Day Twelve: People Watching

Some of our older readers will remember the TV programme Steptoe and Son (in America I think it was called Sandford and Son) where Harold and his Dad Albert Steptoe, a couple of rag and bone men, used to argue with each other. The dad was a bit of a lecher and one of Harold’s favourite sayings about his dad was “You dirty old man.” We have the equivalent of Albert Steptoe on our Lido deck – not, I hesitate to say that he is dressed other than immaculately – for he sports a slightly battered Panama Hat and usually favours cream shorts or trousers and a sports shirt. He is probably Albert’s age though, somewhere in his early seventies I reckon and a good 6 feet tall, rather elegant in fact. But he trawls the Lido deck in search of single ladies of a certain age and chats them up. We first noticed him yesterday when he pounced on a Scottish lady sun bathing on a recliner in front of us, she tried to make him think that she was asleep but he persisted and insisted on pushing one of his mp3 player headphones into her ear so that she could listen to the music he had selected. “Rather good, don’t you think?” he insisted as she obligingly nodded and tried to make her excuses so that he would move away. Facing us, she tutted and shook her head as he made off in search of another conquest. Today he was back; first it was Pearl, a single lady we met on day one in the self service restaurant when we were all given our inaugural lunch. Then he moved on to a gathering of four women who were just settling into their sunbeds ready for a day’s heavy tanning, he really is a most persistent and attentive man but is really very kind, he talks to them, he brings them drinks, puts his arm around them as he makes his chat up lines and I think that his chat up is working for I have yet to see any of the ladies be rude to him or push him away. Presumably he is cruising solo so who knows he may meet a new partner on his way round the world.

My day so far has been a very lazy one, although it did start with a frustrating experience in the CyberStudy. We had a leaflet saying that there will be a webcam operating during our transition through the Panama Canal (www.pancanal.com) and so we decided to email folks early so that they can be prepared for this event. Working offline I wrote an email to everyone I thought would be interested and went up to the CyberStudy to send it. Would the emails go? Would they hell. I logged off, and on and then resorted to using a different mail system while trying to remember who I had decided to send it to. This involved searching through contact lists and heaven knows what else before I finally got it off. 14 minutes of piddling around at £0.16 per minute did not impress me at all. I can only hope that you all got it and if you didn’t then click on the link above and see if the camera is working yet. With our minutes running down (70 left out of 250 and we only started 10 days ago) it was time to buy more so this time the package is 500 minutes for £65 or £0.13 per minute. It does pee me off that I can have a month’s fast broadband at home for £14 and yet we have to pay through the nose here.

Frustration over it was time to head for breakfast (genuine Alpen muesli today!) with prunes of course to keep me regular – yes Graham I think about it a lot too – and a couple of cups of tea and then I was on course to bag a couple of sunbeds in the shade where I could read while Hilary went to the second stage of her model. She will tell you all about that later. I managed to finish my second novel of this trip one by Lee Child, an author I really like, but as I had read it once before I was only too glad to finish it and pass it on to Bill who was again lying on a sunbed not far from us. Now I have started another novel by James Patterson, his books are just wallpaper for the mind really, very formulaic and needing no mental stimulation whatsoever. I completed another Daily Mail crossword from the book that Shirley and Dave gave me but I did need assistance from the answers in the back. Don’t know what it is about this particular set of puzzles but the authors and I are not on the same wavelength. At home I can usually finish 4 out of 6 but not from this particular book. I will keep trying though.

With Hilary back I waited until 12.30pm to go into the pool – it is a good time actually as that is when quite a lot of folks decide that lunch is a necessity. I managed 20 lengths on my front and 8 on my back before the pool filled up again and I called it a day. The poolside showers are fabulous, very powerful, very hot if you want them to be and they have liquid soap that smells OK, men and women have separate shower areas and changing rooms which are between the two pools on the Lido deck. At the bow end of the Lido deck is the Al Fresco restaurant and at the stern end (see how proficient I am with nautical speak) is the Conservatory restaurant. The latter is much larger, has a far wider selection of food and I find it very convenient for just nipping in and getting iced water and cups of tea; lately we have been spending a good deal of our time on the Lido deck but we quit it early today in favour of going to see the SpyMaster talk on Spies in High Heels. Not one of his best but very entertaining as always and I thought that it was his last but apparently there are two more. I hope that tomorrow’s talk doesn’t take up too much Panama time.

Just about the first thing you do when you join Oriana is to hand over a credit or debit card so that they can take an imprint of it, then they give you a small (credit card size) dark blue wallet with the P & O logo on it. Inside the transparent cover on the front is a bar-coded piece of plastic with your name and cabin number and this is the devil incarnate. You see something you like they scan the barcode, buy a drink scan the barcode, book a tour scan the barcode, and buy internet minutes scan the barcode, change foreign currency for a tour scan the barcode. No money changes hands but the debt is piling higher and higher as we reach the end of the first leg in San Francisco, Hilary is keeping track of all our barcode scans for wine at dinner, poolside ginger beers, souvenirs and trips etc but even with our £500 cabin credit and our £200 fuel rebate we will be in debt by the time the bill thuds onto our cabin mat. Hilary has just reminded me that the tenor of the ship will change once we leave San Francisco as we have heard over the ship grapevine that 500 passengers are leaving and 400 joining. We are assuming that most of the new folks will be American and it will be interesting to see how they integrate into the staid old British Empire types who are currently dominant on this ship.

Tiz I. As we have had a lazy day (again) I don’t have much to add. The clay modelling class was great fun and I keep getting the giggles when I see what has evolved on my model. We follow a set pattern by the instructor and my model has metamorphosed from ET to gormless to someone after a heavy night of drinking to an old chap with no teeth to Prince Charles. I can’t wait to see what he looks like after the next lesson when he gains, hair, whiskers and a hat! The spy master was funny as usual and at the end of the talk he took questions, the one I thought most interesting was ‘what makes a good spy’. His answer was a good liar, good listener, someone who can fend off questions about him/herself and able to remain almost as invisible. It was interesting to me that a huge amount of people who attended the talks had spent time in Hong Kong before it was taken over by China. He also knew that there were significant amounts of the audience with secret service histories. Interesting hey?

OK one last bit to add after dinner (Red Mullett, very nice, Black Forest, very fattening, damn). We went to see the film of Brideshead Revisited – Emma Thompson and Michael Gambon, very good but very long I would guess that 50% of the audience nodded off at some stage. The plot seemed totally different from the old TV series, maybe I will read the book again, then again maybe not. It’s the Panama tomorrow and we enter the first lock at 6.00am so we have to be up early, BUT we put the clocks back another hour so all the emails that I sent out are wrong. It will be 11.00am in England and 5.00am in Texas. Night all, thanks for all your lovely comments, it’s nice to know that you are not too bored with the rantings of this elderly couple.

Day Eleven: A lazy day in the Caribbean

Awake at 4.30am but soon back to sleep it was nice to be away from the hectic moments of the last couple of days where we got up early to go off on our tours it was nice to have a lie in today and pretty much laze around all day. A leisurely shower, a stroll up three decks to the Al Fresco and muesli/fruit for breakfast is a nice rhythm to be in. Hilary left early for her 10.15am class in clay modelling while Sam took his book to read while waiting for the latest SpyMaster lecture. Today the topic was Codes and how to make them and break them. He touched on the Dan Brown book about the da Vinci code and dismissed it almost immediately as pure hokum and then took us through the various codes and ciphers from those as simple as Morse Code to the complex ones that were used in the Second World War. Naturally he spent quite a lot of time on the famous Enigma machine which was used by the Germans and was famously cracked by Bletchley Park after we had captured one of their machines on an abandoned U-Boat after if mysteriously failed to sink. Tomorrow is the last of his lectures and it is Spies in High Heels – knowing a little bit of how his mind works it could be spiced with a few graphic pictures!

With the daytime activity over Sam then proceeded to our favourite shady spot on the Lido Deck (deck 12 i.e. 3 up from our cabin deck – sometimes we take the lift and sometimes we are good and walk the stairs; 6 short flights). With towels reserving our sun loungers Sam settled down with his novel waiting for Hilary to arrive from her class, you can read all about that further down. By 11.00am it was clear blue skies, calm seas and 81F and the pool temperature had risen to 29C and time to put on the sun block even though we were in the shade. A little reading, an attempt at a crossword, some dozing and before we knew it 12.45pm came and the pool started to clear out as passengers started their hunt for lunch, so Sam managed to extricate himself from his prone position and stumble his Croc clad feet across the deck to the pool. Footwear is essential when out in the sun because if you don’t bother to put shoes on you become one of the “Ooh, Ooh, Ooh brigade” as you accelerate from the pool across the open area trying to get back to your sun lounger without your feet touching the floor. I have seen so many people today that I know are going to have an uncomfortable night when they try and put their reddened back onto the bed sheets – there are some almighty lobsters out there today. Most of them are men, but a few women have also had too much sun today, I have nicknamed the women “Robin Redbreasts” for obvious reasons as in “Look over there, another Robin entering the hot tub.” I have yet to think up a nickname for pot bellied men with crimson man boobs and scarlet backs, if you can think of one let me know. I (Sam) have a lightly reddened face mainly obtained from my short excursions into the pool where I do laps as much as I can for about 15 or 20 minutes. Not started wearing my backwards baseball cap or a T-Shirt yet but that could come.

Two of our dining table companions Alison and Bill were close to our normal space in the shade and so quite a part of our day was exchanging views with them. Alison has been having problems getting email exchanges with her daughter so I followed her to the CyberStudy to find out what the problem was. She has one of those little Acer netbooks that claim to let the user get on line and perform simple computer applications. She was burning up minutes like they were going out of style and it didn’t take long to see why for basically she had little idea of many of the simple tasks such as opening and closing windows, getting rid of warning messages and she is an extremely slow “hunt and peck” typist. Just to open her email account, read a message from her daughter and compose a simple one line reply took her 11 minutes. Not her fault as she has a tiny machine, with very hard to read characters (because of the screen size) and no one had shown her how to do type and copy things offline and then paste them on line. She seemed pleased with the stuff that I showed her but I doubt that this will be the last time that we meet in the computer room.

That pretty much sums up my day, read, crossword, sleep, get cups of tea for me and water for Hilary and occasionally sneak a bowl full of fruit when I feel peckish I have cut way back on the food that I consumed during the first week and have even managed to refuse extra helpings of vegetables with dinner. Refusing the desserts is hard, a couple of times I have just had sorbet or cheese and biscuits but last night I did succumb to the crème caramel. Tonight is Formal and for me that means dinner jacket and white shirt, the only choice I get is whether to wear a black bow tie or my Longhorns tie, having worn black twice in a row I will probably go Texan tonight. Not sure if I told you but last night was Country and Western, I spotted a couple of neckerchiefs but that was about it. I wore the new Longhorns shirt with Bevo on the pocket and my new friend Alison told me that she liked the colour. I will turn you over to Hilary now and add my closing bit after tonight’s entertainment.

Tiz I. It is so unfair that I eat less than half of the quantity of food that Sam eats yet he can lose weight by cutting out a couple of meals and I continue to increase. Good thing is that people won’t be able to say they didn’t notice me – being the size of the back of a bus has its advantages. I got to my clay class early so while the previous class finished up I looked out of the windows watching the sea and saw bunches of flying fish. They are about the size of a healthy sparrow and are amazing in that they shoot out of the sea and skim the surface of the sea for very long distances. I was very happy to see them. The class was great fun and I have a tube with feet completed so far. Tomorrow we start to make the head and hat – we put the basis for the head on and let it set a little before we make the face. Peter (from our dining table) is a very good artist and he came to the modelling class, its great to have someone who knows what they are doing working alongside one! I can’t wait to get on with the rest of the model. I spent the afternoon on the sunbed reading and code wording! Our dining companions were on the adjacent sunbeds and they talked a little then wanted to sleep or read. Alison went to the computer room and appreciated the help that Sam was able to give her when it meant that she could save some of the expensive minutes typing on line. Tonight I plan to go to a show - a tribute to Abba – Sam probably won’t! Now I have to transform myself into a vision in formal ware – well try anyway.

While Hilary was successfully transforming herself – and she did look really nice in pale green – I sat on the bed to get out of her way. No sooner had she sat down at our little round table and put her hands on the computer than she had me yelling at her “Look, come quick, dolphins!” Sadly she was not able to get to our window quick enough but I saw first one jump out of the water and that was when I called her then that one was joined by another and they both jumped out, one more jump together and they were gone from my view and were heading for the bow of the ship. This is the first time that I have ever seen dolphins in the wild and I really hope that it is not the last.

At dinner, which was formal, full dinner jacket, the works we had our photo taken as a couple so if it looks decent we will buy a copy and then re-photograph it so that we can email it for all to see. I went strictly vegetarian tonight, tomato consommé and roasted vegetables – the problem is that there are not many vegetarians and so there is an abundance of food provided for us. I keep refusing the waiter but he continues to pile it on, contrary to what Hilary has said I am not losing any weight and I am constantly hungry because I am trying to just eat fruit all day and saving my protein and carbs for dinner.

Tonight’s entertainment was 100% better than last night, this was a singer who could also mimic the various styles of other singers, he did a good Bobby Darin, a good Rod Stewart, an excellent Tina Turner (yes Tina not Ike!) and a really good Willie Nelson. Later in the tour he is doing a Matt Monroe evening and I will definitely go to that. As Hilary said earlier she is at the Abba tribute while I am stranded here on my own – at this time of night I seem to be the only one who uses the CyberCafe.

OK that’s all folks, hope to blog tomorrow and then on Tuesday we have to be up at 6.00am to see the entrance into the Panama Canal. Exciting….

Days 9 & Ten: St Maarten and St Lucia What a contrast!

Day Nine: St Maarten

Yesterday I wrote a huge rant about the Isle of St. Maarten, then the internet went down as we were in a satellite black spot. When I came to write the blog for today Day 10 – see later – I overwrote everything that I had written which in itself was probably not a bad thing as it was not a good day. I was miserable, the island was not a fun place, the tour was not anywhere near as good as we thought that it should be and we were not sorry when the day came to an end. The only really good thing about our trip was the coach driver who was funny, witty and deserving of all the tips that he got. ‘nuff said, let’s press on with some photos of St.Maarten and just a comment about the island which is jointly shared between the Dutch and the French. On the Dutch side their currency is guilders, on the French side it is Euros and the common currency is US dollars. On the Dutch side they speak Dutch, on the French side they speak French and their common language is English! Real English too as they spell aluminium the correct way.

Day 10: St Lucia

The only problem that we have with this island is its relationship to the internet satellite, it is a black spot and so you have yet to read yesterday’s rant so make sure that you read them in order.

We woke early, again! This time around 4.30am and then fitfully dozed until 6.45am when Sam decided to get up and have a shower so once again we were in the little Al Fresco restaurant shortly after they opened. This time Hilary had just the salmon and cream cheese bagel and I had that as well as my early morning muesli and fruit. What a boring life we lead, but onwards and upwards to higher decks to watch the ship enter the lovely deep water harbour of St. Lucia. Almost, but not quite, as beautiful as Kauai and certainly a lot poorer - as we later found out. The bay that we moored in is a natural deep water harbour and the landing dock itself is surrounded by lush tropical plants, red roofed houses and gives off an air of being pretty well looked after. The organization of our tour was this time not quite so chaotic, many of the passengers have been to St. Lucia before and they simply opted to do their own thing, either walking into the local town or taking a taxi to a local beach. For those who chose to go into town they had an extra bonus as it is Saturday and that is market day on this island. Not quite like the market in Koloa but the same idea with local people bringing their produce and trying to sell it. We saw plenty of fruits and particularly vegetables that we did not recognise and I hesitate to say it but some of it looked pretty inedible to me, or it would require a lot of cooking to make it edible.

We selected our tour from the book based mainly on the fact that it looked like the most interesting out of the limited number available. It is called Escape to Eden and involved a 30 minute drive through St Lucia’s capital town Castries to a family run house naturally called Eden House. This is a working family home owned by the Welch family who emigrated to St Lucia some 4 years, bought this beautiful old stone house and restored the house and its gardens to its former glory. Our driver was called Samuel and he was a lovely chap, originally from Ghana he decided a few years back that he didn’t want any child of his to have the same sad upbringing as he had so he stowed away on trucks and ships and found himself on St Lucia. Since his arrival seven years ago he has built himself up so that for 6 months of the year during the tourist season he drives people like us around and for the other 6 months he grows bananas. He was certainly very knowledgeable on all aspects of this part of his business and even stopped the bus at one stage to show us how one banana farmer had forgotten to take the flowers off and so that bunch would be valueless as they get marked by insects. Then he showed us a half bunch where someone had been along by the side of the road and stolen all that they could reach.

Eden House is beautiful both inside and out. We were fortunate to have Nick, the owner of the house, as our guide for the tour and he met us at the gate with three of their dogs. Hayley you would have loved Nick and his wife (Laura? Lauren?), they arrived with one spaniel and presently have 33 rescue dogs which have been injured, abandoned, dropped at their gate or just found their way there. They have a nursery for the puppies, a play area for the older dogs and the very old are allowed to roam the gardens accompanying the tourists – they followed us and Nick everywhere. Nick was certainly very knowledgeable about the trees and plants they have added to their garden and after a tour of the grounds we were led into the main house. This is not a show house, this is the house that they live in day to day and when all the tour parties are gone they sit down and have their meal in the rooms that the tourists have traipsed through. They gave us mango punch and banana bread made by Nick’s mother in law who lives with them, they also have a beautiful Caribbean girl who helps them out and when tourists are around she dresses in the National costume. She explained to us that the tying of the head scarf that she wears shows her marital status. One knot means single, two knots engaged and three knots married and she added that the number of knots that she has in her scarf depends whether or not she and her boyfriend are on speaking terms!

We stayed in the house longer than we probably should have but it was fascinating to see and so beautifully restored to its former glory. Huge wooden framed windows, red corrugated iron roof, one large coloured glass window as you enter the living room, white washed ceilings and chunky furniture. We will post photos as soon as we can. Nick quickly zipped us through the rest of the garden, over the little bridge that crosses a small koi-carp pond and back to the main gate where the two “guard dogs” were still sleeping and sadly it was time to leave. We could easily have spent a day there just talking to Nick – (an ex- Custom’s Officer Julian) – his wife and the children’s granny. A lovely experience.

Samuel drove us off to the next stop, a place where they make batik clothes and other goods. It was OK and located such that you could look down from the staging at the rear onto the harbour and this gives the opportunity to take photographs of the cruise ships. Then it was down to Castries again and once more Hilary and I opted to get out of the bus before it reached the ship. We strolled around the market and bought a couple of souvenirs before hiking it back to the Oriana for a nice cup of tea and a short nap. Sam elected to go back to the swimming pool (now 29C – almost warm enough to tempt Hilary), so a quick dip later, a snooze in the shade, another chapter down on the novel and it is time to come back to the cabin so that we can blog and get ready for our Casual Country and Western night. The new Longhorn shirt that Sam got for Christmas is already out of the wardrobe and ready to go.

Hi, Tiz me. We have had soooo much a better day. As Sam said the trip out this morning was fantastic, lovely people, friendly dogs and a very knowledgeable plantsman in Nick. He so much reminded me of Tony Hooper in his approach to life. He does not miss the customs service. I spoke to the grandmother of the family for a long time and she is a thoroughly super person, so kind and totally in love with her family, especially the grandchildren – something I can understand. A really amazing experience thank you St. Lucia. The town of Castries is lovely, so clean and sparkling. It is surrounded by mountainous hills full of tropical greenery. The people are a lot friendlier than those in St Maarten – all in all a super place to visit. We finally bought some rum and persuaded the bar staff to give us a cup full of lemon slices along with the ginger beer we got from them. Tomorrow we will see the sun set whilst sitting on deck with our drinks – I hope I like rum! It’s a lovely thought anyway so thank you Julian. On 20th we go through the Panama Canal and I am very excited about that. Dad and I would also like to wish Sammy a safe and comfortable trip to China and wish her a wonderful time there with Jess, Nathan and Kate. Take lots of photographs we will be over to see them as soon as possible. Well that’s it for another day – Sam is off to the IT room now to see if the internet is up and running.

We had one breakthrough after we got back from dinner and the show tonight and that was a box of Soya milk delivered to our cabin, we should have thought of asking for one before as Hilary had been offered it at dinner on our first night. So now she can have tea and coffee whenever she likes. The after dinner show was OK, bordering on rubbish I thought, he was billed as a multi talented musician capable of playing several instruments and apparently he was in the film Little Voice playing a money lender. If he was then I missed him, he has also said to have played at a Royal Variety performance. The instruments that he actually played were the clarinet (tolerably well), the penny whistle (with his ear and his nose, so different) and the soprano saxophone (badly). He also tried to tell jokes - very badly. So I will probably not go back to see him if he does another performance.

Hilary starts her clay modelling tomorrow, me I just might go for a swim. We are heading for the Panama canal and should get there around 6.00am on Tuesday.

Day Eight: Yards of brown crepe!

We awoke this morning to the sound of sliding glass and realised that the ship was rolling a bit more than usual, it was our water tumblers sliding across the shelf and back again that made us realise that something just wasn’t quite right. Then came the announcement from the Captain, “We are sorry to inform you that there is a problem with one of our fins but we would like to assure you that in the meantime our engineers are working very hard and we expect that the problem will be resolved shortly. In the meantime please make sure that you keep one hand on the handrail as you move about the ship.” As we went to the stairway we noticed the crew tying sick bags at every convenient point. Not a good sign.

Actually we kind of enjoyed the roll, it wasn’t very much by some standards but it could have been dangerous for many of the passengers walking with the aid of sticks and crutches – and there are quite a few of them. We intended to do some laundry today, well it is the end of the first week and so freshening up the knicker drawer would be a good thing to do, but it wasn’t to be as all the laundries were full and even had people wandering from deck to deck trying to find one that wasn’t in use. So we abandoned that idea and continued upstairs for breakfast. The effect of the ship’s roll and the change in time zone meant that for us we were up very early and in fact we had completed our breakfast (outside this time) by 9.30am, mind you our breakfast was very small compared to some of the plates that we saw being carried around. Mine consisted of some muesli with extra raisins, walnuts, figs, prunes and apricots washed down with tea, while Hilary opted for just the fruit and orange juice – neither of us were tempted by the hot food or the croissants.

Then it was “take your positions by the pool and watch the world go by time,” and that was when I saw the yards of brown crepe walking by. Some of these dear old ladies really do need ironing badly; they sit in the sun all day long beside the pool, constantly turning as if they are chickens on a spit. Many of them are on their own, or if not their partner looks like a teak Buddha with huge pot belly and while the women drink wine the men down cans of Fosters.

My day was a very lazy one and I finished one novel and started another and did most of a crossword puzzle. Hilary was a lot more active for she went off in the morning to sign up for a clay model class that starts on Sunday and then to a demonstration about hair care. Later in the afternoon she was off again to the latest Spymaster lecture while I sat by the pool and watched a fashion parade (actually it was just an advertising thing to get people to buy tropical ware for the dinner and party tonight). Yes I forgot to tell you that today’s dress code is Casual/Tropical, and I plan to wear one of my Hawaiian shirts coupled with a silk lei. Around what would be lunchtime – if we allowed ourselves lunch that is – there was a poolside band playing and singing popular music followed by I’m an Officer Get me out of Here. That was just a bit of fun where some of the Officers undertook competitive tasks and the loser was pushed into the swimming pool. I actually did my bit in the pool today with a good few lengths on front and back, so what with the exercise and the reduction in food intake I hope to get rid of the flab.

We did go to the movies this afternoon to see a comedy called The Baker, a British film about a hit man trying to retire who ends up in a small Welsh village. Quite funny and passed away 90 minutes – well a bit less actually as the projectionist seemed to have a bit of trouble and I think that he fast forwarded through the first 15 minutes.

Hope that you enjoyed the pictures, when I looked at them later they didn’t turn out too badly and I will try and put some more up after our trip to St Maartens tomorrow. This is the end of my first part of the blog as I need to get changed into my fancy gear for the Tropical Evening; I expect that Hilary will add a bit when we get back from dinner.
Tiz I. The pool still had quite a swell going on with the missing stabilizers on the ship and the temperature was only 28c – it has to reach at least 30c before I get in there. Still, there is plenty to watch with the grannies parading past. With the ship rolling about so much I decided to miss the shower experience today and settled for a bowlful of water which was much easier to cope with.

The Tropical Dinner went well, with only one of the men not wearing a tropical shirt, I did wear a white silk lei and a shell necklace too but I was the exception among the men in the dining room. The meal had a tropical flavour too with shrimp for starters, red snapper for main course and Pina Colada coconut tart for dessert. Bill bought today’s wine, a white French which he warned us would be dry and he was correct, a bit too dry for my palate. The discussion got a little heated between Hilary and Alison when Hilary was talking about Derrick and Alfred and their time in India. Alison thought that the time of British colonization of India was a very bad thing for the Indians, who were demeaned as servants while we lorded it over them. Richard brought the conversation to a halt by stating that he knew many Indians who would be very happy if British rule was re-introduced. An interesting insight into how others think.

The evening’s entertainment was concluded by a visit to the theatre to see Colin “Fingers” Henderson, an old time cabaret entertainer specialising in highly skilled piano playing coupled with lots of groaning old jokes. He has obviously been doing the cruise line circuit for a long time and knew how to conduct a sing a long to close his routine. One thing that he did amazingly well was his impression of an Australian pianist i.e. playing the piano while standing on his head! And not slowly either, a full blooded fast recital of a modern piece of music; very clever.

While I remember now I forgot to give the names of our dinner companions on the photograph that I posted. From the left Alison, Richard, Keiko, Sam, an officer, Bill (Alison’s husband – they are Welsh) and Hilary.

Tomorrow morning we have a 4 hour tour of St Maarten and St Martin and in the afternoon we will probably do a bit of shopping in the main port. Goodnight and Godbless from our tropical waters which managed to reach a very comfortable 74F today.

Day Seven: Bathers Ahoy!

We checked the temperature in Plymouth last night when we were on the Internet sending out this blog - 37F tough luck our hearts go out to you as we are now well down on our route to the Caribbean and spent most of the day sitting just in the shade of the Lido Deck with a temperature around 75F. Waiters bringing Ginger Beer, plenty of water and cups of tea, snacks available on demand, now this is retirement.

We were very good with our eating again today; both of us had a fruit plate for breakfast (although Sam did succumb - again! – to a croissant with jam and butter) and fruit again for lunch. Although we have yet to participate in any organised physical activity we are endeavouring to get around the ship using the lifts as little as possible. Often this is because we have got lost and can’t remember exactly which deck we are on or which deck a particular place is on – Decks 4, 5 and 6 are very confusing but we are getting there.

We started the day’s activities with a description of the tours available in San Francisco, something that we don’t intend to participate in. Most of them involved Alcatraz although a couple involved Muir Woods and Sausalito. Our plan is to wing it as we did in Madeira, find a Walgreens, see the seals and the chocolate shop and do a bit of shopping which will probably involve buying some bottled water and maybe some fruit juices to keep in our fridge. They seem to be very concerned about the new immigration procedure that came into force this week which means that before anyone can go ashore the whole ship – including crew that want to go ashore – have to be interviewed. Only when everyone has been cleared can the first person go ashore, and this may be as late as 11.30am. Overkill or what? I hope Barrack can do something about this.

We did go to another SpyMaster lecture today and he was brilliant as always, this time his subject was the dark side of the Caribbean and most of it was about the pirates of old - “thank God for Johnny Depp for without him I wouldn’t have many pirate pictures,” he said. He really is an old rogue and likes to sneak in pictures of scantily clad ladies to emphasise his point. He followed up the pirates section with a talk about the use of German U boats in WW2 and how they plundered US shipping in the Caribbean and even disclosed a secret plan by the Japanese to sabotage the Panama Canal by the use of large submarines. He touched on drug smuggling and money laundering and tomorrow promises to talk about the use of spy satellites in tracking the drug smugglers down.

With the lectures over it was time to don the shorts, head for the Lido Deck, find some recliners and hunker down for a day’s book reading, crossword puzzling and general relaxation. By early afternoon the pool temperature was warm enough for Sam to venture into the extremely interesting Sapphire Pool where the water sloshes up and down as the ship pitches and rolls. Ten lengths forward and 4 lengths backstroke – they are extremely small lengths – and it was time to sit in a very hot Hot Tub. Just as we were about to leave around 4.15pm Sam looked over the side and watched a flying fish jump several yards away from the boat. So Hilary is now not the only one to have seen the creatures of the deep!

Let me just explain how we are doing this blogging thing – first of all it is expensive to be on line here as I have probably said before – so we store our memories as we go in Hilary’s notebook and around 4.00pm or so we fire up Word and start typing so that we get as much as possible done off line. Then after the evening show we go back to the cabin, pick up the laptop and go off to the CyberCafe where I am now and finish up the off line typing. We then copy and paste from Word, open up the Ship’s Browser with our password and username, and paste the lot into our blog page. Lastly we check our emails and delete all the spam. So right now it is 9.45pm, we have just come out of the show, Hilary is checking tomorrow’s activities from the leaflet that is left in our cabin when our maid turns down the sheets and leaves our chocolate on the pillow and I am in the CyberStudy typing as fast as I can so that I can get to bed. Actually it is not too bad again as it is another night when the clocks get put back an hour so we get an extra hours kip.

Dinner as always was excellent, Samantha may not approve but we both chose the Mahi Mahi, a fish that we learned to love during our visits to Kauai. We learned a little more about our fellow diners and what they did when they were working and we discussed quite a lot about the good old days of the big bands when Count Basie et al dominated the music scene. Incidentally the dress code tonight was semi formal so it was back to blazer and tie again. I have worn a tie more times on this short visit than I have since I retired; thank God I brought several of different patterns and colours. After dinner it was off to the Theatre Royal for a show involving all the entertainment crew with a tribute to Hollywood. It was pretty good considering that they get so little rehearsal time and we came away humming a few show tunes. Tomorrow looks like being another nice warm day but we do have a bit of a swell running so swimming may not be a safe option.

Oh last thing from Sam – we have now booked all our excursions right up to Barcelona so we are expecting a very large bill by the time that we get to San Francisco – we get to sail under the Golden Gate bridge! Really looking forward to that. On Friday we are in St. Maarten/St. Martin in the Caribbean, not sure what tour Hilary has booked for us but I will let you know tomorrow.

Hi this is she, my bit tonight is about showering on a pitching, rolling ship. Unless you have tried it, it is hard to imagine. You need at least three arms and hands to maintain some hope of keeping under the water spray and in an upright stance. Luckily our shower is over a bath tub which eliminates the probability of the whole bathroom becoming awash. Today I struggled to shampoo my hair which means you have to let go of the grab rail which prevents one skidding down the length of the tub, so I slid down as a skier would descent the mountain. No sooner had I reached the end of the tub and regained my balance the ship tips the other way which means you skid headlong back under the shower. It takes a while to rinse the shampoo away and you can loose interest in bothering with the conditioner!

I understand that the swimming pool has a natural wave machine effect when the ship rolls – I’ll wait until calmer seas before I attempt that one.

PS I have tried to upload some photos but even reduced they take an age and sometimes don't load at all. Enjoy what you get, some of them are poor quality as they are photos of photos.

Day Six: Speedos, Beer Bellies and Man Boobs…

The human body can be a joy to behold, tanned, lean, muscled and well cared for, OR it can be the sort that we witnessed today when the temperature finally rose above 70 degF and the sun came out. The tanned part was there, the gold medallions even but my God there were some enormously large bellies above the Speedo trunks. I wish that I could say it was predominantly the men who suffered from mid-riff bulge but truth to tell there were some whoppers on the ladies too!

Our day started reasonably early when we rose at 8.15am with the determined intention of having just a light breakfast before going off to see the latest lecture by the SpyMaster who has been given such wonderful talks on this cruise. This time it was set in a much bigger lounge with two large screens and so no-one was forced to stand at the back. Today’s theme was Piracy and what countermeasures are being taken to forestall it. He covered all the bases, ending of course with the oil tanker off Somalia which has just been released after the owners paid a $3 million ransom. The bills were dropped by a small parachute and the pirates were well prepared with dollar bill counters to check that the amount was correct, the notes were not forged, nor were they traceable in any way. What they didn’t allow for though was that during their high speed escape they would make a manoeuvre that would overturn their craft and kill 6 of the pirates. However they still managed to get away with the money and are some where in the depths of the Somalian desert. Tomorrow’s talk is the Dark Side of the Caribbean and that includes pirates too but sadly not Johnny Depp.

Let me just say that our resolution to have a small breakfast was pretty successful with Hilary having a small bowl of fruit and Sam two very small croissants with butter and jam of course. But it is a big step forward from scrambled eggs, mushrooms, tomatoes and toast. We remained faithful to our resolution all day and skipped lunch, relying on cups of tea and water (which is free) and a lemonade each at £1.25 a pop.

Then it was time to sit back and relax by the pool, do a crossword and read a book and finally to have a doze of course. Hilary found us two great poolside loungers and apart from moving back into the shade after a couple of hours tanning – yes we did put Factor 50 sunscreen on – we hardly moved from 11.00am to 4.00pm other than to get free cups of water. We watched some hardy people going into the pool, where the temperature is not yet high enough for us, and noticed that with the sea swell that is running the water does slosh around a lot, so we remained spectators.

Dinner this evening was the Black and White, easy for the men as it is back into the formal tux but not so easy for the ladies, however all our group managed to conform and we looked a spiffing group. Official photographs were taken - but of individual table members, not even couples – so strange but I expect it is in the hope that they can sell more pictures at £6.00 a time. Keiko was very disappointed that she didn’t get her longed for group shot. Next time we will have to take a camera and do it ourselves with the assistance of a waiter of other diner. The meal was excellent as always, I did my best by having the clear noodle soup and small roulade of trout and shrimp but probably let myself down with the cheese and biscuits at the end – and the brownie of course.

We then toddled off in our finery to watch a lady singer called Iris Williams OBE (On Board Entertainer she joked, but apparently does really have the Order of the British Empire). She was OK, a poor man’s Rosemary Clooney with whom she had once sung – just goes to show how old she is. Lots of good numbers, but I wouldn’t rate her very highly however she rounded off a pleasant evening.

Just to close, thank you for lovely comments we do appreciate reading them as it means some of you are paying attention to an old man’s prattle. We get another extra hour in bed tonight as the clocks go back for the second time, that’s the nice thing about travelling west, but it will all go in reverse once we start around to head back.


Hi, this is me now and I have a couple of questions. First of all, I have brought my silk embroidery with me and intend to finish the embroidery part but I am blowed if I can remember how it goes together when completed sooo.... my friend Pat, can you remember the pattern of the bag? Next I wanted to know if Hayley had a good birthday and if she is keeping warm enough and whether she has managed to arrange a time for Marlene to come over to teach the level 2 Reiki? Finally I want to thank Marlene for the poem about the Angel and the story of the dove. I saw a house in Madeira with a pair of white doves at each corner of the roof and said to Sam what a lovely thing that was before we got your email, coincidence or what! It is time to dress up again for dinner, so I had better go. Tonight, my friends, we have to dress in black and white. I’ll add more another day when we start the blog earlier. Lots of love Hilary.

Day Five – Still Recovering…

Today was a complete contrast to yesterday’s activities and rushing around. The clocks went back one hour overnight giving us an extra hour in bed but it made little difference to us as we needed the rest to get over all that mountain descent yesterday. We were late rising and showering and didn’t get to the Al Fresco until well after 10.15am. Part of our delay was that we were deciding if we wanted to do any of the organised tours and we went through the book again searching out those that we think might be suitable. We chose quite a few that will take us as far as Bangkok together with some reserves as we had heard that quite a few of them were already booked.

At breakfast we joined a couple that live in London but born in Yugoslavia and they gave us some great insights about why the Balkan wars happened and its aftermath. They have lived in England for many years and now consider themselves English enough to criticise Gordon Brown – they are not great fans. We are still endeavouring to cut back on our eating and so it was largely muesli and fruit washed down with cups of tea. The Oriana caters extremely well for its customers but surprisingly for an “English” ship does not have good tea, relying as it does on Tetley tea bags. Poor show!

Then it was downstairs for a perusal of the photos taken at the Captain’s welcome – I think that we look pretty spiffing in our gear as we stand either side of the Executive Purser, so we chose one of those and another of 6 of our table group with a very Junior Officer who was not very knowledgeable about his craft. We also elected to join a photo group so that if we buy at least 10 pictures during the cruise we get a reduced rate. With that business over it was on to the tour office to see if any of our tours were available and to our delight most of them were. We were disappointed not to get the Maori Village but we will be seeing something similar in Fiji and this way Hilary will be able to get a whiff of the sulphur springs that I remember so well from my first visit to New Zealand. We passed over the opportunity for the Harley Davidson hire on St. Maarten (£250 each) in favour of a beach visit. By the time we walked away from the counter our bank balance had taken quite a hit but we reconciled ourselves to the fact that we were given an on board cabin credit of the travel agent when we booked, so we have gone from being in credit to being in debt.

The stuff on Oriana is not outrageously expensive, although I have ordered a monogrammed P & O polo shirt costing £16.99, an amount that I would not normally consider. We may have found ourselves talked into paying more for wine than we would normally buy when at dinner last night Richard suggested that the 3 drinking men and women on our table should take it in turns to purchase a bottle “nothing too expensive, say £12 a time – not bad spread between us is it?” He then chose to go first and ordered a bottle of Spanish Rioja costing £18!
Potentially over the rest of this voyage we could end up forking out for 26 bottles…. You do the math! I am already planning our escape route from this dilemma.

No major events for us today, we were thinking of listening to a Tracy Edwards lecture this morning but they announced that she was ill – Sea Sickness I queried jokingly? Instead the morning after setting up our tours has been taken up with sitting in the Crows Nest (on the inside, it’s still a bit breezy outside) with me writing our blog off line and Hilary doing some embroidery.

We did succumb to lunch and I am sad to admit that I even had a dessert, “Think thin, Sam Woollard, think thin,” and then we strolled to the Chaplin Theatre to see a lecture on the Falkland Island War with emphasis on Intelligence. Hilary had seen one previous lecture by Glenmore Trenear-Harvey which was about Intelligence in the Cold War and afterwards and thoroughly enjoyed it. Unfortunately this lecture was in a smaller room and was already packed out by the time that we arrived so we had to stand at the back for an hour which both of us, with our aching calves, really didn’t need. This lecturer is old school British and although a little bumbling he does a really good job and makes his subject very interesting. OK it was after lunch and a few heads were seen nodding but let us not forget that the average age on this cruise is somewhere around 105! So it was back to the tap, tap, tapping and the embroidery to sit in the Crows Nest – good seats this time – and sip our Ginger Beers. Just before we left the cabin Hilary looked out of our window and saw a dolphin! She was well chuffed but would have liked to be able to open the window to get a better view!

The weather is still being remarkably kind to us, a bit breezy out on the decks and every now and then we have a little bit of a swell but we are confident enough to do without our Sea Bands. It hasn’t really warmed up yet but as we cross the Lido deck we see more and more people taking in the hazy sun as they sit around the pool (no swimmers yet).

One tape down on the cine camera, and I have started to import it onto the computer so that I can make a DVD of the trip. I will have a go at uploading some snaps as soon as I have transferred them from Hilary’s camera.

The latter part of our afternoon was taken very slowly and we spent most of it sitting indoors at the front of the Crows Nest sipping more Ginger Beer with Hilary doing embroidery and Sam failing miserably with a book of Daily Mail Crosswords that Dave and Shirley gave him some time ago. Even after 4 days the brain cells are remarkably rusty. Then there was a shipboard announcement that “a whale has been spotted off the port bow,” and pandemonium broke loose as everyone rushed over to look for it. Sam was given the job of guarding the embroidery and the handbag until a happy Hilary came over to see that she had seen the tail disappearing under the waves. Two huge mammals in one day – and that doesn’t include the growing mammal called Sam!

Dinner with the regular group was interesting as always, our unofficial organiser Richard moved everyone around the table so that most of us had different people alongside us. It was Bill’s turn to buy the win – Sam’s tomorrow, big responsibility, I mean what kind of wine goes with vegetarian Toad in the Hole? All of the dinner group were seated near each other for the rest of the evening’s entertainment as we met again in the Theatre Royal to see a very good violinist appropriately name Gary Lovini (work it out you anagram fiends). He played medleys of all types of music from, classical, Russian, jazz, bluegrass and nationalistic, ending of course with a sing-a-long of Land of Hope and Glory. And so another good day came to an end, some people have been disturbed by the swell that is running in the sea but I am pleased to say that this old couple have found their sea legs and we hope that it stays that way.