We were not at Pier 33 this time. Since the America’s Cup was last here, there has been a brand new terminal left behind, at Pier 27, which is now used for cruise ships. It has an air bridge, which significantly lengthens the walk to the street, and, of course, P&O made it very difficult to get a wheelchair to help mum over the distance. But eventually, we made it, and, not long after, cousin Fran turned up. It was so good to see her.

I put my dress and bag in the boot/trunk of her car, ready to change into later, and off we went. What ensued can best be summed up as ‘shopping’. We managed to purchase pretty much everything we needed, and also stuff I didn’t need at all, which was nice. One particular purchase consisted of two pairs of shoes in under ten minutes. In fact, I think I spent longer queuing at the till than I did choosing them! So that’s a tick off the list. When in San Fran, DSW (Designer Shoe Warehouse) has to be done, no matter how little time is available.

We had lunch at The Cheesecake Factory inside Macy’s, including a gluten-free burger for me, which was positively joyful.

Much more shopping later, we took mum and dad, and all the shopping, back to the ship, and then Fran and I headed to her house. She ran some errands, while I used her free wifi to set up my new laptop. Then I got changed ready for our evening ‘do’, and Fran got changed ready to go to the gym (not bad for soon to be 70!).

P&O organised a posh dinner at City Hall for all the Round the Worlders – about 400 of us. City Hall is an astonishingly beautiful building. They certainly don’t build them like that any more. The jazz band was very good, but did not need amplification in a space so small, which meant it was hard to converse, even with the person sat right next to you!

The food was quite good and the service likewise, right up until the main course. At this point, the script changed. Someone had decided that, with several different dietary requirements listed, it would be best to just prepare one dish that covered everything – no nuts, no milk, no cheese, no meat, no fish, no gluten. It was essentially a vegan salad with some gluten free fettucine laid on top. The fettucine was stone cold and tasted like refrigerated boot leather. The salad beneath most closely resembled a (warm) Russian salad in fairly tasteless green mayonnaise with cherry tomatoes instead of carrots. I can’t tell you what was said. But suffice to say, I received something I could swallow on the third try (the Russian salad bit without the pasta – I’m coeliac, not masochistic), at which point the vegan bloke on the other side of the table just gave up and skipped straight to dessert. Which turned out to be quite nice, ironically.

The speeches were abysmal, and our table was hardly in the mood now anyway. By the time we even received our hideous main courses, other tables had completed dessert AND coffee, so we all got cold food and were all pretty miffed. And that was BEFORE we tasted it!

I have no idea who the people were on the other side of the table, but we had the HR Manager from Southampton near us. We talked to her about the training of chefs and cabin stewards. It was pointed out (by someone else) that this is the most expensive cruise they sell, and maybe they should not be hiring chefs who cannot differentiate between ripe avocados and not. Perhaps, just perhaps, for nearly £30,000 a head, the passengers have earned the right to be served by chefs and stewards who have already learned their trade, as the waiters have? She said they are setting up a new training school in Mumbai, so that people can be trained before they board, instead of on the job.

My feet were screaming from all the shopping, walking and late application of heels, but I had my day shoes with me on the bus, so I just changed back into them, and walked back on board in surprising amounts of comfort. Beautiful mauve evening gown, stripey socks and boys’ school shoes. Style is my middle name.

Coach back before pumpkin hour. Just. Will need to take a sleeping tablet tonight – we are stationary.

Sea Day 3 of 4 – Saturday, I think. Probably 9^th April? Maybe?

All I have done today is sleep, pretty much. There was some eating, at various moments, and some Sudoku, but for the most part, it was just sleep. The end.

Sea Day 4 of 4 – Sunday 10^th April. The Early Hours Thereof.

Of course, when the night comes around, I can’t sleep for toffee. Mind you, I slept so soundly at first, that when I woke, I had no idea where I was or when it was, and I still find it hard to believe that that chunk of time was only around one hour after I went to bed. That was some deep sleep, that was.

This is the second waking. It is now 2am for us, but my body clock seems to know it is 9am in the UK, and I should be up and about and doing stuff. Or not, as the case may be.

On the plus side, it looks like today was the last time zone change for now, as there is no mention of one in tomorrow’s paper (which comes out at dinner time). Here’s hoping!

Another wakening. It is now 4am here. Ish.

I have passed some time reading Will Self’s latest opinion piece on the BBC website –it must be the weekend. He talks of how we are all now so regimented in our concept of time that it is impossible to really lose track of what time it is. Well, I’ve got news for you, mate. Try this life for a while.  Never mind knowing what time it is, I’d be content with the certainty as to which way is up, and that’s even with gravity helping me out.

He argues that we are all prisoners of what he calls ‘industrial time’. He may be right. The full piece can be found here, if you’re interested. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35976699 . But I found he was just starting to get interesting when he stopped.  He was suggesting that we are in the End Times of time itself. That science and religion can no longer protect us from the realisation that past, present and future are all in the Now – we don’t have to wait to become someone different, over time, for example, we can create an avatar or different online identity in moments.

So my question is this. Do we need time any more? Yes, we have to get up and go to work (yes, even I), but more and more people work flexi-hours, so that’s not rigid any more. And most sensible bosses are happy to grant you a few minutes leeway at each end of the day to cover the transport shenanigans we encounter on the way. The trains have timetables, but when was the last time you saw one complying with it?! The average minute on a Tube indicator is 96 seconds long. So why not just do what Transport for London does with the buses? The first one is 0600, the last one is 2359 and the others will be every 7-9 minutes in between. That’s literally what is written on the bus stops now. We have no need for anything more specific, do we?

We note down the time of everything – birth, death, doctor’s appointments, wedding ceremony start times – but how precise do we really need to be any more? It feels to me, in my granted somewhat addled and time-stewed state of halfwakefulness, that the more precise our clocks have become, the less we actually need that precision. When will we realise that, whilst the clocks continue to run, we only need the subdivisions for the doctor, dentist and hospital visits? The doctor will see you at 11.20. Flu jab day at my local surgery means you get a 3 minute appointment slot. Who the hell actually keeps that?! You just turn up and they slot in you in next. The ostensible time slots are more about controlling numbers and flow, rather than an actual timetable to live by. Television programmes have start times and end times, so that they don’t overlap, but when was the last time you recorded something only to find the last three minutes missing because the television channel’s definition of ten past is not the same as your DVR’s? More and more of us now stream or download what we want to watch, when we want to watch it, anyway –vis, the box set concept – so we are liberated from that tyranny now as well. I like the idea of setting aside a whole weekend to watch an entire series back to back – I just never have the time to do it!

How rigid is our use of time, and, more important to my current train of thought, how rigid do we NEED it to be? If you’re fifteen minutes late for a birthday party, no one minds. You blame it on traffic or trains and you catch up. It doesn’t matter. None of it matters.

Now, I am well aware that some of you are sitting there thinking ‘Ah, Emma is simply retrospectively constructing a background for the fact that she is quite often late for stuff’.  Possibly, in part. But that is also partly because I have never really understood the obsessive need for punctuality in the first place. This is just the first time I have written about it. I am aware that some people think it is the height of rudeness to be late for anything, and they become totally obsessed with timekeeping. They are entitled to their viewpoint, of course they are, but I have often wondered if it is simply just another psychological construct to differentiate Me from You and make Me feel better about Myself because I am Punctual and You are a lesser person because You are not. And I dislike people passing judgement on each other at the best of times, never mind over something as trivial as that.

I also wonder if such judgements are the preserve of the Well. If you are old, or infirm, or suffering from any kind of illness, from a common cold upwards (or, as currently, an attack of the time zones), it may simply not be physically possible for you to comply with the rigidity that the Punctilious require. Your body simply may not obey. Does that make you a bad person? I don’t think so. And I find it somewhat unpleasant that some people think it does.

Now, granted, this may all be my brain rebelling at the inexorable tick of the Adobe Flash counter that tells me precisely how many minutes and seconds, at 20p a minute, mind, I am wasting on the internet here (no, I have not typed this whilst connected!). Or maybe it’s the dismal arrival of yet another Sunday, which signifies the passing of another week, and the further demise of this lovely trip. I’ll be home in just over three weeks, and over 500 are getting off on Monday, so they are already talking about planes and left luggage and the opening the post and seeing the grandkids and blah blah blah.

We are all told that time is money, and as someone who is paid per hour, I can certainly see the concept. But even I don’t use minutes. My smallest increment is five minutes. Law firms work on units of six minutes, because then there are ten in an hour and they can use decimals. I can do my twelve times table, so it doesn’t matter to me. But is time really money? Is one minute of your work day ever really calculated? Or do you do it by the hour? Work a seven-hour day, a thirty-seven hour week, a 0.5 shift. Why do minutes matter? Even when people clock in and out, do they really get paid for 37 minutes? I doubt it. Clocking/swiping in and out is about registering your presence, that’s all. It doesn’t actually affect your overall pay packet. Mrs Briggs, you worked 126,122 seconds this week and you have been paid accordingly. Nah.

When was the last time you went to a comedy gig that started bang on time? Or finished on the dot? Of course not. For a start, the interval has to be a moveable feast, because it depends how many toilets there are in the venue as to how quickly it is actually possible for people to be back in their seats. Why does it matter? Does it matter massively if the play you are seeing starts two minutes late? No, not really. Granted, you may have a train home to catch afterwards, but if you’re cutting it that fine, frankly, you probably deserve to miss it anyway!

Who can put their hand on their heart and say that every single lecture and tutorial they attended at college or uni started and finished at the precise time intended? Probably not for lectures – they do tend to go on a bit – and hopefully not for tutorials, otherwise a potentially useful conversation would be cut short. The only use for the seconds and minutes to be measured in exams, is to watch them tick by while your blank mind rummages around, among the packing cases full of penguins, pandas and kittens, for something relevant to write.

A few minutes here or there really does not matter any more. I say any more, but did it ever? Really?

So why are we still bothering with minutes, or seconds, at all? Why don’t we go back to sundial time, church clock chime time? Half past the hour, quarter past the hour. Do we really need smaller increments than that? We would still have minutely accurate timepieces for car racing or quantum physics experiments, but I am really starting to wonder if the rest of us really need them. The clock in the bottom right-hand corner of my field of vision tells me it is 13:54pm. It might be where you are, but it isn’t here. It’s five to six in the morning. The only thing I can think of that would require that level of accuracy is cooking yourself an egg. Get a timer. Watch the sand run. It’s beautiful. You don’t need a clock with a minute hand for that. And as for the second hand, you don’t really need one of those at all, do you?

Was fairly hungry at lunch, so ate everything quite happily. We may finally have cracked it with the food on board. Hopefully. Only took three months.

Woken by the noon announcement again. Apparently, according to one of the stewards, a lot of people are struggling with the time zones and sleeping late as a result. Not my steward, of course. He clocks off on time, which means an hour early when the clocks change, and to hell with his passengers. Others wait, which I think is a minimum level of service. If you’re being paid to make the beds, you should make the beds, shouldn’t you?

Now here’s a thing. Penguins use their guano to melt the ice and snow ready for nesting – essentially gritting the roads like we do, but using their own poo.

Recent observations:

Japan drives on the left, which is odd, because most of the countries that do that are ex-UK colonies and/or Commonwealth, which Japan has never been.

Hawaii has the Union Jack in the corner of its state flag, although no one knows why, because it has never been a UK colony.

Dear blue patch of rain over San Francisco. GO AWAY! I know they want rain – four year drought and all – but you had better be gone by the time I get there. Rain in Hawaii was bad enough. Don’t want it in SF and SD as well, thank you very much. We have generally had excellent weather during this trip – not many associate the Falkland Islands with sunburn – don’t spoil it now.

Dinner was very tasty but veeeeery slooooooow. It took 40 minutes for the hors d’oeuvres to arrive and the main course arrived at the one hour mark. I appreciate it was a gala dinner/formal (black and white) night, but that felt very slow indeed. We had a lovely chat, in the meantime though. The olds talked about radio shows for a while, until someone thought to include me, and then we discussed children’s television, and it transpires that Maggie and Keith’s son works on Waybuloo, which, luckily, I watch and love, so that went well!

UPDATE: BIG row. Huge. You may remember that, when I wrote about Cairns, I mentioned a shop called Wild Sugar by Sajeela, with a link to their lovely website full of amazingly beautiful dresses. Well, turns out that they don’t bother to read the delivery instructions you give them, and then, when the parcel is returned, because they wrote the wrong information on the label, instead of what you told them to write (twice), that’s YOUR fault. And if you ask them to courier it to you to make up for the ONE MONTH delay, they will issue you with a full refund instead. Despite you not having requested any refund. Dameon is so petulant, he would rather bankrupt his wife’s business than admit he made a mistake.

So, there you have it. Lovely dresses, but not worth the hassle. Don’t bother. You won’t get what you asked for, because they just write whatever they like on the parcel and then yell at you when it doesn’t reach the correct destination. So do not go to http://wildsugarbysajeela.com.au – Wild Sugar by Sajeela – you’ll only make yourselves miserable looking at dresses that will never come.

UPDATE: The refund they sent me is still “pending”. It takes time for a credit card refund to go through. His wife seemed more reasonable, and we were on the verge of resurrecting the whole transaction. But then, Sajeela said she would send me the dress, but I would have to pay again, because she can’t send out a dress without having a payment in hand. When I pointed out that it’s hardly my fault she has no payment in hand, maybe her husband should not have sent it back in the first place – because now I can’t get to it either, while it is pending (and I never requested a refund, remember) – she decided that I could not have the dress after all, because it is ‘damaged’, so I can sod off. Delightful people. I do hope karma pays them a visit soon.

WAY too bumpy for a shower this morning. No, sirree, bob.

Clocks forward at 12pm. Rumour has it, they will be doing this EVERY DAY between now and San Francisco. Yuk.

Those who provide my lunch have now grasped that when I request beetroot, I mean cooked and pickled, not RAW! So that was yummy today, too. Dad commented on how much fruit I eat on board. I never buy much at home, because you usually have to buy so much, it goes off before you have a chance to eat it. may have to look into other ways of doing this, when I get back. Have rediscovered my love of apples during this cruise, so that might be a start. They don’t go off too quickly.

Dinner was not only edible, but downright enjoyable. I got an avocado, edible dressing AND a proper GF roll! Result! And the rest of the meal was delicious. Possibly the best meal I have had on this leg of the cruise.

And Kevin, our waiter who has been off with a bad back, was also returned to us, all smiley and happy-looking. I just hope he doesn’t overdo it and undo all his healing. Backs can be fragile things.

Most of this post seems to be about food. It’s all we do on board, is eat. Get up: breakfast. Elevenses? Lunch. Afternoon tea?! Reception/pre-dinner drinks, probably with canapés or nibbles. Dinner. Last night snack buffet. It’s endless. At lunch, I felt like crying; I just did not want to eat anything at all. Dad has given up eating lunch altogether, but now eats breakfast instead.

My new pooter is very shiny and lovely, but pretty much every single aspect of setup requires being attached to the internet – for AGES – so further such stuff will have to wait until San Francisco. Shame, really, otherwise I could have started using it in anger, so to speak. But not destined to be. *sigh*. Still, it’s out of the box, so that a start, I suppose. Dad says that it should be called Max, as it came from Office Max. I’ll play with the name for a while, and see how it goes. Pink baby was much easier, because she was small and pink! Small and silver and a bit heavy doesn’t really click quite so straightforwardly, it seems to me. But it is VERY pretty. We’ll go with Max for now, and see how it goes. Maxi won’t work; not for a SMALL computer! Maxi the Mini? I dunno.

Dear all, please ignore my previous blog post about Cairns. Do not EVER buy anything from https://www.facebook.com/wildsugarbysajeela.
They will not read your delivery instructions, and when there is a problem with the delivery, as a direct result of their cockup, they will get arsey with you and throw your money back in your face, rather than just apologise and fix the problem they caused. A very sad end to a business that made very lovely clothes, but I can’t see them lasting much longer with that kind of attitude. After all, as we all know, it’s not about making mistakes, it’s about how those mistakes are dealt with, and this company would rather go bankrupt than admit making a mistake and fixing it. Shame, really.

Welcome to your new tax year. If you do spreadsheets and stuff, this is the day you need to start a new one.

Decent night’s kip, for a change.

Email from home. Leak definitely stopped, but pretty bad staining, according to the pics. Now the bills start coming in. Wowzer. Oh well, easy come, easy go, I suppose.

Managed to escape the disgusting parts of breakfast, by keeping last night’s roll and carrying it over, so to speak. Melon has now been sneakily added to the options, but the portion size was pretty insulting. Still, better than nothing, which is what you get if you ask for raspberry-flavoured yoghurt. Yes, I know you have banana. That’s because it’s disgusting and no one eats it!

Off the ship and onto the shuttle bus. Well, if there had been one. There apparently are not many vehicles available here, so they were only running every half hour. That’s a long time to ask someone aged over eighty to stand. And wait. In the rain. So we got on the Hoppa On Hoppa Off minibus, which is the local tour bus, and the nice driver took us into town.

There was a market with crafts and antiques, where I spent a surprisingly small amount of money, considering the number of bags I ended up with. Then a taxi to Walmart. Which, oddly, we had to share with the taxi driver’s wife, who was asleep in the front seat! Very odd. The Walmart complex was out of town – ish. Everything here is so spread out, it’s hard to tell if you’re in town or not, to be honest. I think this is really a very small, pleasant town that they have just spread out like an American town, so you have to drive from one shop to the next. If they put them next to each other, this place would probably only be about four streets square, instead of fifteen minutes’ drive square! At this point, it stopped raining, which was nice, cos it meant we got to see a bit of the town as we drove through.

I bought a laptop in Office Max, which is what they seem to call Office World over here. And it speaks English! The sales girl was absolutely lovely, and knew her stuff. She even took Dad’s shrapnel and made 81 cents out of it, which made his pockets much lighter! We have 14 days to take it back, so if I hate it, I have San Francisco and San Diego in reserve. But I doubt I will. But I may have trouble recalling my Office 365 password, which may make things tricky for a while…

I also bought a wireless mouse. I brought one with me, but I picked up the wrong connector, so the pooter and the mouse couldn’t talk to each other. Have spent the past three months using the touchpad. Am now liberated from that little annoyance. Which is nice.

Then we ate in McDonalds. You know what you’re getting and it’s quick. The portions were huge. I had to finish everyone else’s fries. I’m a martyr, I tell you. No one appreciates my suffering.

Then more Walmart shopping fun – t-shirts for less than five dollars. Rude not to, really, if they’re giving them away like that…  (100% cotton, made in Honduras, for the more curious among you).

Then back to the ship on the free shuttle bus (well, we think we were supposed to pay, but no one asked us for any money!). Then I took the bags back to the cabin, before we headed off again. We used to call this “doing a Honolulu” – buying so much, you have to go back and unload halfway – but we might change the name now.

Then we took the Hoppa On Hoppa Off tour of the whole place. It didn’t take long! It was, essentially, a nice drive along the coast and back for an hour. When we looked on the map of the whole island, we reckoned we had pretty much travelled two squares. Barely touched the surface of the place, although granted much of the centre is volcano (yes, active). But we had a lovely day. It’s a truly nice town, the people are lovely, and we couldn’t really fault it in any way. A few more buses might not go amiss, mind you, if they’re going to keep passengers happy. Remember, we are a comparatively small ship, and if they can’t handle us, what will happen when something three times our size pulls in?!

Got a slightly bizarre text message from my bank during the evening, asking if a card payment was genuine. I rang Reception and they said, yes, we requested an authorisation for that amount. Five days ago. So I texted back that, yes, that was real, and they replied “Thank you. We have now unblocked your card”. Don’t be silly, I’ve used my card so much today, the corners are melting. Even the market stalls accepted it. It’s not blocked. All a bit odd. Still, they’ve got four days to get themselves sorted. Not really my problem. As far as I can figure, the worst that will happen is that the payment for my computer will not go through, by which time, I’ll be out of the country! Not worried!

Sorry, no postcards today. No magnets either, come to think of it. Hawaii, you have let us down. Tut.

Avocado at dinner! RIPE avocado, with EDIBLE French dressing. I was like a puppy with two tails. How pathetic can their service have become that those five words are worth celebrating?! The only remaining let down was that the decent GF rolls are all gone, so they are now expecting us to eat dishwashing sponges for dinner AND breakfast. Nope, not happening. The head waiter was mortified. He went to the bakery, he went down to the stores himself, he searched the whole ship. He came back very shamefaced about the fact that there was nothing else available. Oh well, I should probably not be eating bread anyway – GF or otherwise – so it’s not the end of the world. But it’s a bit tough on every other coeliac on the ship – even if he does treat me like I’m the only one aboard!

Didn’t sleep much. Maybe got three hours between being informed there is water coming through my parents’ ceiling and the docking announcements starting. Heroic efforts by friends and relatives to fix the leak. Happy anniversary indeed.

Forced down the disgusting excuse for gluten-free toast on offer, but drew the line at what purported to be bread rolls. I’m not that desperate for sustenance.

Immigration ground to a halt because they turned off the lifts to do a generator test, so none of the excursion people could get down to the restaurant. When we did get immigrated, they were doing crew drills, so the officer couldn’t hear my answers to his questions! He gave up in the end, and just rolled his eyes at me. We didn’t get off til nearly 11.

On the plus side, the shuttle bus into town caused us endless hilarity – the driver was either bitching about traffic and roadworks, or pointing out the pointless. One offering was “For those of you who can’t see why we have stopped, we’re at a traffic light”. Yeah, like we give a rat’s behind! Twit. Entertaining, but a twit. He was very helpful about return pickups and which buses would have wheelchair access (not all), but then we were dumped by a car park, with only an extremely large flight of stairs offered as an option for getting into the (expensive, surprise, surprise) mall they were dumping us in this time. You could not actually see an entrance, or any signage that showed how to get into the mall, at all. We just had to take his word for it! Some wandering through the car park later, we found an elevator. Chess and Sue and I actually went up a travelator, with his electric wheelchair! There’s an experience you don’t have every day.

At the top, I assumed mum and dad would appear from the elevator, but they didn’t, so I went into Macy’s to use their loos. When I came down, mum and dad were plundering the Clinique counter, which was nice. Not very wise to do the heaviest shopping first, though, perhaps…

We wandered through the mall, past shops we didn’t even have the credit limit needed to look in the windows, and then dad let mum and me loose in a drug store, while he had a half hour rest. Turns out, they don’t have my toothpaste in the US. Nor my mouthwash. In fact, I only wanted three items, and they did not have one of them! I got likely-looking alternatives though, so that will have to do.

Then we found a bite to eat. I had planned a restaurant in Waikiki, but I was so tired I could barely stand, so we plumped for something in the mall itself. It once had a beautiful view of the ocean, but that is now blocked by a building under construction. The service was surprisingly lackadaisical for the US. My drink order was actually wrong, and the waiters did both the repeated vanishing thing AND the never looking at you thing as well!  I had a mushroom risotto, which would have been very nice if it had (a) contained any mushrooms (b) contained 90% less oil. But with the addition of a little lime juice, it was quite edible – if only because the lime juice rinsed off the oil and left it in a puddle at the bottom of the bowl. Mum and dad were not particularly impressed with their meals, either, but we were simply refuelling, so we didn’t really care much. Probably the worst meal we have had ashore on this entire cruise, but all plates were pretty much cleared, nonetheless. Like I said – fuel, not gastronomy.

Then we went down to the lower level of what is apparently the Largest Open Air Mall in the USA (not ideal when it’s been drizzling all day!), with a view to walking the two blocks to Walmart. But because it was, by now, raining fairly hard, we got a taxi. Lost mum and dad within the space of about three aisles, but we reconvened at the tills, just in time for mum’s purchases to go onto my credit card bill. There’s handy, then.

Then back in the ship, with a second lovely taxi driver – they are all obliging and lovely and kind and friendly and chatty here. Delightful.

Then I passed out on the bed.

Dad rang me at 6.10pm to remind me to go to dinner. Shame really, I was having a lovely dream.

We chatted about tv mysteries – Bergerac, Midsomer Murders, the extremely high death stats in Oxford. Janet lives in Australia, and hadn’t heard of the Endeavour series, so we filled her in on the sordid underground world of Oxford in the fifties and sixties, and the consequently much higher body count than just the respective Morse, Lewis and Hathaway series might lead you to believe. Keith said he would be too scared to live in Midsomer (which is a real place, of course). I said you would be safer there than in Cabot Cove, which is officially the murder capital of the planet. Then we played “what have we seen Ian McShane in recently” until it was time for the waiters to sing “Congratulations” to mum and dad.

Bed. Never mind that it is only 2115. I’m beyond pooped and dangerously sleep-deprived, and we have another port tomorrow!

I am now so confused, it has ceased to be funny. I have no idea which way is up. Mum and Dad are barely awake either. It’s ludicrous. This many time changes in this few days is not healthy.  if you think it’s tricky doing a whole bunch at once on a flight, that’s nothing compared to this Chinese water torture drip, drip, drip. We have gone from about eight hours ahead in Manila, to 11 hours behind now.  That’s nineteen hours in three weeks. That ain’t healthy.

Another hour forwards, whatever that means. I think it means 4am for you is 5pm for us. Dunno. Beyond caring, frankly.

At dinner, got guacamole with tortilla chips this time, although, sadly, the chips were rather stale/ soft. Still, progress is progress.

Then cold roast beef and salad. Which would have been fine, if they hadn’t supplied that disgusting excuse for dressing that contained only mustard and oil. I really have to learn to taste the dressing before I pour it on, and ruin a perfectly good plate of food. *sigh*

UPDATE: 20:50.  9pm on the 4th for me appears to be 8am on the 5th for you. Probably…

Got very cross today. I am sick and tired of the attitude of my cabin steward. He never replaces the forms in my cabin folder, so I never have what I need when I need it. So I use what I have available, and then he refuses to comply with the request, coming back 12 hours later with the correct form and saying he cannot comply with my request until I complete the correct form. The last time he did this, my laundry was delayed by an entire day due to his recalcitrance. If it was that important, he could have copied the information onto the correct form – all the information was available to him on the ‘wrong’ form, but instead he just dumped the whole lot back in my cabin until I came back in the evening and filled in the correct form. Which annoyed me no end. I am not his skivvy.

Now he has done it for a second time. This time, it was a request for bottled water. He left me no water forms and no generic bar chits either, so I wrote it on the back of an envelope. That was all I had available. Yesterday. Of course, I have failed to clarify that he knocks off an hour early every time the clocks go forward, so he isn’t around to do my cabin until the evening. Apparently, passengers have to choose between a lie-in and a cleaning service. Knowing this, I figured he wouldn’t get the request until 6pm. So today I patiently waited for my water – despite the fact it should have come last night after dinner. It still has not come – 36 hours after I wrote out the request.

When I asked a room service delivery guy who was nearby, he said that there was no request for water outstanding. So, basically, my steward just CHUCKED IT IN THE BIN AND IGNORED IT. My steward came by, when the room service guy found him, and we had a stand-up row. He said that if I wanted the correct form, I should ask him. I told him that I should not have to find him and ask his permission every time I want a bloody piece of paper. I sent him away with a flea in his ear, and he came back quite quickly with my water. I requested to see the Deck Supervisor, but he hasn’t come yet. I am getting heartily sick of this. I am not putting up with this any longer. Once was a misunderstanding. Twice is a pattern of behaviour. I don’t get cabin fever as a rule, but the end of my tether has now been well and truly reached. This ends now.

UPDATE 21:25: Well, I’ll give him his due. Boy, can the Deck Supervisor apologise! Very fulsome. He will deal with it. He had no idea. He will speak to my steward. Etc. etc. Maybe now things will improve. I dunno. We will have to wait and see.

The mineral water that (eventually) arrived in my cabin is now made in Hong Kong. Although, interestingly, the sparkling water served around the ship is still Tarka from Devon. We obviously get through a LOT more still!

By the way, I noticed on re-reading some previously-published posts, that some sort of automatic numbering has been applied in places, without my knowledge or consent (or noticing), and all my time entries at the start of paragraphs are coming through as manifest gibberish. I will go back and amend them so they make more sense, when I can. In the meantime, humour me. They are rarely less than half an hour apart!

Clocks forward at noon. We are now at UK -11, I think. It doesn’t help that the onboard newspaper refers to UTC, which means nothing to me – is that GMT or BST?! Oh my brain. The Britain Today summary newspaper (provided by The Daily Fail, I believe) is out, dated 4^th April. My head is really starting to hurt now. And as to how out of date the news in it might be, I have no clue. Okay, don’t panic. Breathe. If it’s 10pm here, it’s 10am in the UK.  So it’s still the 3^rd April for me, but it’s already the 4^th for you. Sudden desire to lay down and place a duvet over my head. With added whimpering. Need chocolate. And alcohol. Lots of both. No ice. In no fit state to risk dilution.

Djokovic: when they start listing what you HAVEN’T won, you’re doing pretty well, mate…

Utterly bizarre dinner. I said to the head waiters a few days ago that, if they could not find me an edible avocado, guacamole and tortilla chips would do. I got guacamole and chips. French fries. Talk about lost in translation… Quite tasty, nonetheless, but a bit odd.

Saturday 2^nd April – Fit the First

Listen very carefully. I shall say this only twice. Today is Saturday 2^nd April. Tomorrow is also Saturday 2^nd April. Sunday 3^rd April is the day after tomorrow. Still with me?

Spent lunchtime trying to explain it to Dad. How we are going from 11 hours ahead right now, to 13 hours behind tomorrow (which the newspaper has described as putting the clocks back 24 hours), and so, will essentially live the entire day again. It means we ‘get back’ the day we lost in February. It also means that events are referred to as taking place on 2^nd April (first) and 2^nd April (second). No way that is going to get confusing, oh no.

Fruit, Quorn stir-fry, Sudoku, siesta.

Did not swim today. Got into the cozzie, but the roof was closed, due to expected rain (which I don’t think ever actually materialised), and it wasn’t really warm enough for the getting out again part, so I skipped it and went for a siesta. Which overran massively and meant Dad had to come down from dinner to wake me. Oops. Although, in my defence, going from sound asleep to sat at the dinner table on a formal night in under eight minutes was probably a personal best…

Spent dinner also trying to explain the time zone thing. It helps a little that the newspaper for tomorrow is headed Happy Groundhog Day (although they didn’t show the film, which seems a missed opportunity)! Bizarrely, the clocks flip at midnight, but then go forward an hour at lunchtime as well, which seems to be pushing things somewhat. But, hey, what do I know? The fact that we have eight days to do this in would suggest to me that it doesn’t all have to be done at once, but maybe they know better. *shrug*

Call me picky, but could the BBC not find any newsreaders that can actually pronounce the word ‘nuclear’ correctly? What with the current issues of the day (the Nuclear Security conference thingy), it’s being said an awful lot, and very rarely correctly. It’s quite irksome.

I don’t know a great deal about round the world yacht racing, but the deaths of two people on the same boat in the same race would raise eyebrows from where I sit. I hope someone is going to take a look at this. I am aware of the risks, which are pretty self-evident, and, of course, long-term followers of this blog will know that we have taken part in search and rescue for someone knocked overboard from a yacht, but that was an educated amateur. These were both professionals – experts, one would hope. How can it be that they aren’t tethered? How can those in charge be so lax that they can kill two members of the same crew? I hope Sir Robin Knox Johnson will take a long, hard look at this bunch. Telling them you want them to complete the race is all very well and good, but is that really fair on the remaining crew, to be left at the mercies of clearly inadequate management, procedures and systems?

Thank you, Panorama, for doing a bit on Zaha Hadid.

Saturday 2^nd April the Second – I think…

Missing: one noon announcement. All very puzzling. I appreciate today is different to any other day, but still… It eventually turned up six minutes late – for “operational reasons”, apparently.

So, here you all are (well, most of you) waking up to a UK Sunday morning (7am), whereas, I’m sat here, approaching Saturday evening and getting ready for dinner (6pm). This is all very complicated. I THINK we are 13 hours behind, but please don’t quote me on that. I don’t actually have a clue anymore.

Lunch was a special one – green salad, asparagus risotto, fruit. Lovely, and the company was also lovely – Pauline and Geoff, who shared some recent space photos from NASA and Tim Peake.

Free drinky poos at the Round the World do. Not much gin in that tonic, but I had two, so that helped. This followed dinner, oddly – drinks events are usually before dinner – which was, itself, pretty shambolic. Every table is served by a team of two waiters, and they do half a dozen tables or so. Our senior waiter, Kevin, is currently bedridden with back pain, so we have had a stand-in helping out. It was chaos. We got the wrong foods, the wrong cutlery, the woman at the next table had a full glass of wine tipped into her lap and they didn’t even change the tablecloth. She had to go and change, but on the plus side, it was red wine onto a dark red skirt, so it may survive. I don’t know what is going on, but today was embarrassing. I expected chaos at lunch, because the waiters don’t know us, and will undoubtedly not have read our pre-orders, but at dinner, we have regulars and they should be on top of things. Not impressed at all. Still no avocados, so I had vichyssoise to start.

We accidentally discovered at lunch that they have salt beef on board! Dad ordered “cold brisket” and salad, and what arrived was DEFINITELY salt beef. So I had that for dinner. It was very salty indeed, but I have had such bad cramp for the last two nights, I probably need it.

All these Cuba programmes on the BBC have one thing in common, and it’s something you don’t see much anymore – except perhaps recently in China and Japan. And that is that no one speaks English. For a country so close to the mainland United States, this could present a significant limit to the growth potential afforded by the easing of sanctions. Granted, in Florida, many people are bilingual, but I would have thought that it will be difficult to expand your future if you don’t speak the language of your potentially biggest, and definitely richest, and closest, country/ market. I hope I’m wrong, obviously, but I have a horrible feeling that I’m not.