GrumbleSmiles

Over the last ten years it has become more and more common to hear people tell you to drink more and more water – eight glasses a day / two and a half pints a day / 1.2 litres a day and even 2 litres a day !

Supermarket shelves are loaded down with spring water from the Highlands of Scotland / the Limestone Springs of Derbyshire / The Health Springs of Malvern / The Volcanic Springs of Central France / The Alpine Glacial Streams of Northern Italy.   These days everywhere water springs up, someone is there to bottle it.  Then we can have it still  or sparkling or carbonated or distilled or filtered through charcoal or flavoured with every possible variety of fruit.  No doubt there are many more options I’ve yet to come across.

The message is reinforced by sportsmen and women everywhere taking care to hold the label so you can see the brand name on the bottle.  At Wimbledon several swigs are required between each change of ends – whatever happened to Robinson’s Lemon Barley Water?  At Golf Tournaments a drink of water is necessary on the tee at each hole and between each shot when walking down the fairway.  Watch Leicester Tigers play at Welford Road and you see a pitch invasion of water carriers on and off the pitch at every opportunity.  In my day playing rugby you were lucky to get a small orange segment at half time !

In the London Marathon every kilometre has a market stall of bottled water, although most of the runners seem ungratefully to pour the water over their heads.  Next year “Head and Shoulders Shampoo” are sponsoring the race and they will be adding their product to the water.  In the 2012 Olympic Stadium, there will be water pipes strung above the race track and the Athletes will be attached to “Pellagrino Move-Along Drinking Straws” that will follow the runners throughout the race.  In the Steeplechase, the Athletes will be credited with an extra 10 seconds on every lap to give them time to stop and drink at the “Evian water jump”.

A report in the British Medical Journal casts doubt on this obsession with drinking so much water.  It suggests that Government guidelines on drinking so much water are “worse than nonsense” and that the virtues of water guzzling are exaggerated by bottle water brands. 

End of July 2011 and I have just returned from a cruise up the West Coast of Norway on board the latest ship in the Cunard fleet – the new Queen Elizabeth.  A massive ship – 10 decks high – taller by far than all the buildings and all the ships in all the ports she visits.  So you have an inbuilt sense of superiority wherever you arrive.

It must have been much the same experience for the adventurous sailors of centuries past, whose ships were bigger and stranger than anything the people of far off lands had ever seen.

The Queen Elizabeth has echoes of the past by being beautifully decorated throughout in the 1930’s Art Deco style.  An era reminiscent of luxury and Hollywood films for the rich and famous.

Leaving Southampton to cruise across the North Sea with a shipful of retired ramblers relaxing in the lap of luxury.  A floating cacooned community of sixty, seventy and eighty year-olds sailing on their solitary seas.  Cut off from their youth and momentarily comfortably cradled in their wealth.

A year ago I wrote about a trip across the Atlantic – see “Cast Adrift” dated 29th July 2010.  That time all we saw was the sea, which led me to question the value of endless days at sea.  I have certainly no desire to be a lone sailor.  I am no Frances Chichester or Ellen McArthur.

The cruising life is different, it’s an opportunity for total self-indulgence.  A chance to do what you like, when you like.  Time is your own.  Read when you like.  Stare out of the window when you like – there is nothing to see but sea – so all you see is a reflection of your own thoughts.  Puzzle yourself with crosswords, quizzes, Sudoku or jigsaws as you please.  Grab a scrap of paper and capture a thought.

Eating is an essential part of the cruising lifestyle.  Anytime is meal time.  Eat in one or all of the many restaurants; eat for breakfast,  lunch,  high tea and dinner; eat in the bar,  eat in the all-day buffet,  eat canapes at the reception parties and when you get back to your cabin order room service and eat all over again.  It is as if we haven’t ever eaten before or never will again.

One of the other things to do is to meet great new people.  Every one says “hello” to everyone.  The staff are obviously trained to do it, but every stranger you pass on the corridor, in the lift and on deck does it too.  It is a habit we have lost in the rush hours of a busy working week, but here on board it is a habit regained that lifts the day.

If we learned from this we could probably transform our hospitals into happier places.  Customer care and politeness costs nothing but a smile.

In one brief encounter, I met a lovely lady from Louisiana.  It was her Southern Belle accent that first caught my attention.  She looked well into her eighties and was travelling alone – bright as a button.  She told me that since her husband died several years ago, she had decided to travel some.  She had started by driving herself all around the United States visiting all the national parks.  Her longest driving trip was to Alaska and took 31 days!  She said that her son had worried about her safety, especially when she wanted to go to Mexico but she told him “what the heck, at my age I need to do it now”.  Now she was doing Europe starting with this cruise to Norway.

What a lady, what a lesson.  You’re never too old for an adventure.  She is certainly not adrift, she knows exactly where she is going and what she is doing.  So too are all the other senior sailors.  They are having the time of their later lives in this retirement village at sea.