Blog, a calamity occurred. My 10+ years old Dell laptop finally bit the digital dust. This faithful (and second-hand) laptop had served me well until a couple of days ago when I was suddenly presented with ‘the black screen of death.’  My screen periodically shut down as I was typing away.  Then the battery light started flashing orange, and then sparks flew from my battery charging lead (which had been in a sorry, twisted state for some time, with its wires all exposed.)  The husband lined up the exposed wires and covered them with selotape – ‘is that safe?,’ I’d squealed. There was then an acrid burning smell from the laptop. The husband claimed he couldn’t smell a thing until son no.3 walked in and went: ‘what’s that awful smell?’  Turned out the fan had also given up the ghost.  So, unfortunately, we’ve had to fork out on the cheapest laptop I could find. This has been typed up on the husband’s Microsoft Surface, whilst I await its arrival.

Day 6, 16 July – Sea Day

We awoke at 7 am, which was really 8 am; not that I know anymore, the time changes were confusing and knackering.  The husband napped continually throughout the two weeks, trying to catch up with the warping of time.

I’d noticed a moaning, whistling wind outside our cabin window the night before, accompanied by a sporadic knocking sound, much like the branch that knocked at the window of Wuthering Heights, which Charlotte was currently trying to flog to her publisher in The Brontes.

We breakfasted, noticing on our way to the buffet that the pools had been drained and covered in netting (which was ominous) and the deck 7 doors were cordoned off again. There were whitecaps galore through the buffet windows and the sea did not, in any way, look calm. The husband came back to our table carrying a plate filled with a mountain of devilled kidneys, French bread, mushrooms and four bits of toast. I made do with a pile of varying pastries and an overflowing pot of jam.

The butter and jam came in mini ramekins. Now, I’m a ramekin person. I’ve got 8 proper sized ramekins at home, and what multipurpose little culinary objects they are. I hankered after P&Os mini version. The problem with the mini ramekins, however, was you got one miniscule square of butter in each one. As a person with an obsessive interest in healthy eating (due to our GPs current obsession with sending me regular doom-laden health check texts re: the state of my cholesterol and blood sugar) I knew that those mini knobs of butter were actually what is termed a ‘healthy portion.’  But the husband was aghast, being accustomed to ladling half a tub of Flora on his toast.  Therefore, our table regularly accumulated about 10 ramekins worth of butter, making even more work for our waiters.

The P&O waiters. Such was their expertise at the job that they moved with the svelte like stealth of your average feline while on a hunting mission. No sooner had I scoffed my way through a couple of croissants, a voice would whisper in my ear, ‘Can I take that Madam?’  nearly causing a heart attack in my hyped-up system. ‘Where did she come from?’ I’d asked the husband.  It was like magic, the way they appeared at your elbow from nowhere. I would then offer my plate to our waiters, whilst also gathering up the cutlery and wiping the table clean with my napkin, in the most grovelling manner possible, all the while thanking them profusely.  For I’d read The Guardian you see, which claimed that P&O staff are paid a pittance and how generally awful P&O are, in umpteen other ways.

The husband had had a slight moan about the state of some of the buffet food on offer. ‘Do you not read The Guardian,’ I hissed. ‘P&O pay their crew a pittance apparently, so we must only be grateful and thankful for all the work they do – how the cooks cater for 1868 people is beyond me’. The fact I’d had a carrot cake the previous lunch time that tasted exactly like an orange and cinnamon cake from the day before (which interestingly had no taste at all) was neither here nor there, nor did it put me off from continually stuffing my face. Who were we to whinge about the abundant grub on offer when large sections of the global population were starving.

I should have known the husband didn’t read The Grauniad. His reading matter consists of authentic eyewitness accounts that aliens do indeed walk among us or; eyewitness accounts that Yetis are living next door or; the existence of pots of gold buried on some mysterious island, that he’d rather like to get his mitts on.

At 11.15 am we went to a volcano lecture in the Curzon theatre. The speaker (a geologist and space geologist) was an amiable, engaging chap. He waffled on about the critical, and ongoing, role of volcanoes in Earth’s history and how they also proliferate the solar system (there appeared to be an erupting volcano beneath my seat, as I rose and fell alarmingly with the ship.)

Volcanoes, he informed us, are a planet’s way of letting off steam, as it were, and the reason ours are active is that the Earth is still in its cooling stage, and when it’s finally cooled down, it’ll be dead, and so will we unless we move home to another planet but, by that time, the sun will have burned us to a crisp, and there probably aren’t any inhabitable planets anyway.

He pulled up a slide of one of Jupiter’s moons and said the alien conspiracists think those marks there are alien bases – cue derisory laughter from the audience and himself – well, they’re volcanoes.  ‘See, no aliens,’ I whispered to the husband. ‘Just you wait’, he replied, ‘there’s a congress hearing coming up soon and whistleblowers are going to give evidence that they exist.’  This was news to me, as were the two end of world scenarios our speaker had just hit me with.

At the end of this positive and uplifting talk, our speaker said he’d be in the Uganda room at 3 pm should anyone have any questions. ‘Go see him,’ I urged the husband. ‘Tell him he’s wrong about aliens.’ ‘No, he’d think I’m a nutjob, the husband muttered. ‘Well, you are,’ I replied. ‘Just you wait,’ he said, darkly.

We headed to the buffet for lunch, very unsteady on our feet, Aurora was rocking and rolling. ‘I can’t believe that captain,’ I said. ‘Are his weather forecasts a running joke?  On the way to the buffet however I got sidetracked passing the burger bar.  ‘Shall we try a burger instead,’ I asked the husband, ‘it’s free’.  I’ll just mention here that a burger has not passed my lips in a very long time, not since I’ve adopted an almost totally veggie diet to ‘help’ climate change, and also in the interests of animal welfare.  But I was now afflicted with cruising madness and prepared to consume anything and everything.  We demolished our burgers and chips, and little ramekins of coleslaw, and then my eyes re-discovered the Jude’s ice cream bar.

We asked for one salted caramel cone and one raspberry ripple cone. The cones were dipped in chocolate at the top (which led to much excitement on my part) and they weren’t those crappy wafer thin cones either, that absolutely nobody wants, but those thick waffle cones. I dread to think of the calorie content. They were massive and we scoffed the lot.  We then went to the Raffles lounge for a sit down in our favourite armchairs.

We could see the wind was blowing a gale outside Raffles windows; the lifeboats were rattling, and the railing would occasionally descend markedly then rise up again. Visions of sinking filled my beleaguered brain whilst, inside Raffles, all was calm, as muzak played continuously, and waiters hovered about with their big circular trays. Suddenly, and thus proving I was quietly losing my mind, I suggested we go for a walk on the promenade deck.

I can only attribute this lunacy to a form of cabin fever. I needed air. Real air, not the filtered kind we were inhaling onboard. I needed to not be cooped up in the same set areas every day. What I really wanted was to get off the ship and stand on terra firma. The promenade deck had seemed an inviting substitute.

We went back to the cabin, slipping and sliding along the way and gripping the handrails, got our raincoats and found an un-cordoned door leading off to deck 7.  These deck doors were incredibly heavy, and the husband pushed it hard to open it. It didn’t budge. He was about to put his shoulders into it when the door suddenly opened, and we were pushed backwards by a tremendous gust of wind. A bloke was on the other side, hanging onto the door handle, having just opened it. ‘Good luck!’ he shouted as we exited onto the deck, ‘hope you get back alive!’ and he disappeared inside.

Out on deck all hell was breaking loose. Aurora seemed to be careering along (completely unnoticeable when you were inside) and spray was splashing up onto the deck. The husband rushed to the railing shouting ‘look at the wind blowing the tops of the waves!’  ‘Come back, I screamed, ‘you’ll go overboard,’ whilst inwardly giving thanks that the P&O crew had done a man overboard exercise the previous day.  The husband couldn’t hear me, such was the elemental noise all around us.

We began to walk along the promenade deck. ‘Walk’ is the wrong word here. We stumbled. We veered markedly to the left and right. We gripped the railings on the inner walls like our lives depended on it, which they probably did. We looked like a couple who’d imbibed one too many cruise cocktails.

There was no point talking. The noise was tremendous. The wind whistled and screamed. The ship creaked and groaned. Unseen things banged about above our heads. The husband went ‘Woo Hoo!’  He was in his element.

We struggled past a window, the wind pushing us backwards as we did so. Inside people were sitting at tables, sipping their drinks and chatting, like they inhabited an alternate universe devoid of the madness that was going on just the other side of the wall.  We finally gave up and exited via the door we’d come in on.  The difference was amazing. The quiet and the calm. Even the ship’s movements seemed a minor irritation. We dashed to our cabin down in the paupers’ quarters and I switched on Aurora TV to find the wind was a force 8 and the seas ‘rough.’ 

I took the time to peruse that day’s newsletter to find that Captain Love would be conducting a church service in the Curzon theatre shortly. I thought about popping my head in, hoping for spiritual aid (I really didn’t mind which deity) during the force 8 but thought better of it.

At 3.30 pm I went to see Tom Gamble, a classical guitarist, in concert. The husband declined and rushed off to the casino.  Tom was really very good. Young, tall and quietly cool, he played brilliantly, his guitar resting at an extreme angle on his leg.  He gave us Celtic/English folk tunes that day. I found it pleasingly relaxing. Tom mentioned he’d played on cruises before, and the current waves we were ‘bobbing about’ on were as nothing to some monster waves he’d encountered. He also mentioned how brilliant it was to have such a relatively large and rapt audience, being his usual gigs featured audiences that didn’t care one way or the other.  I bothered to look him up, to find he’d attended a guitar conservatoire and had a Masters in the guitar (who knew?) and was just really talented. And there he was, being wasted on a cruise ship. I subsequently attended his concerts every day.

I found the husband in the casino. The casino became a regular haunt. We’d spend about 20 minutes every day trying to win the £1000 jackpot on the one- armed bandits, which were electronic and pre-programmed. The most we managed was £18.10. Our ‘system’ was to sit at one machine and alternately push the button, believing this doubled our chances of winning should one of us be the lucky one – even though the machines are pre-programmed.

That night the entertainment manager announced over the tannoy system that all shows were cancelled, due to the force 8 and general weather mayhem, as he didn’t want his performers suffering injury, or possible death, and he was sure we’d understand.

I ate dinner that night musing upon the weirdness of taking a holiday that included possible injury and death in its itinerary.

To be continued