I had sat down by the window after getting myself a glass of water, a nice seat I thought, I could see both the ocean and the rest of the room around me. I was the first one there because I was a foot passenger and was quickly joined by another passenger on my bus.
'Quite a day we've had,' he said jokingly,
'Ya... never mind that englishman,'
'haha... you saw that too, poor girl. Tell me, where'd you get that water?'
I told him where it was and he went fetch himself some. As soon as he stood up and walked away the compartment began to fill up with groups people from the car level. One of the groups decided to sit excatly where my friend had just been sitting, and I wasn't one to say anything - they were 8 old black men, and every one of them was decked in bling.
Decked.
Chains, rings, all purple jumpsuits, hats, a cane, and the bottle of booze. I couldn't believe it. Well I could. It was right there. But my friend couldn't because when he came back,vas soon as he set eyes on these guys he spat some of his water out and turned away to conceal his laughter. He was an older guy, which made it all the more funny for me - I started smiling, almost laughing.
He got over it and sat on the other side of the guys, but not out of view, we could see each other perfectly.
Things started to get out of hand. The group of men had cracked their bottle of booze and had all sat themselves down and started screaming and laughing as if, well, they reminded me of a bunch of wild monkeys. The funniest thing was that I couldn't make out a thing that they were saying, yet I could tell it was English, but you couldn't make out a word, and when they weren't screaming in laughter, they would make these weird sounds, kinda like, 'hoot hoot hoot!!' that obviously made sense to them because it made them laugh even more. It was hilarious.
The smallest guy at the table turned out to be a leader of some sort, because they only laughed when he did, and it was absurd because he would just start laughing whenever he felt like it and then they would all break out laughing and then he would hoot like a monkey and they would start laughing even harder and then he would grab his gold chain and hold it up and shake it and hop on his ass and slamming his drink and shaking his necklace and screaming like a monkey and every single one of them would scream and shake their drinks and hop in their chair up and down on their ass. Hysterical. I was beside myself. I had tears in my eyes. I was trying so hard not to laugh I was shaking.
Then something happened that I will always remember, because it is so odd how these things can happen between complete strangers, these moments of understanding that can only really be summed up in a look.
I looked over at my friend and he looked at me - we both burst out laughing.
It was too much. We were both helpless. He got up and strolled for a bit. I faced the ocean giggling like a little girl, tears pouring out of my eyes, trying to think about how incredibly unfunny the English Channel was. I spent five minutes trying to stop it, it was impossible.
I finally got a grip of myself and turned back towards where my friend was sitting and saw that he was just walking towards his seat - the second we made eye contact he turn around to do another lap. It was out of our control. I was stuck in my corner crying trying not to look at that guy for the whole trip, it was absurd, absolutlely absurd, but so funny.
We arrived in France and I couldn't have been in a better mood.
We had to wait for all the cars to leave because the pedestrian ramp was broken had to be walked through the car ramp; the Englishman told the ferry guide to 'fuck off' and swore that he'd never take a PQ ferry again in his bloody life;
and..... I took my first step into France.
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