The ferry left Bari for Patras in Greece at 7. It was an odd object, its front shown a passenger ferry, its long back a lorry-carrier. Still it had the same plush, patterned carpets that ferries everywhere seem to have. It was fairly full of people from many parts of Europe. There was a large crew to look after us, all men, mostly dressed in smart blue waistcoats.
When I was young, I slept on deck on ferries. Now I had a cabin. Lots of other people slept on the carpet, or in the bar on benches. Three quarters of the people had gone.
They must have got off at Igoumenitsa in northern Greece, where the ship was timetabled to stop at half five in the morning. On we went. The land here is 3D. The water is blue. We passed between the mainland and the islands like a dream. At about we came into Patras port. I watched the port staff dockers? Thin ropes are thrown, caught and used to tug in thick ones. This done, the staff zipped off across the concrete dock on the mopeds they had come in on.
At Bari we foot passengers had to follow a route that was simultaneously obligatory and hardly visible. At Patras we wandered across the concrete among the mopeds and the lorries, and the cars. When I came this way in I got the train from Athens to Patras. Now that train service is a sad thing. The driver of the taxi I caught from the port to the railway station kept asking me if I wanted him to take me to Kiato, to Athens.
It was like cookies or subscriptions on a website β I had to keep saying no, if I had said yes once that would have been it.
