I’ve held you up on the Portsmouth-St Malo ferry twice, I’m afraid.
Holding you up no 1
When I was parked on a split deck, the card said deck 5 but not which side. I went from A to B and B to A, and back and forth, looking for my red car, pressing the keys for the car to light up and show me where it was. I asked a Brittany Ferry engineer (in an orange jumpsuit) to join on to help me find my car.
He said wait for cars to disembark But it turns out that I was parked on a strategic place, blocking others from passing.
Then the penny dropped. I was driving our silver car and I had the wrong car keys in my hand…
Holding you up no 2
I hired a van to take some furniture back to the UK. I drove onto the ferry and, for the first time ever, was in pole position right at the front of the boat to be first off in the morning. Whoopee…
I was also taking our cat back. She had been travelling back in a crate for several hours and so, for the night crossing, I let her out to be free to roam about the van.
Returning to the van in the morning, she was nowhere to be found. Nowhere. I was being asked to drive off as I was blocking everyone. Everyone. Brittany Ferries staff didn’t seem too concerned that they might have a cat on their ferry. But I said that an engineer had to check that she wasn’t under the chassis. I didn’t want to squash her. So an orange jump-suited man crawled under the van with a torch. The delay was about ten minutes before I conceded that I just had to drive off.
Where was she? At the customs stop, when an officer was checking the van, she suddenly appeared from underneath a boxed-in area under the passenger seat. The customs officer was not impressed that we had to catch her to get her back into the cage. If you had chosen our queue, I apologise profusely.
Holding you up no 3
Things happen in threes and so avoid Brittany Ferries next week as we’ve booked a crossing…
What is your confession?