The Supermarket Dash

We are back at sea and I am, for the first time since Savannah, a man with a stash.

The Rotterdam shore leave lasted eighteen hours. I had planned it for a week. I had a route, a time budget, a fallback tram, and a list broken into priority tiers. Tier one was tea. Tier two was chocolate, biscuits, and anything salted. Tier three was aspirational and included a pillow I did not, in the end, buy.

The dash itself took forty one minutes. I entered a supermarket near the terminal gate with a basket in one hand and my phone in the other, moved through the aisles in the order I had memorised, and left with a haul that I believe would have made a passable second act in a Mission Impossible film. There was no music. There was no rope. There was, briefly, a moment of genuine tension at the self checkout when the machine took an unexplained interest in the weight of my basket.

Marco helped me carry it up the gangway without comment, which I appreciated. Elena inspected the tea, held one box up to the light, and said, "acceptable." From her this is a knighthood.

The stash now lives in the bottom drawer of the cabin desk, under a jumper, arranged by category. I have told nobody the full inventory. I have told Priya part of it, which was probably a mistake.

Rotterdam itself I saw mostly as cranes, gates and a supermarket. It smelled of diesel and rain. Standing on ground that did not move was strange for about ninety seconds and then felt entirely normal, which was the disappointing part.

We cast off on the tide. The Channel is grey and busy and full of ships going somewhere with more purpose than me.