Mad Max Fury Road. Not bad. Bubblegum for the soul. No value, no insight, no taste.

Valkyrie. Rather stressful but really quite good.

For me, it is now 9am on Tuesday 23^rd. For you, it is 8pm on Monday 22^nd. Still with me?!

A quiet day of fruit, pasta and Sudoku. Adam Hart-Davies gave another talk, which overran slightly, but was thoroughly enjoyable, as expected. The theatre was quite cold, though, so I did rather leg it out the door at the end. I hope he wasn’t offended!

Went down to the Medical Centre so they could give me my B12 jab. £50 for the injection of a product I supplied myself. *sigh*.

Today is 60s and 70s night, so a little bit of dressing up required. Velvet trousers and flared sleeves.

Dinner was pleasant enough. Laurie and Michael did not come to dinner, but that meant that we got to have a good chat with Paula and Dale. We talked about television programmes from our younger days. It’s amazing what crosses over the pond and what doesn’t. For example, they knew Bilko, but not Top Cat. Which was based on Bilko. Very odd.  When we discussed movies, Dale said that he hated Hot Fuzz and did not enjoy it at all. Michael and I were flabbergasted. We’ve never met someone who didn’t enjoy Hot Fuzz. Funny old world.

Michael has a bad tooth, but he was coping quite well until dessert. Ice cream followed by coffee really hurt him and he went very red in the face and left early to go and find some more painkillers.

Tonight, I asked the captain about Hurricane Winston, which has devastated Fiji, and now appears to be tracking on a course that will meet up with us at Auckland. He said it was coming, but that it would weaken as it passes over cooler water. Dale says the water has to be at least 28 degrees Celsius to allow the formation of a cyclone, so the cooler the water, the less energy the storm will have. I hope they’re both right!

It is now 11pm for me on Tuesday 23^rd. I think it is 10am in the UK. This is all getting very confusing.

I’m so tired. No matter how much I sleep, I can’t shake this drowsiness. I spend most of my time just fighting to keep my eyes open.  I think I shall surrender and go to bed. I’ve probably long since stopped making sense anyway, so it’s probably best I stop typing.

Sea Day – Sunday 21^st Feb.

I’m not sure why the new episode of Sleepy Hollow is always shown on a Sunday morning. Someone’s idea of a joke, perhaps. We have a channel called Prime US. Never heard of it before, but it seems to show stuff I like. Now we have NCIS: Cyber. Entertainingly, one of the guest actors is called Booboo Stewart. Is that a real name?! What a bizarre choice. I know that every actor has to have a unique name, under Equity rules, but frankly, Booboo? Seriously?! Prime US must be pre-recorded, because it shows trailers for movies that will be released in time for Christmas 2015. I really want to see Deadpool. That has to be the best trailer I have seen in a very long time.

Apparently, yesterday the Entertainment Manager won a bet in the cricket nets, and now the Hotel Manager is his slave all day. She has to do his announcements, shine his shoes, feed him a Creme Egg on the hour every hour, and glue diamantes to one of his ties! I have been woken by less amusing announcements.

Sundays are sad days. Every set of church bells over the tannoy tolls the end of another week. Six weeks down, ten to go. *sigh* It seems hard to believe that so much of this cruise is already behind us.

Okay, now I officially need a lie down. The noon announcement from the Bridge has just explained that we are going forward 23 hours, and we achieve this by putting the clocks BACK one hour and waking up on Tuesday. Like I could be more confused than I was before. My poor brain.

Tomorrow’s newspaper was delivered. Twice. One for the 22^nd and one for the 23^rd.

The one for the 22^nd offered free spa treatments, helicoptering in fresh goods to the shops –requests taken, and a port talk on a new excursion to somewhere called The Moon. There is a new guaranteed weight loss method available in the Spa’s piranha tank – cost: one arm and one leg, and a class called Kleptomaniacs Towel Folding (bring someone else’s towel). It’s a shame the Naked Bungee Jumping is only available to those over 80, but I’ll console myself with the Strip Name that Tune quiz later. Although with the dance lesson being body popping and break dancing and the late night disco being a drum and bass rave, I’ll have a busy day.

Seven people will miss their birthdays. Does that mean they stay the same age for another year?

Today was a quiet sea day. The pool has water in again, but I was so tired, I didn’t go in. just had lunch and then went back to bed! Slept til dinner time. Either I’m coming down with something or I am going through a spate of depression. I feel very apathetic and gloomy. The weather was a bit overcast today, which didn’t help. I am always quite susceptible to a pathetic fallacy – although I thought the weather was supposed to reflect my mood, not vice versa! It’s still 25 in the shade, mind you, and bright enough for sunglasses, not dark. But I just can’t shake this feeling. Hence all the sleeping, I suppose. Depression has no logic. I’m having a wonderful time, seeing some amazing places and meeting nice people. Even the food is good – when I can stomach any. At the moment, I am only eating fruit and pasta – can’t face anything heavier. Maybe I’ll have an early night and hope I feel more cheery tomorrow. Whatever day it turns out to be!

Sea Day – Saturday 20^th Feb

Bumpy night. Very.  Never noticed before that the trip from the bed to the bathroom was uphill… And likewise the journey back, oddly enough. Or as the passenger info channel PowerPoint on the telly puts it, “Very Rough. Force 9”. There was a calm bit at about half seven this morning. So much so that it woke me up, as if we were coming into port. But we’re back on the bumpy stuff now. How convenient for the worst weather to be hidden in the one place we have no weather forecast, so we cannot see any end in sight.

Up early today. VERY excited. Got to be ready and dressed and in my right mind and at the other end of the ship by 11am. ADAM HART-DAVIS is on board, and he is giving a talk! OMG how cool is that?! I think it’s about explorers, but frankly, I couldn’t care less. Just the chance to hear that man speak is plenty enough for me. The fact that he could make paint drying seem interesting is just a bonus.

Before that? Accidentally watching San Andreas on the telly. Wow, disaster movies are stressful! I haven’t seen one in a while, and now I remember why I avoid them. Hope my blood pressure comes down again soon. Then watched a film about a boy composer in New York, with Robin Williams as the baddie. No idea what it was called. Anyone able to tell me?

Then a bit of Spencer Kelly (BBC Click) getting downright tearful whilst visiting the heart of the LHC. Yes, I think I would too. Humans spend so much time dividing themselves from each other. It would blow my mind to be surrounded by something so enormous that really shows what we are capable of, if we work together. Yeah, you won a bit of land by shooting some people, good for you. We looked at the origins of the universe. The enormity of actually being there must be quite dizzying.

UPDATE: As predicted, Adam Hart-Davies was a wonderful speaker. And I ended up sat next to his wife, Sue, who is lovely. We sat there and pointed out all the errors he made to each other. We had a bit of a giggle. Adam didn’t make many (4 in total, and most so minor no one else would have spotted them). But the Entertainment Director made two, just in introducing him. We were already giggling before poor Adam had even opened his mouth.

Then back to a normal sea day. Lunch, fruit, Sudoku, crossword. Was going to swim, having given my eyes a day off from chlorine yesterday, but, because it was so rough, the pools have been drained. So my eyes get another day off. Probably no bad thing, all in all. It is now definitely calmer than it was, but we are still moving about quite a lot. So then back to the cabin for a siesta and a bit of Notting Hill prior to beginning the preening for yet another formal night.

Lovely dinner with everyone. Wore the red dress. Then to the cinema to see Inside Out. What a fascinatingly intellectual animation! I noticed a Brain Mind Institute listed on the credits, which explains the phenomenally detailed mind map. VERY cool. Loved it.

Then time for an early night. Tomorrow, things get really messy. Tomorrow is Sunday. We will not have Monday. The next time I type, it will be Tuesday. We cross the International Date Line, and we will skip from being 10 hours BEHIND GMT to being 13 hours IN FRONT. No, don’t ask me, I have no idea. I can’t get my head around it at all. I think I’m right in saying that I will go to bed on Sunday night and wake up on Tuesday morning, but, frankly, I don’t really have the slightest clue. How I will communicate with the UK from then on, I cannot begin to fathom. Just thinking about thinking about it is enough to give me a headache. So I’m not going to do it now. I’m going to bed. I’ve got all day tomorrow to try and figure it out. Or have I?!

Bora Bora

Or not, as the case may be. The entry to Bora Bora is through a gap in a coral reef. It is VERY shallow – around 10 metres – and our draught is eight. It is also only as wide as the ship is long, so we would not have much leeway on either side. One strong gust of wind would be devastating.  We were going to have to tender ashore anyway. We’re not. It’s far too windy and rough (wind about 40 knots (50mph) allegedly), so even if we got through without doing any damage to ourselves or the reef, we couldn’t put the tenders down anyway, because the wind, waves and swell are too great. In fact, the whole ship has been juddering against the force of it all for a couple of hours, so it was going to be a long shot. If the weather was predicted to improve later in the day, the Captain might have tried to wait it out, but this looks pretty set in, so we’re leaving.

So farewell Bora Bora. It was nice looking at you through the raindrops on the mastcam channel on the telly.

No postcards from Bora Bora, people, sorry.

No land now til Tauranga on Thursday. Just seven more sea days.

SMALL VICTORIES: Dad asked the Hotel Manager why, when he asked to clarify what time we were leaving a port, he was told he “shouldn’t have that list” which we had been given showing the (provisional) departure times for every port on the cruise. We are the passengers. If anyone has a right to know what time we are leaving a port, it’s us! We have been photocopying the list and handing it out to our mates, but last night, after dinner, EVERYONE got a proper printed copy from the Hotel Manager delivered to their postbox. We won one.

FEELING GUILTY: For something that is entirely without my control, but still. It bothers me that the bottled water now being delivered to the cabins is no longer Uruguayan local, but now labelled by Nestlé, and bottled in Chile. I hate Nestlé. Have done ever since the baby milk boycott at uni. I still feel uncomfortable every time they get my money, and I try to keep such instances to a minimum. But in this instance, it has already been purchased and brought on board, so Nestlé have already had their cut, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

I might question the claim on the front that says ‘Libre de Sodio’, when the ingredients list on the back says 1mg per 100ml. My Spanish ain’t all that, I’ll grant you, but I find those two statements incompatible.  It is also past it s Best Before date. By a month. Now, I know the difference between Best Before and Use By, but, as I paid for it, it could be argued that P&O have broken UK law. They’ll claim they’re not covered by UK law, OBViously, but it’s an interesting point, if I fancy stirring. Frankly, not sure I can be bothered.

OW: So much swimming is playing havoc with my eyes. The chlorine seems to dry them out and no amount of eye drops seems to help. May have to rest the laps for a day or too, to give them a rest.

By ‘eck it’s bumpy. It seems the weather system hanging over Bora Bora is either wider than expected, or possibly actually deteriorating.

Went for a siesta after lunch. Woke just in time for dinner! Everyone I spoke to in the evening had also been sleeping a lot. It’s so hard to stay awake when it’s rocking so soothingly. Still very rough, so staying still is the preferred option. If you’re not standing up or walking about, the ground cannot move out from underneath you. Not much internet signal.

A quiet day, all in all. I think today was Day 40. We have done one third of our total voyage already. Doesn’t time fly when you’re enjoying yourself?

Thursday – it’s definitely Thursday – Tahiti, French Polynesia

The announcement came through at almost exactly 7.30 am that we have been given clearance to go ashore. Really? Why? NOTHING will be open. The taxi drivers will be barely conscious and hardly civil. There will be nothing to see and nothing to do. This is FRANCE, people. Nothing starts till 11! Stay in bed a while longer and adjust to YET ANOTHER bloody time zone jump. We are now at GMT -10, and frankly, I’m beyond discombobulated now. I have no clue about anything any more. I need to start writing my name in my clothes in case I forget.

Got off about 10.30 ish and began the negotiations with the taxi drivers. The one at the front of the line really did not seem interested in taking us on a one-hour tour. Apparently, they think it takes four hours to see their island. And he had absolutely no intention of speaking any English to us. Why would we want a tour guide we could not communicate with?! (He didn’t know I speak French, and I decided that he didn’t need to know). But then a lady stepped in and offered to take us. She spoke perfect English and was very pleasant, so we went with her. Turned out she was a taxi driver and so we went down the line to her van. She then moved the barriers so we could drive away without waiting for grumpy git at the front of a line to get a job (or a personality). He must have done, because when we got back, he was gone. Although maybe he just gave up and went home. When I said the taxi drivers would be grumpy and unobliging, I didn’t think it would be quite so prescient.

She drove us to Venus Point, where James Cook landed to watch the transit of Venus. They say that he did, but I am pretty sure he didn’t, and he had to come back twice more to get the data he needed. There are three monuments at Point Venus – one to the Bounty (as in Mutiny on the), one to Cook and one to the first Christian missionaries to land here. There is also a square lighthouse, designed by Robert Louis Stevenson, who lived and wrote here. It is the only lighthouse on the island, and they still light it, although they now have great big metal beacons marking the shallows.

Emily, our driver, told us all about the corruption in Tahiti and the various court cases against the former President (24!). She also told us about the people of the islands and the local flora and fauna. The island is 55% Catholic, 30% Protestant. There are also Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses. There are, apparently, no Muslims here.

Then we returned to Papeete to find some lunch. At this point, the heavens opened. It wasn’t cold – this is the Tropics, remember – so we just waited it out and then walked to a nearby shopping centre, which had a café called Retro on the ground floor. Mum and dad had burgers and I had steak and chips. People, I’m in France. This could be my last chance at a decent steak for the foreseeable future. It was so good, I almost wept. The only other item on the menu was tuna, done about eight different ways. They REALLY eat a lot of tuna here.

Afterwards, I went for a wander and did some shopping, while mum and dad went back to the ship. The humidity was ridiculous, after the rain storm, and they found it quite tiring. I returned to the ship with my purchases about an hour later, and we all went up on deck to gaze out at the town one more time before dinner. I did 20 lengths, but I would regret that for the rest of the night. Ow. I’m pretty certain there is some leg cramp in my immediate future…

Then dinner and an early night. Bora Bora tomorrow. Need to recharge the laptop, the phone, the camera, and me.

UPDATE: no leg cramp! I survived! Tonic water is marvellous stuff.

Sea Day 9 of 9 – I think it’s Wednesday 17^th, but I might be wrong

We’ve made it. Herewith the last of the consecutive sea days. I think there might be a bit of a stampede tomorrow morning, to try and get down the gangplank! I’d just be happy with a whole night’s sleep right now. we are at GMT -9 and I think we do another tonight. It makes life very difficult, particularly if you want to discuss something with someone in the UK. If I rise at 9, it is now 6.30pm in the evening for them. It’s going to make Skyping home tomorrow a little complex.

Lunch: fruit. Swim: 36 lengths. Eventually stopped because I was bored, rather than tired. The massage I had yesterday must really have cleared my muscles of lactic acid. No aching whatsoever. Lots of chats to people and Sudoku. Then changed for dinner. Laurie and Michael did not come to dinner – they must have eaten elsewhere. They were spotted during the day, so we know they are okay, although there have been some instances of, ahem, illness on the ship, which are now starting to come to light. Several people brought coughs and colds on with them, that they probably picked up on the plane. When you remove half the passengers and add 1000 new ones, fresh germs are inevitable. If we escape with mostly coughs and sneezes, though, we’ll be doing just fine.

Ohh, goody, Ambassadors is back on. Consider me fully distracted. Bye.

Note to self: Cadbury’s Flake and computer keyboards are not a good mix.

Sea Day 8 of 9 – Tuesday 16^th February

Leetle bit bumpy today. I say ‘today’, but of course, whereas it is 9.30 am here, it is 5.30 pm for most of my readers, so I hope you had a nice Tuesday. We have no internet. Don’t know why, it’s not THAT bumpy that a satellite footprint could skip past us because of us moving around constantly. We have plenty of telly, not that there is much on. Great Gatsby is back on tonight, but I may have to go to the cinema to see Agent 47 (if there are any tickets left). We’ll see nearer the time.

Today we are level with Reunion, although 8000 miles away from it! 28 degrees in the shade.

Hung around by the pool, chatting with Laurie and Michael and Ruth and Alan. Dad had left my fruit with Laurie, before he and mum went to their posh lunch, so I ate that while we talked. Dad turned up at about 2.30 and mum surfaced at about 3.15, just as I was heading off to my massage (via the library to book a ticket for Agent 47). When I got back, they had gone. But my 75 minute massage did take an hour and three quarters in total, so I can’t blame them for losing interest.

Good news/bad news. Good news: got into the smaller swimsuit today – a whole size down. Feeling a bit smug. So stuff has either been significantly redistributed, or I’ve lost some weight. Can’t find out til New Zealand though. Probably should have worn the other swimsuit, though, bearing in mind the application of massage oils. It might have been wiser to put on the clean, new one on a different day. Bad news: didn’t have time or energy for a swim today. After my massage, I could not stop yawning! Yes, that is what passes for bad news around here. That, and the lack of internet signal (the flipside of which coin is that it doesn’t cost me much!). Oy, my life is a trial.

Watched Getaway while getting dressed for dinner. Very fast moving, but quite entertaining and a nice Hollywood ending for most of the cast, if not all. Four stars out of five. If you like action movies, and particularly if you like car chases, you’ll like this. Re-watched Quantum of Solace this morning, but you already know I like everything about that film except the theme tune, so I don’t need to re-review it here.  A couple of odd cuts had been made, including the release of the water to the villagers, which I found a surprising omission – that’s pretty much the whole point of the film, I would have thought – but I have no idea who cuts these for P&O or how they think (or, indeed, if).

Laurie didn’t come to dinner, but the rest of us had a nice time. Michael said that she wasn’t ill, she just didn’t feel like a big meal. Fair enough. I know the feeling!

Hitman: Agent 47 was very good. 4.5 out of 5. An excellent, well-constructed action movie. Some good acting, some excellent set pieces, and some interesting philosophical/ moral considerations. Then back to the cabin for the rest of Gatsby. What a beautiful film. Very obviously a Baz Luhrmann work.  Haunting and so lovely to look at. He really is a master of cinematography. To take a story that, whilst written in excellent prose, is essentially quite mundane at its heart, and turn it into something quite so ethereally magical, is a very special gift.

Very late night by my standards on this holiday. I’d say 2am, but, frankly, I have no clue.

Sea Day 7 of 9 – Monday 15^th February 2016

Every day at noon the First Officer does an announcement, updating us on some stuff. Herewith today’s highlights. We have now travelled 13,012 nautical miles since leaving Southampton. We are in what is known as the British Exclusive Economic Zone. We apparently have Sovereign rights in this area, because we are within 200 miles of Pitcairn, which is a British Territory with 70 inhabitants (did you know Pitcairn was British?! I didn’t). We are also in the vicinity of falling space debris (well, where else would you send it down but in the middle of the middle of nowhere?!), and the Bridge will try and find out when it is due to land and whether we will be close enough to see it – apparently it’s an old Russian satellite that they are trying to burn up. The air temperature is now 27 in the shade. Some sort of siren started on the Bridge while the First Officer was giving us that information. Oops. I don’t think we were supposed to hear that! I wonder what it was. Maybe we are closer to the satellite’s landing track than we thought?!

24 lengths. Ridiculous current.  My arms are still aching four hours later.

Dinner was a piece of chicken that took up half my ten inch plate and was a good two inches thick at the centre. I assume it was a chicken. But, if it was, it was most of one. I think the special diets chef has decided that he feeds me so badly during the daytime, that he really needs to play catch-up at dinner. Either that, or he is trying to kill me with quantity, so I’ll be less of a nuisance in future. It feels like every day the portions are getting bigger. Everyone was intrigued to see if I could get through it, but as I only had fruit for lunch, I was more than capable. Mind you, I ordered jelly for dessert, and I really thought I wouldn’t have room for it.

I think I have figured out why I have no appetite. It’s because every night now we lose an hour, so lunch is an hour closer to breakfast or last night’s dinner. I am typing this at 9pm our time, which is 4am tomorrow for you, and our clocks go back again tonight, so 8pm your time tomorrow will be noon for us. I think. And then tomorrow, they go back again, I think… To be honest, I’m really not sure any more. It’s very confusing, and everyone is tired and exhausted and confused. We are all forgetting appointments and getting muddled, and if snoozing was an Olympic sport, there isn’t a passenger aboard that would not be in with a medal hope. Come to think of it, even the crew are getting a bit discombobulated, and they do this all the time. Savio, the bar manager of the Spinnaker Bar, said that his sleep patterns are also up the spout. We are all, all over the place. I just hope the Bridge team are holding it together better than the rest of us!

Won’t see mum and dad til late tomorrow, because, at Valparaiso, they went up a loyalty tier, and so they have a luncheon tomorrow, just for them. The P&O points system only takes into account the past three years of cruises (ten points for every day at sea), so you can drop down really easily, and then pop up again on a long one like this. It’s very silly. Apparently, the Baltic and Ligurian (top two) tiers tomorrow are now so under-populated that there will only be six tables tomorrow at their lunch! Doesn’t really seem worth the bother, if you ask me. I’ll stay on deck (in the shade/pool) and stick to my fruit platter. Much more manageable, and the dress code is more relaxed too!

People are now starting to whinge about the number of sea days in a row. I love it, but I may have mentioned that not everyone feels the same. This is what cabin fever actually is. They get sick of the same four walls, and even being out of deck can feel oppressive. Personally, I think if you enjoy a sea day, you enjoy a sea day, and the number in a row shouldn’t matter, but apparently some people get really desperate to feel solid land under their feet. This is day seven. How these spoiled, whinging idiots would have coped on a five WEEK trip from the UK to Australia, I cannot imagine. It’s pathetic, if you ask me.

Right now, it’s just a bit of light-hearted moaning (mostly along the lines of “I’m bored”), but in the next day or so, it could get a bit grumpy. It has, actually, already begun. One bloke bit my head off today for suggesting that putting his sunlounger across the only path across the deck, thus blocking a waiter and his trolley, was perhaps somewhat less than 100% sensible. Got all huffy about what he called “doing what he was told”. Seeing as the waiter had been saying ‘Excuse me’ for the best part of two minutes before I intervened, I figured he was either deaf or stupid, so I stepped in to help. Well, if you can’t be considerate enough to think that maybe people need to get past your arrogant arse; like, ooh, I dunno, staff, wheelchair and scooter users, or the people bringing you YOUR OWN LUNCH, then maybe you do need to have it pointed out to you, Einstein.  Some people. *sigh*

Plenty more where that came from, I’m guessing. It’ll be nice to get to Tahiti on Thursday, when the attitude will hopefully get dialled back down a notch or two.

Oh poo. I think I forgot to pay my mortgage last month. I told you we were all confused. Oops. There goes my lovely credit score I’ve spent a year rebuilding. *sigh*

Sea Day 6 of 9- Valentine’s Day – Sunday

Late start. Fruit, Sunday roast beef out on deck. 26 in the shade. Sudoku, booked a massage for two days’ time. 20 lengths. Rest. Formal night. Wore the pink shalwar kameez. Received several compliments, which was nice.

After dinner, I went to the show with Michael and Laurie. It was called Reel to Reel and centred on songs from British movies. It was quite good- a couple of the singers will be worth keeping an eye out for in the future, in the West End, I think.  They even did the Full Monty! Laurie loves music, so afterwards, we went to a music quiz in the pub. We didn’t win, but we did quite well and had a lot of fun. As we were in a quizzy mood, we then went up and did the Syndicate Quiz. We ended up sat next to Mum and Dad and their regular table – they go every night. Again, we didn’t win, but we did better than they did – partly because Craig and Peter didn’t arrive until it was nearly over, so they were down a third of their team and also the ‘young’ contingent they normally rely on.

Then had to walk the entire length of the ship – from the front tables of the Crow’s Next to the aft-most internal cabin – which took me a while in kitten heels! Bed. Shattered. Clocks go back again tonight. Tomorrow morning we will wake up at GMT-7. It’s getting quite confusing now. Basically, I’m getting up as you head home at the end of the day. My world is quite topsy-turvy at the moment.

Sea Day 5 of 9 – Easter Island

That may be the worst night’s sleep I have had in a long time.

26 in the shade today. And the sea is a startling shade of bright cobalt blue that is even less feasible than previous incarnations.

Got up at some unhealthy hour to see Easter Island. Didn’t see much. It looks very beautiful, despite humans mucking up the ecology by chopping down all the trees, much as they did on Dartmoor. We did not see many Mooai – I have a few blurry shots – but hopefully the ship’s photographers had more powerful lenses and got some decent photos from 1.5 miles out. There seems to be quite a lot of anger among the passengers that we (a) didn’t land, as originally advertised (b) only stayed three hours in total instead of going around for a while, as we did at the Horn, but you are totally powerless and at the whim of P&O, who clearly have no clue how badly people want to see this place, and neither, it seems, do they much care.

I asked for pasta for lunch. There wasn’t any GF pasta, for some reason, despite previous promises, so my poor pet head waiter went down to the stores himself to get some (unbeknownst to me). Then he found out that the Bolognese had flour in – who the heck puts flour in Bolognese?! So that had to be made for me from scratch as well. I felt really bad for putting him to so much trouble, but he keeps insisting that it is his job to make me happy. He seems to be the only person on this ship who really grasps the concept of customer care. He is the saving grace of the staff on this ship. The rest should be ashamed of themselves. I was so grateful, I wolfed it down without letting it cool down properly, and then I overheated and ended up dripping with sweat, despite the air conditioning! My own silly fault – it’s not like I don’t know how my body temperature will behave – but it was very yummy.

I was so tired (and warm), that I fell asleep at the table, so I went back to my cabin for a siesta, and then a shower before dinner with Michael. I have finally succeeded in finding cold water on the shower settings, but even on the very coldest setting possible, the warm still fights through sometimes, and I have to jump out of the way. The remnants of my sunburn were very grateful for the cold water, when it came.  At least it is currently calm enough that I don’t have to sway about to find the cold every few seconds. It was bliss.

My left shoulder has started to peel a bit, despite my application of copious amounts of aftersun and moisturiser.

I gave dad his Valentine’s Day card yesterday to sign for mum, while she wasn’t around, and mum did his today. I will deliver them tonight. Neither of them offered to pay me for them!

Have just seen a thing on the BBC World News that a salmonella outbreak in California was traced to a frog breeding facility. A what?! What on Earth does a frog breeding facility do with its product? Is there a big demand for frogs?! And how does a frog breeding facility come to have salmonella in the first place, then let it get out, and then spread it to the wider community? This is all very odd. Will have to go to the BBC Healthcheck website and find out if I have misheard or misunderstood.

UPDATE: Dinner with Michael was very pleasant. The food was fine, if not spectacular – my steak was a little over-cooked, and he said his seafood was quite bland – the conversation flowed and we got on really well. And he paid for everything. A lovely evening. We parted company after three hours, which is a very relaxed pace for a ship-board meal.