That sinking feeling by Jan Needle
Forgive me for saying so if you’ve bought a ticket, but the idea of all those punters dressed as refugees from Upstairs Downstairs chugging across the Atlantic to rendezvous with the spirits of the unfortunates who sailed in the real Titanic a hundred years ago fills me with a mixture of astonishment and dread. Astonishment that anyone should want to do it, and dread that the whole world’s turning bonkers at a speed gone critical. Do they really imagine their grandchildren hanging on their every word when they breathlessly reveal ‘I was on that Titanic-related luxury non-re-enactment cruise in 2012 when we didn’t see an iceberg and fifteen hundred of us didn’t drown – it was AWEsome!’? (And why, incidentally, do you think the North Koreans chose to launch their rocket a hundred years after the Titanic sailed? Did they sense an even greater international triumph? Anniversaries, eh – doncha love ’em.) On the other hand, because I’ve got a rather anally retentive pocket diary...