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that’s settled during the night. The Christmas decorations are not yet switched on and the snow is coloured only by the lights of the few cars I meet and the lit foyers of those buildings in which early-morning workers have already started their day. The city looks like one of its sleeping homeless, huddled against the cold and layered in borrowed clothes. At the docks it seems impossible for the boat to take the number of trucks that are being loaded. One after another they disappear into the bowels of the cargo deck, the air frazzled and momentarily chivvied by their exhausts. A late driver comes scuttling towards his cab with a paper under his arm and a takeaway tea or coffee in the other, hauls himself inside and cracks the engine into noisy life, the folded paper flung against the windscreen. I realise that such journeys are part of a daily ritual of commerce I know nothing about and almost experience a sense of intrusion as I wait in the queue. As well as the cars and trucks there is a long line of foot passengers I presume are heading home via boat and train now that the airports have let them down. Going home to their families. I wonder how everyone is going to get on, whether my ticket actually guarantees me a place, or is it similar to the way airlines regularly overbook in the belief that a number of their prospective passengers aren’t likely to turn up. But before long I’m driving up the ramp, directed into a parking place, and when I get out there is a smell that is instantly recognisable – a mixture of diesel, brine-washed metal and some ingredient to which I can’t give a name. Many of the cars I sidle past still have snow on them and in some back seats are carrier bags with presents wrapped in Christmas paper. Following 11
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12-Feb-18 6:30:44 PM