Come Cruise With Milly on Azura

The four woman at the centre of Milly Johnson’s entertaining novel Here Come The Girls get up to all sorts of mischief on a 40th birthday cruise to the Mediterranean.
Milly herself (left), all bubbly five-feet of her, had to behave herself a little better on a recent cruise to the same destinations on P&O’s Azura – she was accompanied by her two young sons – but as she relates in her blog, she had an equally enjoyable time.
Back home in Barnsley, she wrote: ” It’s so lovely to look at the pictures and know that I truly painted a real portrait on life on board when I wrote Here Come The Girls. Strangely quite a few things happened that felt like I was in the book – our captain had a lovely gentle Irish accent for one. I wasn’t expecting to hear dear Captain Nigel come to life. ”
Milly tells me she has been a “die-hard P&O cruiser for nearly 10 years after being persuaded it would be the best holiday for a single mum with two babies. “Every time I’ve been on a ship I’ve come off thinking ‘I need to write a book about this’ and so last year I did.”
She has sailed the eastern Med itinerary from the book five times now, visiting Malaga, Cephalonia, Dubrovnik, Venice, Korcula, Corfu and Vigo.
Like me, she is a big fan of Olly Smith’s Glass House on Azura – she was in there sipping the Peller sparkling ice wine within minutes of boarding the ship in Southampton, and her sons were partial to the bison burger in there as well.
It wasn’t all fun and games. Milly had to sing for her supper, giving talks on her life as an author (and greetings card copywriter, barmaid, waitress and actress – not to mention winner of a week of Channel 4’s Come Dine With Me last year).
“I was chuffed as buttons to find that both were packed out and I sold soooo many books that my arm nearly dropped off signing them. Plus lots of people had bought them before and brought them on board to sign. There was a fabulous response and I met some wonderful people.
“I hope all the people who bought my books to take home as presents were happy and that I’ve been responsible for at least a few people taking the plunge and booking a cruise. I’ve converted a few friends over the years – and they’ve converted more. My friend ended up actually getting married on board after being bitten by the cruise bug.”
As well as her blog, Milly has also been recalling the cruise on her column in the Barnsley Chronicle. “For 17 wonderful days, I didn’t know, not care, if it was Tuesday or Saturday,” she wrote. “For 17 wonderful days, I had someone making my bed, putting chocolates on my pillow at night and calling me ‘ma’am’.”
While on holiday, she had “no cat litter trays to clear out, no queuing in the supermarket, and I was cocooned from a world of rioting, killer sharks and Colonel Gaddafi.” Back home, she is faced with a pile of ironing “so high there is a Sherpa on the top, holding a flag.”
So Milly is doing the sensible thing . . . counting down the days to her next cruise
I have to confess that chick-lit rom-coms are not my usual choice of reading, but Here Come The Girls is great fun. And now I’m going to have to buy at least one more of Milly’s books, because I have discovered that by a remarkable coincidence its central character shares my name – that’s Honeywell, not Greybeard.
I owe Milly that favour at least, especially after upsetting her this week. Of the trip on Azura she wrote: “As jobs go, this was a bit of a beauty,” but then she realised what I do for a living. “Not many people have a job better than mine, but you may just be one of them,” she told me.