After a long day hitch-hiking from Leeds down to Dover I was standing at the roadside by the entrance to the ferry-terminal, I had to either get a lift at this point or I would have to pay to get across the channel. It was around nine in the evening, the Spanish trucks with their own unique smell of Spanish diesel were not stopping , the British trucks were not stopping, the French trucks were not stopping, in fact nobody was stopping. Motorists just sneered.
Just across the way there was a constable carrying out the enormously responsible task of waving at the departing travellers, their last sight of old England would be that of the Friendly British Bobby, a memory to cherish during the insecurity of BEING ABROAD. Well, friendly soul that he was, he came over to me.
"You can't hitch-hike from here." he said. What to do? I thought quickly, years of practice really showing its benefit now, if I didn't get a lift from here, then I was certainly not going to get one from anywhere else. I said nothing but gave him a blank look and then a big beaming smile.
"You can't hitch-hike from here." he said firmly, just in case I had misunderstood his meaning. I smiled even wider and nodded at him, I mean, what else could I do? At this point his special training came into its own as he remembered how to communicate with foreigners or the aurally challenged.
"YOU . . CAN . . NOT . . HITCH . . HIKE . . FROM . . HERE." he boomed in a surge of realisation that he had come up with the obvious solution to the dilemma. I beamed at him again, nodded enthusiastically and waved my thumb in an exaggerated mime of trying to thumb a lift. He shook his head sadly, turned on his heel and went back to waving the lorries off on their mysterious journeys to the other corners of the world.
I didn't manage to hitch a lift, in the end I had to give up and go buy a ticket for the ferry . . . he'd been right all along!