Cruising Lessons.

Recently, I went on a cruise. 

Yes, truly. I finally succumbed to the promotional emails that flooded my inbox, deciding that the best way to get rid of them was to enter my credit card details at their demands and choose a week where dry land no longer tempted me. 

I bragged at work that I was “taking my boat for a spin” and would come back relaxed on ocean views and seeping the smell of sun screen and salt water from my freshly tanned pores. As a cruising virgin, I was going off the TV adverts that almost carried UV through the screen between my Housewives marathons. They also told me I would spend the whole time in a bikini, carrying a pina colada and when I wasn't in the pool, I’d be dancing under the sea-reflecting moonlight to a live band who eye flirted in time with my sashaying hips. 

I know this is a collective belief, who could see those adverts and think otherwise? It’s an inherent truth, and why would they lie? There is nothing more glamorous than being able to tell people that you didn't see land for days at a time and only disembarked to feel golden sand beneath your toes and sit on a texture other than your sun lounger. Despite this, the motion of the ship and the mid-ocean air would actually contribute to your weight loss plan, and your bikini would perfectly complement your rock hard abs.   

You’re with me still, right? Days confined to rolling buffet leads to sculpted bod? Yes. 

Now, I don’t mean to crash your party, but this is not so accurate. From the moment I boarded my personal (plus 2000) luxury floating home, it was clear my stay would revolve around something else entirely. 

Food.

It followed me. It harassed me. It would not leave me alone. Even when it wasn't time for food (e.g. somewhere between 10-15 minutes after my last meal and 5 before my next), not only would I think about it, it would find me. Soft serve machines popped up, sweet treats were handed out; bars with eye-watering (that’s how powerful they are) cocktails would interrupt my path and force my presence into them. Just like a tornado, there was no way around, but through. 

I would close my eyes and attempt to block out the barrage of edible visual splendour but the delicious cacophony of smells attacked my other sense. The only logical way to deal with this dilemma was to give in to it entirely; to wave the white flag while strolling through the buffet and piling ridiculous mounds of food onto the plate and ascertain how on earth so much food could legitimately and consistently appear in the middle of the ocean without the mid-air wave of Harry Potter’s wand or the earnest, muggle hands of a dozen house elves. 

As the days floated by (that pun took a long time to come up with) I found that the women on my TV screen who flaunted their picture perfect bodies with a cocktail in hand and a stream of well-oiled, topless men behind them, were beginning to feel further from the truth and more like the myth; like when I found out that the guy who landed on the moon wasn't the same guy that cheated his way to a number of Tour de France cycle race wins. 

My waist band was ever expanding but I couldn’t say no to the smorgasbord of cheesecakes, or the pudding that featured at every meal. Damn these people for knowing that my willpower is lowest when I’m fresh out of bed and with an energetic night’s sleeping to fuel my appetite. Plus, I've heard the horror stories of cruise food wastage and I wasn't about to be an accomplice in that. I would reduce the wastage if it was the last thing I did before the boat literally sunk under the gulf of my wake. People may think this is counter-productive but I have a public duty and I understand that it has repercussions. This is what selfless people do, and I am not about to be consumed by the rise of vapid entitlement. 

In writing this I hope to prepare you and to warn you, but certainly not dissuade you out of doing a cruise, that is not in the least my intention. Rather when you do cruise (it’s a when not an if with the abundance of mega-sales they have and the inability to unsubscribe from their emails without hopping aboard), consider it a task. Go into it as if you’re on a mission and the only way out is making the number on the scales climb higher.