Cruisin' - Part 3: Piped Aboard?

Continuing the story from Cruisin' Part 2 - Buffet the Waistline Slayer (I know, I know, I'm sorry)

Still on the subject of my recent cruise, there is just one more incident I should share with you that clearly demonstrates how preconceptions can colour your judgement.

When we first booked the cruise, we were a little miffed to be told that the offer price only allowed us to determine the minimum standard of the cabin, not the location.  Therefore, when the details of our booking finally arrived, we hurried to the deck plan to see where our fortnight would be spent.  We were somewhat surprised to find were on Deck 2.  To put this into perspective, if we had been one floor lower we would have been sharing the staff quarters.  In an effort to look on the bright side, I reasoned that the lower you were on the ship, the less movement you would experience in rough seas.  I accept that I can be quite irritating when I have these ‘Rebecca from Sunnybrook Farm’ moments.  My wife viewed the idea with deep suspicion and was convinced that a good storm would have us consorting with the marine life rather than enjoying a view of the Mediterranean.

In addition to our trepidation re the cabin, we were also less than confident about the dining arrangements.  We had clearly requested, right from the start, a table for two at the second sitting.  This was based on the fact that I am deeply anti-social and prefer to share my dining experience with as few people as possible.  In a perfect world, nobody would be there at all, including me.  When we checked our booking we discovered that we had been allocated the first sitting and, despite lengthy email correspondence between ourselves and the travel agent in which we were assured that the mistake had been corrected, the fact that the cruise line’s website showed otherwise gave us little confidence.  All of this background is important if you are to fully understand what follows.

Came the day, and we checked in at Southampton.  Sure enough, we discovered that our restaurant booking was for the first sitting and, apparently, nothing could be done about this until we boarded the ship and threw ourselves on the mercy of the Maitre D’.  Not a good start.  Then, arriving at our cabin, we opened the door only to be met with the sight below through our porthole.

You will understand that this immediately confirmed our worst suspicions about being located so far down in the ship’s pecking order.  Clearly, we had been assigned to the bilges.  Armed now with not one, but two legitimate complaints, we stomped up two floors and joined an orderly queue of aggrieved passengers at the Customer Relations desk.  A very helpful young man (they all are to me these days, young that is) listened sympathetically to our tale of woe but explained that we would need to speak to the Dining Room staff about our meal arrangements and also told us that the cruise was fully booked, so there was no opportunity to change our cabin to something less submarine.  He passed us on to another of his colleagues, who repeated the same information but made the observation, in a confident French accent, that “as there is so much to do on the ship, you will spend very little time in your cabin” which I thought rather made a nonsense of paying a supplement for an Outside Cabin.  However, I did notice that both of the crew members seemed somewhat perplexed by our description of the pipework visible from our cabin window.  Having placed us on a lengthy list of fellow deluded optimists who hoped to change cabins should some awful disaster occur that precluded the rest of the passengers from turning up, we set out to beard the Dining Room staff in their den.

Another lengthy queue greeted us at the Dining Room.  However, as the cruise line obviously had considerable experience of this situation, they had stationed on of their staff at one side of the queue to chat to the supplicants and see if any of their problems could be addressed without the need for the Maitre D’ and her complex computer screen.  To this end, he was calling people out from the queue in turn.  When our turn came, my wife went to talk to him, but two men behind us beat us to it and were already heading over.  As any Briton will know, jumping a queue is a heinous offence, up there in the lexicon of crimes with coughing in someone’s face and belching in front of the Queen (I don’t mean because it's her turn, you understand).  I’m sure that if capital punishment was ever brought back and the range of crimes that would attract such punishment were to be voted on by the general public (and wouldn’t the tabloids have a field day with that?), queue-jumping would be up there in the Top 10.  Anyway, my wife, who does not take such things lightly, and whose patience had already been stretched to the limit, announced loudly “Have I just become Scotch Mist?” at which the offending parties guiltily returned to their former places in the queue, but not without informing us that they had fought in WW2, and one had been injured in Korea.  I must admit that it was a surprise to learn that the previous unpleasantnesses, involving the Third Reich and the Red Menace, were primarily to allow us the freedom to jump queues.

As you may imagine, the devil-may-care holiday spirit was certainly not in evidence by the time we had compromised on a shared table in the second sitting, and we headed gloomily back to our pipe-festooned berth.  Opening the cabin door, we were astonished to find a clear view of Southampton harbour and the sight of a boat, adorned with pipe-work and evidently some sort of supply vessel, heading away from the ship.

We both collapsed laughing, realising that common sense should have told us that we could not possibly be looking out at the assortment of pipes that had greeted us.  We also appreciated, looking down at the sea below us, that the waves would have to reach tsunami proportions before our view became submarine in nature.  Apart from having to share a table for dinner, God was in his Heaven and all was right with the World – well, at least our little bit of it.

You can find a version of this story in the new compilation A Kick at the Pantry Door and more stories from The Slightly Odd World of Phil Whiteland in e-book format - Steady Past Your Granny's  and Crutches for Ducks

Cruisin' - Part 1

 At the time of writing, I am on a cruise.  By the time that you read this, however, I will be back at home, sulking fit to bust.  You may say, with some truth, that this hardly makes for a contemporary account and I would have to agree.  However, I do take the view that advertising my absence from home via the internet would, perhaps, be a little unwise and a boon to the criminal fraternity.

This is my fourth cruise to date.  The notion of cruising seems to divide people quite markedly.  There are those who would happily spend the rest of their lives on a cruise ship (and, indeed, if you have the necessary funds you can now do so) and there are those who regard cruising as a sort of perversion.  I once mentioned, in an unguarded moment, that I quite liked cruising to a client of mine and he treated me as if I had gone over to the dark side.  Cruising used to be the preserve of the idle rich, now it’s more the preserve of the idle retired, although there is quite a range of ages present these days.

The principal focus of cruising is food.  Lots of it.  The single-minded devotion to this cause came as quite a shock to me on my first cruise.  I like a bite to eat with the next man, but I felt positively anorexic in comparison with my fellow travellers.  On a cruise, you can eat 24 hours a day, and many regard this not so much as an opportunity, as a challenge.  The other day, I heard a passenger recount how, when her husband refused to get up at 4.00 am to get her a slice of pizza, she ate everything in the mini-bar as an act of revenge.

 

Gordon Gecko’s observation that “Greed is Good”, could usefully be adopted as a motto by a cruise line.  Unfortunately, this tendency toward self-indulgence can manifest itself in other ways that can be less than socially desirable, always assuming that you believe that eating enough to keep a small impoverished nation going for a month or so is socially acceptable in the first place. 

An army of very polite and attentive people, of all nationalities, are permanently on hand to attend to your every whim.  The outcome of this is a ship-load of people who have become used to being treated as adored children by over-indulgent parents, and who therefore react petulantly when their wishes are thwarted in any way.  This can be a rather unattractive trait.  Moreover, being waited on hand and foot by people who have a tendency to call you “Mister Philip” (in my case) can bring on a touch of the ‘Old Colonials’, particularly in those who suspect that this should always have been the natural order of things.

Please don’t misunderstand me, I quite accept that not all cruise passengers are like this (before the complaining comments start arriving thick and fast).  I have, on my travels, met many charming, interesting people and have been happy to share a drink or a meal with them.  Unfortunately, I have also had more than my share of the other sort, including one pernicious old git, on my first cruise, who delighted in reducing the waiting staff to tears.  He was accompanied by an equally rude young lady who was his paid travelling companion (presumably because no-one else in their right mind would willingly have spent time in the same hemisphere as him, let alone the same ship).  One evening even she had clearly had enough of him and gave him a higher dose than normal of his tranquilisers so that she could go out dancing whilst he slumbered.  Regrettably, the dose was not sufficient to do humanity a great favour and he was back at his arrogant best the following day.

In addition to those who find getting into a lift, side by side, something of a challenge, there are those who are sleek and purposeful.  Not the fitness fanatics (although anyone prepared to climb two flights of stairs could reasonably be described as a fitness fanatic in this company) but the smokers.  On either side of one open deck, a game band of sad-eyed individuals brave the prevailing wind and flecks of foam to consume their duty-free nicotine.  I’ve come to think of this area as ‘Death’s Waiting Room’.

In some ways, I have a certain admiration for this group.  You really do need to be made of sterling stuff to be a smoker these days.  No more the cushioned comfort of the ‘smoking room’ with brandy and fine cigars.  Today, you’re lucky to have a half-constructed shed in which to enjoy your roll-up.  In answer to those who say “well, if the conditions are that bad, why do they do it?”, I can only say, as an ex-smoker with a long history of tobacco-related products behind me, because they enjoy it.  This is something that the anti-smoking brigade refuses to acknowledge, often seeing smokers as obdurate fools bent on self-destruction, which may well be partially true.  Nevertheless, I can honestly say that I enjoyed most, if not all, of the thousands upon thousands of cigarettes I consumed and the habit is, of course, tremendously addictive.

I can, however, clearly remember one cigarette that I did not enjoy.  Way back in the early 1970s, when Spanish tourism was just beginning to flower and General Franco was still in charge, it was theoretically impossible to buy tobacco products from anywhere other than a state-licensed tobacconist.  In reality, there was a thriving black market in UK and US cigarettes and most bars could provide you with a limited range from underneath the counter.  However, if the police had been showing an interest, or if the bar-tender just didn’t like the look of you, then this source could dry up and, with the duty-frees long since consigned to the ashtray, you were forced to the State Tobacconist.  I seem to remember that these kept very restricted opening hours and imported cigarettes were quite expensive.  However, the native Spanish brands could be had for a song (presumably in an effort to protect Spanish businesses).  I had bought a couple of packets of these domestic brands as a sort of emergency buffer if all else failed.  Sure enough, the morning came when the Benson & Hedges had run out and the only thing available to provide that first rush of nicotine was the Spanish brand.  I ripped open the packet and placed the odd-smelling tube in my mouth.  Not ideal, but beggars can’t be choosers, I thought.  I lit up and took the deep drag of the truly addicted.

I honestly thought that my chest was going to implode.  My lungs seemed to go into shock and my chest walls tried to gang up with my spine to make a break for it via my throat.  I clutched at my chest and had to sit down.  I began to wonder if I would ever breathe again and, for a while, that did not look like a safe bet.  Eventually, the evil effects of Franco’s Revenge subsided and I was able to crawl out on the balcony and whimper a little.  Of course, anyone other than a dyed in the wool smoker, such as myself, would have stubbed the offending article out and thrown the rest of the packet into the nearest waste bin.  I, on the other hand, regarded this as a minor setback and a major challenge.  The Spanish Gaspers came back with me to the UK as a sort of bulwark against ever being fag-less and, in due course, were consumed on those occasions when there was more week than wage.  So you see, if you’re prepared to tolerate that sort of discomfort in order to satisfy your addiction, a little hypothermia is nothing.

There's more about the cruise and cruising at Cruisin' Part 2 - Buffet, The Waistline Splayer

The first collection of stories - "Steady Past Your Granny's" is now available in Kindle e-book format at all Amazon sites, and you can find a version of this post in the new collection, 'A Kick at the Pantry Door' also available on all Amazon sites.