Carry on cruising....or not

What a rum do this is in Italy, with their attempt to celebrate the centenary of the Titanic disaster going horribly wrong (or right, depending how you look at it.) It seems the captain steered too close to land in order to wave at a mate of his or he was getting drunk in the bar with some floosy or other...or both.  Clearly, another case of "what a mistake-a to make-a!" (see previous post). The loss of life is a terrible thing but on the other hand, it's amazing that there was so little, given they had to get over 4,000 people off the boat in scenes of chaos, having yet to hold the the evacuation practice. But if you wanted proof that cruising remains the safest way to travel, look no further than the fact that when asked to name a previous cruise disaster, most of us would have to go back to that business with an iceberg in 1912.

Which is handy as Mr and Mrs Marshside recently ended their status as cruise virgins, with a trip round the Canary Islands and Morocco. Have you been on a cruise? I expect so - nearly everyone has but I detect  a few of you who are still "cruise curious" and are desperate to hear my recommendation.

Well I'm glad you asked. Now let me ask you some questions: are you some distance from the first flush of youth? Do you enjoy outings with other similarly aged folk? Do you come from somewhere like Runcorn or Wolverhampton or best of all, Scotland? Are you a member of what some still call the working classes but like to dress up in dinner suits, just like (you imagine) the toffs do? Ladies: do you favour the mutton dressed as lamb style when it comes to couture? And do you have a tattoo (or two)? If you can answer yes to some or all of these questions then cruising is for you. Even better if you have something to celebrate, then you and your friends can wander round the ship with your "Shazza's 60th birthday piss-up" t-shirts, or similar, proudly on display before dressing for dinner in some clingy bit of polyester which fails miserably to hide the fat but succeeds superbly in showing off the new tattoo and/or piercing.

Those who are in the seven stone weakling category should also get along to their cruising travel agent pronto for this is the place to pile on the pounds. Truly, I have never seen so much food. It is constantly available, from a cooked breakfast (even kippers, for which actually I award bonus points) through lunch, afternoon tea, dinner and then, just in case you're getting peckish around midnight, hot dogs and burgers. (Do you get chips with that? Are you kidding?) You have to eat it all as you've paid for it. If you don't want it then why did you come? This is what your brain tells you, while your stomach yells for mercy.

Then there's the cabins. They are just big enough...that is just big enough to sleep in, not to do anything else in at all. The bathrooms are an ergonomic miracle: you can do your business on the lav, have a shower and clean your teeth simultaneously! Fantastic - a boon for the time-pressed cruiser in a hurry to make the most of that all-inclusive bar deal (which we didn't go for, by the way.)

Sounds less than irresistible? Well I am being a bit harsh. The entertainment, which you might expect to be rather tacky end of the pier stuff was simply fantastic - singing and dancing of the highest quality this side of the West End. Ditto the "lounge entertainment" of game shows and the like. Your blogger was collared for one such ("From hero to zero") and won! (A bottle of plonk and a sort of shopping bag thing emblazoned with the name of the cruise line, since you ask.) And, being from the higher echelons of society, there is nothing I like less than wearing a stuffed shirt and dickie bow so the fact that dressing up was optional was a bonus for me. Plus, in the spirit of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em", we made a bee line for the bingo most days. Then there was the library, complete with jigsaw puzzles. Doesn't sound like the height of holiday excitement does it but it kept Mrs Marshside happy for an hour or two.

The best thing about cruising is the time you spend off the ship. We went camel riding and did a lot of walking around the various ports we tied up at. But check the itinerary: after our jaunt, our boat was setting sail from Tenerife to the Caribbean, which means 6 days at sea. If you suffer even the tiniest bit from claustrophobia, you will be seriously thinking about taking a plunge into the Atlantic before you arrive in Trinidad or wherever.

So don't worry about the recent Italian prang - if you want an excuse to give cruising a miss, there's plenty better than the small chance of the captain having his map upside down. Bon voyage!