Thursday – The Biscay Dance
You can nearly always rely on the Bay of Biscay to make things interesting, and today, it didn’t disappoint. Breakfasters in the Marco Polo bistro did the Biscay Dance as the ship rocked and rolled, occasionally quite violently. No… I’ll retract that; in the grand ‘Rough Sea Scale of Things’, ‘Violent’ or ‘Aggressive’ should be preserved for the sort of mayhem I witnessed last year. On hearing the odd few comments from passengers moaning about the rough seas, I wanted to say to them; “you have NO idea.”
Despite the rough weather, there were still a lot of people up and about for breakfast, and finding a table to sit at in Marco’s was difficult. I finally found a space at a table where two Dutch people were sat. I figured this was a good choice, since I wouldn’t have to make conversation; alas, the chap’s English was much better than my Dutch, and conversation ensued. He started by asking me if I’d heard about Paris. I shook my head… what about Paris? Apparently news of a terrorist attack in Paris on Wednesday was all over the media this morning… I hadn’t even turned on my TV, and was oblivious to world events.
The Dutch couple sat chuckling at the funny dances people got themselves into whilst simply trying to stay upright. At one point, however, as my new Dutch friend returned from the tea station with two cups of hot water (I think he and his wife brought their own tea-bags up with them – either that, or they preferred their tea really weak), he lost is balance and came flying into me, managing only to lose about half of the hot water – but most of which landed on me…
As expected; today has been very similar to yesterday, only with a little added aggrevation, in the form of a couple of passengers who insisted on forcing their way into the class, demanding their right to a place, on the grounds that they’d been in the class at THIS time – in THAT chair – yesterday, despite the fact that all the places were full and that I only had places, and enough notes, for a maximum of 20 per session. Honestly… some people’s bolshiness never ceases to amaze me.
Of course, I made as much light of it as I possibly could, but I realised despondently that not having Tracey here, to help out with the admin and control the flow of people entering the room, means I effectively have no ‘buffer’.
I’ve always said that I refuse to get involved in ‘Chair Politics’. This is a phenomenum that I’ve seen many times before, in different circumstances; aggression flaring up over people believing that they have some sort of rights over a particular chair. The normal moral and social boundaries seem not to apply, and angry words fly… As I say… I refuse to get involved, and it was one of the things that I laid out at the beginning of the first session, yesterday. Quite simply; my classes on board ship are on a strictly pay-as-you-go / first-come-first-served basis. Any variation on that requires far more admin than I’m capable of, or prepared to engage in. We’ve tried it in the past, and it doesn’t work, unless it is properly controlled; if you assign names to seats, it’s fine until someone doesn’t turn up one day. If you let that space go to someone else, then the replacement feels that they similarly have a right to that chair. ‘Miss two sessions and you lose your place’ worked quite well last year, but that was when there were two of us running things.
Despite all this, the Tonal Study went down well, three times, at the end of which, I felt totally drained. After clearing up the craft room, I headed for Marco’s Bistro, sat in a dazed stupor and drank about three cups of tea straight after each other, realising only then that I hadn’t had anything to eat or drink since breakfast.
This evening, there wasn’t a show; instead, they billed it as ‘Movie Night’, with a showing of ‘The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’ in the Show Lounge. It’s a great film, and one that I’ve seen before, and wandered into it with no intention of stopping to the end… but ended up stopping to the end. The rough sea seems to have abated quite a bit… hopefully tomorrow will be a little more gentle on us.
