Bubble rapt

On a five-star Mediterranean cruise, Charles Anderson finds a way of life where the conventions and norms of everyday life simply cease to exist.

IN EVERY direction, out across the Mediterranean, there was only flat, blue ocean oblivion and the opening bars of a show tune plucked from the electrified strings of a Fender guitar.

Out the back of the Celebrity Silhouette, a cruise ship catering for some 3000 bodies, a woman in a floral dress and a margarita in hand swayed on her feet. She hauled herself off the bannister of the Sunset Bar and hollered out to the guitarist: ‘‘Can you play Edelweiss?’’

The guitarist was named Simon and, I would learn later, had played the cruise ship circuit for more than a decade. He could also play pretty much everything that had ever been hollered at him. He looked up from his instrument and smiled. ‘‘Sure,’’ he said. ‘‘I can play that.’’

The woman leaned back and began to softly sing along. Then, half way into the first verse, she righted herself and stood alongside him. Simon’s eyebrows rose along with the woman’s decibel level. High pitched words emanated from her mouth like the din of a long-forgotten EP scratched out from a record player’s rusted needle.

Simon’s grin weakened. He shrugged and, whether out of pity or respect, heading into the final chorus, he handed her the microphone.

‘‘Oh, but I don’t know the words,’’ she said.

But still she took the mike and

THE SILHOUETTE is a bubble – a floating five-star, hermetically sealed bubble where the outside world ceases to exist and social conventions dissolve. It is where there is so little to complain about – free food, cheap booze, swimming, tanning, icecreams and tango lessons – that people need to work hard to grumble. So they tend to complain about waiting in line for hamburgers or about not getting enough raffle tickets or about the air-conditioning being too high or the air-conditioning being too low.

In the bubble you can even summon the semi-intoxicated courage to sing a song from the Sound of Music, receive less than rapturous applause and still saunter off proud of your efforts.

In late September, when I arrived on the ship, the bubble appeared like some sort of lavish and wonderfully decorated rest home. It had an art collection, 12 closed her eyes. Then her body began to bob and swoop with each emphasised syllable – ‘‘Eidel WEISS, Eidel WEISS’’. Then, within 30 seconds, the song was finished.

‘‘Give her a big hand,’’ Simon said.

The woman was almost startled. She opened her eyes and emerged from her trance. She curtsied to the sound of two people clapping and swayed back across the ship’s decking, margarita in hand. restaurants, real grass on the uppermost deck, unlimited soft serve icecream, two swimming pools, a twice daily game of poker and a seemingly perpetual game of bridge taking place on deck 7. The cabins were generously sized with a bed so intoxicatingly comfortable that you barely noticed when your breakfast – complete with fresh coffee, fresh orange juice and French toast – arrived at 9am. It was, most certainly, a type of bliss. And one that was easy to buy into. Everywhere and always, in nooks and padded crannies, you could find delirious and disoriented bodies lounging with their mouths agape.

In the days to come those bodies would ebb and flow with the itinerary of the day. Sometimes the ship would port in exotic locales and the loungers around the pool would seem sparse. The ship would almost be peaceful. Almost lonely. Other times, however, we were entirely at sea – nothing but the horizon, ebooks, paper umbrellas and rum-based cocktails. There were wine tastings, quiz sessions and history lectures. There were whiskey tastings, game shows and musical performances. Whatever your conception of holiday was, you could not argue with the simplicity of life aboard a 300-metre ship that fed, entertained and cleaned up after you. Whatever activity the passengers decided to undertake, they were paying scant attention to the days and hours that melted and blended into each other with the ticking regularity of a dawdling metronome.

‘‘On the June cruise it was a different vibe,’’ said a waitress from Arkansas who had been on the ship for several months. ‘‘It was a lot more of a party. There were a lot more Brits.’’

‘‘Most people come on this tour because they want to see God,’’ she said.

Indeed, these 12 nights were tagged as a trip to the ‘‘Holy Land’’, where the main stop, Israel, was sandwiched by Alexandria, Cairo and the Greek island of Santorini.

The majority of the clientele seemed to be Americans who had come to the port of embarkation in the Italian city of Civitavecchia from all manner of towns, cities and metropolises across the

We were entirely at sea – nothing but the horizon, ebooks, paper umbrellas and rumbased cocktails.

greater United States. They were almost all there to see Jerusalem – the city of holy conflagration. Some had seen it several times.

But then there were also those from the north of England, people whose brown leathered bodies, brash accents and penchant for pints of bitters at 10am seemed to have walked directly off the set of a Guy Ritchie film. They tended to stay on the ship when it was in port. When they ventured off, it was to buy trinkets, shawls and miniature pyramids from the vendors that often lined the port terminals.

But simple caricatures and depictions of life aboard the bubble do not do the sociological wonder of a cruise ship justice.