Saturday, 12th January 2013
When we woke up this morning we couldn’t believe the first week had flown by already. Despite the long, leisurely sea days the time passes surprisingly quickly. We just spent today relaxing, going to the talks, sitting in the sunshine on our balcony and generally whiling away the hours.
The dress code for the evening was smart-casual and we just did the usual stuff; went to the show which was featuring the soprano singer Jennifer Fairs again, then along to the Rising Sun at 9.30pm for the quiz, Tonight it was mainly a case of solving anagrams, but can you really be bothered when you’re still digesting a massive dinner and you’ve consumed a few glasses of wine? No, needless to say we didn’t do very well and we didn’t hand our paper over to be marked. 🙂
We finished the evening by going along to the Globe show lounge where they were hosting the well-known TV game show Deal or No Deal. This is a game in which the contestant has to choose a numbered box and try to guess how much money it contains, for £0.01 to £250.00 in this case. At some point the ‘banker’ may offer you an alternative amount of money and it is up to you to decide whether you’d be better off taking it (a “deal”) or refusing it and trying to go for more money (“no deal”). The contestant tonight decided to accept £50.00 as the deal; it was good that she did this as the box she had only contained 1p.
Then it was back along to our cabin around midnight for bed.
Sunday, 13th January 2013
Woke up early this morning as we’d gained another hour due to the clocks going back again to GMT -2. We had our breakfasts then went along to the Palladium theatre to listen to a presentation by Alex Alley, a round the world yachtsman who had won several competitions. He was talking about some of the arduous conditions you have to endure when sailing solo around the world. I love these sort of stories and have read quite a few books on the subject, including A Voyage for Madmen, The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst and Left for Dead. You can understand how insanity often creeps in when these lone sailors have had no contact with any other human being for months at a time, especially in the days before satellite communications, mobile phones etc.
Later on that morning we went to another talk by Ricky Bastin, who was discussing what the future could possibly hold for supersonic travel. It’s amazing to think that it now takes you at least seven hours to fly across the Atlantic but it used to take only 3½ hours – technology has taken a step backwards for the first time in history. But there are several designs currently on the drawing board; one of them is for an aircraft codenamed “Lapcat” that could possibly fly at Mach 5, or from London to Sydney in four hours. But until that happens (if it ever does) nothing can supersede our own beautiful “Speedbird 1”, Concorde. 🙂
Tonight was a formal night again so I wore another of my Gothic dresses, along with fishnet tights, long black evening gloves and a sequinned shawl. It was actually very warm in that outfit so, shortly after the evening’s cabaret, which was the singing MacDonald brothers again, I went back to C149 and ditched the tights and the gloves. Then it was off to the Rising Sun again for the quiz, which was “Name that Tune”. Frank and Brenda from our table in the restaurant joined us for the quiz. We didn’t win, however; some of the teams had six members who obviously take quizzing very seriously and some very high scores were achieved.
After the quiz it was karaoke time once again and I got up to do a few numbers, along with the same singers as the last couple of times. It was all a good laugh and it was nearly 1.00am before we got back to our cabin.
We reckoned we would be very close to the Equator by now, if indeed we hadn’t already crossed it. Last time we’d looked at the GPS it was only about one degree North which meant we were only 60 nautical miles (or about 3 hours at a speed of 20 knots) away from it. We therefore switched on the handheld GPS to see where on the earth we were. 🙂