*pop*
Don't think so, but I thought I had...

A year or so ago I had the (mis?)fortune to be playing a gig with a band on the Isle of Arran. For those who haven't been, it's chuffing miles away, the other end of a several hour drive and a ferry ride. It's beautiful though, and feels a bit funny in an earth magic kind of way. You feel like you need to watch out for the druids everywhere. Very quiet, cold, one road on the whole island. Brilliant.

Anyway, we arrived, went on a tour of the island, rigged, did the gig, packed the van and off to the ferry (via bed). Heading back on the ferry we feel it start to turn round mid-journey. Because a ferry is huge we're not quite sure if it is turning round - also, we're all very tired and, by now, running on caffeine only. But then we get an announcement; "This is your captain, we have been asked to turn round to make a possible rescue in connection with a boat which went missing last night", or words to that effect. So of course we all head up onto the deck and stand on the rail looking for whatever it is.

Pretty soon the ferry slows down and we realise that the crew have probably seen something. At this point I get my camera out, thinking that if there's an upturned boat/survivor/dead body around, I might as well grab a picture. Since I have a zoom lens, I use it to have a look around with, but someone beats me to it and excited pointing starts, so I point my camera and take a look.

As I catch sight of whatever it is, a woman speaks up from behind us - "oh no, it's a child," she says, and I see that it does indeed appear to be a child in an all-in-one suit, floating face down and presumably very wet, cold and dead. When I saw it, the seriousness of it all hit me and I felt like the lowest of the low for having a camera out. Two thoughts... 1) somewhere there was a family who would shortly be going through hell, and 2) it just didn't seem fair that we were all going to know the fate of their child before they were. I know it sounds cliched, but at that moment, it wasn't. Looking around I could see from the faces of fellow passengers that everyone was feeling the same way - we had all been excited about seeing something, and now the thought that the "something" was someone's dead child left us feeling pretty poor.

Thankfully as the ferry drew near we saw that the suit didn't have anyone in it, though I've no idea what an empty romper suit was doing there - especially as people had apparently gone missing the night before.

My feelings were heightened by the bass player commenting "at least someone's got less Christmas presents to buy this year"... a minute or so *before* we realised that it wasn't a body after all. I managed to restrain myself from throwing him overboard though, insensitive git.

*pop* refers to my b3ta cherry, woo. Er... the girth of our Transit van didn't even touch the sides of the ferry. etc etc
(Ed Quarters has moved house!, Tue 4 Mar 2008, 14:49, 3 replies)

Arran
Yup, I've played gigs there too. It's a hellish place to be if you're in a hurry as the roads are in such poor condition that anything over 40mph makes your teeth rattle.

I was in a hurry once and travelled at considerably more than 40mph from Brodick to Lochranza.

Fortunately didn't see any dead bodies, although I felt a bit like one when we got there.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Tue 4 Mar 2008, 15:43, closed)

Actually
I've realised there are two roads. One round the outside and one small one across the middle.
(Ed Quarters has moved house!, Tue 4 Mar 2008, 16:10, closed)

.
The dead body you almost thought you saw was your bass player, right?
(Grey_Ghost has yet to decide on a sig on, Wed 5 Mar 2008, 13:45, closed)