Italian [And Adjacent States] Dispatch No. 2 – Rhapsody In Grey

I KEEP REJUVENATING my fellow travellers. Looking through their grey hair and sagging flesh for the younger men and women they used to be – back in the 1960s and 70s. I do the same, now, in psychic self-defence, whenever I stand in front of a mirror. Cruising the Ionian and Adriatic Seas with a boatload of baby-boomers will do that to you.

Overwhelmingly, these boomers are Americans, and like Americans everywhere carry their arrogance and ignorance as effortlessly as they carry their sunglasses on the peaks of their baseball caps. At one time, at least some of them would have been long-haired, free-loving, pot-smoking college students. Some may even have marched against the Vietnam War and been quick with phrases like “Right-on, brother!” and “Come the revolution.” If you squint your eyes you can sort of see them as they were: young, idealistic, full of certainty that the world must change, and that they would be the ones to change it.

Then they come back into focus, and you see how far their youth (like their hairlines) has receded. What also becomes clear is that the scale and scope of their ambition was not misplaced – merely misapprehended. Because the world has changed, and they were the ones who changed it. But, oh, what changes – and changers!

I used to think that the Editor of The Daily Blog, Martyn Bradbury, was altogether too hard on my generation. That the people who fought against war, racism and nuclear weapons; and for the environment, women’s liberation and gay rights; deserved better from the generations that succeeded them. But then I boarded the MV Veendam at the port of Civitavecchia, and saw up close what my generation has become. Or, at least, what that same privileged stratum of my generation that got to go to university, flirt with radicalism, and participate in the great “youth revolt” of the Sixties and Seventies, has become. The stratum that, while no longer ruling the world, provides the rock-solid political base of the people who do.

Don’t get me wrong: these people are all perfectly “nice”. They will greet you cheerily, and invite you to “have a great day”, but few, if any, seem to grasp what an extraordinary microcosm of the world the average cruise liner represents.

It is commanded by a multinational crew of professional technocrats and managers. It is enjoyed by a privileged community of mostly rich, mostly old, and mostly white passengers. And it is kept functioning by a huge number of mostly poor, mostly young, and mostly brown workers.

While it’s entirely possible that I am wrong, and that beneath all these blandly contented faces seethe the passions of raging socialists, my strong impression is that my fellow travellers simply do not see – let alone recognise – the glaring parallels between real and shipboard life.

That I see them does not, of course, exonerate me. I remain on board this floating zoo of ageing boomers: eating and drinking my fill; going on the excursions to Corfu and Dubrovnik; watching the sun set over the Adriatic from my stateroom on the Verandah Deck. Like all journalists, I gift myself the privilege of standing back and describing the players and the props and the plot of the drama unfolding before me, while doing nothing practical to change it. I could have said: “This is not for me, I’m getting off this ship of superannuated troughers!” But, I didn’t. I stayed and pigged-out with the best of them. Being pampered and privileged – if only for seven days – is simply too much fun!

It’s only at night, in the darkened bars, where the hard-working musicians play endless versions of Sixties and Seventies standards, that you sometimes see the smiles fade.

All of us are old. All of us have more of our lives behind us than in front of us. And, sitting there in the comfortable darkness, sipping our Pina Coladas and Cosmopolitans, that’s when the awful truth – that it’s nearly over – hits home. You can see it on our faces: the realisation that the hopes and dreams of our youth have not been, and probably never will be, fulfilled.

And that’s when, suddenly, it becomes clear that the people all around you are not looking at the dancers on the floor; or at the expensive objets d’art strategically-placed about the room; but back through the years. Back to when the music was louder; and our blood was hotter; and the sheer unrelentingness of life had not defeated the luckiest generation that ever lived.

It would be wrong to conclude this rather bleak dispatch without acknowledging the presence on the cruise of a number of younger people. Gen-Xers, Gen-Ys and Millennials – they are here, too. And – guess what? – they show every sign of being as blissfully unaware of what lies in store for them as we did forty or fifty years ago. How could it be otherwise? Youth is only valued when its gone. The future only reveals its treacherous character when becomes the past. It is in the nature of living to be disappointed and dismayed by the constantly reasserted continuities of human existence, and the impermanence of its achievements.

Yes, the Baby Boomers changed the world – but nothing like as much as it changed them. The world will change the Millennials, also. Maybe more, maybe much more, than it ever changed the lives of their parents’ and grandparents’. All stories must, eventually, have an end.

But still, the ship sails on.