Day 7: Grimaldi, Lifeboat Drills and the Pasta of Doom
The Human Produce Is Still Alive
I have risen on the Grimaldi ferry, having had a half-decent sleep in a biggish bed in a bedroom that does not entirely look like the inside of a shipping container.
It looks like a Magnet kitchen from ten years ago, in the middling range. For some reason, the colour scheme is red and orange, yet Grimaldi is mostly blue.
But it does the job.
The human produce—me—is still alive because, once I open the curtain, it reveals a calm sea and decent sunshine.
The breakfast is somewhere contained in the programming of the ticket I have.
Yes, this ticket’s barcode has the orange liquid or the waterlogged breakfast in it.
The big question on a ship this size is where you can access the cornucopia of goodies.
I am using this to tantalise the reader because I had put in the steps the evening before and knew that the area at the maximum distance from where I sat, called the Drivers’ Area, was where I, as a passenger, might get my breakfast.
The Drivers’ Area, of course, refers to manly, bearded articulated-lorry drivers, not the normal drivers of cars.
Why might it be called this, you might wonder?
Grimaldi’s Priorities
I don’t question temporary signs showing where reception is, for example, mixed with permanent signage showing where you might get your nails clipped, as being unusual.
Nail clipping might just be further up the priority chain than reception in the Grimaldi SOP.
In fact, it might be more useful.
Anyhow, I augmented my water, orange, coffee, plain croissant and small sliver of marmalade and butter with some fruit.
It was fine.
It cost an additional €4.95 and had two pieces of interesting fruit at the top, with plain watermelon beneath.
Such are the lengths Grimaldi will go to for its passengers!
I was getting used to this no-teeth, liquid diet.
Maybe it was a precursor—a premonition of a future I might face, with only gums to chew my food.
The Turquoise Super-Shampoo
I went to reception to get a Wi-Fi code.
It has worked, and I am living evidence of something that is good on Grimaldi.
I had a shower using the ultra-turquoise shampoo that cleans everything on Grimaldi.
It is so heavily scented that you get used to it, I think.
I wonder if, in some bunker during the Second World War, they developed this as an all-cleaning super-substance, rather like Kryptonite.
Kryptonite, of course, gives you the power to fly.
Not sure this does yet.
I think if you cooked it down, as in Breaking Bad, it might have a powerful narcotic effect.
It certainly makes your hair a few shades lighter.
The Sea: Magnificent and Malevolent
I retire to Deck 10 and take in the moving seascape.
Magnificent and malevolent in its contempt for what humanity does to it and the creatures that live in it.
For sure, I’m an ocean lover.
Poor turtles and dolphins, putting up with us.
The Mandatory Lifeboat Pantomime
On Grimaldi, you get the occasional tannoy announcement.
Burgers and fizzy drinks for kids are number one on my list and entirely appropriate for this tug.
But now a new one slips onto the airwaves.
It is mandatory, under some law passed in the year dot, to conduct an emergency lifeboat drill and put on a pantomime while pretending the ship is sinking.
This is a drill so mandatory and important that 90% of the passengers put up two fingers and ignore it.
Well, they put up one finger, because of Netflix’s influence on Italian culture.
The few sane ones—or those interested in Italian soap opera and pantomime—join a crew resurrected from the Titanic.
The West End Titanic, that is, not the decent professional lot from Liverpool.
Anyhow, the beep goes off and possibly four people from our area move.
We are joined by twenty others in our emergency rallying area.
A rather gaunt, bespectacled fellow is trying to convince his guys that they need to wear safety hats and so on.
They have CREW written on their yellow jackets, which presumably has to convey some reassurance to this benign group of passengers.
In a real emergency, I confess I would be off getting my life saved.
With this crew, I think death would be a certainty with knobs on.
Not sure, but certainty of death was even a possibility if the drill didn’t end.
A Titanic Moment
We are all given life jackets.
Mine fits.
One of the crew is wider than me. I’m just as big, but he is shaped like a bell.
We are all trooped downstairs in twos.
Two of the crew members are exchanging kisses.
It is a sort of Titanic moment, in a way.
I mean, romance in a crisis, in a ship’s drill conveyed by lords of the sea in documents seen only by the Pope and God, is significant.
It is also very like the Titanic musical.
But where is the music?
It all comes to a sudden end.
No fanfare. No happy ending.
We just hand back our life jackets.
The ashen chap thanks us for our perseverance.
He might have been the vice-captain.
Certainly, he has never seen the sun. More like a blond vampire brought out for the drill.
Peter Cushing comes to mind.
Hammer Horror does Italian boat soap opera!
The Passengers Who Didn’t Make It
I go back to my seat to do this write-up.
My place is still free.
I joke that those left behind have been pronounced dead on the manifest.
A group playing cards think I’m talking about knockout whist.
Maybe I am.
I hope God up above, or Him down below, now knows that I know there is no way you do what this lot suggest.
Yes. Get the life vest and then figure it out.
The watertight hold doors would hold everybody—yes, every body—neatly in that section so they could make a fast body count.
It’s a Grimaldi efficiency exercise.
Nothing to do with saving lives.
Lunch: The Pasta of Doom
I went to lunch, and the highlight was a burger and some chips.
The various incantations of pasta were beyond description.
Maybe these were the burgers the kids had rejected on health grounds?
We all know what pasta looks like in a pan after two or three minutes.
After twenty minutes, it is setting like the famous Roman concrete beneath the city of Rome.
Nobody knows the recipe, but shit has flowed over it for two thousand years.
I suspect shit might flow over this pasta for the rest of your life, because, like those who died at Pompeii, the cast of this pasta would live in your colon for years.
Your guts would be like Han Solo in Star Wars, locked in black carbon—or its grimmer version.
Possibly the only stuff that might shift it is the turquoise shampoo, if you swallowed it.
Like Turbo Lax in Dumb and Dumber, it would clear you out.
The resultant sludge would rot its way through the ship like alien blood.
God, if that happened, we might have a real emergency.
By not eating the pasta, I had saved the ship!
A Siesta Before Barcelona
I decided to have a siesta, contemplating how near to death I might have been, with Squid Game played out on a sinking, grim cruise liner.
I did not sleep well.
My stomach rumbled from the 80%-fat burger.
I was not on a health kick on Grimmer.
At least, with burgers and fizzy drinks for kids, the Italian nation was in good hands.
Barcelona: The Final Challenge
We approached the lights of Barcelona.
The city is famed for the party starting only at midnight, and I was hoping my 11.00 pm disembarkation might allow me to avoid the drinks, the holidaymaking Brits, the aliens, the ghosts of Picasso and Gaudí.
Even Miró might get me in the end.
It was Google versus the human madness of Barca on a Saturday night.
Somehow, I found myself humming:
Saturday night, Saturday night…
The Bee Gees.
Stayin’ Alive.
Alive!
To be continued…
David Jackson
19.10.2026