My Dad's car was massive. A seven seater with fat tyres and a boot that fisbumped our desire to go camping. Tents, coolers and sleeping bags sat around us, never affecting our comfort or leg space.
But the best camping spots lay across the channel, a ferry ride away. The size of our vehicle vetoed the possibility of using the standard passenger car deck. That was for hatchbacks and saloons. We had to join the lorry queue.
Three men in dirty overalls guided us to a lower, darker floor. We were a dinky toy compared to the rigs and sixteen wheelers that blocked out all natural light. Even when parked they threatened to squash us at any moment.
When you got used to the smell of diesel and the gloom, this was a cosy place. Walls of transport towered over me from my view in the back seat. Strange trinkets hundred their rear view mirrors, and logos of places and sports teams glimmered in tiny boards from behind the windscreen. behind their head. One lorry had the words ‘three steps to heaven’ written on the stairs leading up to the passenger door.
One downside was the animal containers. You knew which ones contained livestock from the holes in the cargo trailers. Glimpses of fur pushed against the metal, accompanied by an odd desperate moo. The walls of the ferry double bagged them into an inescapable trap on the way to death.
These bleak thoughts did not stop me eating steak in the onboard restaurant.
On one occasion the lorry next to us was olive green, and the driver dressing in grey from boots to cap. My rear window was in line with the thin slots that ran along the trailer. Several pairs of llowing green eyes peered from within. A saggy blue ear brushed against the opening. The tip end of a thin claw tasted the outside, like something hanging in the rainforest of South America.
I ran through a mental list of farmyard animals, and nothing came close. My stomach flip. The driver glanced at me, and held a finger to his lips.
Until we reached the shore, all of us were trapped on board.
