I’m pretty sure I’m right, now. It’s back. At dinner, I greeted Dad with the words “The doors are open”. He’s noticed too. The doors in question are the toilet doors. When they are propped open, it’s to reduce the hand to hand contact of using the handles, and that’s not necessary unless You Know Who is in town. In addition to which, one of our tablemates witnessed one of the croupiers in the casino fainting last night. Spark out on the floor. That, plus the missing singer and the two sick people at dinner the other night? Ladies and gentleman, please put your hands together and welcome back on board, the Norovirus. In case I am wrong – which isn’t impossible, let’s face it – I’m staying away from German cucumbers, just to be on the safe side, you understand… I mean, beansprouts… I mean….

Seriously? How hard can it really be to find the source of an e-coli outbreak? What happened to so-called German efficiency? Just concentrate on what connects the first few cases, surely? I’ve never seen such a lousy mess of an investigation. Well, that is, unless you count psychic tip-offs in Texas… Really? You thought it wise to tell the world’s media about a mass grave of dismembered children before you’d even got a search warrant? Smart, really smart. I’m telling you, the whole world’s gone mad.

Colour changing lights. If you don’t like them, this is not the ship for you. The designers of this ship were REALLY into colour changing lights. They are everywhere. The walls of the nightclub, the ceiling of the bar between the art gallery and The Globe, the ceiling of the atrium at reception, even the pillars in the Meridien restaurant. They’re inescapable! Even the bottoms of the glass lifts flash through three colours as they go past! Absolute madness. The people who designed this ship were mental. Although, to be fair, if you want a life, the glass ones are best. They arrive WAY faster than the other ones. Plus you get the view out over the ocean as you go.

These are all just rumours. I cannot vouch for the veracity of any of them. For all I know, they may ALL be nonsense.

Rumour that, originally, the Immigration People were calling names at random. This prompted some sarcasm along the lines of “Can you go any slower?” to which the response was, “We’ll show you how slow we can go”.

Another rumour about an assault and arrest and that someone is now off the ship.

Incorrectly completed Customs declarations or, more probable, not completed at all, as we were told the night before we didn’t need to do them. Many of us caught on and did them in the queue, but many also arrived at the front empty-handed and had to stand and fill them in then and there.

One lady wrote to Captain and was told that the need to fill in a Customs declaration was a change of mind “at the last minute” by US Immigration.

One couple stayed on the ship and waited for the final call, which came at 1pm. They then still had to wait 2 hours.

Someone made an adverse comment about 9/11 and incompetence, which upset the Americans.

Rumour that there was a party on the Queen Mary in Long Beach and the Captain held the ship back so that he could attend. He is joining the current Queen Mary this September.

Rumour that two people from the ship are still being held in LA. And that this made the news in England. Allegedly. The lady apparently assaulted an Immigration Official and her partner stayed with her.

Someone was seen having bananas removed from them. You’re not allowed to take food into the USA and this made them check everyone more carefully.

Cheering and clapping for each person that made it through. Americans don’t like sarcasm.

At least one chorus of “Why are we waiting”.

Rumour that it made it to British TV that there was a riot on a P&O ship in LA. There was certainly something pretty close.

Verifiable and verified facts

There are two currently mentions of the LA immigration incident on the web. They are at maritime matters.com, which starts as a review of the ship, as if it is new, with photos of each public room, etc. (it’s not new, it’s six years old), and then goes on to talk about what happened at immigration in LA; and the other is on the P&O website itself, where individual passengers can have blogs. Who “Jay” is, I don’t know, but it’s an interesting read.

We may never know the truth of what happened or why, but both passengers and officers are openly worried about what might happen when we get to Port Everglades and have to be immigrated AGAIN.

Ah, goody. Another container port to add to my book. Puerto Limon is not very pretty, but then again, I didn’t really expect it to be. Don’t get me wrong. The sea is pretty and we are obviously in quite a sheltered bay, because there are no waves to speak off, even on the opposite shore, and the beaches beyond the port are deserted and look rather inviting. But Puerto Limon itself is a port, a working port, with boxes of things and containers and cranes and forklifts and all the usual accoutrements that combine to concrete over the pretty and replace it with functional but ugly. And, as always in these places, there is one pickup truck that just seems to drive up and down, apparently at random, and without an evident aim or destination. There was one at the Canal yesterday, doing just the same thing.

Puerto Limon is only a little port, I can see the other side. It’s not like Singapore or Los Angeles. It’s teeny tiny by comparison, but it’s a busy little place. Beyond it, the rainforest begins almost immediately, with only a sliver of grey-gold beach and a road before the foliage starts to swallow the houses. Oh, and the runway. Puerto Limon International Airport, as it is known. Because there is one flight to Panama, they’re allowed to call it international. Which is basically a runway of about 2 miles long that runs parallel to the beach, although the road veers reassuringly out of the way. Good thing too, because if anything really large, like a 747 ever came here, it would decapitate any passing cars.

27% of Costa Rica is protected forest and you’ll remember all those stats about biodiversity from the Puntarenas entry. 2,500 types of orchid, for a start; some of which, our guide, Alvero, assures us are edible. I think I may just take his word for that, if it’s all the same to you. Although vanilla is apparently an orchid, and I have nothing against eating vanilla-flavoured stuff!

Our driver, Franklin, kept stopping the bus to go and hack bits off trees to show us. He even brought a full bunch of bananas, and we all got one each. By the end, the coach was full of foliage!

We arrived, eventually, at the Dole Bananito Factory and Village. Bananito means little banana. We calculated that they have a target to process about 2 million bananas a day – 500,000 per container, 4 containers per day. And yes, when I say container, I mean a shipping container. Having seen the process, all gloves and masks and Tesco minimum requirements (no, really)(apparently they are the toughest standards in the world) for crèches and pay, we were then taken to the purpose-built village that they live in. Bananas are an ideal crop for the money-minded. One plant can give you bananas for over thirty years, without the need to reap or replant or anything. Just a bit of fertiliser and people to pick and pack. 42lb of bananas go in one box and then the boxes go onto pallets and the pallets go into the container. They weren’t picking or packing today, because there was no ship in port waiting to be filled.

We bought t-shirts in the village, and sampled the free local liqueurs and coffee and then headed off to the Colon Caribe Resort Hotel. We were brought here for shops and loos and there is also apparently a lot of wildlife. We saw no wildlife at all, but we did see the beautiful pool we didn’t have time to take a dip in. P&O are annoying.

Then it was back to the ship for a late lunch and to watch the boats and jetskis and swimmers in the bay, along with mysterious plumes of black and white smoke rising from different parts of the forest. Then a quick swim and a massage and then it was time for dinner. It’s all go, go, go around here.

Don’t expect much from me tomorrow – we’re losing that hour we gained yesterday, which makes the day astonishingly short. Added to which, it’s a formal night. Another one.

Watching the frigate birds wheel overhead, under a sky that at best would be described as menacing, I feel strangely calm. I am under the roof, which is only half open, so even if those clouds decided to make good on their threats and discharge their contents on the little white boat below, I’d say dry. The humidity is, as you would expect in the middle of a rainforest where it isn’t currently raining, rather high and I have been in steam rooms with less moisture in the air. My clothes were stuck to me anyway, so I figured I might as well go for a swim. My shoulder now hurts, which will wear off in an hour or so, I imagine, but I noticed that, when doing the breaststroke, my mobility in my left arm is still somewhat limited. Still, I have another massage tomorrow evening, after Limon, so maybe that’ll help. Aleksandra is worried about my posture, so I have to think about that now too.

Amazing how many flying ants managed to find my lunch… Well, at least I ate lunch today. That, itself, is an improvement on the last week or so, when I have had no appetite whatsoever.

The war against the noise continues. The only places on this ship where you are not constantly assailed by tinny muzak are the library, the card room and the Neptune pool. Yet today, the shop set up a stall by the pool and promptly started playing tinny muzak – from a phone, I think. When I asked, very nicely, if they would turn it off or at least down, the answer was “No”, and I was told that, if I didn’t like it, I should move sunloungers. I’m pretty sure this is not the way you are supposed to speak to the passengers… Luckily, less than half an hour later, the shift changed and Little Miss Stroppy went off for lunch. I asked the new bloke to turn it off, and, although rather surprised by the request, he did. Several other ladies nearby thanked me.

I don’t understand the obsessive fear of silence that seems to prevail on this ship. You get muzak in Reception, something different in the Intermezzo bar and either the pianist or the singer in the Piano Bar. This wouldn’t be such an issue if they weren’t all centred on the same atrium and staircase, so that, if you position yourself correctly, you can hear all three at once. Seriously?!

You go to a completely empty bar and there is muzak. I once went to check my emails at 4am (couldn’t sleep) and there was muzak playing. It’s like they’re afraid to turn it off. What are they afraid of? Are they afraid that, if there is no muzak, some sea monster will attack the ship? Are they hoping that the noise will drown out the complaints and whinges of the passengers? Is there some competition or bet going on to see how much muzak they can get through in one cruise? Are they hoping the sonic waves will keep whales out of our way? It’s a nightmare. The only silence is in the cabin and the corridor leading to it, and even that isn’t sacrosanct. The Palladium is at the end of my corridor, so during rehearsals or performances, there’s music wafting down there too. But at least the quality is (marginally) higher. Mercy, please. Will someone please turn off the bloody music?!

In certain bars, you can persuade the waiters to turn it down, but they always say they aren’t “allowed” to turn it completely off. Why not? We don’t want it. If we want music, we’ll ask for it, or go to where it is being performed. I know I seem whingey, but I do have hyperacusis, you know. Sensitivity to sound, for those who can’t be bothered to google it. It means that loud noises cause me actual physical pain, such as a knife dropped onto a plate, and also that my hearing is quite sensitive. But I’m not the only one. Everyone I ask is sick to death of all the noise. Cruises are supposed to be quiet holidays – that’s one of the attractions. No cars, no lorries, no horns, no roadworks and pneumatic drills, none of the noises of everyday life. When we arrive in port, we are supposed to be shocked at the noise levels, not relieved there’s no pigging music playing.

It’s not as though music makes you buy more or drink more or eat more. Ask Wetherspoons. They built an entire pub empire on the fact that they PLAY NO MUSIC AT ALL. They even started a separate chain (the Lloyds No.1s) for people who DO want music. And the segregation works perfectly. I’ve only ever once set foot in a No. 1 and that was to use the loo. I can’t take the noise. Give me a nice, quiet Wetherspoons, where I can converse with the person opposite me without having to raise my voice, any day. Funnily enough, some people seem to have forgotten that this is the USP of Wetherspoons. We just take it for granted now. If you asked people what the best thing about Wetherspoons is, they’d probably say the food, although if you then reminded them of the silence, they would probably then choose that instead. I’m sure if you asked Tesco, they’d tell you they rely much more on smells to sell than music.

So why is Arcadia so obsessed with playing music at every moment and in every corner? Sinatra in the Spinnaker bar, jazz by the Aquarius pool, muzak, muzak everywhere, and all of it uniformly terrible. There is some respite in the spa, where you get the plinky Oriental chillout music that’s supposed to make you feel sleepy – I can take that, and I can see the point of it – but not EVERYWHERE. Neptune Pool is a haven from the noise. It’s just you and the sky and the pool and the warmth and, if necessary, the roof. As it should be.

I can hear our engines starting up. We must be about to leave the last lock. Early again. Over an hour earlier than he said. Seriously, the Captain hasn’t given us a single timing on this ship that hasn’t turned out to be woefully inaccurate. Maybe he should just stop altogether. His hit rate can only go up.

There isn’t really anything to tell you about the Panama Canal that I didn’t tell you last time we went through it. Would you like some more stats? Have some more stats.

The first survey of the route was done in 1534 by Charles V of Spain, but nothing happened until the French started digging it in 1880. After 22,000 people had died in nine years, and the company had gone bust, they gave up.

In 1903, the newly-independent Panama did a deal with the United States and the Americans duly started the followed year and finished building it in 1914, ahead of time and under budget, having almost completely eradicated malaria and dengue fever from Panama in the process.

Control passed back to Panama in 1999.

It is 80km/ 50 miles long and knocks 7,873 miles off the trip from New York to San Francisco.

The one millionth ship passed through on September 4 2010. It was a container carrier called the Fortune Plum. Isn’t that the sweetest name?!

The whole canal is currently being widened and expanded and new locks are being built to double its capacity by its centenary in 2014.

There you go. Now you know.

Wandered through the art gallery today. There’s one sculpture and one painting I rather like, but neither grabs me enough, I don’t think. I’m also conscious of all the stuff at home I have yet to hang. I have no idea how much space I’ll have left, if any! Maybe not, then. I’m almost certain I have nowhere to put a sculpture, that’s for sure!

Went to watch the dancing this evening. I only stayed til 11. Most of the dances leave me absolutely cold, especially the latin stuff. The music is so repetitive. The square tango is, to my mind, the most pointless thing I have ever seen and bears no relation whatsoever to the ‘real’ tango. It’s just marching in squares. Ludicrous.

I like the Virginia Reel, the Gay Gordon, the Cheeseburger and the Mayfair Quickstep. All the rest are rubbish to watch. Unfortunately, I couldn’t possibly dance them; not with my sense of balance and tendency towards dizzy spells. I’d spend most of my time on the floor! In fact, just watching made me quite dizzy and I had to call it a day at 11pm. Probably for the best, as I have to be up at 8am. Yes, me, 8am. Scary thought isn’t it? Luckily the clocks go back tonight, so that’ll help.

For those of you following me on a map, we have come south to north through the Panama Canal and have turned LEFT, AWAY from Europe. We are heading back to Costa Rica. Don’t ask me why, I have no idea, but I’m glad of the extra hour, that’s for sure.

Today I came back from dinner at about twenty past eight to find my cabin steward in the corridor, who informed me that the toilets on my corridor were out of order and I shouldn’t flush my toilet til it was fixed. Bowl full of water. Clean water but very full. Fine. I went out to check my emails – I was worried that the Massachusetts tornado may have affected April. At about 10.15pm, I went back to my cabin. Bowl still full of water.

So I went to Reception to ask why, after over two hours, it hadn’t been dealt with and they told me they had no record of a problem. Seriously, it’s not difficult to start ranting on this ship. I know you think I overreact sometimes, but really. Two hours and they had no idea what I was talking about. The night supervisor came to my cabin and we established that it had been reported to a team that were about to go off duty and that the message had not been given to the night people. I kid you not. Why worry? It’s not like toilets are important or anything.

After banging the appropriate heads together, I went to The Globe to watch the ballroom dancing and have a moan at Merle, who is always receptive to a good whinge, and is always at the ballroom dancing, twirling her stuff, and there are also loos near The Globe. After the dancing finished, we went for a hot chocolate/decaff tea up in the Belvedere and then found ourselves at the tail end of a deck party at the back of deck 9. We had a drink and a bit of a boogie and then turned in at about 1.30am. At which point I returned to my cabin. Was my loo fixed? Go on, guess. I bet you’ll never guess.

Reception promptly felt my wrath – good thing it’s manned 24 hours a day on this ship otherwise things could have got REALLY ugly (I told Merle if I couldn’t pee in my own bathroom, I’d go to Reception and do it there!) – the night supervisor came, yet again, and I bent his ear, yet again, and within 15 minutes an engineer had turned up, fixed it and left. I am typing this at 1.47am, while I’m still angry, so that I can get it out of my system before I go to bed. Otherwise, I’ll be lying awake drafting it in my head all night and that is not conducive to a good night’s sleep, no matter how strong that last cocktail I drank may have been.

As the current situation is that, to my knowledge, at least two people threw up during dinner and the singer of one of the bands is confined to her cabin with a fever, I’d say the norovirus may well have reboarded at LA. Marvellous. If so, the one thing we need more than anything else is FUNCTIONING BLOODY TOILETS!

Reading Jonathan Franzen makes me want to write. The way the words fall out of him, the way he condenses so precisely seemingly massively wide concepts into a sentence or two, seem to chime with something within me and I always find that, when I read him in bed, I have to get back up and write immediately. Which is most disturbing, both literally and figuratively. Whether his influence provokes anything of any quality from within me is debatable and I will leave to you to decide, but the urge must be assuaged and the itch must be scratched, so you get what you’re given, I’m afraid.

Talking of which, I got bitten today. Out in the middle of the ocean, hundreds of miles from anywhere – if Warren’s noon announcement informs me one more time that the nearest piece of land is straight down, I may have to hurt someone – I got bitten. Obviously, the security precautions against stowaways discriminate against only those of a certain minimum size and my friend fitted neatly under that radar. For the more fact-conscious among my readers, the bite is on the side of my face, at almost exactly eye height, on the left temple where my sunglasses tan line runs, where my hair begins. Currently. My hair line sometimes seems to be receding faster than a Fifa president’s credibility, so ‘currently’ is a necessary addition there. And that’s with the kelp supplements. If I stopped taking them, I think I’d be bald in a fortnight.

But I digress. This is supposed to be about writing. Reading Jonathan Franzen seems to stir in me the need to get stuff out that I didn’t know was trapped inside. Oh dear, I make it sound like wind! It does feel a little like that, though. I get an ache, somewhere in the region of my solar plexus, that could be mistaken for indigestion if I had eaten anything of any consequence at dinner three hours ago, which I haven’t because I haven’t felt hungry or seen my appetite in well over five weeks now. It interferes with my breathing, just like indigestion, now I come to think about it. In fact, it’s probably just a Haribo cola bottle that went down sideways. Ignore this paragraph.

Is there any point in writing anymore? Does anyone read these days? Do people read books? Newspapers? Blogs? (I exclude my own here, because OBVIOUSLY a good half dozen people read this – when the subscription email trumpeting a new missive nags them to, anyway). Every day on board, an abbreviated newspaper is printed, courtesy of that paragon of unbiased and factually impeccable journalism that is the Daily Mail. I don’t even bother to read it any more. I have 24 hour BBC World News to watch and, if that lets me down or fails to provide the level of detail or intrigue I require, I can switch to Sky News or, say it quietly and behind a hand if you’ve got one free, E! News. Ahem. Crashing on…

When was the last time I read a book? (OTHER than the Jonathan Franzen essays, smarty-pants)

When I was working in London last year (remember that four month temp job in Holborn?), I had an hour each way on the train to kill. Going in, of course, provided a constantly changing, if slightly blurry, landscape to watch, gaze, glaze over and doze off at, not to mention a whole host of people at their desks in the midst of their working days who seemed to have a burning desire to make me ring them up and yell at them about something between tunnels. Going home, however, the outside world offered only darkness, and the occasional flurry of dimly-lit bypassed stations for entertainment, and I was forced to turn inwards. There always remains that old stalwart, the Nap, to fall back on, particularly after Friday drinkies, but going North is trickier, because it is possible to miss the station. Going South, you’d hit the buffers – all rails lead to Kings Cross – so you can nod off with impunity. North is more precarious, so it’s best to stay awake. So that leaves books, doesn’t it? Sadly, no. For I was in the thrall of that most dangerous of Modern Menaces: a New Phone. And once you’ve mucked about arranging icons and editing functionalities, such as ringtone volume and screen backlight timers, new phones have App Stores and App Stores have Games. I became particularly addicted to an app version of a game I used to play at the end of exams. You know the one: where you take a word or set of words, often the title of the exam, and see how many smaller words you can get out of it. I almost always finish exams early, so I became rather adept at this game, and even started with alphabetical columns for each letter, so that I could better sort and see the lists of words I found. Now? ‘There’s an App for that’. Heaven.

So, although, in my defence, I spent the vast proportion of my time on word puzzles, rather than free tetris rip-offs, nevertheless, the opportunity to read was missed. It’s not that I’m short of material, either. Granted, the Books To Read pile did get a little swallowed in the move, and they are now scattered among the shelves, hiding between the Already Read but Keep in Case I Read Again books, rather than all in one orderly location, but only a small amount of judicious fishing would suffice to recreate the Tower of Shame that is the Unread Books Pile. And yet the Tower remains un(re)built, six months on, as does some of the flatpack furniture, and I haven’t read a book in getting on for a year or more.

So why didn’t I read? Why don’t I read all the time? I’m unemployed, for pity’s sake, it’s not like I’ve got anything else to do! Television. Let’s not muck about, you knew the answer as soon as I asked the question. Whether it’s nostalgic episodes of anodine American whodunits (Murder, She Wrote, Diagnosis Murder, Perry Mason) or documentaries about the Pyramids or the Titanic, religion, history, archaeology or the state of the economy, or even just the News, there’s almost always something on that appeals to me. I don’t watch game shows or soaps, only certain quizzes (QI, Have I Got News For You, Argumental), nothing with nature or animals and certainly no movies or sport, and yet there seems to be, nonetheless, an astonishing array of distraction just a button push away. Even here on the ship, we get two 24 hour news channels (and E!), along with the BBC selections I have mentioned previously (one comedy and one drama), the drama one of which, rather deliciously, is currently repeatedly showing the first Matt Smith Dr Who episode 😀 (“Basically… run.”) , and there is a documentaries channel to boot (current offering: the invention and development of the dry dock shipyard, which is a lot more interesting than I make it sound!). Frankly, it’s a wonder I ever leave the cabin at all. Not to mention the three film channels. Which reminds me, I need to do a film list, don’t I?

So if I, someone who wants to be a writer, claims to be a writer, and does actually, sometimes, write, am not reading, who do I think is going to read me?! I’m currently being nagged to write a book, but let’s see how we go with the blog, first! Within the blogosphere, the accepted way to publicise your blog is to go to other people’s blogs, read them, and then leave a message inviting them ‘back to yours’, so to speak. A method that is both highly inefficient and time-consuming and, at sea, prohibitively expensive at 20p per minute (£12 an hour, give or take). I spend enough reading my emails and Facebook and uploading my blog, without devoting time and energy to pandering to someone else’s ego as well. And yet, I expect you to all read this devotedly. Why? I don’t! Well, obviously I read it once or twice before I upload it, and I reload the page to make sure it looks right after I add the photos, but I don’t visit it or any other blogs, even when I have free wifi in a port (which is rarer than you might imagine).

The trouble is that life gets in the way. I have to be somewhere or doing something or I bump into someone I need to talk to and the time just slips away from me. Maybe when I’m back in the UK (three weeks tomorrow, if you’re interested), I’ll be able to devote more time and energy to reading. I’ve certainly purchased enough books during this cruise! In fact, now that I’ve finished the Jonathan Franzen essays, and until I receive the copy of his other book from Ros, who I assume will be bringing it with her next time she comes over, rather than posting it to me, and who is kindly lending it to me because when I get home I will be skinter than a skint thing from Skintville, and unable to buy anything again ever (no, really, if you need money from me for something, ask now), maybe I will have time to read some of the other books that have been hanging over me for so long. But if I’m reading, I’m not writing, and if I’m going to be a writer, then I imagine actually writing would be a useful, nay, positively important, part of the process.

So this is the dilemma I face. Even sitting here now, at quarter past midnight, in a cabin too hot to sleep in, and with this urge to write spilling out in these pages of what will probably amount to utter gibberish (sorry!), should I be reading or writing? Them’s your options. Place your votes now.

This is one of those One Thought, One Paragraph entries. Sorry. I know they’re bitty, but life’s like that.

Had a massage today. Alexandra really is very good. She established that, rather than exacerbating the supra-spinitus tendonitis I was being treated for before we left (thank you, Karen!) that has completely healed (thank you, Karen!) and I have actually done myself a completely separate and brand new injury, overextending the deltoid muscles at the front of my shoulder, not the back. The only cure is massage and exercise. She said it’s okay to use the sling to immobilise it, but that it won’t help it heal, it’ll just stop it getting worse. They have a buy five get one free on massages, so I may HAVE to have another few. *sigh*

The Adonia (launched this week by Shirley Bassey) has no Entertainment Officers on board. Too few rooms and too little going on to justify it. This does not bode well. I mean, I’m all fora quiet holiday, but there’s quiet and quiet…

There are reports that the P&O website shows that we are not going to Limon. Not the pages I looked at today, mind you. Possibly another attack of Overactive Imagination Syndrome from our now notorious tablemate.

Disgusting: Am sat in the shade by the pool chatting with friends, while the Chinese couple at the next table cut their fingernails with nail clippers and let the pieces fall on the floor. Not one broken one that’s bugging you, all of them, on both their hands. People are trying to eat their afternoon tea, here. How revolting.

Theatre. Second-hand review of last night’s show, Cry of the Celts. It was quite good until the girl did Danny Boy. “She didn’t just murder it, she annihilated it, chopped it up into little pieces and threw it away”. It was apparently sung by a girl, which seems unusual, and I can find no one with a polite word to say about it. I’ll keep asking around, but don’t hold your breath.

Sunshine. Am once again lying on a sunlounger trying not to doze off and listening to the sounds of the ship. The murmur of conversations in the shade and between loungers, the slosh of the water in the pool lapping gently back and forth, and the triumphant yells of the rather over-competitive table tennis players in the far corner. Yes, the sun is shining and life on Arcadia is returning to normal. I’m only doing one hour on each side today – start slowly. I don’t want to burn, but I don’t want to arrive home paler than I left, either! After the exhausting sprint of Alaska – 8 places in 9 days – this is the Wind Down. Everyone is lying in the sun or the shade, reading and generally uncoiling, swapping stories and reminiscing and catching up with diaries, postcards and emails. For the record, I have bought some postcards, I just haven’t written or sent them. Small technicality.

Shoulder pain. I have a massage tomorrow. I have booked it with the masseuse who has physiotherapy training as well, in the hope that she won’t do my shoulder more harm than good. The proof will be in the pudding, so to speak. Watch this space. In the meantime, the sling is getting me WAY more sympathy than I deserve!

Racism. Not something you’d expect to find on a P&O cruise ship. But there you go. And certainly not this flagrant. Today one of our tablemates described the head waiter who takes care of us and our advance orders as “Sammy Davis Jnr’s brother”. Twice. Later, when the wine waiter arrived, he called him “Sambo” to his face, which really shocked the Canadians at our table. Everyone laughed it off, but it made us all uncomfortable.

You have to be REALLY racist to think that a Goan of Indian descent looks like Sammy Davis Jnr., who was African-American of Jewish descent, remember. You’d have to be a racist of the “they all look the same” ilk. And that “they” would have to include pretty much everyone on the planet with skin that isn’t Scottish white. Never mind that the waiter concerned is nearly six foot tall and Sammy Davis Jnr was five foot.

I’m rather going off this tablemate, frankly. I don’t know what we can do about it – I think we could be stuck with them – but it’s not good, that’s for sure. If he says anything similar tomorrow, we may have to do something about it, but maybe he’ll reel it in a bit after his wife has a go at him later. For what it’s worth, the complaint about the invitations not being on good enough paper? Same bloke. It’s not all smooth sailing* on a cruise, you know.

* Pardon the pun or don’t, I don’t mind either way.

I’m running out of tablets. This is disastrous because it means only one thing. We’re running out of cruise. By all accounts we have less than four weeks left. This is a Bad Thing. Boo.

Having slept 14 hours straight, I feel a bit better today, but I am ACHEY beyond reason. I don’t know why – I didn’t do that much physical work in LA. I think it’s all just catching up with me a bit. Added to which, we’re about to start losing hours. Rats. 😦 It might also help the achiness if I actually remembered to WEAR the sling I bought for my shoulder…

Dad and I spent a couple of hours today trying to balance my bill. P&O have, without a shadow of a doubt, the most complicated bills on the planet. Good thing I kicked that headache beforehand! We finally sussed it and found that, astonishingly, it was correct, all five pages of it, which was both a surprise and a relief. Tomorrow, we’ll do Dad’s bill! That’ll be fun. You see what a party we have? You’re so jealous. I can tell.

Today was definitely a Take It Easy day. I surfed the Internet a bit and caught up on some emails and then had a short rest before it was time to get ready for another formal night, complete with Captain’s drinks. Oh well, a free drink is a free drink! 😀

Complainers. This ship is full of them. I even found someone today who actually complained that the invitation to the Captain’s drinks do wasn’t printed on good enough card. No, really. It was on thin card and was quite generic and had probably been printed in a bit of a hurry, to placate people with free booze after the past couple of days of ‘excitement’, instead of on the usual thick invitation card printed with your cabin number and name as usual. And someone actually complained that it wasn’t good enough. Unbelievable, it may seem, but you have my word of honour, it is 100% true. I was there. This one I witnessed myself. I can’t help but think that if that is the only thing you’ve got to worry about, you’re having a pretty good day.

After a light supper (avocado, cold meat and coleslaw, fruit platter), I had drinks with a couple of good friends, Joan and Colin, who are an absolute joy to hang out with. They never complain and are clearly happy to be here and enjoying every second, but they are cursed with the worst tablemates, so I have endless hours of fun listening to the complaints of people I have never met and never want to meet! One person told Joan how odd she was to spend her money on ringing home to speak to her children and grandchildren. Really? You need to comment on that? Just because you don’t do it, no one should?

I never understand why people disapprove of others. You have no idea what life is like inside my skin or my head and, until you do, you are in no position to comment, frankly. Who are you to “disapprove” of how I spend my time or my money? What’s it to you whether I get up at 8am or 11am? It’s a funny old world when how often I cook for myself matters to anyone else on the planet but me, and it is nothing short of hilarious why it matters what I do for a living. And as to my health? You have no clue, trust me. Don’t go there, you will just make a fool of yourself.*

People who devote their time and energy to judging others in this way are simply wasting their valuable and extremely limited time on this Earth in the most unproductive way imaginable and will achieve nothing whatsoever but to drive themselves completely insane and render themselves friendless and alone. After all, none of us want to spend our time with people who irritate us at best and upset us at worst. Life’s too short to spend it with people that toxic.

If you have someone in your life that judges you, criticises you and informs you of their opinion of you when you haven’t asked, get rid. Remove that person from your daily life, and I guarantee you will feel better, a weight will be lifted and you will be free to enjoy your life more. It’s simple. You don’t like my driving? You’re free to get out and walk any time you like. My car, my rules. Similarly, my life, my rules. Not yours or anybody else’s. If I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it. If I don’t, I won’t, and if I don’t, it’s because I have no desire to hear it. If you impart it anyway, be ready for goodbyes. I can’t be doing with it any more. This foot is being put down right here, right now. Make a note.

I have a friend whose mother-in-law is toxic like this. She puts up with it a lot of the time, but about once a year, she blows. She tells her mother-in-law exactly what she thinks of her and her opinions and bans her from the house until she has learned some respect/manners. After a few weeks, she’s back, quieter, politer and a little contrite. She deteriorates again gradually, but it’ll be another year or so before my friend blows her top again, so it never gets TOO acrimonious. Mother-in-laws are sadly not as easily disposed of as judgemental friends might be (although I keep telling her ‘a body is a body is a body’), but even relatives can be held in check with a few judicious ‘taste of your own medicine’ moments. Give it a go. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. 😉 As the song sort of says, ‘if you love them, kick them out, if they love you, they’ll come back’. Or something like that.

Tonight, my air con is making a humming noise that sounds like the horn of a distant train. Not an English two-tone train, an American one, racing across the flat plains of the prairies with mile upon mile of freight carriages in tow. You know the sound. Like that, only quieter, like it’s a long way in the distance. Which, from where we are now, it would be! The gibberish has set in. Time for bed, said Zebedee.

* Sorry, that does sound very American, but sometimes a British turn of phrase just won’t suffice.

Various stories floating about regarding the nine and a half hours of immigration chaos at LA

Disclaimer: These are all rumours. I cannot vouch for the veracity of any of them.

One woman lying on the floor and screaming and only being persuaded to get up by the arrival of two armed officers.

One lady staging a sit-in on the floor at the end of the gangplank and refusing to budge until they provided a chair for her to sit on.

One passenger swearing at the Immigration Officers, being arrested and taken away.

One passenger spitting at the Immigration Officers, being arrested and taken away.

Five passengers grumbling at the Immigration Officers and being disrespectful.

One man being refused a doctor despite clutching his stomach and begging for assistance.

At least two people collapsing and one woman fainting in the queue (I know the woman who fainted).

The reason it was so slow was because they were looking for someone.

Someone claiming that the Americans misunderstood ‘Arcadia’ as ‘Al Quaeda’ (remember, they do pronounce it al kay da!)

One person was arrested, cuffed and taken away.

They were only fingerprinting 1 in 50 passengers until someone upset them.

A security officer threatening to arrest people who didn’t disembark when ordered to do so.

Mutiny in Reception from crowds of shouting people who wanted to leave LA as planned and go to Roatan. Apparently some people only took this leg of the cruise because they wanted to go to/back to Roatan (our tablemates from Canada included).

A claim that the Captain’s wife’s plane was delayed, so the ship was held back to wait for her (unlikely!).

A claim that the ship was impounded by US Immigration and refused permission to leave.

Rumours that if you are over eighty, you get immigrated quicker. MUCH quicker. They all but ignore you.

Rumour that the chief executive of P&O UK, Carol Marlow, is going to fly out to the ship to placate the passengers.

Apparently there was no change in procedure – someone who got off at 8am and was in Long Beach by 9am had to do the full fingerprints etc, just like everyone else. So maybe all of the above is completely untrue!

End of list. Take your pick, frankly. Could be any, all or none of the above whatsoever.