I’m in a ferry terminal, waiting to leave Ireland.

I have around me a group of Intrepid Travelers.

I can’t understand them, but I think they’re some kind of kid sports team headed somewhere.

Also, they are Welsh.

Their mothers have clearly discovered fourteen hours ago that a perfect manicure and four-inch heels are, possibly, not the best choice for hauling a hyperactive eleven year old across Treacherous Seas.

One of them has, in his sticky little hands, what is possibly the greatest Annoyer of Traveling Writers ever invented. It looks like one of those fake steering wheel toys you used to find in Toys R Us in the eighties.

It is, in fact, a rapping machine.

I am not making this up.

When turned on, it produces a backbeat. Then, with a selection of futuristic little wheels and levers, the child genius can add in beeps and whoops, one of which, and apparently his favorite, sounds exactly like a slide whistle.

I’ve just discovered that what was to be an hour-long journey will, due to rough seas, take seven.

I’m surrounded by about thirty youngsters, their harassed mothers, and four or five shell-shocked fathers.

One of their children has a rapping slide whistle.

Seven.

Hours.