First Full Sea Day

Today was our first full day at sea, as we headed down the English Channel, towards The Bay of Biscay. It was also the first day of art and craft classes; Jan did her crafts in the morning, and my art class was scheduled for 2pm in the afternoon.

Naturally, we popped along in the morning to see how Jan was faring, and to see what sort of a turn out she had; we also took the opportunity to slip into the Conference Room to sort out some of the materials for when it would be my turn later. Jan’s turnout was a good one, but we were also told of the aggro she’d had with some of the passengers, who’d battled for a seat and weren’t enamoured with how things had been organised… it didn’t bode well for my class.

The designated Art and Craft space is an area just outside the conference room (which no-one is allowed to use due to some mysterious pre-booking, remember). For most of the time, it is a public space, with large windows and seats where people can sit and watch the world go by, read a book or do a jigsaw. For the art classes, it was agreed that the jigsaws would be moved away and a cordon be put up, to create a semi-physical barrier (and hopefully a proper psychological barrier), and create what should, at least, appear to be a designated ‘classroom’. The removal of the jigsaws hadn’t happened, so that was one of the first issues that needed to be adresses. Once that was cleared up, the housekeeping guys were brilliant, bringing in extra tables and arranging things exactly as requested… what could possibly go wrong?

As with Jan’s Craft class, I have a finite amount of art paraphernalia, which equates to a strictly limited number of available spaces… thirty to be precise. As soon as people started turning up, from as early as 1pm, we knew there would have to be a second class…

The thing is this… people can be very sneaky when it comes to bagging a space. We had several people take residence in the chairs along by the windows, on the pretence of relaxing, but in reality they were positioning themselves ready to grab a seat as soon as it became available. It takes a while for Tracey and myself to set things up, so we told the growing queue that they would need to wait until everything was ready. The queue grew and grew, and when we’d finished setting everything up at around 1:30pm, we started to let folks in through the barriers, to sit down. Within minutes, all thirty spaces were full. But people just kept coming, and tempers started rising…

We somehow managed to find a couple of spare spaces, and two rows of seats at the far end of the cordoned off area became a viewing area (I called them the ‘Gallery’), where people could sit in and watch, but not take part in the painting bit.

At around 2:40, we started to get some aggro. It would be fair to say that the majority of people who turned up after 1:30 and realised that there was no way they could fit in, were more than happy to accept that fact, and told us that they would return at 3:30, for the second class. Some people just can’t help themselves though, can they? One man in particular became quite the Mr Angry, venting his spleen as loudly and violently as he possibly could. It wasn’t a pretty sight, and Tracey was taking the brunt of it. I stepped in as best I could (although Tracey is perfectly capable of taking care of herself), and tried to calm the situation down. I tried sympathising with Mr Irate, and promised him that if he returned for the 3:30 class that there would be a place for him and his wife. In retrospect, I should probably have told him to stuff it and go bang his fist on the desk at reception, but on the spur of the moment, it was the only half-baked solution I could come up with short of it turning into something uglier.

Once started, the class went swimmingly, although people were still turning up and getting agitated….

At 3:30, I repeated the class. Getting the first class out, resetting the workshop space and letting the second class in lacked any finesse, and tempers bordered on the steamy, but we made it. Sadly, there were still a few folks who failed to bag themselves a space, but there simply wouldn’t have been enough time to squeeze a third session in… all things considered, I think we made the best of what time and space we had available… I’m almost certain there are some who would disagree about that…