Low life
Cruise news
Jeffrey Bernard
T couldn't address you last week because I was stuck in a Norwegian fjord aboard a luxury cruise liner and the radio signals that transmit the telex couldn't get through the mountains and cliffs surrounding the said fjords. I was there aboard the ship on a freebie press trip. Right. Let's get rid of the plugs and moans to begin with. SAS Scandinavian Airlines - who flew me to join the ship at Oslo are without doubt the best airline I've ever flown with. Their First Business Class was excellent. The grub was good, the drinks kept coming and the staff seemed to be aware of the fact that they were mere waiters and waitresses in the sky and not show-business entre- preneurs. A very good airline indeed. Secondly, Royal Viking run a good, clean ship and a happy ship. If cruising is your cup of tea then Royal Viking are the people to get .in touch with. Now, as it happens, press trips aren't my cup of tea but on this trip the press happened to be delightful, with one exception: a girl who works - I won't say writes - for a Fleet Street daily. She contrived to last six days without buying one single round of drinks. Think about it. Six days. Wages. Expenses. Six days without a sortie to the bar. Granted she didn't wear her sunglasses on the top of her head but six days without making contact with a barman has to be a record of some sort. As Charlie in the Coach and Horses would say, this one could peel an orange in her pocket. Come the first class lounge in Copenhagen before the SAS flight home where the booze was free she bought me two drinks. Have these hackettes no shame?
And what of Norway and a ship of fools in the shape of 500 or so geriatric Amer- ican women with arthritic fingers festooned with diamond rings? Well, it was a rum do and a close thing, as the victor of Waterloo might have said. For the most part the scenery is pretty monotonous and a little like Snowdonia on a bigger scale. Rocks and more rocks. There was a spectacular fjord at Geiranger and I actually sat on deck at 3 a.m. well inside the Arctic Circle nursing a drink in sunlight hut, for the most part, the views were pretty dull. I assume that Norwegians live for most of the year in darkness, feed on roll mops, read Ibsen
and then blow their brains out. The whole thing was like a series of postcards and reminded me of the time I suggested to Francis Bacon that he live in Switzerland for tax reasons. 'What?' he screamed. 'All those fucking views.' Quite.
Anyway, the first shipboard acquain- tance I made was an attorney from Washington with the splendid name of Wally Schubert. He was okay at first but then he drifted into the habit of saying 'What would you have done without us?' I told him, 'The same as we did between 1914 and 1917 and the same as we did between 1939 and 1941, you prick.' Amer- icans, I discovered on the cruise, are completely unaware of anything whatso- ever that goes on outside America. Amaz- ingly isolated. Then Mr Schubert, a real Wally, began to tell me what a great man President Reagan was. He then showered praise on Mrs Thatcher, told me that he was going to spend a night in the Sheraton Hotel in Knightsbridge and asked if they would know what a dry martini was. I told him that we in England know what a dry martini is and that furthermore we have electric light, running hot and cold water, telephones, automobiles and that we in- vented the law he practises round about 1215 AD, 300 years or so before his country was discovered. He made me want to scream and the Fleet Street hackette walked around with a notebook and biro taking notes. I only once used a notebook and a biro, the uniform of a journalist, and that was on the very first job I went on. I had to interview an actress and I was a bit pissed for a change. I suddenly cast the notebook aside and said, 'I can't interview you. All I'm doing is sitting here and thinking how much I'd like to fuck you.' She said, 'Well, why don't you, you silly boy?' A splendid lady.
But, to the cruise. The food aboard the Royal Viking Sky was pretty good and there was masses of it too, which you could order and get at any time of night or day. The Americans on board ate like pigs and all had horribly fat arses. The only excep- tions were a delightful grandmother accompanied by three grand-daughters, one of whom was and is one of the most nourishing girls I've met for years. But that's another story. The only really bad night on the ship was the night I discovered the casino. There was a lady croupier from Milton Keynes who kept turning her 14s into 21s with monotonous regularity and it hurt. There was also a croupier from Southport and a barman from Bourne- mouth. My favourite barman was a Swiss- German called Rikki and in spite of the ghastly combination of Swiss and German he turned out to be a pretty good chap. I don't remember the first night on board because I was pretty smashed, but the next day, first man in the bar at 10 a.m., he looked at me and said, rather casually, 'The usual sir?' and proceeded to pour me a vodka, lime, ice and soda.
What happened the first night? Most of the people aboard were surprisingly un-
drinky and I fear I stood out like some kind of sore thumb. There's not a lot to do on a ship except drink unless you happen to be into deck quoits or jogging and I'm not. It struck me that all you need on a cruise is a friend of the opposite sex - if you happen to be heterosexual - and a good barman who pours whoppers like Rikki did. You wouldn't want to look at a fjord on your own and all those wretched rocks need company. I didn't go on any of the shore excursions'although I had a pleasant wan- der around Bergen one morning and saw a superb tall ship. A drink in that town I was told costs £3.50. No wonder the Vikings came here and no wonder the suicide rate in Scandinavia is so high.
There was only one suicide lacking that would have made the cruise perfection. Instead of throwing herself and her note- book at almost every man in sight because of her insecurity, the girl should have thrown herself overboard. Six days without buying a round! I ask you. Even Norman buys me a drink once a week in the Coach, Richard Ingrams smiles at me once a week so I suppose that my cup runneth over anyway. Yes, it's good to be home again. Last night I took my doctor from the Middlesex out for a drink and she told me I'd end up with a leg off - the one I try to get over - if I don't stop smoking. It's been a wonderful life - so far.
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