More waiting.
You get used to it when you work at sea, waiting for the pilot, waiting for orders, waiting for a free berth, waiting for the agent, waiting for provisions. In fact the whole job is waiting until the relevant object being waited for turns up, then its a helter skelter mad panic the world is ending tomorrow freak out for a short time until you get back to waiting again.
My first portion of waiting was at the airport at Schipol, Amsterdam, I sailed through the arrivals expecting one of those people holding a sign with my name or the ships name or something that will make me understand that they are waiting for me. Nothing. No sign. Not for me anyway, plenty other signs and people waiting for other people. So I sat on my suitcase and decided to give them 10 minutes before I rang the agents number.
Still nothing. So I phoned, ah yes are you at the airport we are sending your taxi right away…..
Little did I know that there was a public transport strike in the Netherlands today, so sending the taxi right away meant a long wait.
I got asked a lot of questions at my wait at the meeting point,
Are you Mr. J Brown?,
Are you from CBS?
Are you from San Francisco?
Are you from the Order of St. John?
Are you from Riga?
Are you from Unilever?
Are you from Vestas?
I must have looked like an American/Latvian TV producing windmill salesman with a hint of religious order thrown in, I did have black jeans on and a bit of a suspect “father Dougal” V-neck sweater in wine colour on.
Others didn’t ask they just stared, hoping to find some clue in my face, looking for the name tatooed across my forehead in invisible ink.
An hour later I called again, are you still waiting, oh I’ll give the taxi driver your number…
As if that was going to evaporate the traffic jam stretching from Rotterdam to Amsterdam.
I will have to get somebody that I can call on the phone and talk loudly in English to with a Scottish accent about football and say words like “pish” and “shite”, there seemed to be a few of them around today, and all the other lost souls that gather at airports , the bewildered, bored, screaming children, tired parents, lost, confused, determined, condesending air hostesses, tanned and gold wearing 50+ year old men, and everybody else…
Finally the taxi driver arrived, a slightly balding man in his late 40’s to early 60’s with a paunch slightly sweating and middle eastern origin. It’s never a mid 20’s blonde, but then it’s just as well I know how to talk to the former about cars, the price of petrol and football and other kinds of bullshit to fill up a taxi journey like GW Bush and Barack Hussein Obama.
Now I’m on my ship, time for bed. More later.
Recent Comments