Life on Board

We are currently traversing the “Bay of Biscay” – a legendarily treacherous body of water off the west coast of France that is moving the boat around a fair bit. I’ve already seen a couple of people stagger in the corridors – somewhat surprising given I can only just feel the boat moving.

It turns out the boat is moving around just enough to make my other half feel fairly off-colour – she’s retreated to our room for the afternoon to hopefully sleep it off – and is moving our celebratory dinner reservations to later in the cruise. Given I grew up on boats, I seem to be more or less impervious to the shifting nature of the floor beneath us as we make our way south.

Lunch alone in the buffet restaurant was more trouble than it was worth – if I end up eating alone again, I’ll go for one of the proper restaurants. I hit the classic “table for one” problem – aided and abetted by over-eager table waiting staff that spirit anything used away within moments of it being pushed to one side. I lost the seat I was sitting at while pouring myself a coffee at the machine five yards away. While thinking about perhaps grabbing a pastry to go with the coffee, I gave up – given an elderly gentleman was hovering nearby not unlike the Jack Nicholson character in “As Good At It Gets”. The moment I got up to leave, he almost ran for the table (if he could have run, which he couldn’t).

I wandered back to the cabin to retrieve the iPad (using it now), and went off in search of somewhere quiet to sit for the afternoon.

I sat in a restaurant for a short time – the “Glass House” – thinking I might get a little writing done. The waiter didn’t look too impressed with my ordering just a coffee. Don’t get me wrong – he was professional, and courteous, but he also looked like he might have a trap-door button that could cause my table to flip over and eject me from the restaurant. I left pretty quickly.

Ever since I’ve been sitting in a wonderful cafe bar called “Raffles” (no doubt named after the hotel). As long as you have a cup of tea or coffee in front of you, they leave you alone. Perfect. Although I might add that drinking several cups of tea back-to-back probably isn’t the best idea in the world. I can feel my insides sloshing around like a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

All the excitement just happened. Some of the security staff on-board the boat just passed by in full military inform – looking suspiciously like Gurkhas. The amount of rubber-necking among the passengers watching them pass by was pretty comical.

I wonder if the service staff have different outfits for different restaurants ? I hadn’t considered it before. I think they might. The staff in raffles have khaki trousers and blue striped linen shirts.

Anyway… I’m rambling. I’ll write more later.

(Cut to the next morning)

We lost an hour overnight. It’s currently 9am – my other half is pretending to still be asleep – I’ve been awake for hours. I have no idea why.

We got dressed up last night, had our photo taken by the ship’s photographer, then went for dinner on our own at an Indian restaurant on-board – one owned by a celebrity chef that has a restaurant near where we live. It seemed a bit backwards to me – coming all this way to go to a restaurant we could go to at home – but here we are.

The dinner was lovely, but again it was strange – only three tables were filled in the entire restaurant – yet earlier we saw a queue a mile long for one of the on-board restaurants. Quite WHY there was a queue is a mystery, because everybody has an assigned seat. Given the average demographic on-board, I’m tempted to say “old habits die hard” – I’ve lost count of the times on trains and planes where the older people get to the door first, and then hold everybody else up. It appears when brought together they become absolutely ruthless – queueing for quite some time just to walk through a doorway first to a chair and table that were waiting for them anyway.

Madness.

We finished the night in Andersons once more, and sat at the bar. The industrious Philippine bar lady took our order while marching back and forth and barking orders at members of the waiting staff. One of the younger men recognised us from a previous night and came over for a chat during a quiet moment – telling us about his career so far, and the corners of the world he had so far seen. If I see him again, I’ll try to spot his name badge.

Anyway. Breakfast. Better go get something before the rest of the passengers attempt to pig everything – you know – because there isn’t an army of chefs working round the clock for them – and they might run out.

I wonder where I might find some dynamite from to wake a certain person up? We just missed a fairly lengthy announcement on the ship.