Tuesday – Choppy Seas
There’s a bit of a keen wind today which is making the going a little rough. In the morning, the front end of the ship was closed off to passengers – it opened later, but I’ve been up there a couple of times, and it’s been a cold and breezy place to stand and watch the world from. There’s been a little bit more to see today; far more ships on the horizon, and, off to our port side, for most of the day, you could just see the coastline of Tunisia.
We’re into our last week of cruising, now, on our way to Palma de Mallorca, where we are due to arrive at about midday tomorrow. This morning, I dropped by the tours office to offer my services as tour escort for our last two ports of call; now that Tracey isn’t with me, I don’t have any firm plans for either Palma de Mallorca or Gibraltar, so I told the tours manager that I would be happy to escort on anything, should they be struggling to fill places (that could, of course, just mean being given tours that no-one else wants to do… a gamble I’m happy to take…. or nothing at all).
I spent most of the morning painting in the cabin. On our final day at sea we’ll be holding the traditional art exhibition of work produced by passengers throughout the cruise. I have several pieces that I’ve painted in the cabin, but it’s also important that I tart up the exercise pieces that I’ve produced during the demonstrations – that’s what I was doing all morning.
The Captain’s noonday snippet of trivia was this: did you know that snails can sleep for up to 3 years? Strange, but true, apparently (how do they know?)
This afternoon’s workshop was on winter trees. Before the class, Ronnie, the Cruise Director called me and we discussed the timing situation; at first we agreed that, with only three more classes to go after this, it’s a bit late to go changing the times, and that it’s probably best just to leave them as they are – starting earlier would affect people who like to attend the afternoon lecture, which starts at 3 o’clock, and I still felt uncomfortable about the idea of overlapping too much with the craft class. Half way through this afternoon’s session, though, Jackie came and had a word with me, to say that they’d received several more letters from people asking for the classes to be made longer… so it looks like we’re going to compromise, and advertise the class as starting at 3:45, giving us an extra 15 minutes… passenger power!
This evening’s showtime was the turn of Andy Rudge, the comedian, to entertain us; other entertainments were also happening around the ship, but I opted for an early night….
