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From the Times...

Fortysomething Mary Gold crashes a Saga voyage....

SOMEONE once said that if you want to look young and thin, then you should hang around old, fat people. I have a narcissistic friend who asks rudely, “Who’s going?” whenever she is invited to dinner, so that she can decline if there is a gorgeous 25-year-old woman on the guest list.

Now I’m not that bad, but the prospect of being the youngest passenger on a splendid cruise ship, in this case the Saga Rose, did have its attractions. Saga Holidays are for people aged 50 and over, but a travelling companion may be 40 or over. My husband is 64 (though pretending to be 34) and I am 45. I could simper, flirt and win the Most Attractive Woman on the Ship Contest.

Or not . . .

Contrary to what I had expected, and the popular image of cruise customers, our fellow passengers turned out to be a fit and jolly bunch who got up early, played deck games, tucked in to the fine food on board and stayed up late ballroom dancing or taking part in quizzes. Such energy!

We were among 550 adventurous people taking part in the ships’s round-the-world cruise, which takes slightly less than four months, though some passengers fly in from Britain and join for ten or 15-day breaks, as we did on a stretch from Mauritius to Cape Town.

Our cabin was a generous size — well equipped, on a par with a good five-star hotel room, with two very comfy beds, seating area, satellite TV and video, ample storage in blond wood cabinets and a nice Art Deco-style bathroom with a proper bath. The attention to detail was also good, with a powerful hairdryer, books, umbrellas and even binoculars.

There was a daily programme of activities — walk a mile around the deck, play shuffleboard or bridge, listen to lectures by a wine expert, a Concorde pilot or the broadcaster Sue MacGregor. But for us, days at sea soon settled into a relaxing routine: breakfast on the balcony, sunbathing, then a leisurely buffet lunch on the lido deck.

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Saga Rose has one main restaurant, but the Lido menu was often themed, Spanish food one day, Caribbean the next, and if you wanted to, you could have a formal lunch every day in the restaurant.

Afternoons were spent browsing in the excellent library, which was rich in military history books, then at 6pm caviar canapés arrived in the cabin.

At dinner we struck lucky with our table for eight, mostly empty-nesters who turned out to be good company. Rita, a widow from Essex, had been married three times and was a committed cruiser. “That’s the trouble with husbands,” she said as she tucked into her lobster thermidor, “they keep dying on you.” She was a keen dancer and availed herself every day of the talents of the “gentlemen hosts”, four retired men who were on board to dance with the unattached ladies. “We don’t get it free, you know,” said one gentlemen host. “We pay eight quid a day for our keep!”

Tony and Sandy Drake, from Sheffield, had taken the P&O ship Oriana to Sydney but were returning on Saga Rose after the ill-fated Aurora broke down. “This ship’s nicer than the Oriana because we get free ice-creams,” said Sandy as she deftly made herself a cone and bodged a chocolate flake in the top. Her husband was a fan of the poems of Stanley Holloway, which he recited with relish:

“They didn’t think much to the ocean
The waves they was fiddlin’ and small,
There was no wrecks, nobody drownded,
Fact nothing to laff at at all”.

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There was, however, plenty to laugh at on board, including the ship’s comedian, George King. “Remember to love your children,” he told his audience, “because they’ll be the ones who choose your nursing home.” Our fellow passengers were no slouches in the laughs department, either. Suzanne Lally, from Warrington, boasted that her husband Lawrence might do his party trick after dinner. “He throws peanuts up in the air and catches them in his mouth like a seal. Once it went wrong, and the peanut came out of his nostril three days later.”

Even the captain, the dashing Philip Rentell (whose autobiography is called Ship Happens), was a bit of a wag. His masterful tones came over the ship’s Tannoy every day: “I’m just parking the boat and tying it up with some hairy string.” When he told us, at the captain’s ****tail party, that Saga Rose was a grand old lady who needed careful handling there were murmurs of agreement from the grand old ladies present.

Most passengers seemed well-off, but in many cases this was because they had worked all their lives. Some joined the world cruise every year, at a cost of about £14,000 each.

One thing intrigued me. A note in our cabin literature said: “If you wish to be known by another name while on board, please let us know.” Like what? James Bond? Liz Hurley? Handy cover for adulterous octogenarians, clearly.

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And so we drifted down the African coastline, stopping at the French island of La Réunion, at Richards Bay for an overnight stay at Ubizane game reserve in KwaZulu Natal, in Durban and at Port Elizabeth for an elephant safari.

The highlight was the relaxation. Breakfast arrived seven minutes after it was ordered, our mobile phones didn’t work at sea so we had peace and quiet — all we had to do was sit on our balcony and watch the Indian Ocean sparkle in the sun, as the occasional dolphin broke the surface.

One morning I put on my new bikini and stood next to my husband in his steamer chair. “Who’s the most attractive woman on the ship?” I said. Without looking up from his newspaper, he said: “That girl Sandy from Sheffield.” Things looked up at dinner that night, however, when an elderly gentleman engaged me in conversation. This is it, I thought, the Trophy Wife Trophy is mine at last. “Your husband is a very lucky man,” he said “. . . he’s sitting next to Sue MacGregor.”

NEED TO KNOW

Mary Gold travelled with Saga Holidays (0800 0565880, www.sagaholidays.co.uk) on Saga Rose. An 18-night trip leaving on March 19 joins the ship on the Mauritius- to-Cape Town leg of her 2006 world cruise. The cost, starting at £2,429pp based on two sharing an inside cabin, includes five nights’ all-inclusive in a hotel on Mauritius, ten nights’ full-board on Saga Rose, one night in Cape Town, overnight flights from the UK and transfers.

The 2007 Saga Rose and Saga Ruby Round the World cruises sail from Southampton on January 7, with prices from £13,871 and £11,586 for the 108 and 109-night voyages.