8th June 2010.
My dear friends, at last I start my blog. After promising you this for months now, I’m finally at it. Many apologies for the delay. However, now that I have finished editing my new book (out in October, called Three in a Bed in the Med) I can put my mind to other writings.
Star Clipper
It’s been a frantic time, what with working full time and trying to re-write my book (making it better) and then coping with getting ready to come away to holiday in Greece and then to go on to France to await the arrival of our 2010 culinary tour group. I nearly went mad with the stress of trying to get everything done. In fact, one day I had a complete melt down and had to go home from work and lie down with a tranquiliser. But frantic is good, better than having nothing to do and become so bored I want to open the champagne at lunch time. That, my dear reader, is my biggest dread. If I didn’t work I worry I’d become a Noosa socialite (Noosa is where I live) and just do lunch every day and then fall into complete and chronic alcohoism. (Don’t like to joke about a serious subject, but it’s true.)
But drinking problems aside. I’m hear on Mykonos. (Should I say ‘in’ Mykonos? Sounds funny when you’re ‘on’ an island to say ‘in’. Whatever, I’m here. More about that that in another blog.)
We’ve just finished a week sailing around the Greek Islands on Star Clipper. This is cruising in the way of an era long gone. It’s about experiencing sailing on a tall ship, complete with millions of metres of canvas sails.
Very romantic and sexy. The thing about crusing, apart from the obvious joy of going from one gorgeous place to another, is that something weird happens to your stomach. It can’t stop thinking about food. Even people of small appetite suddenly find themselves preoccupied with food the minute they step on board a cruise ship.
After a breakfast of fried eggs, bacon, sausages, baked beans, seven slices of toast WITH BUTTER (never allowed that at home) and cheese and jam (good combination) you stagger up to the top deck to bag a sun lounge by the pool and settle in thinking “I’ll just let that breakfast settle down for a while’ and after about, oh, say, 20 minutes, you start wondering when morning tea might served.
It’s a gluttonous state of affairs but it’s also a force higher than you. You can’t do anything about other than give in and tell yourself you’ll deal with the consequences later. Looking at your watch, wondering if it’s decent to be the first one in at the buffet lunch served out on the tropical deck, you can resist no longer and practically fall upon the smoked salmon and the potato salad, and that’s just your entree. Oh, my dear friends, it’s shocking. Food takes over every little space in your mind. (Along with alcohol of course.)
