A queen should travel in style… So as I looked around the ferry to Ibiza, I found myself asking why the hell I was surrounded by Brits on the piss... singing, unsavoury-looking children screaming, loud Americans being American, and Italian men being Italian. Yes, I know they’re stereotypes. But honestly? Everyone was behaving like they'd been cast to act their part. The latter were particularly offensive. The advantage of a plane is that everyone is forced to stare in the same direction. This ferry, however, allowed a group of young Italian men - early twenties - to park themselves directly opposite me. They’d already heard Naz and me speaking in English, so they assumed that, like most English speakers, we wouldn’t understand their language. They were wrong. I’m not fluent in Italian, but the languages I do speak allow me to recognise, pretty much universally, the vocalised appreciation of my breast tissue. Then a ferry employee... a purser, bosun, captain, who knows... made an announcement in that exact calm, rehearsed register pilots use when a plane starts dropping through turbulence. He explained that the sea was very choppy and was about to get choppier, and that anyone who felt sick would find a bag somewhere nearby - down the side pouch of the seat. I didn’t really listen. Come on, surely seasickness isn't a thing. And then two things started to happen. The undulation increased. And the sound began to decrease. If I had a graph, I’m sure it would show perfect concordance: the more the ferry bobbed, the more the volume dropped - until something completely mad occurred. Within ten minutes, an eerie hush fell over the entire space. Not silence - obviously - but compared to what had just been happening, it might as well have been. The children lost all their energy. The Italians started looking at each other, making the odd joke that no longer seemed to amuse them. An American looked green. The Brits stared at their beers, reconsidering their choices. And then it began. People staggered out onto the deck, clutching their bags (thank God they went outside with them.) So yeah, I never really believed seasickness was a thing. It is! And frankly - as far as I’m concerned - if it shuts people up… it’s no bad thing at all. And there my tale should end, but the confounded universe had to punish me for this moment of charitable deficiency. As you can see from the graphic accompanying this post, within 12 hours I ended up bent double driving the porcelain bus myself. What's the moral of the story? Puke unto others as you would puke unto yourself... or something like that.
