Birvidik

So - we're off in Moby looking for a canal boat. Unless you want to drive all the way round through Albania, Kosovo, Serbia, Montenegro and Croatia, this involves taking a ferry from Igoumenitsa to Italy. Having experienced the dubious pleasures of Albanian roads two seasons ago, and the even more dubious pleasures of the Kosovo people many years earlier, we plumped for the ferry to Ancona.

This is not an unalloyed pleasure, as anyone who has sampled what is laughingly referred to as the on-board cuisine will attest. While we were manfully attempting the Adriatic version of bushtucker trials in the restaurant that evening, Liz idly wondered what they do with all the leftovers. We found out at breakfast - they put them in the omelettes. I've never been subjected to a cold chip omelette before. I know that a similar principle is found in the Spanish tortilla, but I'm sure this one had distinctly non-tortilla-ish traces of moussaka, chicken tandoori, battered unidentified marine invertebrate and Bolognese sauce.


Another little niggling worry was the memory of a recent fire on one of the ferries plying this route and the carnage, chaos and catastrophes that ensued. So our interest was piqued when the tannoy announced that there was to be a safety drill. We'd seen one of these before on an Adriatic ferry, but as it mainly consisted of a bunch of bored-looking waiters unconvincingly dressed up in flash-suits and dragging tangled hoses disconsolately behind them, it didn't exactly inspire confidence.

This time, though, the tannoy informed us that we, the passengers, would need to play our part in this exercise to add a dash of cinema verité to the proceedings. We thought that this was an excellent idea, although we suspect that the authorities had forced it on reluctant ferry companies after the aforementioned fire with its subsequent loss of life and embarrassing publicity, not to mention the eye-watering rescue bill.

We were in our cabin when the fun began. The tannoy fired off a series of short beeps followed by a long beep, which reverberated tunefully around the ship. This was a rather restrained and civilized alarm, a bit on the lines of "Er, excuse me. Sorry to bother you, but would you mind awfully just popping into this lifeboat?"

To counter this, the ship's horn was brought into play to pep things up a bit. The long blast from this did not convey a polite request. This was more along the lines of "MOVE YOURSELVES YOU BUNCH OF BRAIN-DEAD DINGO'S KIDNEYS AND GET YOUR GREAT WADDLING FAT ARSES INTO THE LIFEBOATS OR YOU'RE ALL GOING TO BLOODY DIE!" It also induced tinnitus on everyone on board, as well as causing any dental fillings within earshot to drop out. Every dog on the ship (of which there were many) started howling and Einstein's fur stood out like Helena Bonham-Carter on a bad hair day. She yowled like a banshee (Einstein, that is, not Helena Bonham-Carter), then flew across the van and clung onto the cab window like one of those stick-on Garfield's you see on cars driven by people who have a sign on their desk saying "You don't have to be mad to work here, but it helps!!!"

This was followed by reassuringly professional-sounding instructions for Charlie team to make its way to their stations and contact the bridge, after which Foxtrot team were told to meet up with Charlie team and establish communications. What the Hell were teams Alpha, Bravo, Delta and Echo up to? If my miserable hide's in danger I want every bloody member of crew doing their damndest to save it, not sitting around doing their nails or polishing their epaulets.

The tannoy then instructed us to leave our cabins and make our way to the nearest muster station, where we should follow the instructions of the crew.

Here is a little survival tip: To increase your chances on an Adriatic ferry should disaster strike, learn the emergency instructions in Greek. These announcements are made in Greek first, followed by Italian, then English, after which comes French and finally (possibly significantly) German. Albanians, Bulgarians, Romanians and Turks are left to fend for themselves. The upshot of this is that by the time most people work out what's going on and make their way to the muster stations they find that the lifeboats are already full of Greeks and Italians and halfway down to the water. If the Captain is Italian, he will usually be found in the first lifeboat to be lowered, having tripped over his shoelace and inadvertently fallen in it.

We, along with all the other passengers on board, dutifully left our cabins and made our way to the muster stations. Well, I say all, but from the noises coming through the bulkhead from one of the cabins we passed, I suspect that its occupants had something rather more urgent on their minds.

It was all very realistic at the muster station - lots of crew wandering around in hi-vis jackets with 'crew' emblazoned on them, just in case we thought they were politicians on a photo-op visit to the last remaining factory in the UK. Fire hoses snaked across the floor and walkie-talkies squawked unintelligibly. About a hundred of us stood around expectantly, waiting to be shown where our lifejackets were, or to be directed to the lifeboat stations. Nothing happened.

Eventually I asked one of the crew what we should do. This was obviously an unexpected request as he looked confused, stuttered a bit and then beckoned over someone more senior. Crew senior also looked somewhat taken aback but recovered admirably and told us to go into the nearby lounge bar and take a seat, which we all did.

I have to say at this point that I don't believe the other passengers were really entering into the spirit of the exercise. They just weren't giving it their realistic best. There was no shouting, screaming, wringing of hands and wailing; no desperate pleas of 'Please forget about me but for the love of God save my baby'; no fighting and clawing over prostrate hemiplegics to get to the lifeboat. Nothing.

It was easy for us though. We were British and so we behaved as the British would in such a situation. We sat quietly with stiff upper lips and prepared to follow instructions, no matter how inane they may have been. There were two problems with this approach.

Firstly there were no crew about to give instructions. I don't know where they had all got to, but there wasn't a hi-vis jacket or a crisp white uniform flashing gold braid anywhere to be seen. This latter omission was the most puzzling as, until the drill started, the officers were everywhere, strutting about flaunting their gold epaulets and stripes with a knowing swagger. Perhaps they have a standing instruction to go into mufti during a crisis, thus avoiding having to make a decision and getting first dibs at the lifeboats as a bonus.

The standby comms channel was the tannoy and it was here that the second snag appeared. The tannoy itself sounded as it had been thrown out from Kings Cross underground station circa 1964 on the grounds that it was too unintelligible even for London Transport. This difficulty was compounded by the announcers, whose mastery of several languages was admirable, but whose pronunciation was idiosyncratic to say the least. I had more success understanding the Greek than I did the English. As for the Germans, no wonder they looked puzzled. I suspect they were getting thinly veiled subliminal messages questioning the competence and ethical probity of Angela Merkel, the Bundesbank and the IMF.

Human nature then conspired to ensure that even master linguists and professional code-breakers stood little chance of deciphering the announcements. If one was made in Greek, all the Italians, French, Germans and even some Brits talked over it at the top of their voices, leaving the Greeks to make futile attempts to glean anything useful from it. When it switched to Italian, the Greeks joined in the cacophony while the Italians dropped out, waving their arms and slapping their foreheads in frustration as they tried to make sense of the announcements above the din. This continued through all possible combinations and permutations while the Albanians, Bulgarians, Romanians and Turks kept up a low level basso continuo underneath the lot.

Then the captain entered the melee and came on the tannoy. Slowly and clearly, in all five languages, he said "This is the Captain. Abandon Ship, Abandon Ship. All passengers go to muster stations and follow the instructions of the crew, who will direct you to the lifeboats."

Even though you know it's a drill, it's nevertheless a sobering thing to hear.

Well it was to us. No-one else seemed to take a blind bit of notice. I suspect that this was because the whole exercise had by now degenerated into a gigantic game of Chinese whispers:

"He said there's a band on the ship."
"No he didn't. He said Ban Don Smith."
"Who's Don Smith? I thought he said Abba don't shit."
"Don't be daft - of course they do."
"What? - Even Agnetha?"

The cacophony continued, passengers ordered drinks from the bar and the bar staff served them without a second thought. A few, us included, looked round for a member of crew for guidance. There were none to be seen. A slight undercurrent of concern and irritation started to spread through the assembled passengers as it began to slowly sink in that, had this been a real emergency, they would by now have been in deep doo-doo.

After a while, a German near the door decided that the beer he had drunk was taking its toll on his bladder and he went out to find a toilet. A few thought he knew what was going on and followed him. This triggered herd behaviour in most of the other passengers who all shuffled along behind him, squeezing through the door and down the corridor. I don't know how many actually made it into the toilet. It must have given him a shock when he looked over his shoulder from the urinal. Liz and I made 'Baaa' noises to each other. About five minutes later they all wandered back in, trying to look nonchalant.

Eventually, a naïve crew member made the mistake of walking into the bar. He was immediately besieged by passengers demanding to know what they were supposed to do next, and when this bloody drill, which by now had been going on for more than an hour, was going to end.

"It ended twenty minutes ago" he replied, nonplussed.
"Why didn't you bloody tell us then" they shouted back.
"We did. We said it on the PA system three times. We wondered why no-one took any notice."