Not a bad night’s sleep. Didn’t go to bed til 1.30 am, because Christine and I went out for a drink. She is a truly amazing person, who has had an extraordinary life – much of it pretty miserable – and she is also really, really nice. We chatted for hours (obviously!). Later, I had some very odd dreams, but not unpleasant, and at least I didn’t get woken by cramp, which made a pleasant change.

Woken by a crew drill at 9.55 am. This crew alert thing is very annoying. I’ve finally found the beginning of an episode of Ambassadors that I have not seen (as usual, I have seen the END), and it is being constantly muted while the Captain blathers on, every few minutes. Here we go again. *Sigh* Heaven forbid those of us who are NOT participating in the drill should be left in bloody peace. They’ve been bugging us, on and off, for over an HOUR now.

28 degrees in the shade as at 8 am this morning. It’s cooling down quite quickly now. 28 may not sound cool to you, but it’s a damned sight cooler than the high 30s we were dealing with last week.

Do you remember the pre-recorded tv channel that I have mentioned before – Prime US – that runs trailers for stuff due out last Christmas? Well, it has just dawned on me that they show weather forecasts for US towns in between shows. They are labelled Monday to Sunday, but with no date or month. That’s bizarre. This could be the forecast for Honolulu six months ago! Very odd.

Hang on, did someone just say that Jack Warner had an apartment in Trump Tower just for HIS CATS?!?!?!?!?!?!? I need to do look into this. That’s astonishing, if true.

Baltic lunch. I went up a loyalty tier at Sydney, due to points/ nights accrued, so now I get to go to the same lunches as the parents. Three courses (asparagus, beef, bizarre dessert), free drinks. Fairly pleasant company. Sat with the doctor, and her dad. Her name is Emma! Chatted with two sisters called Pam and Pat. Turns out, they were on the same Alaska cruise as us, on here, and on the Aurora cruise where mum broke her wrist, so we had quite a lot in common.

The bizarre dessert was called Rocky Road, so you would expect ice cream, right? Wrong. Two balls of chocolate mousse (marbled mix of milk choc and white choc), three cubes of white marshmallow (one coated in cocoa), three VERY small cherries, a handful of salted peanuts and a handful of walnuts. When you mixed it all together, yourself – rather like the Eton Mess you have to mix up yourself – it was surprisingly tasty, but it didn’t look very good on the plate!

No internet. *sigh*. The first real outage of the whole cruise. And it has been out all day, so far.  It came back at 5.20 pm, just as I was off out to do stuff, but it’s a good thing I decided to be late for the stuff, as I had some rather urgent emails to deal with. Like it’s not complicated enough being ten hours adrift…

Have just realised I never set foot outdoors today. That ain’t healthy. No wonder I have a sore throat. Hope it doesn’t become anything more.