Tom Fletcher and Izzy
This morning, as usual, we were up on deck having a coffee and talking to friends. There were a few other people sitting around at other tables who we didn’t take much notice of. The subject came up of the previous nights entertainment and when asked what she thought of the comedian’s show, Izzy said “Oh, his jokes were all old, I’ve heard them all before, so I left after the first five minutes”. From behind us came a booming voice “Are you talking about all my old jokes”, we turned around and there sat Tom Fletcher, the comedian. Izzy was immediately flustered, but to her credit she recovered quickly and said “Well, I’d heard your first three jokes before, so I left”. He seemed a bit ticked and said “so if you go in to hear a singer, do you say ‘oh I’ve heard that song before’ and then leave” “so why leave when you’ve heard a few of my jokes”. Going on the offensive, Izzy countered “ok, I actually left because I wanted to go to the casino, but I can tell you a few good jokes”, with that, she lifted her coffee and moved over to his table. The mood softened and Izzy went into joke mode as she and Tom traded jokes and insults. We sat for about an hour laughing, ‘til we had to leave to play trivia. Parting words went to Tom, when Izzy said “You can join us to play trivia, if you want”, Tom laughingly replied “Oh I think I’ve seen enough of you for this morning”. We didn’t win trivia, missed by one point again.
The bridge of the Royal Princess
Me on the outside wing of the bridge
Izzy steers the ship
After lunch, we had signed up for a tour of the bridge and around 02.00pm we gathered with 14 others and passed through the mysterious gateway to the ship’s control centre. The first barrier opened to reveal a continuation of the corridor with several doorways, officers quarters and meeting rooms. I noticed the corridor walls were covered with awards and plaques given to the ship for various achievements as we made our way to the second barrier door. Inside the bridge area, we had a guided tour of all the instrumentation, by Alan, the officer on watch, the highlight was stepping out onto the open-air wings at each side of the bridge. The view down the side of the ship was spectacular, we stood on the floor grating, looking straight down at the ocean breaking against the hull. Back inside, we were free to look around ourselves and ask any questions of the two officers on duty, though we were warned not to touch any buttons, apparently, true or not, we were told that on a past bridge visit a passenger had pushed the emergency stop button. At evening dinner, we applied a little lubrication to the maitre’d and arranged to move to another table with bill and Shelley but for tonight we had dinner back at our usual table to let our tablemates know that we would be moving, it went surprisingly well. We lost some money in the casino, watched the evening show, ’the sensational voice of Claude eric’, for five minutes before deciding that we’d rather have a quiet evening in the cabin.
Tuesday 10th March - Didn’t sleep well at all last night, Izzy was up with chest and back pain and we came close to calling a doctor, but after a while we decided it was probably indigestion. Anyway she was somewhat improved in the morning, but she decided to stay most of today in the cabin.
