That was only Dover

“Ten minutes” He said.

“Aye that’ll be shining bright?” I questioned to myself as I headed towards the ‘SF Rodin’ and the definitive start of the journey to the centre of Celtic consciousness or possibly my own unconsciousness.

I hated being right. Especially as it meant pain for me and to be fair he had only missed out three wee words. So really it was a sin of inadvertent omission rather than one of deliberation!

Unfortunatey the three words were erse, feckin, and my! As in……..

“Feckin ten minutes, my erse”!

“Ten minutes maybe, for a normally constructed man with the requisite specification of limbs and joints, but not for me – the human tortoise/snail – depending upon your phobias or tastes”

It had always been obvious just why those overburdened creatures of Gods mischievous sense of humour were so slow, but obvious in the same way that daylight comes from the sun is obvious. But the sheer undertaking and understanding of how the universe functions in the way it does only becomes really important when you become personally involved in making sure that the light just keeps on coming, plants grow, snow melts and Jimmy Calderwood gets a tan!

For the moment I’ll leave that to God, as I was having enough trouble attempting to walk along Marine Parade in Dover with all my possessions and accoutrements loaded and packed within the bulging, straining straps and flaps of my heroic backpack.

Snails and tortoises now have my unbound admiration.

Thirty minutes later and I suavely and coolly entered the travel centre via the auto-start/stop revolving doors and fifteen seconds later, having ignored the signs that said ‘keep walking’, I left the same travel centre this time on my back, propelled by the unstoppable sweep of the same auto-start and slightly less efficient auto-stop revolving door.

Profusely tendered apologies that ‘the automatic safety stop was intermittently inoperative”, stemmed neither my embarrassment nor the unstifled guffaws of the waiting, watching passengers. The suavanometer and coolguage plumbed the bottom of their scales and I only hoped that the sniggering mockers of my affliction weren’t travelling on the same ferry as me!

Mind you after my one day and evening in this final stepping stone to Europe and all its potential, I should have learned how to deal with adversity and embarrassment.

I had met the master; his name is Flynn; he comes from Mayo; and he owns the Priory Hotel!

I’m saving the whole story up for later, but believe me if you ever have the fortune to find yourself at Dover Priory railway station. Then under NO CIRCUMSTANCES miss the opportunity of Dover’s answer to ‘From Dusk to Dawn’, looming like some praying mantis, scooping its victims into its voracious mandibles.

I had arrived at the station on March 12th three hours late and had decided to stay overnight in Dover rather than rush to get the last ferry!On reflection I am glad I did this, but at the time I was well and truly tired, hungry, pished off, and a wee bit of the opinion that Britain not only conspires to prevent people from entering the country (unless they are free of all curry stains, have made their money by pillaging the poor, or are indictable on charges of causing crimes against humanity), but also pulls strings and levers, derails trains, causes road crashes and generally does everything possible to prevent anyone leaving the country (unless the have never eaten an onion bhaji, believe in equality of opportunity and contribute to Amnesty International - in which cases they will provide first class accompanied air travel, possibly a big whack of cash, and maybe even a change of identity if necessary to speed the unwanted on their way. The even have invented a new term for this largesse – Extraordinary Rendition).

Anyway I had slipped through the net of the normally impeccably efficient security service’s beady eyes and had been delayed at every possible opportunity finally arriving dishevelled and dyspeptic in Dover (now that beats 'Down and out in Beverly Hills’).

It’s a strange but welcoming wee town which probably feels the pull of Europe more than most since its whole economy and existence is now based upon the ferry system that keeps its arterial sustenance pumping through its vital organs – the Bureau de Change and the B&Bs.

It’s said that during the second world war, German Generals with binoculars or very good eyesight used to point their beady eyes at the lookouts on the tops of the white cliffs where the Home Guard were correspondingly ‘watching them, watching us, watching them’.

Personally having stood both at the top and bottom of those same white cliffs, I tend to think that the Krauts (vernacular of the time applied only to those who gave the orders) were thinking “I vunder vot ze idiots are doing at ze top of zose hills. Vy vood anyvun vish to try and invade zer unless zey were totally mad. Zey must be planning zumzing else, zo keep your eyes on zem”! (apologies to allo allo!)

Anyway, having arrived and exited from the station I looked around and, my back pack feeling like another body stowed on my shoulders, was totally underwhelmed to see that the handily placed St Albans hotel – “ideally placed for the weary rail traveller” - was exactly where it was designed to be…..right at the top of about 50 steeply rising steps. It wouldn’t have been that much worse if it had actually been in St Albans!

However, I state this without a word of a lie.

This wee diamond of a hotel is well worth the climb, oxygen and muscle spasms.

It is run by Theodora, a young lady who I would imagine is in her early thirties with a smile that could bring world peace and eyes that could put the stopper back on Pandora’s box.

Her poached eggs and tomatoes are to be savoured as well.

Great wee hotel, great welcome, and at thirty five quid for the night all in, it was ‘jist magic’.

As I looked out the cleanest room I have ever been in, back down to the station, the Priory Hotel lay pulsating in its rough hewn, come -and-get-me, hard-to-get promising sort of way! Somehow I knew that behind those dust ingrained curtains and peeling paint lay an experience with an edge. I would have to visit this obvious monument to the misanthropes of the world.

So about three hours later having separated body from belongings, eaten in a Chinese buffet (eat as much as you can for ten quid) called Chapter Eight (and brilliant that was too) I retraced my steps to the railway precincts and entered Dover’s answer to the OK Corral. He spotted my hooped shirt and in an instant had wripped a St Patrick's day tricolour from the bar and swathed it roundmy shoulders.

Flynn’s from Mayo, but as well as running 13 pubs in twenty six years has also spent ten years in the clink and owns a stud in Tipperary. His brother won £17,000 quid at Cheltenham that morning, but he had only won a grand. He hated running pubs and while he put up with ‘customers’ they were really only a necessary evil. He was going to place all he had spare on two horses tomorrow (Barber shop and Exotic Dancer)! Anyway he had sold up now and was heading back to Ireland, Dublin this time, where he had three pubs already. Those were turning over £250,000 a week and anyway money wasn’t everything.

I learned all of the above from Jo, the head barmaid – in fact the only barmaid.

From the moment me and Flynn had struck up our rather one sided conversation, I had listened intently but the deep deep Mayo accent and the habit of making a sentence into one word left me breathless and unenlightened.

If it hadn’t been for the raven haired Jo’s translation, I would be telling you about the town’s version of neds and chavs.

Anyway I never paid for a pint; after all I was wearing a Celtic shirt (and a fine ‘6 pints of Guinness’ it was Flynn) – and Flynn’s Cousin had played for Celtic and a fine full back he was too. (I won’t name him for the moment since the fellow lives in the Gorbals and some of the stuff needs confirmation)!

At this stage of the evening Flynn was taunting some ‘Marines’ with the heroic history of rebellion in Ireland, and they were all laughing in the way that people laugh when they want to dismember you and your mother! After all it was she who was miserably at fault for giving breath to you!

And there was I standing in the middle with a tricolour wrapped round my shoulders and Flynn having a great time.

Even God decided that that wasn’t funny!

I don't know if anyone's wish that the ground would open up and swallow them whole has ever come true, but while not specifically requesting divine intervention, fortune of fortunes, a drip of (possibly holy) water hit the floor and within a second the ceiling caved in as about twenty gallons of the self-same-stuff crashed into and around the (swimming) pool table.

What happened next?

Ah that’s being saved for Sunday best but believe this; Flynn is larger than any character I have ever met.

And let's be honest that was only Dover!

More to come but the ferry is about to dock and Calais here we are!

Gloire Gloire, Les Celts sont ici!

Matt