And here we go again with another Morgan family holiday blog, or half thereof. This time around, it will be only a half-holiday in two senses of the word. Firstly, it will be a flying visit of just four nights, so not a long time – certainly not enough to reach that nirvana sense of relaxation regular people tend to achieve when on holiday. For us, that has been an all-too-illusive state we’ve rarely reached. I don’t recall the last time that we actually achieved a sense of relaxation from a holiday. But I digress. The second reason this is only half a holiday is that it’s just me and Jae this time. Sandy and Joey are taking advantage of the half-empty house we’re leaving behind. In fact, this trip was triggered as an 18th birthday present idea for Jae to go and visit her Grandad. Yes, we’ve reached the milestone of both offspring now having fully fledged into bonified adults. I guess that means they will fly the coup soon, leaving Sandy and me to enjoy some time together, right? Ha! Fat chance!
As has been the trend on more recent family holidays, preparation for this trip was minimal to non-existent. For my part, I threw a few things into a bag late last night. Jae did likewise. Neither of us is a natural early riser. I hate morning people, as well as mornings…and people. This morning, we both awoke dangerously close to when we were supposed to be on the road. Squeezing a plethora of required activities into a short space of time after waking up in the mornings has become a carefully crafted art for me over the years, one that Jae has apparently mastered relatively early on in life. We were cutting it fine this morning, according to the departure time Sandy was insisting we stick to. She had been mumbling something about school holidays and unexpected delays. My satnav was showing a straight and unobstructed journey through to Dunkirk this morning, but I decided to bypass the hassle of dealing with Sandy’s wrath, and we got into the car by around 8:30 anyway. My choice was either to spend a couple of hours twiddling our thumbs in Dunkirk after arriving with far too much time to spare or having to listen to Sandy admonish me for leaving too late. It wasn’t a difficult decision.
Sandy helped ensure we packed all the last-minute items like chargers, cables, my winter jacket, etc. I’ve typically been quite independent when it comes to such things in the past, but I’ve slowly mellowed and become more tolerant over the years. Paying attention to Sandy’s ‘helpful suggestions’, or at least giving that impression, does make her happy. As the saying goes: Happy wife, happy life.
I had the car detailed inside and out just a few days ago. This meant the car felt and smelled less like the floor of our local Maccas that hadn’t been swept clean for the past several years. The windows were no longer a significant view obstruction, having been cleaned inside and out, which was a nice bonus. I suspect the car will be trashed by the time we make it back to the continent in a few days. We’ll see. Even if it does last, the car will be used to transport Joey back and forth to Maccas on a routine basis, so that essence of chip-fat will, I’m sure, return before too long.
We were out of the garage by around 8:30. Uncharacteristically, Jae decided to tuck herself up snuggly in the back seat instead of in the front passenger seat. She wanted to squeeze in a little more sleep. Much like myself, teenagers can often be useless unless they’ve had the full sixteen hours of sleep.
Jae’s plan to squeeze in more sleep time was short-lived. In the event, we decided to stop at our local Maccas for breakfast. Most of this morning’s journey to Dunkirk would be through Belgium, which tends to yield fewer stop options.
As expected, the drive through to Dunkirk didn’t take the four hours that Sandy insisted. After factoring in a brief leg-stretch stop, we pulled into the DFDS ferry port in Loon-Plage after just under three hours of driving time.
Jae and I love to do car karaoke whenever we are in the car with just the two of us, and we belted out more than a few tunes together during the trip. Along with the car detailing, I recently had the car radio Sandy bought me for our anniversary installed. She had been nagging me to get the job done for a while, but as I said, if I say I’ll do a chore around the house, I will; there’s no need to remind me every few months constantly. Anyway, the new radio has Bluetooth, so I can finally connect my mobile phone to it. The previous car radio was the one that came with the car. It’s around 20 years old, so it is 20 years out of date, with little more than some basic radio functions and a CD slot. Jae and I both have Spotify subscriptions, so we were both able to influence what music was being played through the car speakers independently through our mobile phone apps. That turned out to be both a blessing and a curse. Ever tried listening to teenage music tastes for 2 hours solid? I was about ready to decapitate someone by the time we pulled into Dunkirk.
I typically set my driving speed to just over the legal limit. I figure that the car speedometer always registers slightly faster, and the authorities give you a little leeway, so there’s usually a good margin for error for speeding-fine safety. That notwithstanding, I did spot a flash from a stationary safety camera just ahead of me about a half hour outside Dunkirk, which I suspect was aimed at me. The flash was facing the oncoming traffic, so it looked like it was photographing the front of the cars instead of the rear, which is more typically the case. I was doing 114 km/h in what I thought was a 110 km/h limit, but it might have been a brief stretch where the limit was reduced to 90 km/h. The main coastal road that leads to Dunkirk has numerous sections where the speed limit is temporarily reduced. I might get a nominal fine in the post. I won’t know for a few weeks. What I do know for sure, is the pain of getting the fine will pale in significance to the pain of listening to Sandy berate me for it.
So, we arrived in Dunkirk with around two hours to spare. Thanks, Sandy! Paul had asked me to buy some cigarettes for Dad in the duty-free. I always find this a moral quandary. On the one hand, I don’t want to support Dad’s smoking habit. On the other hand, he’s in his eighties and doesn’t have a huge disposable income. Nothing I will do will stop his smoking, but I can lighten the financial burden with some cheap cigarettes. Reluctantly, I agreed to get some. It’s considerably more affordable than buying them in the shops in the UK – a pack of 200 can be had for around £70 in the duty-free. As we walked through the duty-free shop, however, they experienced a technical fault preventing the tills from working, so they shut the shop temporarily. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, the shop reopened before departure, allowing me to pick up a couple of packs of 200. That’s the total duty-free allowance to which Jae and I were collectively entitled.
As is typical, boarding was swift and painless. The ferry itself is less than half capacity today. We made a beeline to our usual spot on deck 7, where there was an electrical outlet. Our usual table was occupied, but we were still able to benefit from the one available power socket.
Having made this trip numerous times, we implemented our pro tip of letting the initial queue in the restaurant first die down before grabbing a plate of food. When people first board the ferry, the food is already sitting in the food trays waiting to be served, so letting that (sometimes a little cold/stale food) first get served to the eager passengers means that new, freshly-cooked food is then available for those of us who had the willpower to hold off for a half an hour or so. As a bonus today, the two customer-friendly servers behind the counter were hilarious in interacting with each other and the customers awaiting freshly cooked fish to arrive. It’s the small details like this that really make a difference, and I will remember this when it comes to writing up my review when I get the survey request from DFDS in a couple of weeks. I like to make it a point to provide positive feedback whenever appropriate.
As we’ll soon be pulling into Dover, I will wrap up here and finish this blog entry later tonight. Watch this space.
So, here I am at the end of the night, tucked away nicely at a good friend’s house. More on that in a bit, but here’s how the rest of the day played out.
When I bought Dad’s cigarettes at the port, I had wondered whether there might be better or cheaper options on the ferry, so I checked at the duty-free shop on deck 7. To my pleasant surprise, they had a more comprehensive range of options. Better still, some options were cheaper than at the port. I came within an inch of buying more packets of 200 before it dawned on me that I had already purchased the maximum allowance. Had I bought more, I might have landed myself in hot water with the authorities on the off-chance we were stopped going into the UK. Realistically, that was never going to be likely. In the thirty or more years that I’ve been making these crossings, I’ve only once or twice been stopped for car inspections or customs checks. In the vast majority of cases, I’ve just driven off the boat and straight onto the UK road network.
As we were waiting to disembark, I spotted a couple of restaurant staff members standing not far from us, including those we had enjoyed interacting with earlier while standing in the queue for lunch. I went over and gave them some positive feedback about how we enjoyed our earlier interactions with them. They were highly appreciative and asked if we would be kind enough to visit the main reception desk and leave feedback there, which is precisely what I did. The friendly man I found there explained that they typically only ever get negative feedback and thanked me warmly for taking the time to provide positive feedback. We and the staff came away from the experience with all smiles and a warm feeling inside.
The doors to the car decks opened, and we made our way back to the car. A few minutes later, we were driving off the ferry, and my attention turned to programming the satnav with Dad’s address and making our way to the correct motorway. Then, something extraordinary happened. For the first time in living memory (which, admittedly, is becoming less reliable with age), random cars were being stopped and directed into a building with customs inspection bays. The three cars ahead of us were each directed towards the building. We were about to pass through, and it looked like we were going to be waved on, but the woman with the sign seemed to have a last-minute change of mind and directed us also into the stream of cars leading to the inspection building. It seemed we were among the handful of cars selected for a customs inspection today. In a split second, my life seemed to flash before my eyes. I suddenly wondered what kind of drugs might have been stashed behind the door panels that the previous car owner had forgotten about and for which I would now be accountable. Not for the first time in my life, I had a rush of visions about being given twenty years in the electric chair before being forced to share a dark and dingy cell with a man called Ben Dover with Mummy issues. A lovely man came to our window and asked a few routine questions. Where are we coming from today? Where are we staying while in the UK? What was the purpose of our visit? Do we have anything to declare, such as duty-free? What’s the carrying capacity of an African swallow? I suddenly remembered my near mishap with inadvertently purchasing more cigarettes than we were allowed. I told him we bought 400 cigarettes, the maximum allowance for two people. For whatever reason, he seemed to conclude on the spot that we were perfectly innocent travellers (which we were) and sent us merrily on our way with a smile. He didn’t even ask to see the duty-free purchases. It was as pleasant an interaction as possible, but it still got my blood pumping. It made me wonder just what could have happened had I bought those extra cigarettes and had that been discovered. I wondered just what sort of relationship between Mr Dover and me might have otherwise developed over the years while incarcerated together. I guess we’ll never know.
With the stress of crossing into the UK now fading, I found the way onto the correct motorway, and Jae and I resumed our car karaoke indulgence. My little sister, Jacky, and I had a quick video call. We arranged to meet up with her tomorrow afternoon/evening for a meal at a carvery near where she lives. It will be good to see her and Ella again, and this now settles our plans for Sunday.
The remainder of the journey to Essex via the Dartford Crossing and my old stomping grounds of South Ockendon was uneventful. We made our way to Dad’s house without stopping.
Dad was in fine spirits, which was comforting and reassuring to see. He’s still a little frail but doesn’t appear to be deteriorating, which I had feared. It was good to see both him and Paul again. Dad was grateful for the cigarettes. I still view this with some moral ambiguity, but it is what it is, and I left it at that.
As has become customary, we made the local chip shop our first port of call for food upon arrival in the UK. Yummy.
Dad spent much of this afternoon reeling off anecdotes we’ve all heard numerous times before. Listening to the same stories repeatedly can sometimes be challenging, but it doesn’t matter. It was just good to see him so animated and full of life. One day, we’ll lose the luxury of hearing these repeated anecdotes, at which point I’m sure we will all miss them terribly and wish we could sit through them one more time.
Paul and I often find ourselves on opposite ends of a political debate. It can frequently be a pretty spirited discussion. Despite both of us firmly entrenched in our beliefs that the other is incorrect in their position, neither of us got upset or offended with the other. I find this easy – especially as I’m always right and he is always wrong 🙂
As per the original plan, I left Jae with her Grandad, as she’ll be staying there for the duration of our visit. Jae has developed a wonderful relationship with her Grandad, and I’m especially pleased that it continues to flourish.
I have been given refuse with some very good friends of ours – Kerry & Nick. Kerry is one of the mums from the antenatal group that Sandy was part of when she was pregnant with Joey some 19 years ago. Many of those ladies have kept in touch over the years – some more than others. We’ve been fortunate enough to maintain an active friendship with Kerry over the years. This isn’t the first time she and Nick have put a roof over our heads when we’ve been in need. During the very start of the Covid lockdown, Kerry and Nick provided the four of us with emergency accommodation when our existing plans fell through just as we were driving off the ferry. With just a couple of hours of advance warning, they still came through for us and found a way to make it all work, even though they had a full house with four of their own kids. It’s hard to overstate how fortunate we are to have friends like this in our lives. It doesn’t matter how far away we live or how infrequently we see each other; the fact that they have been there for us when we’ve needed them is a testament to how wonderful these people are.
I arrived at Kerry and Nick’s house and squeezed my car onto their property. Their eldest kids are of driving age now, and there are now more cars on the drive than when I was last here. We spent much of the evening catching up, covering many topics about life, kids, mortgages, holidays, finances, etc. We have lots in common, and I thoroughly enjoyed catching up with them both.
After a few hours, and with eyelids starting to droop all around, I shuffled into the room Kerry had allotted me and plugged all my gear in, such as the laptop charger, my CPAP machine, etc. I spent the next hour or two polishing off this blog entry.
All in all, today has been a most successful day.