pole position at the front of the grid

Sat in pole position at the front of the grid ready to make a speedy exit from the Pride of Hull. The car deck has lots of bikes. Motorbikes. Mostly off to the Isle of Man for TT Week one assumes. We will see them there 🙂 

I booked a club stateroom. Double bed, fully stocked minibar, bathroom with bath and shower, TV. The TV is supposedly relevant because the other room types don’t have one but I only watched it for a couple of mins and switched off. 

The other thing that comes with the room is a concierge who collects your luggage from the car and shows you to your room and does the same in return on departure. He also picks up your duty free. And you get priority disembarkation, hence my front of grid position. When we landed in Rotterdam I did not have any of this and it took an hour to get through passport control. We shall see how different the experience might be today.

Amazing how many car alarms are going off. This is despite multiple warnings to switch off your alarms. I have to admit I’m not sure I know how to even switch it on. My key is one of those old fashioned car keys that opens the door by inserting it into the lock and turning and ditto for switching on the ignition. This being THG’s car she has possession of the remote control key fob that also sets the alarm. Hey I know my place…

Punters are now streaming onto the car deck. They must have broadcast a message. Being on the front of the grid they got me here early, presumably to make sure I was there when the doors opened and didn’t block the smooth disembarkation of the ferry.

It being notionally a seven ey em arrival time I didn’t bother with breakfast on board. I need to stop off at Waitrose en route home so I’ll either get some nosh there or include some breakfast items in the shopping. At seven sixteen we have arrived but the door before me has not yet been opened. I can hear some activity outside. The odd whirr and clang.

I would definitely book this type of service again. We are off to Caen in July and I checked. We have it going to France but not coming back. No availability. I’ll keep my eye on it for cancellations. The Caen trip is a combo of rugby sevens at the Olympics and following in the footsteps of Dick Winters and Easy Company around Normandy.

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The getaway from the ferry worked like clockwork. I was first off, through passport control in no time and back home almost before I’d be just leaving the port had I not had priority disembarkation.

Duty free gin was proper duty free prices on the boat. Fifteen pounds fifty nine pence or simlar for a litre of Tanqueray. In front of me in the queue some bloke bought five hundred quids worth of ciggies. Paid cash. The cashier alerted him to the fact that the amount was over the duty free allowance but that didn’t phase the guy. P&O seemed happy to sell cigarettes in pre-pack sizes that would automatically be over the limit. Woteva.

Back home I am happy to report that my peas are poking through and the wildflower meadow seems to be coming along nicely.

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The big news of the day (yesterday in fact but I was busy travelling), and it won’t be news to any of you, is that old Dishi has called a General Election for the 4th of July. This is both good and bad. You can make your own mind up what is good about it. People will have different opinions. The bad bit is the fact that we are now going to be overwhelmed by election coverage for the next six weeks. I’ll be ignoring the news even more than I normally do. Bores the tits off me. In fact it annoys me. 

That’s all folks. Cue Looney Tunes music…

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