Around here, emerging from the place where you have spent a night
of drunken passion is usually known by the local young people as the "WALK
OF SHAME".
I have come across this countless times picking many a red
faced lady up in the taxi who is still dressed in her night be fore’s glamorous
outfit.
But I had never come across one quite like
this Saturday mornings walk of shame, nautical style.
The call was to the dockside way out down
in the docks far away off the beaten track to a place most locals would never
visit. The place was guarded by a lift up barrier and a security guard on
24 hour duty, the guard when I opened my window to ask about a passenger just
laughed and mumbled something into his radio.
Shortly after a smirking guy in bright
orange overalls got in the taxi with me and said in broken English "to
ship" and directed me to the waterside where a Cypriot registered ship was
tied alongside. He asked me to wait and then boarded the huge ship and went
below. Several of the crew were on deck and I watched as they laughed and joked
pointing below and at my taxi. All was explained when a young woman walked out
onto deck blinking and shivering into the freezing daylight.
She wore a short skirt and
a cropped top showing her bare midriff and definitely not the sort of shoes for
walking the plank. She had to walk the full length of the ship and then totter across
a rickety looking gangplank onto the dockside and then across the dock with its
dirty water filled potholes before finally making the sanctuary of my taxi.. By
this time, every porthole seemed to have a laughing or smirking crew member
looking out watching the long walk of shame.
"Where the hell are we," she asked
looking round baffled at the barren industrial landscape, I explained and then
we reached the barrier with the security guy and again he couldn't stop himself
from laughing as he let us out.
"Bloody hell I woke up with a
hangover, the floor was moving and everyone was speaking a foreign language. I
thought I'd been kidnapped,” she told me as I drove her the five miles home.
I blame the alcohol myself; still she was lucky I noticed that the
ship was heading out to sea later in the day, so she could have ended up
anywhere.