Today’s Daily Programme can be found here…
We got a very welcome extra hour in bed with the clocks going back overnight as we transited towards Italy, this was needed as our stateroom was incredibly hot last night which meant Jane struggled to sleep and it was only when we propped open the balcony door that it became bearable for sleeping. Although this presented Jane with a whole other bunch of issues, what if we sleepwalk and fall over board and there were a lot of extra noises/lack of noises to contend with. I had just kicked off my covers and slept through most of it. We needed all of that extra hour to make it to breakfast. We were treated to excellent views of our passage through the Straits of Messina though
The sun was our balcony so it was easiest to get some intermediate sun there before I was off for my round of Insights lectures starting at 10 am with Professor Andrew Hopkins who gave a talk on Cagliari: The capital of the kingdom of Sardinia which was a prototype for the unification of Italy. The second lecture of the day was always going to be very popular. We had our second headlining speaker of the cruise with Henry Blofeld, stalwart of test match special and general bon viveur. This lecture, the first of three by Blowers was about his time with TMS and mainly about John Arlott and Brian Johnston.
I met Jane back at the stateroom where she was sweltering on the balcony, so we chilled for a while before heading up for lunch. Taking with us all the necessary paraphernalia for an afternoon in the sun. We lounged on the Grills terrace for an hour or so after lunch then Jane disappeared off to Phil Brown’s matinee performance in the theatre at 14:30. She does like a bit of Phil Brown having only seen him perform last night after dinner. She came back singing his praises while I went in search of a cup of tea. I went into the PG dining room where Afternoon Tea was being served, but I wasn’t interested in the cakes and scones, just a cup of tea, which I received and it was very nice indeed.
We had the continuation of the progressive trivia quiz at 16:15 so we headed to the Winter Garden expecting to find our table mates, but only the ladies turned up, the others had completely forgotten about us. We maintained our usual terrible standard getting 12/20, we are not going to win anything, I’m not even sure we’ll qualify for a certificate for turning up. After the quiz it was Commodore O’clock, it’s been a few days since our last visit and we found a couple seats by the window. Jane had a dark and stormy while I had a Ringwood Old Thumper, I do like this beer, but it’s too strong at 5.1 %abv for more than a couple as I’m now officially classed as a lightweight.
We didn’t stay too long, I promised Jane a pre-dinner cocktail, which turned out to be a lie, we were running late so went straight into dinner where I was pleased to see a turkey dinner on the menu, Xmas dinner is by far my favourite roast so I’ll always plump for it, my only complaint was that there was no stuffing.