Giant jellyfish swarmed in the sky.
Lisa and I were slumped in the cafeteria of the Sardinia Regina Express II, half-way through a six-hour ferry crossing from Nice to Calvi in Corsica.
After a debilitating night’s non-sleep in Nice, it was blissful to be on our way in the sharp light and new hope of a holiday morning. We bagged deckchairs, put our pale faces up to the sun and lost sight of land as the Riviera disappeared in a blue haze with our memories of yesterday.
Half an hour later we were in woolly hats. What had been a bracing sea breeze became a concern. Muffled tannoy announcements warned passengers to stay off deck and not to use the lifts (that there were lifts on ferries was news enough to us). Then came the worrying inquiry as to whether there was a doctor on board. A woman we later met on Corsica told us that her ferry from Marseille had been forced to turn back because two passengers had been ‘beheaded’. Or at least so we understood from a year of failing to learn French with Michel Thomas.
Health and safety forced us inside, right into the horror of a man attempting to comfort his wife as she threw up down herself. Balancing bravado at being a seasoned Calmac sailor and regret at not packing seasickness tablets, I ordered a coffee from a jolly crew member. Barely five-foot tall, resplendent in his Butlins-style Corsica Ferries livery of yellow jacket and dinner suit trousers, he appeared unperturbed by the ferry’s slow earthquake shudder. Ham baguettes wrapped in plastic lay unloved on the shelves, takers for lunch few, allowing the crew to congregate for an extended break and a smoke in the lee of the lifeboats.
A couple slept with their fallen hair touching across the plastic table. Three marine biology students, two young men and a woman, prevented from partaking in cetacean studies, notebooks empty of dolphins, passed the time by making roll-ups.
A stagger to the toilet, as if six pints down, ran the gauntlet of the afflicted – the lower decks a hospital tent in Sebastopol. I was no Nightingale. There was nothing I could do for them. I just cowered from the vomit slopping under the toilet door and shut out the harrowed sounds of the sick.
Adjoining the cafeteria, the ship’s lounge, where ‘Captain’s Cocktails’ were listed on a blackboard, the Saturday Night Fever dancefloor scattered with staccato shoots of light from the mirrorball as the ferry jarred its way on in a jerky slow dance. There were no takers for the ‘floor, no band struck up, yet the music played over the tannoy. There were no more announcements.
Back at base, in my sleep-starved state, the ceiling lights of the retro-futuristic cafeteria fuzzed through my head and hovered over the waves in a heaving, rolling, wallowing nightmare.
We made it, fortunately without any beheadings. But the jellyfish will always be with me. Next time, we’ll fly.
jamesteideman 