Big boat toot

Big boat

Previously on The New World Of Bollocks we discussed things that are Not For Me And That's Fine, Or Whatever. I'm reminded sometimes that 'Or Whatever' is heavily load bearing, and by sometimes I mean every couple of days through what is laughably referred to locally as ‘summer’ as my town is monstered and overrun by shuttle buses and tourist trainloads of comically dressed tourists fresh off a big fuck-off cruise ship freshly parked up at the port in the No Standing zone. Cruise ships are Not For Me. Cruise tourists, even less so.

You're never in doubt over who the cruise tourists are from their uniform. Oversized rainproofs, bumbags and invariably stupid hats, milling around mindlessly, getting in the way, obscuring each other's photos of the same mildly photogenic landmarks, DDOSing the cafes and farmers' market, shouting into the ends of their phone at apparently brain-injured people overseas. They're blocking up the door, they're walking up the escalator, they're knocking on the door of every single store, they're looking for a score, they might as well be dead...

Banger

The one that was pesting around the port most recently was the Celebrity Edge, a monstrous new conveyance with a name like a reality TV show where C-listers compete to be pushed off a cliff the least. As distinct from Celebrity Edging, which just sounds frankly unpleasant.

Why does it come with a handle like a Little Tikes ride-on toy

And, look, fine. I said it was fine alright. I'm not going to go all CRUISE SHIPS DO NO GOOD in storey-high lettering like the people of Lyttelton up the way, although I get the vibe. Having your town periodically ruined is one thing, having your planet ruined by 2900 people on a massively carbon-footprinted jolly is another. There is no carbon-ethical form of international transport short of experimental teleportation or solo yachtspersoning, with either just as unlikely to have you reach your destination alive. But surely cruise holidays are amongst the most offensive wastes of planet, an absolutely pointless form of transport that takes you a net zero nautical miles from your original start location.

But when I say cruise ships are definitely Not For Me, it's not even about the carbon footprint or the sledgehammer impact on harbour towns or the facile surface-level tourist experiences they encourage. It's not even the norovirus. It's just that they are full of the sorts of people who want to be on a cruise ship. Who not only sought this experience out, but paid through the bumbag to do so. Rich boomers harbouring hideous fashion sense and even worse opinions. And norovirus.

I guess it's the mentality of the sort of people who are into all-inclusive package holidays - people who like certainty, like paying up front, like having a solid 6/10 experience at the place they’ve always gone to rather than rolling the dice on something new or exciting, and like being surrounded by people while they're doing it. Incredibly normie behaviour. Not to make everything about teh neurospicy, but you’ve never seen a bigger collection of neurotypical motherfuckers than on a cruise ship. To me, the point of a holiday is to go explore and see things, on my own schedule, in my own time, as far away as fucking possible from those people. Definitely not to have a pre-set itinerary, menu and experience list on a floating Club Med full of punishers and ringed with a ten story drop into shark-infested waters.

Also did I mention the norovirus.

In isolation (not for norovirus), it’d not be too bad to experience the outline concept of a cruise holiday - a gentle sail between pretty locations, stopping off to do little sightseeing tours and foodie expeditions in places you might struggle to get to by car or campervan. But that's assuming you're actually in control of where you go and what you do, and that's also without the Other People. Cruises are for people who like other people. And my people, that ain’t me. As some great British philosophers of the 1990s might have put it:

Fuck right off, thank you very much
I need a holiday from human touch.*

The Doctor is OUT. 

* So it turns out that lyric isn't 'Stop right now, thank you very much, I need somebody with a humid crotch'. Which was somewhat embarrassing at work karaoke.