Picture this... a new and exciting world
THERE are few things in life more annoying than that friend who goes on a big holiday and starts posting pictures of it on social media while you are stuck at home.
You know the kind of pictures – bottles of beer balanced on fine talcum powder sands with palm trees waving and azure seas gently lapping the shore in the background. Those ‘wish you were here’ pictures that make you chew the furniture with rage as you slave away at your daily toil while your so-called ‘friend’ is living it up.
Don’t be that so-called friend, I said to myself, as I lined up the perfect shot of my bottle of Carib lager, pressed artfully into the soft sand, a slice of lime wedged into its neck, just waiting to slake my thirst in 30-plus degrees of temperature.
In the background a pelican skimmed the surface of the perfect blue water as an elegant white schooner made its stately way out to sea.
This really happened. There is no need to embellish the picture when it’s that perfect already.
Don’t do this, I said. Everyone at home will hate you. It’s Monday morning and they’re just logging into their computers to check a weekend’s worth of bothersome emails as the rain lashes their windows. You’re on the tropical island paradise of Tortola in the British Virgin Islands and for the time being you don’t give two hoots for the daily grind.
Don’t be that so-called friend.
But of course I did it. I couldn’t help myself. I posted the picture online and it looked pretty fine. I’m sorry if you had to see it on a bad Monday morning.
We cruised the Caribbean last week, me and Mrs H with DIY Dave and Nanna. None of us had ever been on a cruise before, nor to that part of the world. It was all very new and exciting.
And none of us was sure that cruising would be our thing. Could we spend a week ‘cooped up’ on a ship, seeing the same people around the same corners at the same times each day?
Wouldn’t it just be like swapping one routine for another, albeit with some breathtaking scenery passing by outside the vast windows of the ship’s huge public areas?
Actually no, it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience and our first taste of cruising probably won’t be our last.
It does have its risks, though, not least the fact that all of your clothes will have shrunk mysteriously by the time you return home. former
In fact, I am now so large that I am beginning to generate my own gravity. Small objects are being drawn into spinning orbits around me, so much has my size increased.
I ran several times during the cruise, using the red running track that looped around the upper deck. Four laps make a mile, so I ticked a few off here and there, occasionally having to dodge around the sunbeds and now and then stumbling slightly as the ship crested a wave.
But none of the well-meaning exercise could cope with the sheer quantity of fabulous food and drink on offer – all catered for in the price we paid for the cruise back in the depths of the wet winter when sunshine seemed so far away.
It is theoretically possible to eat and drink for 22 hours of the day in various bars and restaurants on board – all 24 if you pay to have things brought to your cabin. We did not put this to the test.
Now I either need to buy a whole new wardrobe of clothes, or buckle down and shed some of this newlyacquired Caribbean bulk. It is not going to be easy.
Cruising does have its risks, though, not least the fact that all of your clothes will have shrunk mysteriously by the time you return home