“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.