A slightly more convenient ferry across this time, arriving Portsmouth about 2130 – Paul Stickler’s giving a talk in Winchester that evening so he can pick me up and off we go to his place in Romsey. TOPS isn’t coming on this one – too many sea days and she thinks the Caribbean’s boring. Couple of nights at Paul’s then he’s booked a cab to get the three of us to Heathrow – Natalie, his daughter, is coming on this one and she’s sleeping on an inflatable mattress the night before, which makes me feel slightly guilty as I have the guest room. But not for long. As ever, Paul insists on being at Heathrow three hours before the flight, so the cab is booked for 0515. And it’s late – Paul has a giveaway sign of stress: his head throbs. As it happens, the driver makes up the time and check-in is fast and efficient.
Predictably, the chap in the seat in front of me on the plane goes into full recline before the seat belt sign is off, and the child behind is kicking the back of my seat. Oh well. Only nine hours to go.
At Barbados, a minibus is waiting but they’re under the impression we’re crew and insist on us filling in lots of forms and giving us information about what to do in Rotterdam during the refit. At least the ship is there. P&O have reverted to giving us crew cabins as they did pre-Covid and Paul and Nat have got the nice officer’s cabin at the front overlooking the bow that I had last time I was on Britannia. It takes Paul and I half an hour to find mine – a tiny crew cabin in the depths of the ship. I go straight to the Ents office to complain, but no, the ship’s full of contractors and they’re four to a cabin in the larger cabins. Not happy, but the show must go on. I work out the easiest way to get to my cabin is go to the passenger area on Deck 8, go as far forward as possible, then into the emergency exit which takes me into the crew area, and then down ten flights of steps to deck 5 (sic) where I am based.
The three of us go to a beach bar in Barbados for the day, but I don’t do much in St Lucia. In St Kitts we do an island tour with Austin Powers which was excellent – it’s a very pretty island.
And finally away – first sea day the clocks go forward at noon, so my 1330 talk is actually at 1430, so the assistant entertainment manager changed it but left it in the same place in Horizon, so my 1430 talk was scheduled between 1300 and 1345. Some of the guests appeared confused, but the talk went well and the illusions worked. Talks every sea day, and the AEM has adopted the novel strategy of not advertising the titles. Paul’s packing them in in the morning slot and I’m only at two thirds full but that’s not unusual – the only time I had a bigger audience was when his talk coincided with the semi-finals of the Euros.
Five sea days and then we’re due in Ponta Delgada, which is a beautiful city, but the weather’s foul and the Captain decides not to berth. He should have asked a couple of chaps in Brodie’s to help get parked – they clearly knew a thing or two about manoeuvring a 140000 ton ship with 5000 people on board in high winds. Paul and I shot down to the office to make sure our talks weren’t just bumped up a day as we save what we think are the most powerful till last. Made it. An interesting glitch to my antepenultimate talk – I turned up expecting a lectern and a microphone to find a drum kit and a piano. Fortunately the tech team sorted it out very quickly. Overall the talks went well and lots of guests thanked us personally, which is always reassuring.
The evening before disembarkation I get a letter telling me to attend immigration at 0700, so I did and was given a queue number. A young lady started calling out the numbers, but one guest shouted out “Let’s do this the British way and form a queue”. So everyone did, and I was near the back. Eventually the Border Control officer took a cursory look at my passport – no machine reader – and wished me good morning, and a pleasant young lady gave me a ticket to prove I’d gone through immigration. However, nobody asked to see it subsequently, although a young man did cross my queue ticket number off a list for reasons neither of us understood. At least we were in Romsey by 0830.
Off to the ferry to Cherbourg, and a very rough crossing. I decided to eat in the restaurant which was pretty full. I was just starting my plat when a child at the next table energetically threw up. “Projectile” really doesn’t do it justice. I left the restaurant and returned to my cabin. Plus ça change. Fortunately TOPS was waiting at Cherbourg and she drove us home. She even had a bottle of Muscadet waiting in the fridge. Good to be home. Next month, Aurora to the Baltic. If I get a decent cabin…
thehairypsychologist 