The last sea day for what will probably be a very, very long time.

Mind you, eight hours solid kip was lovely, and that was only ended by a bout of screaming cramp. Something I ate last night disagreed with me, but I’m good at finding the upside of that particular situation and I am happy to sit there and think of the weight loss.

Met the parents for lunch. Then back to the cabin for a nap. But I couldn’t sleep worrying if all the last bits I have unearthed (including one whole cupboard I had forgotten about) would fit in the space left available, so I had to get up and do the packing, to be sure. THEN I went to bed.

I have ended up with two jute shopping bags and a yoga mat that don’t fit in anywhere else. Not bad for four months of unmitigated shopping opportunities, and most of that is probably just down to my poor packing and could probably have been solved with more effort.

Went to the parents’ cabin and dad managed to house the contents of one of the bags, almost in its entirety, so now I’m down to one extra bag and the yoga mat, which will be much more manageable. Just must remember to get my stuff out of his case before I leave London on Friday! He taught me a very useful packing trick for one of the hardest items to deal with – belts. Every day’s a school day!

Dinner was mostly talk of travel plans and goodbyes. I think I have seen everyone I wanted to. Some of the waiters seemed genuinely sad to see us go. I suppose, thinking about it, if you go to the same restaurant every weekend (and let’s face it, not many do), you’d only see the staff 52 times a year. These guys have been with us for 114 nights in a row. That’s two to three years of friendship in the real world! Life can be very intense on a cruise ship, and the friendships can either last a lifetime or vanish in a puff of exhaust smoke. There is no in between. I hope some of the friends we have made on here will stay in touch – we haven’t made many, but those we have have been really lovely people, and I would like them to continue being part of our lives and social circle.

I really ought to start my next essay – due to the extension I needed because of that ridiculous lurgy, I now have only three weeks until the deadline for the next – but now that all my decorations and notes and magnets have come down and been packed away, sitting here at the computer, I see nothing but my own reflection staring back and me in the mirror that covers the whole wall in front of the dressing table/desk, and it is surprisingly distracting! I don’t want to watch myself while I type!

Talking of distracting, the hangers now have nothing stopping them really going for it with the jingling and so, although it is actually quite calm here in the English Channel, they are not stinting themselves on the moving about any more. It’s like being next door to a school music room, and every few minutes, someone drops a boxful of sleigh bells on the floor.

Watched The World’s End on the telly, which, I believe, is the one remaining part of the Cornetto Trilogy that I had never seen before, so that was both thoroughly enjoyable and a useful completion of that canon. Very satisfying.  And P&O had not noticed/ removed the swear words, so I got to see an unexpurgated version, which is rare on these ships.

That’s it. The end of the longest cruise we have ever done. TTFN.

Bad night. Barely slept a wink. Didn’t feel like I had, anyway. Woken by announcements that started at 8.45am – no, really – for non-UK residents’ immigration. Met parents for lunch. No appetite – just fruit and a drink – well, two drinks – a pint of orange juice and a pint of diet coke. Then back to bed. Meh. I’m aware of my To Do list, thanks very much, but I’m no good to anyone like this.

Got up at 4.30. Shower, etc. Ready for last formal.  Black and white, although they forgot to say that in the paper. *sigh* Captain’s drinks. Said goodbye to him – he’s off to Adonia next – and chatted to some other people we like. Had a bit of a laugh and a free orange juice.

Then dinner at the Ocean Grill with mum and dad. Very pleasant. The steak was astonishingly soft – it was amazing. Bit boring there, though. Wouldn’t want to eat there too often, I’d be bored to tears. No one to talk to. No regular waiters. And dinner takes over two and a half hours. You’d never get anything else done ever again. Some people have breakfast there – if you have a suite, it’s included. No, thank you.

Then back to the cabin to sit on some cases and stare blankly at my essay notes for a bit.

That was Tuesday, that was.

Last day tomorrow. A bit sad, but a bit relieved too. I’ve had enough now. It stopped being fun about two weeks ago, and since then, we’ve just been counting down the days, til we can get back to some form of normality. Talking of normality, this essay won’t write itself…

3AM UPDATE: done, printed, bunged in the parents’ postbox for proofing. Bed.

The LAST three sea days. *sigh* and including the Last clock change at lunchtime today, after the Last face-to-face immigration inspection (woohoo!). We will move from GMT to BST and then the end will truly be in sight. Once we’re back in the same time zone as you, it’s just a matter of time – if you see what I mean.

I have to say, you have clearly been trying very hard with the weather for me, just as I requested. Words like ‘heatwave’ are very reassuring, but I don’t think I’ll put away the fleece and scarf just yet…  It’s still less than half of what we had a week ago. But bless you all for (a) trying and (b) thinking that 19 degrees constitutes a heatwave in May, even in the UK.

So, anyway, one proper night’s sleep later – lovely – immigration, fruit, pasta, Sudoku, siesta, massage. Last one of those too, sadly. Michelle really is VERY good. *sigh*

Then dinner and chores – picking out the photos worth keeping/paying for, trying to arrange the apology meal that is all we are clearly going to get for all the lies that were told about San Francisco, emails and the usual stuff. Busy, busy, busy. Who has time for packing?!

I really need to crack on with that essay…

Fever/cold day, I dunno, six? Did not sleep last night. Dreadful night, frankly. Got dressed. Ate something.

Met parents. Went out. Got as far as the end of the shops on the quayside, before I had to lean against something. Went back to bed. Mum and Dad went shopping without me. No postcards from here.

Ambition for today: getting dressed in time for dinner and managing to get there and eat and hold conversation. I imagine that will be enough for today.

UPDATE: In the end, I managed all of the above, and also fitted in a walk through the photo gallery afterwards, to check if there was anything worth buying. There wasn’t. I don’t take a very good picture, so I was hoping the law of averages would provide something decent with four months of trying. Will take another look tomorrow. But at twelve quid a pic, I’m not sure anything less than SPECTACULAR will cut it. Their prices are getting utterly ridiculous.

Films: Today, in between sleeps, I watched Inside Out (again) and No God, No Master, the story of the anarchist bombings and political machinations in the US that led to the formation of the FBI. Rather good, but not one to watch while you’re doing other things, unless you have very fluent Italian, which bits are subtitled.

Dilemma: In San Francisco, I had to buy new mouthwash and toothpaste, due to miscalculation of need (also under-budgeted for cotton buds, cleanser and moisturiser)(by contrast, vastly over-budgeted for conditioner, shampoo, deodorant and sun cream). Anyway, my teeth look whiter (to me, at least). Trouble is, I now don’t know whether to thank the mouthwash or the toothpaste! #firstworldproblems.

The Lasts have begun. Yesterday was the Last Friday night get together. Tomorrow will be the Last pillbox refill and the last port day/stop. Today was the Last new canister of deodorant. Monday will be the Last formal night. The Last, the Last, the Last. Most conversations now include, “Well, there’s still a week to go, but in case I don’t see you again…”. There is less than a week left now, in fact.

I think the reason I slept all afternoon today was possibly less to do with the persisting cold and fever, and more plain common or garden depression setting in. Everyone is sleeping a lot now, even the healthy ones. But at least I made it to lunch like a relatively normal human being today. Fever came back during dinner, but luckily, I had eaten by then. Dad and mum both ate well this evening, which is reassuring for me.

Question mark over the air con in the cabin. Is it set too hot if the elastics in your suitcase have PERISHED in the four months they have been sat under the bed?!

Stayed in bed. All day.

Made it upright in time to meet up and say goodbye to the Friday night crowd. Quite weak and wobbly and sweating/feverish, so definitely in no fit state for kisses and hugs!

Then dinner. Still feverish off and on. Managed to eat, but felt pretty dodgy afterwards.

Back to cabin. Back to bed.

The cough and rib pain are new, though. Maybe that counts as progress? Less sneezy, at least.

That was Friday, that was.

5AM UPDATE: Couldn’t sleep. Felt queasy, which is new. The ship isn’t moving about much, so it must be something to do with this monster lurgy thing that has taken up residence inside me, and shows no signs of moving out. Ribs still hurt too, which makes the, granted now fairly rare, coughs and sneezes all the more enjoyable.

I’ve really had enough of this now.

Did some packing, to pass the time. Dad is starting to fret, so I’m going to need to leave time to go and help them with theirs, as well as doing my own, so a head start is no bad idea. Amazingly tricky to pack stuff away, logistically. I’m seeing some people the night I get back, so I have to make sure I don’t pack their presents in the wrong place, by accident, and drive them back to my flat without delivering them. That would be most annoying. Although I’m sure I’ll forget something, in my current, somewhat befuddled, state (whilst typing this I have realised that I have, indeed, put at least one item in the wrong case, already).

The head rush that comes with trying to get the cases out from under the bed, whilst bunged up with cold and unable to breathe properly, was quite an interesting upside to the whole procedure, especially as, when done, they all had to go back under again! Who needs illegal narcotics?! Hah!

Which reminds me. I have a philosophy essay to write. Woohoo. No way this can go badly, oh no.

Took a sleeping tablet (herbal, not prescription) and slept from 11 pm to 4.30 am. Woke up shaking with hunger and had to call room service. On the plus side, my fever may now have completely broken. On the negative side, it’s not easy to order from the already somewhat restricted overnight cold food menu during Passover. But on the plus side, at this hour, you don’t half get served quick.

For some reason, our BBC News channel visuals are now six full seconds out of sync with the sound. It’s very distracting.

Slept til 11.30. Mika rang to ask if she could change our dinner date tonight to lunch. She woke me up from such a deep sleep, I remember commenting on the phone ringing in my dream, before it woke me. But at least the awakening meant I got to watch Singin’ in the Rain on the telly, which I would otherwise have missed. There is an upside to almost everything.

Met parents for fruit and a chat. Then went and met Mika. We sat out by Aquarius pool and chatted. I didn’t eat – my fever returned – so I just watched her eat and then smoke, and we had a drink. It was very relaxing, just hanging out. The captain came over to say hi, and ask how my dad is. He commented on the irony of me now being the one who is ill. When he had gone, Mika was white as a sheet. She works on Reception and no one had told her that the Captain’s plans had changed. She thought he had disembarked at Aruba! I knew the communication on this ship was rubbish, but fancy not telling the Reception staff who their current captain is?! Shocking, really, if you think about it.

I went back to my cabin and had a rest before dinner. At dinner, dad ate properly for the first time in possibly more than a week. He had soup and steak and chips and he ate it all. He said he felt hungry for the first time in ages, it was all delicious, and the steak was the best he had ever tasted. It was quite a relief. I wasn’t so worried about parting company after that.

I am getting very cross with my grey hairs. Until now, they have only grown in my fringe, where they are the most prominent and obvious they could possibly be. Or so I thought. Turns out I was wrong. There is somewhere more prominent and obvious. My EYELASHES are now going grey. For goodness’ sake. Eyelashes?! Seriously?!

<Pause for sneezing fit> That’s it. I’m done. Time for bed.

Tuesday 26^th April 2016 – Sea Day – 1 of 5

Didn’t sleep well. Well, I did have a fairly stressful day yesterday! Very achy when I got up – even my hair hurt – so met parents for fruit and drinks and a chat and then went back to bed. Slept til nearly 5pm. Not quite the achievement it sounds, because we did lose an hour today at lunchtime, but still pretty impressive, I think. We are now only four hours adrift from the UK. I think the rotten pair of them have given me their cold – I am pretty sure I have a roaring fever. Still feel pretty rotten, to be honest. Unfortunately, I have an OU essay due that I haven’t even started yet, so I can’t just curl up and go back to bed. Boo. Oh, who am I kidding? I’m in no fit state to study. Gnite.

Wednesday 27^th April 2016 – Sea Day 2 of 5

Slept til 2pm, which was 3pm, because the flipping clocks changed again. Then dad rang to see if I was okay, and then turned up with a bowl of fruit. I still have a roaring fever, which is probably why I didn’t sleep much during the night.  But I slept today, oh boy. At 5, I had a shower and put on some clean clothes, which felt good. Went to dinner and ate something and drank LOADS. Then back to the cabin for more medication and rest. Still sneezing like crazy. Still feverish. Dunno where I caught this, but it’s a corker.

Stephen Hawking talking about the Wow signal. If the governments of the world are covering up alien contact, they are doing much better at it than they do pretty much anything else. If not, where is everyone? 6EQUJS. It is a puzzle. The human race discovered the atom bomb quite quickly. If the other civilisation did too, over 200 light years away, they might have destroyed themselves before our answer could get there. Maybe they destroyed themselves as soon as they discovered that E=mc². Or maybe they are already colonising the universe. If aliens ever visit us, it will be like when Christopher Columbus found America. Which did not go well for the Native Americans. He’s quite witty, is Hawking. And probably not wrong, either. We can either listen or talk. If we talk, what should we say? We get some quite thought-provoking stuff on our in-cabin tellies, you know.

Very annoyed. This morning’s arrival announcement – we’re here, you can go ashore, the weather for today is…the gangways are located… be back by… – came through the cabins on the Emergency Channel. Just when I think we have explained it clearly enough for them to understand that not everyone on board wants to be woken at 08:25. They may not want to go ashore. They may not be feeling well. They may have been quite looking forward to a lie-in. The bridge crew on this ship simply cannot get it into their thick heads that the pillow speakers are for EMERGENCIES, when we absolutely HAVE to hear what is being said, because our lives depend on it. They are designed to wake us up. That’s the whole point. Using them to tell us the effing weather forecast is NOT  acceptable. *Sigh* ANOTHER letter to write to the Captain.

Signal jamming. No internet today. No news, either. Just repeats of Sherlock Holmes, some nature thing and An Inspector Calls.

This island is literally in two halves – half run by the Dutch and half by the French. They hate each other, apparently. The French half has road markings, like white lines and road signs, but the Dutch side does not. It’s very obvious when you move between the two! The capital of the Dutch side is Philipsburg and the capital of the French side is Marigot.

Went ashore without problem. All fab. Took a taxi to Marigot.  Beautifully warm and sunny – perhaps a bit on the over-fierce side. The taxi dropped us by the market. We went to a little shopping mall, called the West Indies Mall, first, for a bit of air con and some VERY nice loos (one dollar). A rather unpleasant French man threw me out of his little nameless café in the centre of the mall. Apparently, old ladies are allowed to sit down to wait for their husband to come back, but not the people with them. When I offered to buy a drink, to thank him for letting us sit for a few minutes, he said we would have to move to a different table to order a drink and if we stayed where we were, we would either have to order food, or he would call security. Stupid boy. Lost a sale, and quite possibly more, because it was gone noon, and we needed food, as well as drink. Nasty little man. There are some lovely shops in that mall, but steer WELL CLEAR of the little café in the middle, whatever you do.

Dad has had a cold for a few days, and not much appetite, and now has a rather wheezy cough. So he and mum sat in the shade on a bandstand wall while I browsed a few stalls. When I went back over, he said he felt dizzy and should probably have a drink. So I went and bought three. I gave mum hers, and then opened his. He tried to put the straw in his mouth and missed. Then he took one gulp, dropped the can on my foot and keeled over. I was terrified. I thought he was having a stroke. I ran to a stall and asked for an ambulance. The bloke said he didn’t know the number. Like, seriously?! Then I ran back and he was lying back on the floor of the bandstand. I tried to wake him, but he wasn’t coherent, just making noises.  When I tried to move him, he fell sideways onto the ground, and hit his head on the concrete with a crack the like of which I hope I never hear again. By now some people were coming and helping, and we rolled him into the recovery position and he started responding to my shouting at him. I put my bag under his head and someone put a cold bottle of water against his neck, which he said was lovely. I made him stick his tongue out, which reassured me he wasn’t having a stroke. Then the ambulance people came. They took his blood pressure, which was very low, which confirmed to me that he had fainted, and his details from me, and then loaded us up into the ambulance. By which time, dad was using whole sentences again and apologising for all the fuss.

We drove to the hospital and I had to give his details all over again. Then we went through and sat with him while they did a 12-wire ECG  – normal, blood pressure, a bit low, pulse fine, oxygen sats 95, a bit low. Then they basically left us for over an hour. I think they were figuring that if he had damaged his head when he fell, he would exhibit some symptoms, but after an hour of me trying to get drinks out of a machine that only took one dollar bills, he was pretty much back to normal. He ate two Mars bars, which seemed to perk him up considerably. The doctor said he fainted – a mixture of dehydration, low oxygen saturation because of the liquid in his lungs, the heat and not having eaten a proper breakfast before taking his meds and going out in the Tropics. He told dad he could go, but when dad stood up to tuck his shirt in, he went a bit pale and said he was dizzy, so they laid him down again and put him on a saline drip for an hour. THEN we went back to the ship.

I think there was also caffeine or something in the drip, because dad was more perky and chatty during that taxi ride that I’ve seen him in days. The whole escapade cost fifty quid – including the ambulance, the ECG, the drip, and having a private room despite the fact that two women were treated in the corridor on trolleys –both having drips and one having a bandage applied and a conversation with a surgeon. It will probably come to less than the excess on the insurance policy! (FYI here, at least, EHICs are only relevant if you are admitted as an inpatient – they are not valid for outpatient care). Dad had a rest and then came to dinner as normal, looking just fine, although he used mum’s Luggie to get there, because he had damaged his (already bad) knee when he fell.

Scary afternoon but problem solved.

After dinner, I went back out – we weren’t leaving til 9pm – to see if I could find some postcards, but everything was shut, despite the whopping great cruise ship still sat in the port. Rather short-sighted, because lots of people were still milling around looking for stuff to do or buy. But their loss.

Not enough sea day for my liking. One, pah. That’s rubbish. Bring on the multiples, I need a rest.

Woken by the noon announcement. Warm but cloudy today. Lovely, actually – very pleasant. Sunday roast barbecue out on deck, too, which was nice. Went up to find mum and dad fast asleep. They both now have coughs and colds, which may be why yesterday was such hard work for all of us. Tomorrow will be fun…

The sea is quite purple today – cobalt blue in the sunlight, but definitely purple in the shade. Reminds that my painting teacher said that shadows are always purple.  And I’ve painted them that way ever since, and it never looks wrong, so she must be on to something. Maybe it’s like water actually being blue in colour? Maybe the air is too? Maybe we don’t just make it blue when we swear; maybe it’s always like that?

Had another massage today, while gazing out at the said blue stuff – sky and sea alike. I always think of the Caribbean as being quite narrow, but there is nothing but sea in any direction. Just us and a few bits of algae/seaweed – hard to tell the difference from fifty feet up; a brown strand of something is a brown strand of something. No more birds. Only had those between Huatulco and Aruba. I suppose we are too far away from land at the moment. Or possibly there’s just not much worth eating around here?!

Internet signal is a bit patchy here, which is odd. We’ve done quite well so far on this cruise. A couple of patchy signals at night, which presumably coincided with the entire United States logging on after work, but this is the first daytime problem I can recall (other than the in port jammings, of course). Oh well, I’ll just have to read a book or something. *sigh*