Cruise Day 7 - Rome

I wake up still feeling a bit rough, but definitely better than last night. We go up for some breakfast, deciding that if I can keep that down, we’ll risk the afternoon trip to Rome. It’s more difficult than usual to watch the plate-pilers, but I manage my wee bowl of Special K and it stays put, so Rome is on.

We’re berthed at Civitavecchia (pronounced Chivitavekia), about an hour or so away from Rome. Our tour guide is the absolutely stunning Simona. She’s great, and listening to her talk I realise just how hopeless Nathalie really was. Simona gives out so much information, but she makes it funny and interesting. As we enter Rome it’s like driving into a live history lesson. Just hearing the names Marcus Aurelius and Julius Caesar mentioned in relation to buildings we pass sends a shiver down the spine.

The traffic is mad – Simona says Rome is a city of three million people, two million cars and one million scooters. She’s only half joking. Cars are parked everywhere, people are taking serious risks on their scooters – I’m just glad I don’t have to try to cross any roads.

I’ve noticed something odd: my mum has this habit of reading out road signs. Nothing important – just random stuff, street names, speed limits, distances. I now realise that all elderly people do this, and the fact that the road signs are in Italian is no deterrent. 47 voices are muttering about schools, stop signs and 'ooooh' new pizza restaurants. It’s mind-bending.

We stop at the Coliseum, our only chance to get off the bus. We have forty minutes here, so we wander down the hill to the best spot for taking pictures. We’re in a kind of small park and there are various homeless people lying around, sleeping. They’re all very young, and they’re not begging, they’re just lying there. It’s one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen – the Coliseum in the background, the poverty right in front of it. Horrible.

I hear some people from other tours talking. ‘Yeah, Trevi Fountain is a bit of a let down – just stuck up a side street. I wouldn’t bother if I was you.’

The Trevi Fountain is a let down? Seriously. She’s probably also pissed off that they appear not to have finished the Coliseum.

We go back to the bus and are swarmed by trinket sellers – total junk. They’re very persistent, but we manage to shake them off and get back on the bus. We head in the direction of St. Peter’s – this is what Mum really wants to see. It is a spectacular sight, but again only serves to highlight the haves and have-nots. The Pope’s official residence is ridiculously huge – it offends me just to look at it. Charity clearly doesn’t begin at home where the Vatican is concerned (no news there, I know). Mum is delighted to have seen it all, and that’s what’s important on this trip, so I’ll stop whining.

Simona points out some very posh looking, very empty restaurants. ‘They charge €20 for a cup of coffee – that’s why they’re empty.’ No doubt there are those who will go there, just to be seen to be seen, which is a bit pathetic.

Another thing I notice is that we haven’t seen anyone overweight. None. Everyone walking about the streets of Rome looks fit (I don't mean skinny, model types - just ordinary folk, but all in good shape). I wonder if it’s a combination of the Mediterranean diet and the fact that the city is built on seven hills – walking around here would definitely keep you fit and healthy.

I loved what little we saw of Rome – I’d love to go back for a while and have the chance to see it properly rather than from inside a bus. Definitely on the list of things to do.

We get back to the ship at 6 pm and we set sail again at 6.30. Mum has decided she’s definitely too tired to go to Corsica tomorrow, and doesn’t want to do Gibraltar, so we'll be on board for the rest of the holiday.

It’s Hawaiian night tonight – lots of loud colours and garlands.

Richard and John are at the table when we get to dinner. We tell them what happened to us re Barcelona and why we weren’t at dinner last night. They have tales of their own. They almost witnessed, and possibly prevented, an assault in Nice market. A tourist tried to take a picture of the man with the handlebar moustache, the one on the scooter, and he went nuts (yeah, because he’s trying not to get noticed with the way he dresses etc.) shouting at the guy, then threatening him, then going to have a go at him … until Richard and John stood either side of the tourist, at which point scooter man left.

Their tour guide in Rome was a real Italian mama type, telling everyone they were all her bambinos and she’d take good care of them. They went for a wander at the Coliseum and when they got back the bus had gone. Their Italian mama had abandoned them on one of Rome’s seven hills. They hung around, looking suitably dejected and lost, and one of the other tour guides, thankfully, brought them back. So much for being treasured bambinos.

I mention that today’s cocktail is the Bahama Mama and John orders one for each of us. The lads drink theirs like it’s lemonade – Mum and I take two hours to finish ours.

John and Richard are off to the casino, we head up to the sun deck and the tropical party night. We don’t last long, especially after Hamilton Browne, who ‘is’ Lionel Richie turns out absolutely not to be. We drain the last of our Bahama Mamas (nowhere near as good as the ones my friend Gillian makes) and go back to the cabin.

Richard and John are going to Corsica tomorrow, so I look forward to hearing what they get up to. We’ll be sunbathing all day. It’s a hard life.

2.30 am – ‘Am I hearing things, or is it raining?’

‘It’s just the noise of the ship.’

Ah … all is back to normal.

Cruise Day 6 - Cannes and Nice

Up and ready to go – not going to miss anything today. We get a call from the excursions team – do we realise that we’ve booked today’s excursion and Cannes is only accessible by tender? (A tender is a wee boat that takes you to the dock – they use this at ports where they are unable to berth.) Eh, yes, we are. But you have a wheelchair. Yep, and we told you that when we booked and you said it wouldn’t be a problem. She says that’s fine. I take the opportunity to tell her what happened about Barcelona. We don’t do refunds. I explain, again, exactly what happened, how it wasn’t, in our opinion, our fault, and that we would like her to reconsider. She says she’ll get back to us. She never does.

We decide to skip breakfast and just have the shortbread and coffee that’s provided in the room, then go to Tamarind Lounge where everyone is meeting to be allocated coloured stickers and numbers and told where to go to get the tender. This is much more efficient than yesterday’s debacle.

I’ve never seen a tender before, but Mum assures me she’s used them loads of times and has no bother getting on and off them. When I actually see the wee boat, see it bobbing about alongside our ship, which is also shifting a bit, I seriously doubt this. One member of the crew takes the wheelchair and folds it up; two others get either side of Mum and tell her to step across when they tell her to. She does that thing she does – just kind of launches herself and hopes for the best. I’m terrified, but, amazingly, it’s fine, and there she is, standing on the wee boat, hanging onto the rail, perfectly happy.

There are no seats at the front, but two people see Mum’s condition and move to let us sit down. There really are some very nice, helpful people on the cruise. The couple opposite are from Largs, so that sets off many memories and conversations (we’re typical ‘Glasgow folk to Largs’ types). When we get to Cannes we are allocated our guide, Nathalie; very smiley, masses of black, frizzy hair, clip board hugged tightly to her chest. Her English is good - not quite as perfect as you’d expect from a professional guide, but she’s so smiley I don’t really notice.

Nathalie tells us we’re going on the little train around Cannes. Mum is confused – last time she did this tour it was the bus round Cannes and the little train round Nice. She’s not happy with this change. It’s a bit of a walk to the wee train and a lot of people are complaining as they hadn’t expected this and aren’t very fit. Mum’s in the wheelchair, so she’s fine … until we get to the wee train and realise there’s nowhere to put the wheelchair. The guide talks to the driver and he says he has a basket he’ll put it in – no problem. The next problem is actually getting her on to the wee train – it’s a very high step. The driver produces one of those wee steps for toddlers, the ones for reaching the toilet/sink, and between us he and I manage to get Mum on the train, not helped by the fact that she’s having another giggling fit.

The little train is not actually a train and doesn’t run on tracks – it’s just one of those things you see at theme parks that looks like an old steam train from the front and has open carriages attached. As it pulls away I see our wheelchair sitting on the pavement. Oh dear. Hope for the best that the driver had a plan and it will still be around when we get back. The little train is very bumpy. Very, very bumpy and the driver is wheeching us up and down hills and round corners and along narrow streets. I’m beginning to feel a bit sick. Fortunately Mum has brought the travel tablets, so I take a couple and hope for the best.

Cannes is absolutely beautiful, especially in such glorious weather. Nathalie is keen for us to see The Carlton Hotel, which is where all the top stars stay when they come for the film festival. She mentions Brad Pitt more than is strictly necessary. The beach looks small, but gorgeous, with some very fancy sun loungers dotted around. We stop at the top of a hill where we can get out and take some photographs of the spectacular view.

Once we’ve ‘done’ Cannes we head back to get on a bus for Nice. Nathalie has this disturbing habit of talking directly to one passenger when she’s giving out info, and when we get on the bus it’s me and my mum. We feel obliged to nod and answer questions, and smile way more than the information warrants. Eventually Mum just falls asleep – good tactic.

We stop in Nice and Nathalie tells us we’re going to walk down to the market, we should get off the bus and follow her. More grumbling from those with disabilities as the market is about a ten minute walk and involves going down some stairs. Mum and I fall behind as moving the wheelchair around these streets isn’t easy, and Mum has to get out and walk down the stairs, very slowly. We catch up with everyone at the market. We have 45 minutes to spend on our own. Yay. We go and get a coffee and a croissant and watch the market (we couldn’t get the wheelchair through market – no chance) and the people going by.

We spot one ‘character’ – an old guy with bizarre hair and a very fancy white, handlebar moustache. He’s wearing a suit and a hat and riding a scooter. He’s got ‘eccentric’ screaming from every pore. A sudden roar comes from the Irish pub (yes, I’m afraid so) opposite – that’ll be the rugby again. We know that we can’t really spend the full 45 minutes here as it will take us longer to get back to the bus, so we set off and get there at just the right time.

Cannes and Nice really are beautiful and I would love to go back there for a proper holiday. I think this is probably all you’d ever get out of cruise excursions – the chance to get a feel for somewhere, to know if you’d like to spend more time there. It’s a good way to check out possible holiday destinations, but nothing more.

Back at the dock in Cannes there’s a massive queue to get to the tenders. The sun is at its hottest and everyone is feeling tired and irritable and really not keen on hanging around here for ages. The queue snakes forward slowly and after about half an hour we’re almost at the front. A couple of people ahead of us point out that there’s a separate entrance for the disabled lift. We thank them and move over, but just as we get there, two people walk in front of us and start complaining to the staff that they paid for priority boarding and shouldn’t have to wait here with all these people. They want something done about it immediately. They ignore us and the fact that they’re blocking the disabled entrance. Two more people join them and start up the same complaint, one of them adding that she’s actually officially disabled, just doesn’t have her badge with her. Eh, yeah, but she’s not in a wheelchair and is still blocking the lift. They pretend they can’t hear me asking them to let us through. Mum suggests we just ram them with the wheelchair. It’s very tempting. The rest of the queue start yelling at them to get out of the way, to get back to the end of the queue, they’re not jumping ahead etc. Eventually I raise my voice and ask them if I can please get through. They pretend they hadn’t seen me and move, but only enough for me to squeeze past them.

By the time we get down in the lift to the next queue, we’re way at the back. The people who were in front of us up on the dock spot us and shout to us to come forward – they’ve kept our space. Like I say, some people are lovely, others are selfish gits. Such is life.

Finally back on the ship we head up for tea. Mum has her usual, but I don’t feel quite right, so I just have an orange. The orange tastes odd – like the flesh tastes of orange skin. Instead of throwing it away, I keep on eating. This proves to be a very bad decision. We go up to sunbathe, but after lying down for a few minutes I’m feeling really rough and tell Mum I’ll go down to the cabin for a while and come back and get her when I feel better. It soon becomes apparent that I’m not going to get any better, so I get Mum and then lie down, hoping that a sleep is all I need.

I start throwing up at 6 pm and and continue to do so at fairly regular intervals until 5 am. For a tiny orange, it certainly made its presence felt and somehow reappeared eight times throughout the night. We miss dinner, we miss everything. Mum goes and changes our Rome excursion to an afternoon panoramic bus trip. I hope I’ll make it tomorrow, but can’t be sure.

Did I say today could only be better? Well, mostly it has been, but tomorrow is looking like being a cancellation. Rome is the one place Mum hasn’t been before and she really wants to see it.

Fingers crossed.

Cruise Day 5 - Barcelona (sort of).

Alarm goes off at 7 am. Mum is sitting in the chair by the window completely ready to go. No idea what time she got up at. We go to the Saffron Restaurant (the one we use for dinner) for breakfast. In the morning passengers are allocated any available seat rather than the allotted tables we have for dinner. We end up at a table with Richard and John – poor souls just can’t escape us.

During breakfast the captain makes an announcement saying they are having trouble berthing and everything will be running at least an hour late. We were supposed to leave for our bus at 9.45 am. It’s only 8.30 am when we finish eating, so we go back to the cabin to wait for further announcements.

By the time it gets to 11.45, we’ve still heard nothing and are concerned about the lack of information, so we go to the reception desk. Getting out of the lift on Deck 5, the ship looks like a modern, slightly posh, Marie Celeste. I explain to the guys on reception (yeah, okay, there was no one left on reception on the Marie Celeste etc.) that we were supposed to be on the 9.45 tour that was delayed, do they know what’s happening? Yeah, it left at 10.25. I tell them we didn’t hear any announcements, but they insist calls were made and that if we’d been in the public areas we would definitely have heard them. But it says in the news letter to stay out of the public areas as it can cause congestion. Then we should have had our TV tuned to the channel to receive announcements in our stateroom. Eh, we did. He shrugs - the announcements were definitely made. I ask him what we do now. He shrugs again and says there’s a regular shuttle bus. Yep, that’s great – me, Mum and the wheelchair on a shuttle bus.

We decide to go for it, at least see a bit of Barcelona on our own. When we get on to the dock I see one of the excursions staff getting people on to a bus for a tour. I explain what has happened. That’s a shame – there’s the shuttle bus. I ask if we’ll get a refund. No refunds, under any circumstances. She doesn’t offer any help at all, doesn’t offer to put us on another tour – nothing. Very pissed off now.

We get on the shuttle bus for the short drive to the town. We’re dropped off at The World Trade Centre – no map, nothing – just get on with it.

Mum is very keen for me to see The Sagrada Familia, which she thinks is at the end of Las Ramblas (anyone who’s been to Barcelona groaning yet?). So we head off, in the blistering heat, me pushing the wheelchair. After a long, long walk along Las Ramblas, Mum says we should really be able to see spires or something by now. I decide to find a tourist information office. The first one I find is down some stairs, looks like it’s in a subway. I park Mum in her wheelchair at the top and walk down. There’s also an escalator going up. A woman is standing at the bottom of the escalator, blocking it with her suitcase.

‘Excuse me – could you help me get this case upstairs? I really just can’t do it.’

‘Eh, gimme a minute to just ask them a quick question, then I’ll come back and help.’

‘Oh, the queue is very long – you’ll be there for a very long time. Couldn’t you help me first?’

I wonder how long she's been standing there waiting for help. Fine. I grab her case and carry it to the top, where she assures me I will be rewarded by God. If he could just help me find this bloody church, that would do.

The queue for information is, indeed, ridiculously long, so I find a map and head back to Mum. Mum is surrounded by tourists asking her directions in various languages. She’s just laughing and shaking her head.

Can’t make any sense of the map, mainly because I don't actually know where we are at this point, so using my very rusty school Spanish I ask two passing women how to get to Sagrada Familia. They indicate a bus. I tell them I’m walking, with the wheelchair. They look slightly horrified and give me directions in very fast Spanish that I just don’t get, but I do get that these directions are going on for a very long time. They pat my arm and shake their heads as they wander off. At this point I begin to wonder if Sagrada Familia is actually in Barcelona at all.

We give in and get a taxi. Taxi driver doesn’t speak English, but takes one look at us and says, ‘Sagrada Familia?’ Yep – that’s us - it must be obvious that we need to be 'saved'. It’s a good ten minutes in the taxi and I’m told later that it’s about a 40 minute walk from where we were, which would have been closer to 90 minutes pushing the chair.

Sagrada Familia is a spectacular sight, but I’m so hot and tired, and I’m struggling to manoeuvre the wheelchair in the crowds – people can, believe it or not, be very ignorant and selfish when confronted with wheelchair users – that I really just want to take some pictures then get the hell out of Barcelona. That’s exactly what we do.

Back at the ship, I’m finding it hard to get out of my bad mood, and I know it’s affecting Mum, but it’s been the worst possible start to our few days of excursions.

At tea we sit with a couple who are not at all happy with P&O – I’m not happy with them at the moment either, so we have a good moan. The woman is hilarious – really over the top complaints, but done in such a funny way, by the time she’s finished listing everything that bugs her I’m laughing so much I finally get out of my huff. Her final statement: ‘Our cabin steward is a lazy bastard – runs a damp cloth over a few things, but cleans nothing. The cabin has never been hoovered since we got here. I’ve placed some crumbs under the chair, taken pictures of them, and I’m going to see how long they stay there.’ Taking pictures of crumbs – that’s the way to relax and get into the holiday spirit. I imagine the woman and the steward in a kind of Mexican stand-off re the crumbs – him moving them a little every day, just to freak her out, but never actually clearing them away. Crumb wars. The couple normally travel with Royal Caribbean and say they’ll never use P&O again.

Back to the cabin for a rest before dinner. Foghorn Leghorn is yelling into his phone (at least I assume he’s talking on the phone – Mum has other ideas), ‘No, no! Don’t do that – if we do that we’ll bankrupt the entire stock market!’

Mum rolls her eyes. ‘I’m telling you, he’s mad – delusional.’

There's a 'Sail Away' party on the sun deck as we leave the port, but we're too tired to go up and see what it's like. There'll be others on other days.

No John and Richard at dinner, so we don’t get to hear about their day in Barcelona and we don’t get to tell them about our misadventures … so we moan about it to Manoj, our waiter. He’s surprised to hear about the lack of refund. ‘That’s stupid – why would P&O risk losing two passengers’ future business for the sake of £68?’ Why indeed, Manoj – maybe you should be running the company.

Our trip to Cannes and Nice leaves at 8.30 next morning, so we need to get an early night. I set the alarm for 6.30, but Mum will probably still be up and ready before it goes off. I'm tempted to sleep on the reception desk so I don't 'miss any calls'.

Mum gets into bed and reads her book. Minutes later she’s asleep and the book has fallen onto her chest. I put the book away and put her glasses on the night table. It's been a stressful day for her and she's shattered.

‘Thanks,’ she whispers, then she’s out for the count. If it actually rained now she’d sleep through it, which would be a real shame.

Try to sleep, hoping tomorrow is a better day. Could it be any worse? And not even any Countdown to take our minds off things.

Cruise day 4

Awake to find the ship has stopped bouncing about – good, we must be out of The Bay of Biscay. At breakfast we meet some other Scots. They tell us they travelled down by train from Edinburgh and were pampered all the way – breakfast and lunch provided, big comfy seats, and only a seven hour journey. Bit pissed off that we didn’t know about this. Tut.

Off to book our excursions. We opt for the Panoramic Barcelona tour i.e. it’s a couple of hours on the bus. Mum’s done it before and I point out that we have the wheelchair this time, so could try something different, but she reckons this is still the best bet and she really just wants me to see The Sagrada Familia. We book Cannes and Nice and ‘the little train’ for Sunday and Rome for Monday. Looking at the tickets later, I realise that the Rome trip is nine hours long. Not sure Mum will be able to cope with that, but we’ll see. We decide to leave booking Corsica until later and are going to give Gibraltar a miss as Mum says it's not worth the bother unless you're after lots of duty free.

Get the crossword first then head up to sunbathe. The weather really is spectacular for the time of year. It gets too hot and Mum decides she’d rather just sit out on the balcony at our cabin because it’s got more shade. We haven’t used the balcony much – the man in the next cabin seems to be on his balcony all the time, smoking cigars that choke us, so we haven’t really been able to go out there. Sitting there we hear him on the phone – it’s like having a cabin next to Foghorn Leghorn. The person he’s talking to could probably hear him without the aid of the telephone.

‘Yes, yes – I’ll try to see you in Barcelona tomorrow. Can’t wait to get off this ship – it’s awful. There are people everywhere. We’re not leaving the cabin at all – having everything delivered to the room. The excursions are the only days we’ll venture out. It’s terrible. So crowded. Just can’t believe how many people there are.’

Eh, it’s a ship that takes over three thousand people and one and a half thousand crew – what the hell did he expect? We already hated him because of his stupid cigars. Now we hate him because he’s an idiot.

I decide to go to the gym. I’ve been and looked at it before, I've thought about it, I've talked about it, now it’s time to give it a go. If you’ve never been on a treadmill on a ship before, may I suggest you give it a miss? Although the ship isn’t bouncy anymore, it’s still shifting about a bit, so being on the treadmill is really unnerving. I’m holding on to the handles, sure I’m going to fall off, and I’m only walking. I give up and decide to just walk around the promenade deck until I feel like I’ve had a bit of a workout. I start walking and pass other people walking in the opposite direction. After I’ve passed them several times, I realise that they are walking for exercise too, but I’m the only one walking this way – apparently the wrong way. Nothing new there, really – if there’s a wrong way to do something, I’ll find it.

I get back to the cabin. Mum has come in from the balcony because, ‘That bloody idiot kept smoking cigars and talking rubbish, very loudly, on the telephone. I think there’s something wrong with him. He’s probably here with his carer.’

Time for tea and then Countdown. Check hair and height of waistband. All normal. Same woman wins Countdown again. There may be a riot. Entertainment officer announces that there will be no more Countdown until after the following four days of excursions. Anger is replaced by horror and disbelief. Someone wants to know why – after all, not everyone is getting off the ship. That’s just the way it is. Waistbands are hoisted up a notch further and they leave, dragging the toes of their brown leather sandals along the carpet, totally depressed.

It’s another formal night for dinner, but we decide to avoid the photographers – hands looking very fat tonight, and there’s the jowls, so no point in wasting time. As we get out of the lift, we see two women pushing two men in wheelchairs and another woman walking by their side. They all stop and point at my mum and go, ‘Ooooooooh. Stroke?’

Mum nods. ‘Yep – twenty years ago.’ The men in the wheelchairs look horrified, so I assume they have been affected only recently and were hoping for a complete recovery.

The woman who wasn’t pushing a chair comes up to Mum, pats her on the shoulder and says, ‘Aw, you are lovely. You’re doing very well, dear. Are you on holiday?’

Mum looks at me and tries not to laugh, then turns back to the, clearly mental, woman. ‘Eh, yes.’

‘Aw, good for you.’

They go off into the lift and we fall about laughing.

Mum’s hanging on to me. ‘Are we on holiday? No, we live here. On this cruise ship. All year round. And what the hell was all that about anyway? Did they want to start a bloody club or something? The stroke club? What a great laugh that would be.’

Definitely the most stupid question we’ve heard in a long time.

No general knowledge questions from the lads tonight, but the patter is good, as is the food. Richard and John are going to Barcelona on the same tour as us, but are more concerned about how they’re going to see the rugby match on the Sunday morning and are doing the rounds of the ship’s bars to find out if anyone is showing it. Yes, that’s why they’re doing the rounds of the bars. They head off to the casino and to their rugby quest; we head for mad Laura and her daft quizzes. No word of Delia Smith still releasing her godmother.

Back to the cabin – we have to be up early and plan to have breakfast in the restaurant so we’re ready in time for the Barcelona tour.

‘Is it Barcelona tomorrow?’

‘Yep.’

‘So we’ll have to be up early?’

‘Yep – I’ve set the alarm for 7 am.’

‘That should be fine.’

3 am. ‘Is that …’

‘It’s just the noise of the ship.’

It’s going to be strange getting off the ship – I’m used to it now and it feels … well, normal. But looking forward to Barcelona and going crazy... oh, and having our first cooked breakfast of the cruise. Oooooooh, will we cope with changing the routine?

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.

Cruise Day 2

I awake to sun blinding me. Mum has pulled back the curtains at 8 am. We’re not getting off the ship until Saturday (it’s Wednesday today) - there really is no need to be up early on the days we spend on board. I’ve had about an hour’s sleep. Mum is telling me just to stay where I am, not to get up, she knows I’ve had hardly any sleep, don’t mind her, she’ll be quiet, just lie there and get some more rest, there’s no rush, we don’t have to be anywhere, no problem at all, can have breakfast anytime, just lie there, just get some rest etc. She keeps this going for a couple for hours while I hide under the duvet.

I crawl out of bed and get ready to go for breakfast. We opt for the buffet restaurants on floor 15. I’ve never seen so much food or so many plates piled so high. There’s a choice of cooked breakfast, pastries, fruit, cereals – pretty much whatever you want – and some people are having it all, and lots of it. Mum has some fruit, I have some cereal. We go nuts and have a croissant each. Other people are going back for second helpings of everything, and piling it high again. Some people seem to be making bean mountains - I have no idea what's underneath.Watching them makes me feel a bit sick.

I get a good look at some of our fellow passengers: lots of wheelchairs; lots of walking sticks; lots of hearing aids; lots of very overweight people; a few young families, a few people my age, but mainly over sixty (at least). Hmmmm…

Next stop is the library where we collect the daily crossword – this is something Mum has done on every cruise and is a set part of the ‘routine’ – and go back to the cabin to complete said crossword. We wander about a bit more, trying to get to grips with the layout of the ship, but failing. We skip lunch, having had a relatively late breakfast, and head back upstairs at 3 pm for ‘tea’. Same as before – people piling plates high with cakes, sandwiches, scones – everything they can get their hands on. Something tells me these people have also had lunch and will be snacking some more before dinner.

Countdown is approaching – oh, the excitement. Mum wants to rush down there at 3.30, convinced it will take us ages to find the place it’s happening. I calm her down and assure her I know where we’re going (is anyone who knows me well laughing at this?). We finally find the room with one minute to spare. See? You should always listen to your mother.

There are about twenty passengers waiting to play – I’ve never seen such a collection of odd, badly cut hair and so many high waistbands and belted trousers with tucked in polo shirts in one place … and that’s just the women. They look serious. They look like they sit in front of Countdown every day, jaws clenched, teeth gritted, pens clutched in claw-like hands. They mean business. The game is played pretty much as it is on TV, except these contestants jeer, ‘That’s not a word!’, ‘That’s a proper noun – you can’t have that!’, ‘You’ve already had a turn at the conundrum!’ I’m a bit scared of them. Even more scared that, if I come here every day, I’ll get one of those haircuts and buy those trousers.

After Countdown it’s a wander round the shops then back to get ready for dinner – it’s our first formal night and men wear tuxedos while women wear cocktail dresses or ball gowns. I’ve got loads of those, as you can imagine. We have a formal picture taken, but don’t buy it because I decide I have fat hands in the picture. It’s true.

The dining room does look pretty special with everyone dressed up. Two new dining companions arrive – Richard and John, from Wales. They’re easy to talk to and good fun, so we hope they’ll come back the next night. We tell them they have to come back or other people in the restaurant will think we’re scaring people away. It turns out Richard and John are constantly betting each other a drink against the answer to various general knowledge questions.

John: So, Karen, what do you know about Haile Selassie?

Me: He was the president of Ethiopia.

John to Richard: Ha, that’s a drink you owe me!

Richard to me: ‘And?’

Me: He was the founder of Rastafarianism.

Richard to John: No – you owe me a drink. See? Told you.

John: Tut.

Our waiters, Manoj and Cletus (I’m sure Cletus is taking the piss and chose that name for a laugh) saw me cutting up Mum’s food last night, and tonight they insist on doing it so my food doesn’t get cold. Aw, that was nice – and worthy of a bigger tip, obviously. The vast majority of the staff and crew seem to be Indian. We also have a sommelier, Milgred, who is, I think, from Goa, but I could be wrong.

After dinner it’s off to the theatre again. A comedian called Johnny Casson who is stuck in a 70’s time warp (and is at least 70): casual racism, mother-in-law jokes, ‘take my wife – no, please, take my wife’ kind of stuff. And he has a mullet that has clearly been carefully preserved since 1972. He had one good gag: ‘Got up last night to go to the toilet and when I came out the cabin steward had made my bed.’ Yep, the cabin stewards work very hard.

We leave the theatre to discover we have now entered the Bay of Biscay – we know this because the ship is bouncing about, and so are we. If you’ve never seen hundreds of old people with walking sticks trying to walk straight - after they’ve had a few drinks - on a ship that is rolling around, you haven’t lived. I shouldn’t laugh, especially given the state Mum and I are in, but it's superb entertainment – better than the comedian, that’s for sure.

I plan to get Mum away from attending the theatre from now on – after just two nights I know I can’t take any more.

Back to the cabin and in bed by midnight.

'Better get some sleep - Barcelona tomorrow.'

'No, tomorrow is Thursday - we go to Barcelona on Saturday, Mum.'

'Ah, right - yes, October 1st. Sorry - I forgot.'

2.30 am: ‘Is that rain?’

‘No, Mum – it’s just the noise of the ship.’

5 am – there’s a strange rustling noise. ‘Mum, is that you?’

‘Yep, just taking my tablets.’

‘It’s 5 am.'

‘Oh. Right. I’ll go back to sleep, then.’

Try to sleep, but there's Countdown tomorrow. Maybe some sunbathing. And the crossword, obviously. And food - lots of food.

Cruise Diary

A quick bit of background: My mum had a stroke in 1991, when she was 57 years old, which has left her paralysed on the left side of her body and also heralded some personality changes, including pessimism, extreme sarcasm (she was pretty good at that before), a slight recklessness with finances, impatience, and the ability to talk the hind legs off a large herd of donkeys (those of you who know me will know that I can do a fair bit of talking myself, so if I’m mentioning it …). In 2000 my family moved in with her and we have shared a house ever since. She loves cruises – the ideal holiday if you are elderly and/or disabled in any way - and she and my brother have taken four trips with P&O. She has been trying to get me to go with her for years – I have refused. Then I gave and decided to give it a go, and from September 27th we took a twelve day Mediterranean cruise on the Ventura. This is the diary of our cruise, which I had planned to post day by day while we were away, but P&O wanted £35 for 90 minutes internet connection, so, eh, naw. Some days will, obviously, be more interesting than others – but, hey, I’m writing something, so that’ll do for me.

Day 1: The Journey and first night.

Ten hours from Glasgow to Southampton on the bus. Ten hours from Glasgow to Southampton on the bus with my mum, followed by twelve days cooped up in a cabin (sorry – ‘stateroom’) together. We leave at 4 am – Mum has had her jacket on and been perched on the edge of her chair since 9 am yesterday. Okay, I exaggerate, but since at least 2 am today. As we pull out of Buchanan Street bus station, this whole thing really seems like a bad idea.

We're just settled into our seats when Mum starts telling me all about previous cruises and how much I’m going to love this. Mum has been telling me about this for six weeks, ever since we booked. It’s going to be a long night/day/journey.

Our driver is Keith, a very nice man with a Lancashire accent. He also has a tips box, which means he gets even nicer and more helpful at various points throughout the journey. The ten hour journey. Did I mention that it’s ten hours? It’s ten hours. Ten hours of listening to stuff that I've heard before and being charged £24 for a biscuit at service stations. It'll be fine.

We finally get to the Mayflower dock at Southampton at around 2.30 pm and we can see our ship, The Ventura – a ship that takes about 3,500 passengers and over 1,000 crew. It’s quite big. Really quite big. I have no idea if I get sea sickness, but I have twelve days to find out. People have told me not to worry because big ships have stabilisers. Stabilisers make me think of a child learning to ride a bike. This is not a soothing image.

We get through boarding pretty quickly - because Mum’s in the wheelchair and we get priority (the priority queue is still very big – this is a clue as to what’s to come) - and head off to our stateroom, which looks remarkably like a cabin. Okay, actually it looks like a nice hotel room in a nice hotel. We have a lovely big balcony – our escape from each other (I’m sure this will work both ways). Our luggage hasn’t arrived yet, so we go for a wander around the ship.

The Ventura only has one promenade deck i.e. only one deck where you can walk right round the ship. This means that using the lifts is an odd and confusing experience as only some lifts, either aft or forward, go to certain floors. Getting lost becomes something of a habit, as does looking for what often seem like fabled lifts to mythical floors.

We miss the actual departure – eh, Mum may have talked through the announcement – and don’t realise we’re moving until we spot other passengers with champagne, waving at the docks.

Champagne downed, we go back to the cabin and I unpack the bags that have arrived safely. We try to sleep for an hour before dinner – I fail, Mum sleeps soundly… or rather, she sleeps noisily (another side effect of the stroke). I’d forgotten about that. Twelve days, eh?

We had booked ‘club dining’ which means you are assigned a table at a specific restaurant at a specific time each night. We’d asked to be seated at a table of eight (more people to talk to/at) and for second sitting, which is at 8.30 pm. We get to the table to find it empty. We’re bang on time, so not too concerned. Other tables around us start filling up, but still just the two of us at this table. I confess to a little bit of panic setting in at this point. Twelve days, just me and Mum at the dinner table every night? Oh.

Eventually two women sit down next to us – another mother and daughter. The mum in her 80s, daughter probably late 50s, early 60s. Conversation is a bit strained until we all down a glass or two of wine, then, as is to become a feature of the cruise, medical problems are discussed. The mum has diabetes and can’t really eat this late, so they warn us we probably won’t be seeing them again as they plan to change their dining times. Oh. Given that no one else has turned up at our table for eight, this is a worry. The daughter then tells us she is on her fourth holiday this year. She’s taking lots of holidays because she’s being put on the heart transplant list soon and then she won’t be able to go anywhere, so she’s having as much fun as she can while she can. I like her attitude.

We don’t see our dinner companions from the first night for the rest of the cruise. It really is a big ship.

Mum likes to go to the theatre at night. I knew I’d hate it, but Mum is, quite rightly, calling the shots, so off we go. It’s a young guy, Will Martin, from New Zealand playing piano and singing, very, very sincerely. The kind of thing Michael Ball does – singing rock/pop songs in a classical way, with absolutely no emotion, and slaughtering them. This is particularly excruciating during Nights In White Satin. I want to shoot myself/him – Mum wants to buy his CD, and extra CDs for everyone she knows. I distract her with a Bailey’s and ice and she forgets about the CDs. Lots of people should be thanking me.

Back at the cabin, there’s a newsletter waiting for us detailing all the activities that are available the following day: table tennis; introduction to Chinese medicine; art class; cookery demonstration; whist drive; Noddy’s welcome aboard party; Countdown. Okay, tomorrow we’re playing Countdown, apparently.

Time to sleep, having been awake for almost two days. Well, that’s the plan. Like I said, Mum is quite snorey, and I suffer from insomnia anyway, so the chances of me getting any sleep are low. The ship makes a constant noise, but you get so used to it - I found it quite comforting - you hardly notice it’s there. It sounds a bit like light rain hitting a window.

Mum wakes up at around 2 am. ‘Is that rain?’

‘No, Mum, it’s just the sound of the ship.’

I fall asleep, exhausted, sometime after 7 am. Probably too excited at the prospect of Countdown at 4.15 pm.