Cast adrift

Why are the wealthy spending their twilight years cruising?

Taking a cruise is, as the old saying goes, the pursuit of the “newly wed, the overfed and the nearly dead”. It seems also to be growing in popularity, so much so that we report today on one American enthusiast who has spent eight years on a cruise ship. Apparently she finds time to do plenty of needlepoint, which is just as well, as even the best appointed of these floating towns have a finite amount of entertainment available. How many performances of Fogwell Flax’s comedy routine, renditions of Grease, or Rob “this is the life” Brydon throwing shapes on the dance floor can one flesh-and-blood cruiser take?

Maybe more entertaining were the reminiscences of the military veteran who spent the last six years of his days aboard MS The World cruise ship, a span uncannily close to the duration of the Second World War he was talking about. But without the U-boats. Now the largest cruise ship ever, MS Harmony of the Seas, has embarked on its first sea trial off the coast of France. This whale of entertainment measures about 1,200ft long, has room for 5,479 guests and enough food and drink to sink a, well, cruise ship. It will also boast three multistorey waterslides, robot bartenders and a “handcrafted” carousel.

Yet all this strangeness comes at a price: about £700 per week per person, meaning an eight-year “get away from it all” break will set you back about £300,000 – rather more than the price of an average home in most of Britain. It confirms what many will suspect: that the prosperous classes have never had it so good, and can afford to spend vast sums of money doing not very much at all. And that many of us are really very easily pleased.