My wife has reached that awkward age.

Most people in the western world get to it eventually - when booking themselves onto an ocean liner for a couple of weeks suddenly seems like a good idea.

Hints have already been dropped about how a once-in-a-lifetime cruise could be the perfect way for us to mark her retirement when it comes in the next few years.

Unfortunately, cruises are so not me, and there are so many reasons why a holiday afloat gives me a sinking feeling.

Now the issue has been brought into sharp focus by the news that Royal Caribbean Cruises are going to launch the world’s largest liner, which will be a mind-boggling five times bigger than the Titanic, so no wonder they are calling it Icon of the Seas.

Swindon Advertiser: Royal Caribbean's new cruise ship Icon of the Seas has been nicknamed Human Lasagne

Sadly for them, though, there is an iceberg on the horizon.

Last week, social media was awash with the idea that the ship’s official name is already giving way to a new nickname suggested in a viral tweet by a lady called Heidi Stephens, a writer who happens to live in north Wiltshire.

She said that after seeing an artist’s impression of its 20 decks with their capacity for nearly 10,000 people, her young son said it ought to be known as Human Lasagne, adding that the ship was ‘absolutely my idea of hell’.

Part of me is in awe of these cruise ships for their incredible size and complexity, and I wonder how you go about even starting to design something like that, let alone build it.

So when Human Lasagne greets its first passengers in January 2024, it really will be an engineering marvel.

But the main thing that puts me off sailing on one is the prospect of the captain telling me I can’t eat in his ship’s posh restaurant unless I am wearing a tie and uncomfortable shoes.

For one thing, I look forward to dressing down when I go on holiday, not dressing up, but I also see it as a matter of principle.

If a chap has coughed up a small fortune to go on a cruise, the least he should expect is control of his own wardrobe.

So it seems like poetic justice for Royal Caribbean Cruises to lose control over what their ship is called.

You can be rich enough to spend two billion dollars on building a ship, and millions marketing it, but no amount of money may be enough, in the end, to stop people naming it after a pasta dish.

After all, we have been here before, because nobody refers to the Gravelly Hill Interchange anymore, the official name for what every single person in the country now calls Spaghetti Junction.

So I expect the people from Royal Caribbean Cruises think Human Lasagne is pasta joke, and must be praying the nickname doesn’t stick.

But we will just have to wait and see.

Only time will tagliatelle.