OH THOSE CHEFS…

We were late starting this morning, thanks to the chef’s meeting running over. They meet every morning from about 8:30 and are usually finished by about 8:45, so up until now it hasn’t been a problem. Today, however, the head chef was delivering what sounded like lots of very stern words to his troops, right through until 9:15am, by which time our passengers had started to arrive, and were getting a little edgy and impatient. The question of why they must hold their meeting in the same space as the art classes and not another part of the restaurant was raised more than once.

Surprisingly, once the chefs had departed, everybody rallied around and mucked-in, enabling me to start only a few minutes after the official starting time of 9:30am. Even so… when the Cruise Director stopped by some time later, I had a quiet word with him, explaining what had happened, and he promised he would have a word.

Once up and running, I have to say that the session on Summer Trees seemed to go rather well. I have a minor migration around the 50-minute mark, of participants dashing off to join the crafts class. I don’t have a problem with that, but I do find that it can disrupt my ‘flow’ a little (note to self: be prepared for it…).

Last night it was Green tickets. Tonight it was Red Tickets. We were in possession of Red tickets, which meant it was our turn to see Jools Holland in the Payhouse theatre.

And what a truly fantastic show it was. Although it was billed as simply ‘Jools Holland’, he was accompanied, of course, by several guests; his rather excellent drummer from ‘Squeeze’ days, and three singers, one of whom was than Ruby Turner, who appears with Jools on his annual New Years Eve shows.

An excellent evening’s entertainment!