Sunday – At Sea – First Workshop
Today was our first day at sea; the weather was pleasant with only the merest of breezes, and the Mediterranean was calm. It makes a change to be at sea on a Sunday and not in a port town, pottering around, wondering what it would look like with people.
This is clearly a busy by-way for ships; we’ve seen loads of large tankers, and the Northern coastline of Algiers, North Africa has been visible off our starboard side all day. We spent a large amount of the late morning and early afternoon stood on deck watching the world go by. Tracey swears she saw a flying fish, but it would appear to be a bit of a rarity, as we saw no others all the time we were stood there. We spotted a lone bird at one point, too; other than that, there was a distinct lack of any signs of marine life.
At approximately 12 noon, the Captain came over the PA system to give us his daily address, telling us how far we’d sailed from Almeria, and how far we’d got to go to Valletta. This one also seems to like to throw in a few nuggets of random knowledge; today, he told us that bank notes aren’t made from paper, but from cotton, and then he said “did you know that Leonardo De Vinci could write with one hand and paint with the other, both at the same time?” We stand to learn much in this trip.
At twenty minutes to 4 o’clock, we headed up to the Glentanar Restaurant to prepare for my first workshop. Everything was laid on, efficiently, and people started turning up from about 10 minutes to 4 onwards. I didn’t count how many we had, but at one count, there were 35 people… I’m guessing there were, in total, nearer 40.
Anyway; it seemed to go well, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. Because people at the back were struggling to hear what I was saying, a Stage Technician set up a microphone for me, which made life much easier, except for the fact that I couldn’t paint and talk at the same time, because I had to put the microphone down to hold the board steady… how would ol’ Leonardo De Vinci have handled that then, huh?
Supplies of watercolour paper are always an issue with cruise workshops, but the Cruise Director himself came along, armed with a handful of the stuff, and a willingness to guillotine it into smaller pieces himself… all very helpful, and very much appreciated. First workshops are always quite fraught affairs, with everyone getting used to the set-up; I’m expecting tomorrow’s class to go much smoother.
After the workshop, we retired to the cabin for more sleep (I think we’re still acclimatising ourselves to our new environment), before heading upstairs for dinner.
In the evening, we tested out the ship’s wi-fi in the library, which, true-to-form, is clunkinglingly slow and cripplingly expensive. It didn’t help that I was struggling, for some reason, to connect to the blog site, which is why this entry is a bit late getting posted. I managed to top the bad-technology night off by losing a 32GB memory card, from my video camera, somewhere between the Library and the Observatory Lounge. No amount of backtracking and rummaging around on the floor with torches could locate it, which put me in an incredibly bad mood. Fortunately, I download all footage and images onto the laptop on a daily basis, so there’s nothing on it that I’m missing – it’s the sheer cost of replacing it that’s annoying. I’ve reported it missing in Reception, so there’s always the possibility that it may yet get handed in, but it looks like I may have to replace it from the onboard photo shop.
Tomorrow is Monday, and we have one more day at sea before reaching Valletta… sweet dreams…
