk to, so he amused himself by trying to tame a seagull using some chips he bought. He was very relieved when the tannoy system announced that foot passengers were boarding.

The ferry itself was a bit more interesting, although only compared to three hours enticing seagulls over to eat chips, the expecting them to stay for the conversation. Having had the good sense to book a small berth to stay on, he threw his meagre possessions under his bed, and wandered out onto the deck. It was a wonderful spacious deck, as you would expect on such a large ferry, and while there wasn’t much of a view so far, still being in Hull Docks, it still had plenty of potential to be a stunning view, and just needed some fresh scenery to achieve it.

Apparently, it was a relatively nice ferry. While not exactly being a cruise ship (a bit too glamorous to be passing through Hull, perhaps), it was certainly much grander than the pokey boat he had done the day trip to France in back in Sixth Form. And since it was an overnight ferry, it had to be. There was even supposed to be a small cinema somewhere on-board. Exciting stuff, but what to do first? First thing was obviously first, food. As the ferry started to pull out of the dock, Graham sought out what had been described as high quality catering, but found was something not too similar to the canteen in his hall of residence back in the old days. The ancient, greasy-looking woman standing behind the counter looked about the same. The dry-looking roast beef sat despondently under a hot lamp in much the same way. Hoping for a miracle, Graham instead opted for the chicken korma, and was thoroughly not delighted to see some sort of fluorescent orange gloop being poured over some crusty looking rice. Handing over a fiver, Graham discovered the best part of the meal was the can of Coke, a sealed drink that hadn’t even been touched by the catering staff. Just to make things more fun, the chicken korma went through him at a rate of knots, and he had to become acquainted with the facilities on the boat fairly quickly. This was made twice as fun by the gentle swaying of the boat going down the Humber, and the heaves of a man already being sick in the next cubicle.

Hoping for something a bit more fun to follow all of this up with, he meandered up to an information point, and was told by a woman who was covered in bright orange fake tan, that the only films showing that evening were a nauseating kids film, an artsy foreign film, and one of those films with explosions and char chases and not a lot else, trying to be a James Bond film and failing miserably. None of these piqued Graham’s interest, so he went back to Plan B, the extremely overpriced bar.

Several hours of drinking, and Graham hadn’t managed to get as ratarsed as he’d have liked. There were several good reasons for this. Since it was three pounds per can, and proportionately more for spirits, he had forced himself to savour his drinks, seeing as even if he tried to get drunk on his own, it’d cost as much as it did when he was seemingly buying for a crowd of students. Secondly, the staff seemed to be keeping a very close eye on him, probably looking for an excuse to arrest him, or throw him overboard, or whatever they did when you were drunk and disorderly on a boat.

Most significantly, of course, was the fact that once the ferry had left the mouth of the River Humber, they had immediately hit the North Sea. Apparently, it was quite calm for a night in the middle of nowhere-on-the-water, but since Graham had only been on a ferry for the sum of about four hours in his life, he wasn’t used to the rocking motion of the boat, and he had discovered just how sick you could be when you had sea sickness. In moments of relative calm, he had experimented with drinking away the sickness, but this only made it worse, so that by about nine at night, he was very drunk, and very ill. The crew weren’t sure which it was, but left a handful of sick bags under the crook of his arm, and hoped he got the idea.

As always, it got a bit better before getting much worse. Near ten at night, the seas calmed down just enough, so that Graham considered going outside for a bit of fresh air. This was not a brilliant plan, as the winds were fast, freezing, and full of sea water. To complement this, once Graham was a good distance from the door back inside, the waves picked up again, rocking the boat by two metres each way. Nausea took hold again very quickly, and came to a head almost immediately. It also came to the head of a crewman wandering around the lower decks, who had the bad fortune to be right underneath as Graham unleashed the remains of the chicken korma. The poor man swore very loudly at Graham, and retreated, assumably to somewhere with a shower. Graham tried to shout out an apology, but it sounded more like a further round of heaving, which naturally it was. Considering himself beaten for the evening, Graham staggered back to where he reckoned the door was, and tried to make his way back to his room. But he had re-entered through a different door entirely, and the rocking of the ship did not abate. He therefore spent a fruitless hour wandering round the ship, alternately trying to find his cabin, and dry heaving into a bag, before giving up and collapsing in a heap in a corner next to a flight of stairs.

* * *

The police raid on the head shop was swift and efficient. While the man running the shop had the good sense to not keep any weed in either the actual shop or his flat, this wasn’t the target of the raid. They had been tipped off that some other highly illegal contraband was being stored in the shop prior to being transported to Holland, and they wanted to nip it in the bud before it left the country. However, as we well know, they were too late. However, they took the man in the shop in for questioning.

* * *

Miranda was starting to get worried. Graham hadn’t called at all since he set off, and even now, his phone appeared to be off. She tried it again, and lay down in bed. She couldn’t sleep.

* * *

Bizarrely enough, Graham found it very easy to sleep, although he would have thrown up several times in the night if he hadn’t emptied his stomach earlier. However, even with a two hour delay due to the inclement weather, the ferry still arrived in Rotterdam harbour far too early for Graham. He was shaken awake by a worried looking crew lady, who had evidently seen the gastronomical carnage he had wreaked the night before, and was defiantly not in the market for an encore. It wasn’t the problem, by miles. His head hurt, and he still had a great deal of sea sickness, although most of it had migrated to his head. Plus, as a change from the previous morning, he was far too tired to be disembarking off of a ferry. Besides, all his stuff was in his cabin, which, after asking the disapproving lady where it was, turned out to be just around a corner at the foot of the flight of stairs he had fallen asleep by. Quietly but angrily resolving to never set foot on a ferry again, Graham retrieved his stuff, and disembarked from the ferry.

Once again, he made it through Customs without any problems, although the man on the passport desk spent rather a long time staring at his passport before handing it back over. Bloody stoned Dutchmen, thought Graham, oblivious to the fact that his stumbling around and red eyes gave the self same impression. He couldn’t see this, but he felt it nonetheless. He had no idea how he was getting to Amsterdam, no idea where he was in Rotterdam, very little idea of the language, and a head and stomach that were waging war on the rest of his body. The first port of call, therefore, was breakfast and the strongest cup of coffee known to man. Despite feeling decidedly uncultured, he decided a traditional Dutch breakfast would be good. Finding a café, with a waiter who seemed to speak English, he ordered such a breakfast, and something terrifyingly strong and coffee-like. He ended up with both of these things, and was pleasantly delighted. The coffee was indeed coffee, and was terrifyingly strong. The breakfast was a wonderful selection of decidedly plain things, some cereal, some toast with chocolate sprinkles on top, and some currant buns. Overall, while not as interesting as he was expecting, it was just right for his flailing insides.

He then set off walking around, trying to gather his bearings. He started discovering a vast selection of stereotypes about the Dutch were very true indeed. There were certainly a large number of canals running through Rotterdam, and there seemed to be a fair few people smoking things in the street that would have gotten you arrested in England. But he couldn’t find anything that resembled anything providing tourist information. He needed to find somewhere to sleep, preferably now, but later if all else failed, and he hadn’t planned this far ahead. After yet another hour of wandering round looking, he decided to just enter the first shop he could find, and ask for some directions. He made a sharp left, and went into an establishment with a picture of Bob Marley on the side of it.

* * *

Miranda couldn’t understand it. Graham had said he’d call her, and he hadn’t. Full blown crazy paranoia overtook her, and she rooted out the number for his boss.
“Hello?”
“Hello, is that Graham’s Burricombe’s manager?”
“It most certainly is, but I actually have a name, its…”
“…undoubtedly very interesting, but I’m worried about Graham.”
“Ah yes, he came in to see me about that a couple of days ago.  All organised a while ago, and he’s away with it this weekend.”
“Its just that he hasn’t called me, and I’m a bit worried… hang on, arranged it how long ago?”
“Quite a few months ago, as it was, and he’s just taking us up on it now.”
“He said it had just come up out of the blue!”
The first series of chuckles came out at long last.
“My dear, he’s been meaning to go on this for a long time, but apparently… things kept coming up.”
“What sort of things?”
Another chuckle, this one a rather nervous one.
“Well, I think what he meant, the thing that he meant by that was, erm, ha ha ha…”
“What did he mean?”
“Well, not to put too fine a point on it, young lady, I think he meant problems with you.”
A frosty silence came up, and hung around for a long pause. Suddenly, a gasp came from the other end of the line.
“What is it?” cried Miranda.
“A damn bird just shat on me! That’s not funny! My dear, I have to go. This is just the worst…”
And the phone promptly died in her hand. She stared at it in disbelief.