A three-year cruise sounds like a costly, sweaty nightmare. But then you start doing the maths … | Emma Brockes

A cabin on the round-the-world MV Gemini costs 75,000. It could be a cost of living escape hatch for the middle classes

It is a juvenile but bankable way to pass time and lift one's spirits without too much exertion: I'm talking about identifying ways in which the lives of rich people suck, a list that is always imaginatively growing. Gwyneth Paltrow, testifying in Utah, has delivered solidly on this front this week, but there's an even more gratifying story you might have missed. For a mere 75,000, people with what is officially known as more money than sense can embark on a round-the-world cruise, taking in 135 countries and docking at 375 destinations. If that itinerary sounds overloaded, it's because you are a wage slave who only takes 14-day holidays. This particular cruise takes three years.

I know, right? Three years on a ship playing indoor golf" with the characters from Triangle of Sadness. It is so perfect a punishment for a certain type of hollowed-out plutocrat it might have been created by a limp, mid-list satirist. According to Life at Sea Cruises, the company behind the venture and a subsidiary of Miray Cruises, demand for the cruise is unprecedented" and it also goes without saying that the word cruise" in this case, is a misnomer. Cruises are for people who get excited by the presence of jumbo prawns at the buffet. By contrast, life aboard the 400-cabin MV Gemini" is, says Mikael Petterson, the managing director, a way of living as opposed to travel".

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist