Monday's evening

Tuesday, May 7^th 2013

Dinner last night was great. Not for the food (which was nonetheless very nice and pudding featured ice-cream again), but for the conversation. We sat with some ladies whose pensions from a well-known bank were clearly generous enough to fund frequent cruising. My accent deduction skills were on top form as I correctly identified that they were from Merseyside. They had worked in IT (or “computers” as it was in the 1980s) and one of them had been involved with the introduction of credit cards. It’s difficult now to think of the pre-plastic era let alone that someone had had the job of going around retailers installing the system for this.

Also on our table was a couple from Farnham, both of whom were (still) self-employed. The topics of conversation included:

• the perils of navigation (I had once got lost in Farnham and could think of nothing else to say about this settlement, unfortunately my mentioning of this resulted in an extensive discourse on Farnham’s one-way system)
• the dreadful weather we’ve been having in the UK over the last few years (I even threw in a comment about the jet stream)
• how much Americans eat (a lot)
• the benefits and pitfalls of working from home (you never have to get dressed versus lack of human contact)
• how good ice-cream is (and which cruise lines offer all you can eat ice-cream, they might be getting my custom next)
• the ridiculous health and safety notices on board. My personal favourite being “do not flush while seated”. Frankly if you need a sign to tell you this I think that you’ve got whatever’s coming to you. I would excuse this sign if they had those light activated flushes that you can set off by accident (I did this once in Switzerland, it was quite terrifying), but they are push button ones and the toilet seat lid covers the button up (until you put the lid down – I wish I had a diagram to show you) so you really would have to go to some effort to flush whilst seated.

Bonus calorie saving of the day: avoid the cheeseboard.

We decided to give the dance floor (and our feet) a rest and headed instead to one of the shop’s numerous bars. This one had a view to the stern (look at me with the nautical jargon) which at 10.30pm was not very much apart from a ship behind us. Matt took this opportunity to explain to me about port and starboard and red and green lights.

Amazingly, one of the bartenders recognised us from our previous cruise. Even more amazingly he recognised us as “The Dancers”.

A little night cap

Since the clocks were going forward overnight (which would be yet another complication to the alarm setting) we retired to our cabin after just one cocktail.

Monday's energy savings

Monday, May 6^th 2013: continued

After yesterday morning’s oversleeping I made sure that I turned up my phone to full volume before going to bed. I awoke feeling pleasingly refreshed (maybe the separate beds?) so was surprised that the alarm hadn’t gone off. I was even more surprised to find that it was gone 10 o’clock. Evidently the alarm doesn’t sound if the phone is turned off.

Calorie saving of the day 1: skip breakfast. I persuaded Matt that as it could be less than 2 hours until lunch (we had already spent some time faffing) we could swim, shower and then eat. We headed to the largest of the ship’s 4 pools; it was overcast this morning and this pool has the benefit of being undercover in such conditions (like a convertible car). I did a 20 minute swim but not very vigorously (no risk of being mistaken for a channel swimmer) as I had my “beach” bikini on and was rather concerned about the security of various parts of my anatomy in it. I did however enjoy doing some forward somersaults (without any loss of anatomy).

Calorie saving of the day 2: opt for the lighter options. Which I enjoyed for starter and main at lunchtime. Followed by treacle sponge and ice-cream. We had signed up for a “soda” package (20 drinks for the price of 16 or something like that) and had spent quite some time deliberating as to whether to add 20 branded soft whipped ice-creams for an extra £7.50. While this seemed like a bargain (and I do like a bargain), 20 branded soft whipped ice-creams would be quite a lot to get through. It was not clear whether these branded soft whipped ice-creams would come with chocolate flakes and while I love ice-cream this branded soft whipped type is not my favourite and I figured that there would be good ice-cream opportunities available at the port stops. As it turns out there are also good ice-cream opportunities available every lunch time and dinner time. It is always a pudding option (seemingly different flavours on every occasion in addition to the standard vanilla) and, even better, it is possible to exchange whatever dessert condiment is allocated (e.g. custard for the treacle sponge) for an ice-cream “side”. You can even have ice-cream as well as the allocated dessert condiment. It was a good call to opt out of the branded soft whipped ice-cream.

Over lunch I practised my small talk. Today’s subjects included the various ways of travelling to Southampton (in particular from Edinburgh) and Scottish (and other bits of the UK) independence, which I suppose might really be classed as political debate rather than small talk. Although you couldn’t really class it as debate as everyone joining in had the same opinion.

Calorie saving of the day 3: avoid the afternoon tea buffet. We had spent most of the afternoon in the convertible area by the pool, reading and playing my favourite fruit based word game. A 4 o’clock hoards of people started walking through this area. It was a few hours since we’d eaten and we were getting a bit peckish. So I suggested to Matt that we pack up our stuff and get afternoon tea (rather than go for the poolside pizzeria). We had always intended to go to the restaurant for this, as it is a civilised thing to do that doesn’t happen in day-to-day life (well not in ours anyway), plus there would be several flights of stairs to navigate which would be good exercise. In order to get to the waiter service restaurant we had to walk through the buffet area. This was clearly where the hordes were heading and now settling with their plates piled high with cakes, rolls, scones, samosas and curry. Yes, samosas and curry: since when afternoon tea has featured these I do not know. In the restaurant I was much more restrained – it is somehow ore difficult to over-eat when other people give you food rather than you putting it on your plate yourself from a seemingly unending supply. The only disruption to the aforementioned civility was when I failed to differentiate between the butter and the cream on my mini-toasted tea cake. Retrospectively the difference was obvious since the butter was in those little gold wrapping papers.

Then we re-settled by the pool. I wanted to paint the mini-fruit tart that Matt and I had just shared. I am not particularly good at painting and I particularly not good if I am trying to do it from memory. So I braved venturing into the buffet to see if I could pick up a tart to model for me. Unfortunately I was too late – afternoon tea had been cleared to make way for the Enid Blyton character themed tea. I didn’t think that the under 5s would have appreciated me taking one of their jam tarts to help me with my art so I would have to rely on my powers of recall. Whether you would identify my creation as a fruit tart is doubtful, but it’s colourful at least.  

Painting a fruit tart

Sunday's relaxation

Monday, May 6^th 2013

We’d opted for freedom dining, which meant that for evening meals we could turn up when we wanted and then sit with different people each night who had turned up at the same time. This has the drawback that you don’t get to know anyone else really well; but this is, in my opinion, vastly outweighed by the benefit that you don’t run the risk of being stuck with the same people each night yet have the chance to meet lots of interesting people. (On our previous cruise we had been very lucky with our fixed dining table but the freedom dining seemed like a much better option overall.) Yesterday lunchtime (when you also turn up when you want and sit with whoever turns up at the same time) demonstrated why you might not want to sit with the same people all the time. We were sat with 3 older couples. That in itself was not a problem (there are plenty of delightful older couples). It was their nature that was troubling:

1) Mr and Mrs A. Mrs A seemed a bit grumpy and barely uttered a word. Mr A was one of those men who insist on imparting their “wisdom” to you, which I don’t mind too much if it’s interesting wisdom. But Mr A’s wasn’t as he inisted on regaling to us i) details of the (numerous) cruises that he and Mrs A have been on before ii) an (excessive) discourse on the Panama Canal. I don’t even know where the Panama Canal is, which I’m sure would have been some better wisdom to acquire.

2) Mr and Mrs B who seemed very friendly but as they were sat opposite us on quite a large table it seemed somehow socially inappropriate to bellow across to them.

3) Mr and Mrs C who seemed nice enough but despite varied conversation starters from Matt and myself just weren’t very chatty. They became animated during an exchange with Mr A about the benefits of high end supermarkets’ ready meals. At which point Mr A asked me if I cook. Since Matt and I had been having a private conversation about sun protection I initially responded about the perils that Matt faces from ultra-violet radiation. Until Mr A made it clear that he meant the kitchen type of cooking and not the skin type. Apparently his daughter-in-law never cooks  - he seemed to be quite cross about this. I felt very smug in replying that I cook frequently and even on busy nights we don’t have ready meals (from high end or low end supermarkets). Unless of course you include homemade reheat.

Sunday afternoon passed highly uneventfully. After taking a turn on the promenade deck to walk off lunch (which included edible proof of a pudding that Matt had previously not believed existed: Brown Betty), in which I was successful in not losing anything overboard (one of my main cruise fears), we avoided the organised deck sports, donned appropriate sun protection and found some loungers in a quiet spot. We read for a bit, looked at the clouds and topped up our sun protection. I wasn’t particularly comfortable as I had to sit with my head clamped against the lounger to prevent the loss of my (rather lovely) sun hat to the occasional gust of wind.

I managed to retain my hat

After a couple of hours we moved inside and I got my watercolours out and painted the sky and sea. Matt mostly read and passed occasional comment on my interpretation of the sky and sea.

 

I clearly have some way to go before
I'll be exhibiting at the Royal Academy

And then it was 7 o’clock and probably time to contemplate getting ready for dinner. This would mainly consist of ironing (Matt) and dealing with nails (me). As usual I made a right mess of painting my right finger nails but did a very neutral colour so hopefully it didn’t look too bad to a casual observer.  

We ate dinner with a lovely, recently retired couple from Waterlooville. Sharon was particularly pleased to live somewhere called this. Neil had worked shifts for many years and they were “making up for lost time” cruising now. I was rather disconcerted by Neil’s earring (it just somehow didn’t go with a dickie bow). We enjoyed sharing stories of camping (our usual holiday mode) and discovered that they had met in Germany. Neil had been in the forces and Sharon had gone out married to one serviceman and come back married to  another (Neil).

I had my first ever experience of Lobster. And very nice it was too. It had a cheesey sauce and, as we know, cheese improves almost everything.

We rounded off Sunday with some more ballroom and latin dancing – a  bit better this evening mainly because I think that I had found my proverbial sea legs and Matt wasn’t drugged.

Saturday's and Sunday's feeding and exercising

Saturday, May 4^th 2013

First impressions indicated that we were well below average age. Although maybe not to the same extent as on our previous cruise since today there were a few couples with babies and toddlers. I quite like the company of the older generation but if past experience was anything to go by the greatest challenge of sharing a ship where the mean, mode and median age of your fellow travellers is over 70 would be avoiding sharp elbows at the buffet and not getting too annoyed at disregard for queue etiquette.

Setting sail (or more technically powering
off with marine diesel) from Southampton

If you look hard enough you can spot
my Mum and Dad waving us off from the
garden of The Grove, Hythe.

              

  Sunday, May 5^th 2013

We did some dancing after dinner last night. This was not entirely successful as:

1) The dance floor was oval. We are used to a quadrilateral which provides helpful position markers for our moves

2) There was a lot of sequence dancing. We don’t don sequence dancing – it’s too regulated

3) Matt, my husband, was lacking his usual assertiveness in leading. He put this down to me having “drugged” him with sea-sickness tablets.

Despite all that I ended the evening with only 1 dancing related injury (a bit of a smashed up big toe nail) and had half learnt a Square Tango (from Paul the dance host while Matt was having some liquid refreshment). Matt kindly dealt with my toenail (which I suppose is only fair given that he is at least partially responsible for it) and I feel sure that our dancing will improve over the fortnight.

We ate dinner last night with a man from Wales, his Brazilian wife, their 5½ year old son (fluent in at least 3 languages, or as fluent as it’s possible for a 5½ year old to be) and her parents (her mother originally being from Japan). They spoke only Portuguese (and I suppose maybe Japanese but that was definitely not going to help) and despite my best efforts to combine French, Italian and Spanish (in descending order of competence) it was very difficult to converse with them. I did manage to deduce that Ida is very excited about going to Rome and Jose identified that Matt talks a lot and I am “silent” in comparison.

I had a remarkably good night’s sleep. This was despite Matt and me sharing a single bed. We had booked late and hence got an incredibly bargainous holiday but were allocated a “twin beds only” cabin. I took the outside of the bed as Matt was worried about falling out (I didn’t see this as a risk as long as the sea stayed calm). Unfortunately Matt didn’t sleep as well as me so we may have to take separate beds from tonight.

The plan for today, a full day at sea, was to do not very much, but to make the most of the day and take advantage of some of the on board facilities. Therefore I set an alarm on my mobile for 8am. This would facilitate an early morning swim but still give us time for a leisurely breakfast.

As we have an inside cabin there are no solar clues as to the hour of the day. I was shocked when I awoke and checked the time: it was 9.20am. I had clearly neglected the fact that my alarm doesn’t sound if I leave my phone on silent. (This wasn’t as bad as the time that I locked my phone with alarm set in a hotel safe overnight when I was in Greece with a friend. We didn’t hear it go off and overslept so badly that we missed an extensive boat trip that we had booked the previous day.

So, early morning swim and leisurely breakfast were off. Buffet breakfast and mid-morning snack was on. As well as the aforementioned risk of sharp elbows at the buffet, the other risk is of over-eating. We both showed extreme restraint on this, our first, visit – Matt having his usual of a bowl of porridge (bolstered with a side of blueberry smoothie) and me breakfasting on a bowl of fresh fruit plus one piece of toast with a few beans, mushrooms and tomatoes. Pleasingly they even had mini portions of my favourite yeast extract spread which enhances greatly such a toast based morning meal.

At breakfast we were joined by an older couple who had lived in Plymouth in the 1960s. They enjoyed reminiscing about some of their favourite haunts back then, many of which are still around now. I enjoyed listening to their stories – one of their daughters was born at the hospital that used to be on the site where I lived when I first moved to the city. I think that we might have persuaded them to take a holiday to Plymouth – I hope that they’re not disappointed! – but apparently it will be better than the Northern town in which they currently live (which shall remain nameless).

We swam in the adults’ only pool, which we had found during our explorations yesterday. It is deceptively located within the spa complex (which I had no intention of paying extra for) and at first I thought there was and additional charge to swim her. However we managed to ascertain from dandy Daniel (Matt’s choice of adjective) that this was not the case. It is apparently one of those pools with a current that you swim against but that didn’t seem to be working this morning and it was too short to swim lengths so I did laps. It was too late when I realised that persistently going round in the same direction would make me dizzy, and there was a bit of a swell picking up too which can’t have helped that sensation. I got out after about 20 minutes and, hilariously, one of the older “spectators” asked me if I was a channel swimmer because I “looked like one”. I took that as a compliment rather than a comment on my layers of body insulation.