Characters

I woke up last night around 4am, possibly due to a gang of French sociopaths in the next cabin deciding, as they returned from one of the ship’s all-night discos, that despite shouting at each other for at least the last eight hours, there was still shouting to be done. Fortunately they only kept it up for a few minutes, before realising they could shout at each other from nicer cabins than the ones around mine, and decamped for them.

As I silently thanked God for banishing them from the Garden of Interior Cabins, I noticed that there was an irritating rawness in the back of my throat. I hope that’s just some random glitch, I thought, and not the start of a cold.

When some of the Gallic trash returned an hour and a half later, still noisy enough to wake me but somewhat quieter, either due to chastisement or, more likely, fatigue, the burr was still there and felt a little worse.

Since then, there’s definite indicators that a cold is setting in – slight sniffles, hot and cold flushes, sapped energy and occasional coughs. So… hooray. I suppose when you have 8000 people in a confined space, and approximately 9000 of them are obnoxious drooling French children who cough on their hands and then stick them on serving utensils in the Buffet, or, possibly, stick them directly into salads and trays of chips, cross-contamination is unavoidable.

As today is an At Sea day, I’m prioritising staying in my cabin and resting, drinking plenty of fluids (including copious amounts of citrus juice at breakfast), and keeping myself well-fed.

I also did two loads of ghetto laundry, and am quietly proud of the unobtrusive places I found to hang various socks and underpants around the cabin. Based on experience, they should all be dry by tomorrow.

In the meantime, I am listening to downloaded podcasts (as we’re in a mobile data deadzone here in the middle of the ocean) and typing up my observations from the last few days regarding...

The (Dreadful) People of the Cruise

A somewhat puffy 20-something Italian woman with a top knot, fake eyelashes and lips so pumped with collagen that she may die of protein poisoning, sitting in the front row of the theatre drunkenly but meticulously Tik-Toking herself and her two girlfriends waving and drinking unnaturally coloured margaritas while Latin dancers gyrate in front of them, and in the process slightly obscuring the view for the rest of the theatre behind them. You go, self-involvement queens! <backsnap>

An Italian boy in this early 20s with a wispy beard, too much gold jewelry and heavily branded Gabbana sneakers (no sign of Dolce, appropriately enough), watching some excited video on his phone, without headphones, on a crowded tour coach. The cadence of the video’s narration sounds to my ears like a hyped-up game show host, so it’s probably some trash(ier) Italian version of Mr Beast, or a particularly well-produced Twitch streamer.

The unidentified woman in the breakfast buffet who has doused herself in perfume before setting herself loose on an unsuspecting world. It is beyond pungent. I literally can’t imagine how she must have applied that much perfume, apart from upending the bottle over herself like a superannuated Jennifer Beale. The stench is so bad that I can’t actually work out who she is; it just lingers where she’s been, so that everything’s okay as you wander past the hot donut bay then BAM! the delicious smell of deep-fried carbs is overwhelmed by this unholy floral miasma.

The lumpy, elderly French yokel who’s about as sharp as custard, being asked for the fourth time for his card to pay for his drink, staring at the increasingly frustrated bartender with slack-jawed imbecility, as if the word “carte” was Swahili and not French.

A 60-something Frenchwoman with her three adult sons, in their 20s and 30s, in the Buffet. The boys are all morbidly obese and dressed in brightly coloured sneakers, vivid T-shirts and expansive jean shorts, like spectacularly unimpressive Biggie Smalls impersonators. When they speak they are loud and blustery, but they are silent now, as Mama is holding forth from a neighbouring table, simultaneously trying to yell at them about something and cram scrambled eggs into her mouth. As a result, half the egg that goes in comes straight out again, dribbling and spattering over the tabletop. She doesn’t care; she has opinions and she wants to express them, loudly, penetratingly, and messily.

Pirate Pete is consoling me with the traditional medicinal tonic of seafaring types: the Aperol Spritz.

There’s nowhere near enough ice in that. The sea is indeed a harsh mistress.