Woke at 6 when the sea suddenly became much calmer as we entered the shelter of the Channel.
Woken again at 9am by a medical emergency tannoy call.
Woken again at 9.30 by the captain announcing we will dock at 2pm today and we can go ashore/disembark early if we want.
Woken again at 10 by gangway and checkout information for those wanting to disembark early.
At this point, I gave up trying to sleep and got up. I can take a hint.
Telly channels are back but now Yahoo Mail is offline instead. Marvellous.
Well, this is weird. It’s now 3pm and we’re moored. The sail up the Solent was very pleasant. It was nice to be able to admire the scenery on the approach to Southampton, as we normally arrive hideously early in the morning and leave after dark.
After lunch, helped Dad pack their cases. Then he came to my cabin and watched me pack mine (!) while mum had a rest.
Have had to put on my sea bands, because my MDD has kicked in, because we are, of course, no longer moving about! Got a little bit queasy, but the bands were already out, just in case, so it didn’t last long. Queasiness returned during dinner, but that passed fairly quickly.
Met the couple on the next table that Dad spoke to for the first time last night and found out live down the road from me. They’re very sweet.
Did all the goodbyes to the waiters that I hadn’t seen at lunchtime. Some passengers had gone ashore to eat, so dinner was quite quick. Said goodbye to Ben.
Many people – passengers and crew alike – asked when we would be back. Don’t know. We have nothing booked at all, and the parents are saying this may be their last cruise. I hope not. They both enjoy them – as long as they stay healthy, that is.
The last night of a cruise means the arrival of the Cruise Log, a sailing parlance diary of every cruise. It’s supposed to be a special souvenir of our trip.
It is always a proofreading joy, and this cruise’s offering is no exception. They made it as far as the second paragraph before getting the name of the Solent wrong. You’d like to think that Solvent was a regular enough autocorrect error to have been automatically corrected by now, but apparently not.
Even more bizarrely, the log states that “guests had an overnight stay ensuring they could explore all that the beautiful island of Fuerteventura had to offer”. Erm… no, we didn’t! Even more bizarrely, the entry for La Gomera states that we headed from there to Madeira, which we didn’t, and the next entry, on the next line down, is clearly entitled Tenerife. This is pretty poor, even by the usual, extremely low standards one expects from P&O staff!
And to top it all off, it states we moored in Southampton on the 6th, when, as you well know, we arrived on the 5th. That decision was taken two or three days ago! It also states that the air pressure on Friday 5th was over 1000 millibars. It wasn’t. It was about 960.
I mean, seriously, how hard can it really be to type this thing?! It’s only two pages/ five columns of text! Makes my eyes bleed and my brain ache every time, without fail.
Time for bed. Last night on board for a while and we all know I won’t sleep well, so I need to get ahead of the curve if I can!