SECOND CLASSES

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As per yesterday, we were up at 7:30am, in order to be in the Art and Crafts Room ready for registration at 8:30am. Just to recap: registration is to be done daily, filling spaces for classes due on that particular day, and does not relate to the whole cruise.

Why, then, was it so quiet? With only 16 signed on one class and 14 on the other, I was starting to wonder if I’d managed to scare them off, and was considering walking up and down the Promenade Deck wearing a sandwich board to try and drum up further business.

At 9:30am we called it a day and went off to grab some breakfast, ruminating on why the registration had seemed to so underwhelming. At about 10:45am, we returned to the Art and Craft Room to prepare for todays session; a tonal study, featuring the Rock of Gibraltar, and as folks started to arrive, our questions where duly answered…

Basically, we had more people turn up than we’d got booked down from the mornings registration. This was primarily because several folks turned up not realising that they were required to register every morning (per class).

The upshot of this is that we had to turn people away. One bloke got very disgruntled and stormed off in no uncertain terms, and it was only after much negotiation with folks who were there who really ought not be there (and encouraging some of them to come back for the afternon session), that I was able to proceed with the session, teaching, finally, to a full group of twenty.

The good news is: they found the packs of spare paper. I’m not sure how – or where it had been hiding – but there it was…

After the morning class, and once everything had been cleaned up and packed away, we went for lunch. A ‘reboot’ nap seemed in order, which took us neatly up to Covid test time, at 2:50pm.

I have to say that the testing is very quick. We turn up to the Britannia Lounge at the appointed time where there are no queues as such, and the whole thing is over with very quickly. The only thing we’ve noticed is that not all the testers are quite as gentle as one another. On the first day’s testing, we barely knew that it had happened at all, while today’s tester (who was also the same yesterday) probed just that little bit deeper up the nostril… not quite so comfortable, but still very quick.

After testing, and confirmation of a negative result had been received via a phonecall to the cabin, we headed back down to the Art and Craft Room on Deck 7 (we’re on 9) for the afternoon class. Once again, we had a combination of newbies and people who believed – incorrectly – that they were entitled to join because they’d turned up yesterday. In the middle of having to sort things out, I had to evict two ladies, who didn’t seem very happy at being asked to vacate their seats for two people who were actually on the list. We also had one newbie who got quite upset because she’d opened a painting kit she believed to be hers, but did in fact belong to someone who had left their kit briefly to pop out…

Despite the ensuing chaos, I felt that the second class actually went much better than the first (and am reassured that the Rock of Gibraltar Tonal Study really is a viable, workshoppable, exercise, and hopefully things will start to settle down from now on.

Peter Woolley

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