Day Sixty Six: Back in business at last in the Arabian Sea

Since my stupidity in not saving each day’s blog in Word we have been going over in our minds what we might have written about and then erased before it was posted and we are not sure if we told you that a few days back we were graced with the company of two whales. They were not very big or highly visible just two humps, dorsal fins and tails plus blowholes issuing water and air at irregular intervals, nevertheless they were there and they were the first that we have ever seen in the wild. Too far away for a decent photograph and I didn’t have the video camera with me either but we will always have the memory of seeing them.

I remember that in one of the blogs not sent that I did have a little rant about the overweight people on this voyage who are always the ones with the most food on their plates, who eat huge breakfasts, mid morning snacks, huge lunches, afternoon tea and then huge dinners and of course you always see them standing outside the lifts rather than walk up or down the stairs – even if they are going one floor level. This must be cause and effect mustn’t it? Oh yes and the larger the men are the smaller size of Speedos that they fit themselves into; to use an American expression – gross. Incidentally Jeff if you are reading this our mutual friend who tucks his Hawaiian shirt inside his pants is not alone, my guess is that 30% of men over 50 on this ship also do that, even when wearing shorts just below the knee accompanied by black calf length socks and sandals. Weird.

The ship’s internet connection seems to be stable at the moment as I was on for 45 minutes last night in an effort to catch up with past events and to rid our laptop of 85 spam emails and it seemed to work OK albeit a little slow but as the CyberStudy was full after 11.00pm there were an awful lot of people catching up for lost time. What I hadn’t realised was that the loss of the satellite also stopped passengers from using their mobile phones for speech or text so you can see why they were so angry. I also logged on briefly this morning to get Hayley’s latest email and also one from our erstwhile dining companions Richard and Keiko.

My day didn’t start too well when I discovered that the spring on the other arm of my spectacles has gone the same way as the first i.e. busted. With the judicious use of superglue that I had bought early in the trip to fix the left hand side I was able to fix the right hand side, so now I have to be very careful in folding them down lest they fall apart completely. I am hoping that when we get back to Middle Chub Tor there will be a small package for me from the USA containing the new frames, if all else fails I can fall back on my sunglasses but it does make it very dark in the theatre as well as looking rock star pretentious to have them on at night.

So what has happened today? Not a great deal if truth be told, we are in a nice calm stretch of beautiful blue water known as the Arabian Sea and we are heading for the Red Sea on our way to Sharm el Sheikh and the Suez Canal. We sat on the aft deck for breakfast today as there is some good shade there if you catch a bit under the deck above; the sun is quite high in the sky, very few clouds, a stiff breeze and a temperature of around 85F. We met a couple of ladies who are friends of Peter and Christine and they joined the ship at Mumbai having spent a week touring the more northern parts of India. They had been to Delhi, Agra and the Taj Mahal and had endured several coach trips over very poor roads – their impression of India was much the same as ours, too many people, too few jobs and too little money giving rise to too much poverty.

I went to a couple of lectures, the first of which was with Hilary to see a lady talking about writing. When I first saw it I thought that it was about Creative Writing and that maybe it could help with Murder on the Oriana but I had the wrong end of the stick. She is actually a graphologist and studied handwriting and my initial fear was that it was not my kind of subject but she made it very interesting and I shall certainly go back to see her again, we understand that she does a series of 10 lectures and has promised to analyse some of the audiences handwriting. I already have my sample in….. The second lecture was by an ex-flight engineer who served on Concorde and although the subject matter was very interesting he doesn’t have the personality to make a really interesting speaker. Saying that I will probably go again to see him provided that it doesn’t clash with something really important like swimming.

For those of you who have asked Hilary questions with your comments please accept my apologies for not getting replies to them, she did reply to each and everyone but they were lost when I didn’t save my pre-post notes. The one thing that I am really missing from home is my nice fast internet where I can be on line all day long and not have to worry about the cost, this ship’s system is so expensive that it is almost like the old dial-up days where to keep the cost down you have to do everything off line and only go on line when you are ready to send and then disconnect as quickly as possible. That requires a level of discipline that I find really hard as I have been so used to reading and replying to emails on line, ah well only 2 weeks and we will be home! OK it is formal night and Captain’s Reception tonight – who said “Hooray that means lobster thermidor again?” So I will stop and let Hilary add her bit, at the moment she is sitting on the bed cutting and sticking photos and text into the scrapbook in an effort to bring it up to date with Cochin and Mumbai.

Tiz I I am sorry but it is now 15 minutes before I need to be dressed up to the nines and I’m still wearing a T shirt and jeans! I love you and miss you all and will write more tomorrow. Take care, God bless.