I remember when...
Don’t ask me how we got onto the subject but I just found myself regaling colleagues with a tale from my childhood.
I recall vividly the journey home from West Germany to England via a car ferry and the Hook of Holland. Not so epic one would have thought but you have to understand that I was but five or six which makes it, well, early seventies.
So EzPop is taking his family on this quest by car. Now, let’s see... there was me dad driving, naturally, and me mum in the passenger seat being shouted at because she couldn’t navigate like they do on car rallies. Or, for that matter, like they do when not on a car rally...
In the back would be my middle brother (eldest brother had been left in Jersey some two years previously... you’d think they would have remembered...?) and three sisters. Which left me. In the front foot-well at me mum’s feet...
So that would be seven of us in a Fiat 124 Special T (one of these...). Travelling from Germany to Holland with a one night stop-over half way.
Stacked on the roof were suitcases and boxes wrapped in a huge plastic sheet and roped down with all the strength and weight my sixteen stone dad could muster. Now I could be exaggerating (I know, I know, it is sooo unusual for me, but you have to appreciate the perspective of a small child here...) but I swear the roof rack was stacked as high again as the height of the actual car. A veritable double-decker jalopy if you will. It took us hours to do, with me dad getting all flustered and shouty because, for example, I had let go of my end of the rope; probably when the forty year old soldier he was yanked the fucking thing out of the hand of the five year old child that I was... Brother and sisters I do not remember helping but that is unlikely because we all had to be traumatised equally, it was only fair. All packed, stacked and tethered, one last chance for a pee was declined and we set off. It wasn’t until about two or three hours onto the autobahn that me mum realised the passports were “in the little brown case” as in “you know the one, the one I distinctly told you not to put on the roof rack...” Oh how we laughed... not.
Germany and the seventies had not heard of paedophilia so it was custom to hand out lollipops to small children when change came below a pfennig – the Deutsche equivalent of a penny. My brother had, as we stretched our legs and after my inquiry as to why we kept stopping in these lollipop shops, pointed out that cars needed fuel. And dad was just paying for the “special” long journey kind.
Oh how we laugh today about the skidding and the screeching of brakes and the weaving and the sudden banging our heads on the dashboard/seat in front when I innocently inquired “when’s our next stop for pixie-piss, dad?”
Personally I don’t remember much of what happened after that; it all seems rather dark and bloody.
Sigh.
You just don’t see people making journeys like that anymore, do you?
Ez
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Pic of car on my profile: http://writing-community.writersworkshop.co.uk/members/profile/3830/pictures/8046/2
Ah yes. Car sick. Not a good medical debilitation for a foot-well dwelling tot. Or so my Mother would have you believe...
Trip would have to be profitable enough to fund huge compensation to family members and children's psychiatry costs.
I do know people who are driving to Nurburgring in Germany for a stag do. You can drive your own cars on the racecourse for £20.
Nothing was in fact missing chez Tiger - we had everything in order. The only problem was that our vet had attached the lab certificate into his passport proving in black and white that he had loads of rabies antibodies coursing through his furry veins. But the dippy Frau had not stamped the relevant page in the passport to say that she had attached the lab certificate. It's true! Aaargh!
We had 1 hour before sailing and the nearest vet was half an hour away. I'm driving, said hub grimly and we hurtled round dykes before thrusting Tiger and his documents at a bewildered vet. "Emergency!" I shouted at the queue. Well, actually, the vet wasn't very bewildered since panic-stricken British pet-owners visit you a lot if you happen to be the nearest vet to the Hook of Holland. Passport duly gestamped, we belted it round the greenhouses back to the ferry and they loaded us in with the lorries right at the back by the doors. Luckily I had had the foresight to book a cabin on the Pride of Holland although it was a Sunday afternoon...
Oh and in case you're wondering, Harwich veterinary customs waved us through without a glance at the sodding paperwork. "Should we go back and check with them?" said sweet hub as he realised we had left the port. "Drive!!!!!" I screamed.
Things change so fast, but you used to be able to book a train ticket from Liverpool Street Station in london to any Dutch railway station. The fare was about £60 return (I am sure this would be more now). At Harwich you go straight onto the boat from the train. A the Hook of holland you go straight off the boat,onto the local train to Rotterdam, which is on the major European network. The ferry is a jet propelled, and takes about four hours. Getting to Heathrow, or any airport round London takes time as does boarding and deplaning. Can you have inplaning?
The journey by train and boat is less of a strain than either driving or flying. But you do have to carry your baggage so it is not really for families. In Holland and some other parts of Europe, the train station is usually in centre of of the town - not at the periphery or miles away - as is the case in England.
I shall have to have a chat with you for my retirement to France as I will be taking Puss-puss and Mitten with me and will need to look up the whole cat passport thing. Don't hold your breath though; it may not be for another 30 years... sigh.
(Well, I appreciate the travel sick issue, but there are "cures" for that these days!)
No, I don't remember much.
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