The staples of my daily alcohol consumption on the cruise were champagne, gin, red wine and Polish vodka. One morning I woke up in my cabin more hungover than usual, also depressed. Turning my head to the side and looking through the gap in the curtains I saw that we were no longer at sea but docked in yet another Mediterranean island port with barren sun-bleached hills above and beyond. Reaching for my daily news-sheet, delivered to the cabin the night before, I read that what I was looking at this morning was Heraklion in Crete. Further reading informed me that if I returned to the ship from the shore excursion early I could go to the ‘Walk-in wrinkle solution’ on deck 9 at 2 p.m. Turning next to the Spectator cruise itinerary pamphlet, I read that, at 3 p.m. in Hemispheres nightclub on deck 11, Taki would be speaking for an hour on his 30 years as the Spectator High life columnist. I threw on some daywear and tottered upstairs to the breakfast buffet in the Lido restaurant on deck 10.
In the scrum for the coffee machine I encountered one of the 31 Spectator readers. Without any preamble she said to me: ‘There are days when you wake up feeling lifeless and depressed, right? You get up and realise that you aren’t quite in your right mind?’ The Spectator readers on the ship hailed from all walks of life. Every possible kind of human activity seemed to have its representative among them. Now I’m talking to a psychic, apparently. I looked at her in astonishment. ‘As a matter of fact, I’m having one of those days today,’ I admitted. She handed me a white A4 envelope folded in half. ‘Jeremy, I have one word for you,’ she said. ‘Modafinil.
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