You cruise, you lose

Holidays in hell

I have reached the point in life at which the holiday marketing companies buying up my personal details no longer try to flog me a two-week shagfest in Ibiza but instead imagine I must be in the market for a luxury cruise. Their algorithm is clearly faulty because, in the unlikely event that I’ll ever have two months off and 50 grand to spare, I’d rather attempt Kilimanjaro or trek to the Everest base camp than risk catching Legionnaire’s in a hot tub with these improbably airbrushed members of Team Viagra on a floating crypt somewhere off the Aegean coast.

T, however, took one look at the two-storey Premium Suite with its personal heated wardrobe and private canopied whirlpool spa and is sold. The idea that such luxuries could exist on board a ship has blown her mind. She quite fancies a 23-day journey across the northwest passage from Anchorage to Reykjavik (£101,899 for the premium suite, or a snip at £26,399 each for a cheap option with the fragrance of engine oil and a view of the bins). Or how about 10 days closer to home peering at the wild Scottish islands through the inevitable pissing rain, a bargain at £22,099?

During a lull in negotiations Lizzie announced that she’d once spent a summer working on board a cruise ship. She didn’t elaborate further, so it’s not clear whether she was employed to clean cabins or to do the can-can behind Jane McDonald with an ostrich feather sticking out of her arse, though it might be possible to speculate. She did confide that she’d been a guest at the captain’s table, which makes the ostrich feather seem rather more likely, though whether or not this journey involved an exploration of the northwest passage remains thankfully unexplained.

The fact we’re even having this conversation is entirely my fault for failing to book a summer holiday yet this year and therefore leaving the matter open to debate. T’s alternative suggestion is a trip to Blackpool, which must be a contender for the UK’s worst holiday destination, and I speak as someone who has been to Rhyl. Though to be fair to Blackpool, it may be short on whirlpool spas and heated wardrobes but it is ahead of the curve on some things - it championed fake tan and cheap sequins for decades before Strictly made them prime time viewing, and it had a sewage outlet on the beach long before the people making millions from the UK’s privatised water companies determined that all our rivers should contain at least 50% shit. Blackpool is also home to the Sandcastle Waterpark, which ranks only slightly below a luxury cruise on T’s wish list of dream holiday destinations and roughly on a par with one in my personal vision of hell.

So my current challenge is to reset T’s holiday expectations at a more realistic level and aim for something in between these two extremes. Lizzie has been cagey about her plans for the summer, though a stint as a holiday rep in the Balearics is probably not out of the question. I’m off to google holiday deals, otherwise it’s entirely possible I’ll end up trying to recreate the luxury cabin experience with a paddling pool in the back garden, a heated blanket over the wardrobe and a trip in a narrow boat on the local canal. T might just notice the difference. I can make a start on stocking the drinks cabinet at least.