How I fell in love with cruising

I am a workaholic – true. I love my job and find it very hard to switch off because I don’t want to. But we all need to relax and recharge our batteries.

I just thought I’d never find anything that could make me chill out for longer than a few hours. And I certainly didn’t think I’d find it in the middle of the sea. But a few years ago a friend of mine persuaded me to go with her and our children on a cruise. I booked it a year in advance and think I stressed every day about it being the most expensive mistake I’d ever make.

I bet myself that I’d be only one of five people under 90 and bored rigid.

The weird thing was that when I first saw the ship – P&O Cruises’ Oceana – my eyes filled up with tears. Incidentally, they still do. I certainly wasn’t expecting that – nor would I have believed that when I walked onto her I swear I felt my shoulders drop by four feet.

The boys took to cruising like ducks to water. I never saw them – they were off in their kids’ club swimming and dressing up as pirates and I rested properly, for the first time ever I think.

I spent ages looking out to sea, spotting the odd dolphin, cocktail glass in hand (me, not the dolphin) and it was bliss. Sea air seeped into me and relaxed my soul – that is the only way to put it. So much so that I’d already booked my next cruise five minutes after landing home. We tried the QE2, just to say we’d been there and done that. She wasn’t as glitzy inside as the Oceana but she was an old lady then and a beauty from the outside with her black hull. Next we tried the Aurora – which is one of my favourite ships.

We sailed the day after Boxing Day and while Britain was shivering with cold, we were posing with parrots in sunny Tenerife. Then, on New Year’s Eve, we stood on deck and watched a Madeira sky fill with fireworks. I’ve always hated New Year, but that one was magical.

And the next cruise was equally as wonderful – back on our beloved Aurora again– up to the beautiful fjords where the air was so clear I felt my lungs purring.

Then we travelled on to Russia and stood in the spot where Czar Nicholas was arrested in his palace, I bought my father the smoothest vodka he’s ever had (75p a litre) and we journeyed on to Poland. “You know how to holiday you, Mill,” said my grinning boss hearing that I’d taken the children to the Gdansk shipyards. But it was truly fascinating and very emotional.

Over the years, we’ve seen Pompeii, The Vatican, sailed on gondolas in Venice, swam in emerald private Sardinian bays, been limoncello sampling in Italian farms (not the children, obviously), sailed on underground lakes and my son has had an ice-cream in every major and minor city in Europe – I’ve even done impromptu book signings in Rome and Sorrento.

The boys have grown up now and prefer to don suits and dine with me and we chill by the pool and don’t argue – for the whole cruise we all actually get on. Miracle! And every time I start to unpack my suitcases I think “I must write a book about a cruise” So last year I did. My ship – The Mermaidia – is a mix of my three favourite ships – the Aurora, the Ventura and the Azura. I obviously had to go on another cruise to make sure I’d got all the details right.

I felt duty-bound to sample the massages in the spa again and quaff a few glasses of champagne to get the descriptions spot-on. And sitting on my balcony making notes as I watched a dolphin rise from a sea as smooth as glass, I really did think that if heaven exists, I hope it is ship-shaped and floating.

STORY INSPIRED BY LOVE OF SEA

Milly Johnson’s latest novel Here Come the Girls was inspired by her love of cruises.

It is the story of four Yorkshire girls who dreamed of riches and glamorous lives but ended up with dead-end jobs and dreams crushed.

So when they win a luxury cruise, will it just be a lovely holiday – or can the sea and the Mediterranean sun work its magic to put them back on course for their longed-for happy endings?

Two lucky readers of this book will win a P&O Cruises’ 12-day cruise aboard one of Milly’s favourite ships.

Here Come the Girls by Milly Johnson is published tomorrow by Simon and Schuster, £6.99.

To order a copy from the Yorkshire Post Bookshop, call free on 0800 0153232 or go online at www.yorkshirepostbookshop.co.uk. Postage and packing is £2.75.