Walk Of Shame

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.