Bad Trip Man

Actually I wrote this a long time ago when I was more of a traveller than I am now - sometime around 1985.

So I've been a contractor for many a long year, and in one of those long years I had cause to go and live in Finland. And in that long year I had further cause, because cars don't fit an aeroplanes, and various other reasons, to travel the surface way from Huddersfield to Helsinki. It was on one such trip that I was forced to spend the night with a Swedish sailor.

Now I know you think contractors will do anything if the money's right, but things aren't always what they seem. On the trip from Felixstowe to Gothenburg the Tor Line has, or had, a policy which ensured that each of a ship's cabins was filled before moving on to the next, so that single men were packed into cabins berth by berth, whether the ship was full or not. This in direct contrast with the Sally line from Stockholm to Turku, where you got your own cabin, with the other berths empty, unless the ship was full.
Anyway on this occasion on the ferry to Sweden I find my berth which is one of those luxury ones below the car-deck and above the screws, and I am just observing that it is a two bunker, rather than the usual four, when in comes this rather muscular and somewhat over-convivial person who says, or should I say shouts - ''Hi! my name's Sven, great to meet you, nice cabin huh? Then he blasts off some unrecognisable snatch of scandinavian lyric while producing a large bottle from his bag which he shoves in his locker, followed by the unhopeful observation - ''Hey we got the wine, we got the song, - you just wait here while I go find us two smart chicks!!'' And over his shoulder as he goes out again. "I'm in the navy man, got to make the most of this leave.'' Nightmare! Sven disappears and I think what to do.. Yup - Run away! I spend the evening an the usual pursuits - eating unrecognisable multinational meals in the cafeteria, watching out-of-focus copies of Kramer v Kramer in the ''cinema'', and observing the imperceptible progress of the string of lights which marks the ship's passage across the North Sea on the chart outside the purser's office.

Eventually I can't put off the fateful moment any longer, but when I return to the cabin, no Sven! What luxury, and even when after a further half hour of reading in my bunk he doesn't appear, I assume he has found his ''smart chick", and I settle down to sleep. Some indeterminate time later it's CRASH and BASH and WHAM, and in stumbles Sven. I keep my eyes really really tight shut and hope and hope, but -
''Urgh! You 'wake man? Wow it's really boring up there, hey come on let's have a li'l drink. Hey you 'WAKE man? So I stick my nose out and tell him that jolly really whizzo idea though it is, and how though nothing could really normally please me more I really can't not just at this precise moment go off a gallivanting with him, and that maybe, just maybe the reason it's ''boring up there'' is because it's nearly three in the morning and perhaps, just maybe it's time he put his head down. So miracle of miracles, he lies on his bunk, and out go the lights. Some small time later I hear ''scratch scratch mutter mutter fumble fumbled. Now what the hell is going on? ''What are you doing Sven? ''Blurgh I got some drink in this locker man an I can't open the lock." So I open the locker for him, and he takes his bottle and staggers off. I go back to sleep.

''Excuse me sir". - What the smorgasbord is going on now? I open my eyes to find a very smart genuine Swedish sailor standing in the doorway. ''Sorry sir but your friend has hurt himself in the bar. ''I never saw the guy before tonight, sorry."
''OK don't worry sir, we'll look after him.''
Great, that's justice, Swedish sailors have to look after the Swedish sailor. Excellent. Except the looking after only amounts to bandaging his head so that he looks like a wartime casualty, blood stained red patch and all, and then carrying him down and putting him in his bed. Still, he appears to be concussed, so that'll be it for the night. - Some hopes.
''Wurgh what the?? Swedish muttering. Hey where's my bottle By now my patience has run out. It has run out so far that it is holidaying in the antipodes. In one fluid motion I rear up in my bunk, switch on the light and roar - ''Shut your *&*!@ mouth Sven. If you don't go to sleep right now I'm going to come over there and put you to sleep'' which shows some faith in the fitness inducing abilities of COBOL coding as opposed to the namby pamby weediness induced by a lifetime at Sea.

Poor Sven is appalled - he's obviously completely forgotten there's anyone else in the cabin, let alone a senior programmer doing an impression of the incredible hulk. In a flash he's out of his bunk and has disappeared through the door, head-bandage and all. At first I am pleased and relieved. ''Good riddance'' I think. Then some minutes later I hear a feeble moaning which rapidly rises to a full throated wail coming from the corridor. It's Sven of course. I know it's Sven, but to all the other harmless passengers behind their bolted cabin doors it must sound like a cross between a hound from hell and a rabid football hooligan.
So who is going to go and rescue him? I said who is going to go-, Yes OK, OK I know it's down to me, and out I go into the corridor where I find Sven crawling along on his hands and knees, trailing his bandage, and muttering to himself.
''You come with me Sven'' ''Where? ''In here, this is your cabin'' ''No it's not, no really it's not man... there's some HORRIBLE guy in there who SHOUTS at met'' Eventually I propel Sven onto his bunk, force his arms down by his sides and cunningly push the blanket under the mattress from both directions so that he is trapped by his own weight, wrapped like an Egyptian mummy.

And that's almost the last I ever see of Sven, because when I wake up in the morning neither he nor his bag is there. But some time later, passing the queue for the duty-free I spot him, jaunty in a fresh bandage, waiting to top up his alcohol supply, and he grins at me and says -

''Good trip eh man?"