Day 17 My Birthday at Sea

Tea in bed – what better way to start your birthday?   I opened my birthday cards and set them out on the windowsill before stumbling down to the FE club for breakfast.

We made a quick dash for the sun beds as this is the first sea day for the poor, unsuspecting, first timers who boarded at Barbados.  They will have no idea what a shortage of beds there will be by 09.30.  We were in luck and found two beds on the upper sundeck, which is where the unofficial topless sun bathing appears to happen.  No sign of Linda yet, but it early days and the camera is ready for action.  The weather remained fine with the occasional fluff of cloud giving a welcome break from the blazing sun.  Temperature today was a cool 28 deg C, but the sun still felt absolutely intense even through the partial cloud. 

Maureen slipped away at lunchtime to watch the film being shown in the theatre, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, whilst I continued to worship the sun god.  Definitely getting worried about you know who from Wigan as one minute the sun was on the right (starboard) and I must have just dozed off for a few minutes and it was on the left (Port).  That meant we were going in the opposite direction!!

Later on it reversed again.  What on earth was the skipper up to??  The problem for professional sunbathers, is that you have to continually relocate the sun bed to face the right direction.  There were bodies and beds all over the place today, trying to keep up with the direction of the ship.

Around 3.30 a shower of rain appeared from nowhere and cleared all but the pros from the sundecks.  It had turned very humid and the wind had dropped after last night’s chicken Madras, so I decided to retire from the sundeck, take back my library book and get another.  I don’t ever remember reading so much as I have on this trip – I’m on book number 6 - That’s Janet and John go sailing.

It was now late afternoon and time for afternoon tea, so we decided to have it in the self service restaurant.  The problem with self serve is it’s easy to have eyes bigger that your tum.  Our eyes are really huge at present.

Maureen enjoyed a cat nap whilst I went to the promenade deck to start book 6.  No disrespect to the author, but I only managed 3 pages before nodding off and not waking up until after the sun had gone down and the army of ants had materialised to secure all the chairs back to the bulkhead.

Time to dress for dinner, as it’s a formal evening and we were having drinks in the Metropolis bar with our Welsh companions again.  Whilst in the bar we sailed past St Maarten on our way to Tortola.  Glyn and Joanna had bought me a birthday card, which was really kind of them, but it was time to eat and we were dining in the White Room this evening, which is Marco Pierre White’s restaurant on board.  Unfortunately they were not joining us, but we agreed to meet up for the show later.

The food in the White Room was absolutely fantastic and by the time we were on desserts – Créme Brulé to die for, it was past 10.00pm and we still had coffee and Rennies to go.  By the time we finished, not only were we too late to meet Glyn and Joanna, we were absolutely pigged out and had to get back to the cabin for a lie down. Well- it is my birthday!