A CRUISE TO RUSSIA: THE LAST FAMILY HOLIDAY

🎧 AUDIO QUACK 🎧

Blog “illustrated” by my Panasonic camera & Motorola KrZr K1 photography

In the Summer of 2008, my parents thought it would be a grand idea to take four teenagers on a two week cruise to Russia.

I was sixteen, brace-faced, and was tortured by how far away the Baltic Sea was from my Mcfly-haired boyfriend. Jack was a student and didn’t like any of us. And Joe had been allowed to invite his side kick, Tom with him. They’d recently turned 18 and were determined to show their ID off to every bartender on the cruise… and every woman in Scandinavia. They also packed the Xbox with them, so when they weren’t drinking in a bar, they could play Halo in their cabin. Each night they would emerge red-eyed at the dinner table, once with a confession that one of them had vomited on the side of the ship.

The dinners were often formal events that required us to dress up. I was currently moulding myself from a grungy tomboy to a girlie-girl, and had packed uncomfortable floaty dresses that exposed my shape, and my first pair of high heels. My face was made over with magazine lipgloss, glittered eyeshadow and cheap black eyeliners. It was as awkward as you can imagine. (Read The Time A Kicked A Magdalen Boy to see what I mean).

I would meet my parents in the piano bar before dinner, where a jolly old pianist played familiar songs and encouraged requests. He was so round and happy, it was like watching Father Christmas in his Summer job. On one of these evenings, Dad went to the pianist with a request, and came scuttling back as American Idiot began to play.

“Your favourite,” Dad said to me with a smile.

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I had stopped listening to Green Day a year ago.

On the way to St Petersburg, we stopped at various European cities, where Mum would lead us around and try and force some culture into her kids and husband. It was in Tallinn where I learnt about the power of the high heel. A tanned long-legged woman, silenced our lunch table by the sound of her heel clicking in a hypnotic tune as she went by.

Heel-toe. Heel-toe. Heel-toe. Heel-toe. Heel-toe. Heel-toe.

“Blimey,” Dad said, as he turned his head back to his family. Mum inhaled loudly as she rearranged her knife and fork on her plate.

We arrived in St Petersburg a few days later. At the time Mum was fan-girling Peter the Great and was trying to get her three teenagers, and Tom, as excited about the dead emperor as she was. Unfortunately, we didn’t care for his cabin, or the Smolny Convent. Joe and Tom wanted to know where they could buy vodka, Jack wanted lunch, and I wanted to go back to the cruise’s computer room to check MSN.

I was reading on the top deck of the ship, sailing away from Russia as ignorant as I came, when I sensed someone sitting across from me.

“What are you reading there?” an American voice said. I looked up from my book and saw a white haired man, in a polo shirt that showed off his puttylike sunburnt neck

“Er, Riders,” I said. (It was unfortunate that I was reading an erotic horse-riding novel).

“What’s it about?”

“Horse riding,” I said. The cover was also unfortunate; the backside of a woman in tight white leggings, holding a whip behind her back, and a man’s hand on her bum.

“Has anyone told you, that you look a lot like Britney Spears?” he said.

“No,” I said, quickly. Not liking where this was going.

“Well, you do,” His thin damp lips broke into a smile. “Britney.”

Oh, not this again, I thought.

Only a few weeks before that holiday, I was in Tesco’s when I noticed a man appearing in every aisle I was in. I didn’t know if I was a coincidence, so I quietly made an effort to lose him. I got to the fruit juice section and was relieved when I couldn’t see him anymore. It was just me being dramatic. I reached up to get orange juice, when I felt something on my leg. I looked down, it was him, crouching near the hem of my Top Shop blue skirt. It was like losing a spider in a room and suddenly having it crawl up your leg.

Neither encounters escalated to anything more serious, but that summer when I was 16 was an uncomfortable one for sure.

SO, with a pervert on board, and the love of my life (it lasted 18 months) back in the UK, the last night of the holiday couldn’t have come quick enough. For the final dinner, I put on my black dress and my high heels, lined my eyes with black eyeliner and sighed at my fulled-mouthed reflection, then walked like baby giraffe to the piano bar.

Heel-toe…. Heel…..toe. Heeltoe. Heel…….toe. HeeltoeHeel-toe.

The pianist came shuffling in a little late with a grey face and holding a Bloody Mary in his shaky hand. He began tinkling on the piano whilst he introduced himself once more.

“Any requests just let me know…” He pulled away from the mic to hid a burp. “Sorry, feeling a little…fragile…today.”

After a few ropey songs, we went to the dining room. Joe and Tom came bumbling in late, with the two-week European bender showing on their clothes and faces.

“Another heavy night I see,” Mum said as she glanced disapprovingly over the menu.

“It was bants,” Joe said with a mouthful of bread. “We taught this pianist how to play Xbox. He got so wasted.” Tom and him both laughed as if imagining the same comical image from the night before.

“So wasted…” Tom added.