One of the questions was this: what does the secretary bird eat?

Only one of our team knew the answer (Mary), and as none of the rest of us had even the faintest idea, we went with it. Answer: snakes.

Now several teams, when it came to giving out the answers and scoring, had put down 'reptiles', and the quizmaster said NO - she would only accept the answer down on her sheet - this is a good thing, since several quizes just recently have deteriorated into a shambolic shouting match, where people who have simply got the answer wrong will do anything to try and get a point - I'm sure you understand what I mean. Anyway, after we'd been hailed victorious and received our winners vouchers (I don't get one, being a lecturer), this pompous bloke walked from across the room and called us cheats, claiming I was a crew member and knew the answers. After I assured him that I was not a crew member but a lecturer, wasn't party to the answers, and wasn't allowed to claim a voucher, he said (to our team in general) "Have you ever seen a secretary bird?", to which Mary said "yes, I have actually". Then he sort of puffed himself up in a particularly unattractive and poncy way and said "Well I've seen them in THREE countries" and proceeded to list the three countries, ticking them off on his fingers. Mary said she'd only seen them in one country, and HE REPEATED HIMSELF!

So disengenuous - so unsporting - so juvenile!!

In the evening, after dinner, I joined a table in the centre of the ballroom for the second of what has been a highly popular feature - Call My Bluff. Four people, including the Smart Trio and another bloke called John from the entertainments department (who is very funny, actually) sit at a table on the stage and give definitions of wierd and wonderful words in the same way they do on the TV show. What happens then is, each table in the ballroom have to decide who is telling the truth and when they've decided, a representative from that table takes a ticket with their table number on it, goes to the stage and places it in front of the person they think is telling the truth - da da da.

Anyway, before all this had even started properly, our table had someone else join us, and in order to make space, we all shuftied around. As I shuftied around, I happened to slide my chair back and touch the foot of a someone behind me. This came as a bit of a surprise to me because I wasn't aware that there was anyone that close behind me. So, I turned around to apologise, as you do, and was met with the stoney gaze of one of the most miserable, grumpy-looking old doods you could imagine. I started to apologise, and he just cut me off and grouched something along the lines of "why don't you just move your table forward?" (which we couldn't because there simply wasn't the space).

I mention this because, at the end of the Call My Bluff thing, I'd had enough of the infra-red eyes burning into the back of my head, and the mardy face glaring at me every time I happened to turn around. I had been planning to stay there for the following act - a virtuso violinist - but just couldn't be ***ed. All this comes on the same day that I overheard a poor lady passenger telling someone at breakfast how several people on her dining table had been making her life such a misery that she'd cried herself to bed several evenings and was seriously considering leaving the cruise and returning home!

I returned to my cabin, pondering on how grumpy and pathetic some people can be, and watched a bit of the onboard TV for a while, with the intention of heading on up to the Preview Bar for a late drink in a short while. Instead, I fell asleep and didn't wake up until after midnight - the Preview Bar would just have to miss me - I had a tour to escort in the morning!