Cruise Day 3

Awakened by blinding light, early in the morning. Hang on – the curtains are closed. Ah, the bedside lamp – the one right next to my head. Mum explains she put that light on, instead of opening the curtains like she did yesterday, so as not to wake me.

Today’s list of possible events includes: Passenger Talent Show Registration; a talk about the Krays; bingo; basketball; dance class; Texas Hold-Em tournament; Countdown.

Hmmmm … I wonder what we’ll choose?

Off to breakfast upstairs again. The ship is still bouncing about in The Bay of Biscay, so everyone carrying a tray of food looks like Mrs Overall from Acorn Antiques delivering Miss Babs’ tea. A couple sit at our table. The woman is extremely overweight, the man fairly slight. Her tray – bran flakes, a banana, and a yoghurt. His tray – every fried food known to man in huge quantities. I keep waiting for them to have a palm-to-forehead d’oh moment and swap trays, but it doesn’t happen. We all chat as we eat, but every time the man speaks, his wife looks at me, rolls her eyes and sighs. He’s not saying anything annoying or odd, so I have no idea why she keeps doing this. Mum can’t make eye contact while this is going on ‘cause she knows we’ll both burst out laughing.

We get into the lift after breakfast and I suggest that I’ll go down and get the crossword and Mum can just go back to the cabin if she feels confident about finding her own way. She does. By the time I’ve gone down to floor five, got the crossword and walked back up seven flights of stairs, I get to our cabin just seconds after Mum. I open the door and she’s having a fit of the giggles, collapsing on to the bed. She’s been all over the place trying to find the cabin, and kept finding the laundry room instead. We agree that I should stick with her to avoid this happening again … unless we’re actually planning on doing some laundry, in which case I’ll send her out like a detergent-seeking missile and track her progress.

The weather is amazing, way better than it should be at this time of year, so we head up to the sun deck to sunbathe. It’s mobbed, but we find a couple of sun loungers. Now all we have to do is work out how to get Mum on to one of them. In the end she just kind of launches herself at it and has another giggle as she imagines what this must have looked like. Then we both lose it as we wonder how the hell we’re going to get her back up again and come up with a scenario where she has to stay there for the rest of the cruise, fed, watered and entertained on a sun lounger.

After a few hours (everyone around is us stuffing themselves with pizza and burgers and chips and beers – we drink water and feel all smug), it’s time for tea and then Countdown – yay. We go back to the cabin to drop off our towels. As we walk back along the corridor I see a tiny white-haired woman in her dressing gown and slippers. She calls back to someone in her cabin. ‘There’s a young girl coming – she’ll know what to do – I’ll ask her.’ I look behind me for the young girl, then I realise I am the young girl. I can hear Mum snigger.

‘Excuse me, dear, could you help us? We can’t work out where to plug in the hairdryer.’

This might sound daft, but it’s actually quite a task locating the one socket that will accommodate the strange plug on the hairdryer and it took me about half an hour on the first night to find it hidden next to the telephone. I know it will be too difficult to explain, so suggest I show her. I walk into the cabin and see her travelling companion – a very tall woman, white hair in curlers, floral dressing gown, the belt tied so tight it’s cutting her in two. Now, I’m not exactly sure where this woman thought her lips started, or, indeed, where she thought they ended, but let’s just say she’d covered all the possibilities with bright pink lipstick. I get their hairdryer working to much thanks and insistence that I am a gem, a wonderful girl, an absolute darling and (this from the lady with the lipstick) a lifesaver because she couldn’t have gone out with her hair in that state. No, she would have looked ridiculous with that hair. Yes. Definitely.

We get inside the lift and slide down the walls laughing. Tea is a quick scone and cake and then off to Countdown. We get there in plenty of time today, having learned our lesson. I don’t mean we actually find the room right away, but we give wiggle room for getting hopelessly lost, which we do. The woman who won yesterday wins again today. This does nothing to temper the unpleasant atmosphere, which now feels vaguely violent. The winner has the most bizarre hair and the highest trousers. Surely these things cannot be unrelated?

It’s a casual night for dinner, so no need to get dressy … but we do it anyway, ‘cause we can.

John: Karen, how do you spell pterodactyl?

Me: You mean the one that starts with a ‘p’?

John: Damn.

Richard, grinning at John: That’s another drink you owe me.

Richard and John have entered the poker tournament – they like a wee gamble, John more so than Richard. I convince Mum to give the theatre a miss tonight – it’s another comedian, and after the last one, she’s fairly easily dissuaded. So we head for The Exchange Bar and a quiz. This is our first experience of the entertainment team. Tonight it’s Andy and Laura. Andy is Scottish, Laura is … bizarre. She has the strangest accent ever, and is clearly hamming it up to great comic effect. She is from Norfolk (I think – maybe Norwich) but also spent a lot of time in Devon, so if you can imagine a combination of those two accents, then exaggerate it, you have Laura. I heard her call the number ‘saxty-sex’ as I walked passed the bingo one day. It says on her bio that Delia Smith ‘has her godmother’. Delia Smith, a kidnapper – who’d have thought?

Although the whole quiz and patter is very holiday camp, it’s pretty well done and funny and way better than our nights at the theatre. We have a couple of drinks and head back to the cabin at around midnight.

‘We better get some sleep – Barcelona tomorrow.’

‘Nah, Barcelona is on Saturday, Mum.’

‘Is it? Tut, so it is – sorry.’

3 am. ‘Is that rain?’

‘Nope – just the sound of the ship.’

‘Oh. Okay.’

Tomorrow we’ll sort out our excursions. There will probably be sunbathing, crosswords, Countdown, tea cakes, and laughter in large quantities.