JUST ANOTHER SEA DAY
Today has been a somewhat isolated, single sea-day, sandwiched between yesterday’s visit to Syracuse and what will be a 5-day back-to-back port marathon starting from tomorrow. A day to take a little breather before a relentless on-the-ship-off-the-ship kicks off, which we’re looking forward to. Even the craft tutor this afternoon, as we passed her in the corridor, punched the air uttering the words ‘five days…’
A relatively insignificant sea-day, then, with not a huge amount to report on. Except perhaps the water on the balcony…
Our cabin is at the very front of the ship, the first section of which has a sort of curved gutter running around the outside of the balcony. When it rains, the water seems to congregate along this channel, which then manages to make its way onto our balcony, and sit there, like a winter’s flood.
We asked our cabin steward if he might be able to mop some of the water up, but he didn’t seem very hopeful that he could. In the end, he either did have a go at it, and managed to dry things up – or… the sun dried it out while we were in Syracuse. Either way, we were slightly disappointed to see a fresh flood out there today, which didn’t look like it was going to go away any time soon. The cabins either side of use (both of which are subjected to the same channel) appear to have a drain on the very edge, but ours doesn’t. Having said that, as far as we can tell, both adjacent balconies also seem to have standing water like ours… so, the drains don’t seem to do much good anyway.
I should add that it isn’t a major deal. It doesn’t stop us using the balcony, and there’s a good chance that as soon as it is subjected to some prolonged sunlight it may dry up all by itself.
Curiously, there’s also a pair of chunky-looking underpants rolling around in the same channel, which has been there for a few days. We’re not entirely sure where they came from, but we do know for sure that they don’t belong to either Tracey or myself. Someone’s missing some undies, though.
Today’s class was on the tricky subject of perspective. It isn’t an easy subject to teach at the best of times, but it becomes a little harder when you’re working to a relatively short class duration. My tutorial has undergone several incarnations over the years, and todays exercise is about as pared down as I feel I can make it. The good news is that I think everyone seemed to appreciate it, and as far as I can tell, no-one left more baffled than when they came into the class. I’m always glad when it’s over, though. It’s a subject that many folks struggle with, and I always worry that I may not be conveying the correct, basic information clear enough, but it remains a subject that I feel is vitally important to cover nevertheless.
This evening was the second formal night. Because there was nothing on in the Playhouse that particularly interested us (we’ve been rather spoilt the ;ast two nights), we chose to head on straight back to the cabin after eating dinner in The Grill, so that we can have a relatively early night in preparation for tomorrows port visit, when the ship will be landing in Croatia, and we’ll be taking the shuttle bus into Dubrovnik… aka ‘Kings Landing’ (from Game of Thrones)…
Bring it on…
