Cruising Aboard the Minerva - Naples to Tierra del Fuego

CRUISING ON BOARD MINERVA - South America

2009-11-23T01:01:00.000-08:00

CRUISING – My time aboard Minerva on a month cruise to South America 2008

DAY 1 – Monday 10 November

‘Nice to see you again, sir’ – the Rep greeted me at the check-in queue at Gatwick. Oh my, I must look like a seasoned cruiser though this is my first one. Swan Hellenic’s Minerva cruise is the ‘WI’ of cruises, a veritable dowager duchesss. Its passengers are usually not a day younger than bus-pass age, have walking and hearing difficulties and may well end their days at sea. There are so many deaf aids going on board the plane I wonder if they will affect the flight deck. In the departure lounge an urgent announcement asks if there is a doctor at hand. There Is a delay whilst we wonder if we’ll be one less even before take-off. We board a charter plane to our cruise departure at Naples. The plane has less leg-room than Ryanair though more pleasant staff – but even Siberian prisons have more pleasant staff than Ryanair. Though we are as tightly packed as a packet of Werther’s originals there are newspapers on each seat: only The Times, Telegraph or Daily Mail get to grace the leatherette, no place for top-totty tabloids here. As soon as the seat-belt light is off, the loo queue forms. Well-worn bladders, which are bursting at the best of times, lose control at thirty thousand feet. We are given drinks and wine to accompany the chicken and mash. Though squishy squashed we are all excited by the thought of four weeks at sea. I just signed up last week as it was a late deal. Most of my fellow cruisers are Swan Hellenic stalwarts and have been anticipating this cruise to South America for months. For them there is no cruise line like SH. Not for these slacked and jacketed, pearled and permed oldsters a Carnival (heaven forfend) or even a Princess. At Naples, we are met by a group of cheery local tour guides and led to buses to be taken to the port. The sun is warm and the day delightful after the dreak dreariness of London. Lucca tells us a bit about his city including a joke about a chum of his driving through the sulphur fumes of Vesuvius with a new girl-friend. It is something to do with the smell not coming from outside the car ‘but if you love me you’ll close the windows and not complain’. How we laughed! Our bags are screened at the port and our yellow-fever certificates are inspected. These are for Brazil but I can’t recall a voyage up the Amazon being on the itinerary. The Caribinieri have a mobile set-up by the ship’s side to check our passports, photos are taken of us as we board the Minerva – not for souvenir fridge magnets but for ID and our passports are taken away. The cabin stewardesses are eastern European, mine is Veronica from Poland. ‘Nice to see you again, Sir’, she says, and adds, ‘are you staff?’ I must have a cruise director’s look. Then I meet Paul Carter, the real Cruise Director and, though I could see her point, I am still miffed. Most of the waiting staff (some of whom have doubled as engine room crew) are from the Philippines and all have been trained to smile cheerily throughout. Hurricanes, gales, men overboard or having jugs of Pimms poured over them would always be met with that happy smile. Maybe it’s not only chlorine they add to the tap water. As we all explore our floating home, the dock-side is kept busy as lorry-loads of food is taken on board and eventually our luggage. The Italian job is union ruled. Three fork-lift truck drivers manoeuvre round each other to move pallets of pineapples and our luggage all of five metres before another picks the pallet and moves it back. On board, tea is being served: scones, cakes and sandwiches. The battle of the bulge has commenced. My fellow passengers are generally geriatric. The staff has been skilfully skilled in assisting the frail and unsteady in their slow and shaking pace and assist them with their plates.

I think the only other passengers younger than me are the classical musicians and Emma, the on-board bird watcher here to accompany her older twitcher, Clive, on the voyage to chart life at sea.

My cabin has two porthole windows and looks out, at present, across the harbour. It has a table and chair, TV, two single beds, a small sofa and a shower room. The curtains and valences are emblazoned with jaunty flags. We are due to leave at 18.00 after life-jacket practice at our designated muster stations.

At 18.30 Captain John Moulds addresses us like a transport minister coping with heavy weather problems. Miss Minerva, it appears, has been in Naples for an overhaul and only came out of the dry-dock that morning. Yet, it seems, all is still not well with her. Her generators are not generating like generators should. We shall not be sailing until 21.30, the captain says. He will keep us informed. We settle into drinks around the deck and watch the sun set over Naples. I meet the chef, Anthony Briggs, a man who enjoys eating as much as he does cooking and who looks like he long ago admitted defeat in the waistline wars. Dinner is served either as a buffet in the ‘light’, or Veranda, dining room or by waiters in the ‘serious’ dining room. Today it is steak, salmon or veal and mushrooms. Due to the delay in our departure the cruise director is offering complimentary drinks. Hurrah! Jock and Linda are making merry with the house red. At 21.30 we are still in port. This time the captain’s voice quakes over the Tannoy; more like a prime minister with news of great doom - we are not going to be leaving Naples tonight.

DAY 2 – Tuesday 11 November

When I looked up the cruise itinerary, admittedly without much deliberation or planning (as I only booked five days ago) one thing I did wonder was why we would be flying east to Naples before sailing the seas west towards South America. And, if we are going to Naples, why don’t we have any time in the town? That Madame Minerva had been hauled to the dry-dock for her make-over and engine repair in Naples answered the first question. Many had already abandoned ship and cancelled when they heard the start date would be delayed by three weeks. It was due to depart from Madeira which made more sense. Our further delay today, due to the ineffective Italian repairing, means that we have a morning off to ‘do’ Naples. I took the funicular to the Castel d’Elmo which towers over the town and gives vistas to Vesuvius, Capri and all round the bay. Neapolitan streets are paved with broken glass. Everywhere I walk there are shards of beer bottles. Civic pride and urban cleanliness are so below horn-honking and pizza prep in the city’s psyche. Though told to be back on board by 12.30 for a 13.00 sailing we are still tied up to the dock-side. I think this is going to be like the Magic Christian, a film with Peter Sellers as Sir Guy Grand and Ringo Starr, which features a cruise. In the end, it turns out, that the ship never left port and scenery was scrolled past the port-holes and windows. Still, the passengers are behaving most stoically and are settling into the endless rhythm of eternal eating and the library’s comfy chairs, reading and playing with the jigsaw puzzles. As the sun has got his hat on, the decks are blotched with bodies attempting a tan in between meals. Turning over on the lounger and strolling between cabin and trough is going to be maximum exercise for some on this trip.

I meet Penny from Lancaster Gate. A Fabian, dog lover and retired solicitor who has a litigious relationship with her neighbours, likes gardening and likely to remain single. We agree to dress up and meet for dinner. The captain announces that the ship should be ready to sail but the Neapolitan port authorities want to make sure it is properly sea-worthy. The general consensus is that without a bribe or knowing a local prominent personage the vessel will never leave. Proposed sailing, we are guardedly informed, will now be at 21.30. From now on, all drinks, except premium spirits or top-notch wines, will be on the house (or ship) courtesy of the company. Penny, who doesn’t drink, isn’t too impressed and comes up with a legal-minded solution to get her own compensation package. I don’t know if she’ll be having in-cabin massage, complimentary excursions or entrée to the bridge (game not deck) circle. She has already negotiated a cabin upgrade.

We dine on dorade and wet spinach and go outside to see the lights of Naples recede into the distance. Sadly, the ship seems keen on Naples and remains stubbornly shackled to the dock. No bribes, then, though there are a number of decidedly un-cruiselike Italian men on board. At 23.30, unannounced, the motors growl and we finally slide away into the bay of Naples. I don’t know if the Italians also slipped away before we sailed – laden with fresh pineapples or a stash of cash. I go to bed with the sound of sea sloshing past the port-holes. The cabin is decidedly chilly but I snuggle under the duvet and dream of Richard and Judy in a new chat show called ‘Raw’. Can’t think what I could have eaten.

DAY 3 – Wednesday 12 November

Life on the ocean’s waves at last. I wake up to see the sea and nothing but the sea. Jill joins me for breakfast on the deck. She is ‘travelling companion’ to Maggie who will be giving lectures about wine. There are eight, or so, on-board entertainers (and their ‘companions’) and not a lap-dancer amongst them. No laughs, no show tunes, just erudition and education though Peter, who takes the watercolour classes, is a bit of a wag. Yesterday, he said that the class must use their brushes as lightly as if they were kissing a fairy. ‘What sex is the fairy?’ he was asked. ‘Any sex you’d like’, he replied. Pamela organises the bridge games with the same gusto as a redneck would look forward to a lynching and Clive (heaven forgive our mad embrace of all things environmental) is going to bore the braces off us banging on about marine life and whale watching. When he told us that he was so excited about the chiff-chaff he’d been eyeing up I thought he meant his young (and, therefore, attractive) companion Emma but no, it’s some migratory warbler flying over us (or hitching a lift) for some winter R&R. I hope there’s a harpoon on board. These are the diversionary entertainment. The really meaty Minerva megastars are the Guest Speakers. We have Sir Peter Heap, once ambassador to Brazil and High Commissioner to Nassau and Professor Christopher Stillman who looks like, dresses like, sounds like, and indeed, is a geologist. I could tell he had an unhealthy intimacy with tectonic plates as soon as I saw him - he has a straggly half-chin beard with the whiskers missing from above the lip, he wears dark socks under sandals and tweeds and employs failing, yet unflinching, humour in his attempts to make rocks (which hadn’t been found and ground by de Beers or sold at Asprey’s) sound interesting. To round off we are graced with His Grace the Right Reverend and former Bishop of Durham & Rochester, Michael Turnbull. He will lecture us on guilt and historical injustices to prepare us to be more understanding when being pick-pocketed or mugged in a favela. I go back to the cabin. It is even colder there today. I know our final destination is Ushuaia, where the world ends and the Antarctic begins, but I can’t see the need to prepare us for chill winds before we get to the Equator.

One of the beds has such a dip it must have been berth to a hippo – or is that how heavy we all become after 4 weeks of forced feeding? I decide not to do lunch today and visit the gym instead. The gym is not huge but it is in a windowed room on top of the ship with fantastic sea views. There is a treadmill, two cycles and two rowing machines to practice on for when the motors stop again, an all-in-one iron maiden where you can bench, shoulder and, if you are so inclined, incline press and even lift your legs up and down. I can see muscles developing and weight reducing as we plow through the seas. Though may be not on me. Apart from the bars, the library is a the centre for socialising and a riot of activity: pages turn at a furious rate and the jigsaw ladies seem to take shifts in puzzling out the ‘two cheetahs on a tree’; shaky fingers slowly fill in the blank spaces. It’s a massive task they tell me – probably taking the full four weeks to fill in the whole 60x90 cms. Ena said she sometimes gets up in the night to have a fiddle.

Today’s film, showing on TV and in the ship’s cinema, is Indiana Jones and his Pointless Return. Perhaps the lecture on volcanology will be more entertaining after all.

Tonight is the captain’s cocktail and gala dinner. All tickety boo and dicky bow. The cocktails turn out to be cheap champagne and vile wine (even if mixed into a kir) in the lounge.

I walk into dinner with Jock and Linda, the Bishop, his wife and Penny. We are seated all together. The chef has made the most of yesterday’s left-overs and used the asparagus in a soup. The dinner discussion almost reaches room temperature when Penny mentions ordination of women and gay priests. If the good bishop is hot under his dog-collar, he doesn’t show it and talk turns to eating in Sussex – a lot of wittering about the Witterings. We roll merrily to our cabins as the ship starts its rolling through the waters. A satisfying slumber is broken, as I am woken, by the cupboard doors banging about in the swell. Is this the start of some stormy weather?

DAY 4- Thursday 13 November

True enough the skies are murky. Everyone is breakfasting indoors. Someone, evidently, joined in as the ship heaved so a table is put out of bounds until the carpet can be cleaned, the table polished and the smell abolished. The Bishop gives the morning lecture on Islam and Spain and its conflict with everyone else. Platitudes of eradicating poverty and saving the planet are mingled with the belief that the Abrahamic religions need to tolerate one another and live happily ever after. Oh, for a return of the saintly Stalin and the magnificent Mao and an eradication of all religions! If religion is all about saving mother earth we may as well revert to worshipping woods and whippets. And isn’t poverty relative? Why are the Religious thought to be the only guardians of morality and philosophy when they are in disagreement with each other’s systems and beliefs anyway?

(Discuss).

It seems that there is a Scrabble snatcher on board. Only one set remains and is in great demand. No one is interested in Cluedo – though given time, playing it for real will probably become more appealing. Clive, the whale-watcher, would be found bludgeoned in the cuckoo’s nest (the cuckoo nesting in his wind-cheater) with his binoculars. He warbles excitedly over the Tannoy this morning about his sea species sightings. I only want to see sea creatures filleted, fried and served with chips.

Fortunately, Mary has her travel Scrabble with her so she me, Penny and Joan are able to play. Meanly, we say that ‘quave’ is not an acceptable word - which miffs Joan. She wouldn’t have won, anyway. As we lurch, I lunch with Anne, from Vancouver and Bill (who’s not) and hear about another lady’s travels through Bhutan. This is Lady Anne, Sir Peter’s wife and is livelier than most. Though most of my fellow cruisers are, on the whole, sedate or sedated, there are some who prefer to spend their time hiking, biking, canoeing, climbing, diving, driving, skiing, trekking or abseiling about the planet than on towels by the sea in the Seychelles.

Dark clouds gather as tea is served and rains hit the deck.

The ship rolls as I pile the profiteroles with chocolate sauce and watch the skies blacken. Miss Minerva is beginning to feel the strain being the old rock and roller she is. I meet Bill’s wife, Trisha and we chat with Anne through the afternoon.

From the gym windows I can just make out the mountainous cliffs of the Barbary coast lurking in the murky distance. I straddle the exercise bike and pedal furiously, for all of five minutes, when I think I’ve probably worked off the cake and sandwiches. There is a table tennis professional pinging and ponging his balls around the table set up in the gym room. A robin is flittering about the window. I can’t bear to ask Clive if he thinks it’s migrating otherwise he’d probably have the thing tagged and bagged before it had time to chirp. I think it’s hitching a lift to visit its cousins in the Canaries for Christmas. It’s now been announced that the stop at Recife, in Brazil, is cancelled. Bummer! I haven’t been there. The majority of cruisers are very stoical or loyal or not prepared to complain enough (or all three) so the news is greeted with a groan rather than a revolution. Dinner is smoked mackerel followed by pheasant. Though it looked small enough to be robin.

DAY 5 – Friday 14 November

The sun has come to greet us as we coast along southern Spain. Last night’s lights of Sardenia are but a distant memory unlikely to stir any déjà vu. I worry now that the chef has been shopping at Lidl as the food, though abundant and varied, is not what we Waitrose shoppers would expect on a sailing of this supposed class. The sausages are particularly unappealing and taste of slurry mixed with pampers; today’s meats wouldn’t be used to hold the doors open at Lidgate’s and the soups would be spurned by a pot noodle. Worse are the wines. You’d think being able to cruise the world and buy any type of wine, ship it freely and not pay duties that we’d have the pick of the bunches. But, oh no, the house wines are barely drinkable and beyond dreary in their choice. I suppose that’s why they have offered them free.

The self-service coffee machine, in the ‘light’ dining room, proves most popular. It whirs and grinds and squirts and foams. Indeed, queues form from dawn to test this technological genius and get a decent cup of cappuccino, a mean macchiato or a luscious latte – all at the touch of a button.

The wind would be in our sails, if we had them, but it is certainly bursting through the pants of the gentleman nodding off opposite me in the library. With each lilt and roll of the ship he farts majestically. It is time for the wine lecture and Maggie takes us through a potted and bottled history of the vine. She ambles and rambles amiably like a creeper round a pergola. The comfy chairs prove to be a passage to the land of Nod and many a grey head droops and drools. After such an early morning exertion and with breakfast still lining the sides, we waddle back to the dining room for lunch. Today’s roast is pork. To say the pig was tough: it was possibly born disadvantaged and brought up traumatised on a sink-estate of a sty, maybe with a hair-lip, a hip affliction and bullying brothers. Once chewed I have to find a discreet way of removing it from my mouth and putting it back on the plate - from which it will be scraped and turned into tomorrow’s sausages.

Instead of dinner, which this evening begins at 18.00, I take to the running machine and jog away as we sail closer to Malaga. We are given three hours shore leave and, instead of joining the rest of the crew and cruisers at a flamenco show (hastily organised in a warehouse on the airport’s industrial estate), Anne, Bill, Trisha and I meet up to take in a tapas tour. We bump into Emma and Clive (who said he isn’t really an anorak – though is wearing one) and, together, take in some bars, plates of fried fish and a few schooners of sherry, or rather, amontillado, which was crisp and tasty. We leave El Pimpi and head back aboard though would like to have stayed for a Bacardi party that is kicking off on a nearby sailing ship.

Some of the flamenco party, returned and raucous, are practising what they’d seen and stay up late enjoying a free bar and the tight-grinned and gritted attention of the bar staff who would still have to be up working at nine in the morning no matter how long they are to stay and serve tonight. Whoops! A tray of drinks and peanuts crashes to the floor: one of the party animals ruts and throws her hands in the air whacking the waitress carrying the tray and wrecking destruction: peanuts and piña coladas everywhere. Time for bed.

DAY 6 – Saturday 15 November

We’ve crossed a time zone and return to GMT. The straights of Gibraltar are behind us – I wonder who was up at 3 to see it sailing by? I breakfast in the serious dining room and avoid the sausages. Sir Peter Heap makes his appearance and begins his economic and history talks. Turns out to be too much Nelson. After lunch, Maggie the Wine, takes to the podium to continue the story of the grape but is soon interrupted by Clive’s voice booming from the bridge. Apparently, there’s something whale-like to be spotted port-side. Maggie asks if anyone would like to rush. Her sarcasm challenges but some people do actually make for the windows. She battles on but two minutes later the Live Clive show interrupts again with more beak-whale sightings. I think Maggie would like to join me in finding the harpoons. Today’s lunch is a barbie on the deck. That gets the chef sweating. The pork is soon scoffed so I have some grilled swordfish instead. Then it’s afternoon Scrabble. Mary is a seasoned player and knows her way with words and how to maximise points. Joan tutts and objects when perfectly acceptable words like ‘Hi’ or ‘Na’ are used. She’s not come across the Scrabble players’ dictionary before – or those who’ve studied it. Another talk in the lounge and Professor Stillman tells his gathered gang about the one time waterfall between the Atlantic and the Med then it’s time for tea, the gym, a drinks party for Minerva virgins, then dinner. There is a quiz afterwards and Emma proves remarkably knowledgeable. Margaret and her husband, David, joined our team. When the ship reaches Buenos Aires, they’re heading off to a home they have in Cordoba province in northern Argentina. She tells me about her childhood upbringing and being shipped, literally, back to visit England. There are many British descendants in Argentina who were terribly affected by the Falklands/Malvinas war as they were being asked to fight, in a sense, their mother country. As the quiz progresses we slip from being half a point behind in second place to a miserable fifth. Afterwards, I join the social outcasts in the smoking room where comments crackle about crew and cruisers ably aided and capably abetted by Yvonne, the purser and Helen, who has the uniform and deportment of a nurse but the body and appetite of a chef. Steve has taken up semi-permanent residence here being a semi-permanent smoker. He is looking forward to our stop at Las Palmas so he can shop. Not only is he a collector and connoisseur of high street labels but one of his bags didn’t follow him on board. And not only did the bag contain his medication, it also contained fancy brand toiletries. It hadn’t been flown to meet us in Malaga but the Yellow Shirts say it will be waiting for him at Las Palmas. We drink to that - several times. A man without his moisturiser is a forlorn creature. I don’t think I’ll be up for the church service tomorrow. Or even breakfast.

DAY 7 – Sunday 16 November

It is Sunday. The good lord and his bishop commune with their flock at eight this morning breaking bread and taking wine. Meanwhile, I snore off the night’s alcohol breaking wind and slaking from the wine. Today is to be a day off. A day off from meeting, chatting, over-eating and being cheery. A day to be snug under the duvet and read and write and watch re-runs on the cabin TV of Peter the Painter’s lectures about his life in Yorkshire. Should the BBC’s long- shuffling show, Last of the Summer Sanatogen, need a living candidate, I’d recommend him. I miss breakfast and morning coffee to finish Douglas Coupland’s ‘The Gum Thief’ (in my book he’s a star writer and in his book I find a good tale told well). ‘Alexander’, a film about a badly-dyed hairdresser from Belfast who tries to make his way in the manly manners of ancient times, is also on the cabin TV but is as unwatchable as it must have been in the cinema. At least the small screen doesn’t show his roots. I surface for lunch. The weather is a bit dreaky so few are turning on the deck. A pair of petite and delightful ladies joins me: Gabrielle and Pauline. Both had been about a bit. Or, rather, both had lived in several countries. Pauline is a Paulista, born and brought up in Sao Paolo. Gabrielle tells me about one visit she made to Rio about fifty years ago and tried to book into an hotel. Though she had a booking form for it, they refused her and sent her to another establishment down the road where doors and all sorts were banging through the night. It seems single ladies were given a hard time of it in Brazil and Gabrielle wasn’t interested in a hard time. I retire to my cabin to start a PG Wodehouse ‘Jeeves’ omnibus and order room service. There is a Ladies Gala Evening dinner taking place in the serious dining room tonight. I have nothing to wear and no intention of dragging up. The medallions of pork are very tasty. I wonder if room service is the better option. By 22.30 it’s lights out and duvet drawn. Tomorrow we land in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria.

DAY 8 – Monday 17 November

A week ago today I was up at six to get to Gatwick to get to Naples to stay in Naples. Today I’m up at 5.00 - it is still dark - I see the lights of Las Palmas loom ahead and go on deck. No one else about though I assume the Captain, or a robot of equal rank, is taking charge of the driving. A shooting star flies across the universe - then another. Adrian, retired Captain, and his wife, Glenda join me on deck to watch our approach into port. As with most Yorkshiremen he tells me of his origins within five minutes and of his sailing days as a cargo captain before they retired and moved to Portugal. He tells me how container shipping began and what the flags mean on the ship. A Spanish flag is hoisted to greet the pilot who’s boarding from a small boat that’s pulled up alongside. We slide into the port as ropes are lobbed ashore and tied tight. The docking manager (there’s probably a name for him but much though I can admire a sailor as the next man, I’m none too nautical) calls out ‘midships’ a lot from his perch sticking out the side of the ship (there’ll be a name for that, too). As the dockside busies itself attending to its new berthing I go for breakfast. There are a couple of trips planned around the island but I have people to meet and shopping to shop for so excuse myself from the excursions and stroll into town. First thing is to get some decent wine on board and then some more tapes for my video camera. The lawn by the port has been mown. How delightful to smell cut grass in November. How more delightful it would be to smoke some too but I haven’t come across that sort yet. All aboard for a farewell look at Las Palmas as the ship makes a complete turn about (and neatly avoids contact with the bulking China Shipping Line tanker that is being loaded and unloaded with containers) and then heads out to sea. After days of smooth sailing the waters feel a little choppy but after thirty minutes Mademoiselle Minerva rearranges her petticoats and floats serenely once more. Supper is pate then halibut – both tasty and tastily presented - with some inconsequential chicken soup in between. Steve has still not got his bag back. Now they say it will be flown to Cabo Verde. He had to buy more eye gel, lotions and creams in the Canaries and is mighty miffed. Tonight is to be the crew party. It is only right and proper not to detain the bar staff beyond the call of duty so they too can go below decks and make merry with each other. I imagine service may be slow tomorrow.

DAY 9 – Tuesday 18 November

True enough, the crew are bleary eyed and tackle the morning with reduced vigour but there is a twinkle in many an eye. I have moved cabins and am now serviced, if I may make so bold, by Lesia, from Ukraine. She’s usually pushing her trolley along at 7.30 but today all is quiet in our corridor. When I see her, after breakfast, she tells me she is very happy and she had a very nice party. Excellent news. The crew is also cheered as most of them got land-time in Las Palmas yesterday so were able to shop a little and see some city life. Jasmine works in the bar. She is Filippina. Her husband is also at sea but, sadly, not in the same boat due to our change of sailing dates. She was able to get a little gift for her little one in Las Palmas and Mr da Silva, the head-waiter, got a chance to speak with his two-year old from a phone centre. The crew seems to be booked by nationality. The cabin stewardesses are mainly eastern European, the waiting staff are from the Philippines and the head waiters from Goa. And even further afield, Greg, the Maitre d’ is from Gateshead.

The captain has ordered all crew to go through an emergency drill so the happy and the hung-over have to muster to their stations and cope with a ‘situation’. The captain has come up with a fire in the engine room. We all hope this is not tempting fate given our sluggish start to the cruise caused by faulty engines.

The hooters blast, the crew man the stairs, the lifeboats and the muster stations while we watch with our coffee. Good thing there are no children on board – that’s one thing less to have to shove aside should there be a real emergency.

Chef has prepared another barbie on the deck and this time I get to taste his talked-about pork. No wonder the ladies line up for a second helping; it is most succulent. Penny joins us again for Scrabble. She feels defeated by Pam’s Bridge club and most miffed that Pam won’t teach the rudiments to beginners. Again, Joan doubts some perfectly acceptable Scabble bamboozlers but Mary, more experienced in these matters, backs me up. My time at the knees of Scrabble meistress, Rosemary Forgan, has not been in vain. I have followed her mantra and forget making big proper words to focus, instead, on scoring high using silly small ones. The sun shines. It is 24C, lots of loungers are occupied and the pool has been filled. Someone has taken the plunge. You really have to use it one at a time and swim diagonally. Even then, after three strokes you’re banging the bar at the other end. Penny thinks it should be turned into a hot tub. A frightful thought. There’d be so much flatulence it would be like a geriatric Jacuzzi with all manner of flotsam and jetsam scumming the surface. The sea is wide and empty and marvellously calm and not a whale or a dolphin to excite, or incite, an announcement.

It is not even 18.00 yet dusk is upon us. The yellow-shirts (the Swan Hellenic cruise crew who are all called Paul) encourage a walk around the deck and gather a few game birds to do eight laps before supper. That will have hardly worked off a water biscuit.

The gym is full; every machine busy. Gabrielle is on the step-master; the treadmill is pounded and the cycles pedalled. One of the musicians is on the Power Race rower. Steam is almost coming out his ears. If he bowed as he rowed he wouldn’t be able to pluck his pizzicato for very long.

After dinner (seafood and beef medallions, yum) I go to hear Sir Peter talk about life as a diplomat. He is a fascinating man who has lived a fascinating life but, alas, cannot make a fascinating talk. It is assuring that the good man cannot see his drooping audience through the bright lights that are upon him as so many are deep in post-prandial reverie dreaming of the next meal.

I had forgotten that we’d turned the clocks back again another hour last night. I don’t wear a watch and there’s no point having the mobile phones on when we’re so far out of range. I take my time from Channel 1 on the cabin TV. This is the CruiseShow channel which shows the ship’s position on the planet, the time and other nautical nuggets like wind speed and direction. There is a camera attached to the bow so I can see where we’re going without having to go up on deck. It is tempting to while away the entire cruise in the cabin and get room service and books delivered and watch our passage progress and the lectures (though maybe not the dire films) on TV.

DAY 10 – Wednesday 19 November

The tide hasn’t quite turned but the temperature has. We must be in the Tropics by now as it is warmer by the degree – latitude and temperature. People are taking breakfast outside without so’westers or shawls. M&S shorts reveal varicose veins and shoddy shaving. Socks have been abandoned and bare toes breathe in their Clark’s-clad comfort. It could all lead to a summer of love. Minerva slips through the waves like a trolley through Tesco’s. There seems to be no one but us on these waters. Sea, sea as far as the eye can see and then more sea to be seen. Not a ship, not a trawler, not a tanker nor whale on the horizon. Oh,oh! Live Clive cackles over the Tannoy. He is so beside himself with excitement I can almost feel his moistness. He’s sighted a cetacean to the port side. People dash to the side hoping to rejoice in watching a whale weave through waters. Nothing. A faux whale, a virtual whale. A hoax. ‘Well, ladies and gentlemen, by the time I got to the address system it had dived out of view’. Oh, yeah! I hope that there is Toys’r’Us store where we stop in Cabo Verde. I shall buy a plastic shark and tie it to the stern. As we potter into a routine of eat, stroll, lounge, eat, read, paint, eat, learn, drink and eat again there is less sign of the Swan Hellenic ‘yellow shirts’. I haven’t seen Senior Paul, the Cruise Director, since before arriving at Las Palmas. We wonder why they’re hiding. It would be much jollier if he and his colleagues were on hand to make introductions and, at least, give the appearance that they cared about their passengers’ needs and ensure that they were enjoying themselves. They could even organise us into choir groups or present Murder Games for the more mobile or an AmDram and have a play in production for the end of the cruise. But alas, they’re keeping their profiles lower than a dormant dachshund’s dangly bits.

Sir Peter recoups some cruise credibility during this morning’s lecture by delivering an interesting talk about our next destination, the Cabo (cape) Verde islands. We hear later (oh, the joys of sea-born gossip) that Professor Stillman will have to re-write his next piece as he feels that many a salient point he was going to make has now already been made. After a lovely lunch of chicken and ribs, the Scrabble quartet gathers again only to find that the on-board board has gone again. Mary brings out her much appreciated travel version. Penny causes consternation by putting down ‘Jew’. Though inappropriate, the full ‘Oxford’ (there is a set in the ship’s library) lists it as a verb and therefore acceptable. Understandably, Mary finds it offensive. As we enter the heated final moments, Maureen comes to sit next to us. She and her sister, Diana, were also born and raised in Argentina. Penny asks us about the polite form of ‘You’ and distinctions between Spanish spoken in South America and Spain. Trying to explain ‘usted’ and ‘vos’ causes fractiousness. Maureen warns me about avoiding the use of the verb ‘coger’ whilst in Argentina as its meaning there of ‘to take’ will cause blushes and, possibly, repercussions. It is so time for tea. Since the clocks shifted back an hour it is now still light at 18.00 and after an hour in the gym, it’s time to dress for dinner - this evening’s theme is ‘Colourfully Casual’. I oblige and my attire of pink shirt, Carmen Miranda wild red and fruit tie, multi-coloured waistcoat and red cumerbund is met with applause in the bar. The Captain is on the bar deck enjoying a sea shandy and a cigarette and says he would be happy for me to take my camera and film him ‘full steam ahead’ on the bridge. The Chief Engineer, an unsmiling Russian, says ‘no’ to any visits to the Engine Room. I never knew Russians to be sticklers for regulations though I suppose he has Chechnyan rowers chained in the galley. Two of the young quartet of musicians compliment me on my colourfulness and much more is made of my choice of wardrobe when I join Roberta and John and Maggie and Jill and Trisha and Bill and Anne for dinner. They realise I don't do drab. Roberta is a martyr to insomnia and can be found at three in the morning tackling the jigsaw in the library as the crew vacuum around her. She looks remarkably well on it and tells me she’s tried everything from sleeping draughts to watching the dullness of the Discovery Channel to help her sink into sleep. Maggie orders some rather agreeable wines (where did she find them on the menu?) and we enjoy a jolly dinner. The house band (no one knows if they’re Turkish or Albanian) have set up on the bar deck, by the pool, and are turning out a collection of 60s chart toppers. The weather, the wine and now these wild techno tunes have several couples twirling and shaking – their recently replaced body parts become slaves to the rhythm. It gets all too much so I think it safer to slope off to sleep before I’m hauled to hokey-cokey.

DAY 11 – Thursday 20 November

We are well into warmer waters now. I go on deck at 5.00 and it is decidedly more temperate than in the cabin. We are entering the Cabo Verde islands archipelago heading for Sao Vicente. Islands in oceans are not only palm-fronded atolls with sandy beaches and rum punches served by grass-skirted maidens. These ones certainly aren’t. Cape Verde islands, or at least these windward ones, are massive hulking mountainous volcanic megalithic monsters that sheer out the water to huge heights. Not only have we been sailing seas that are deeper than Ben Nevis is high, now the rocks rising in the distance seem to top Kilimanjaro. I had expected there to be scant population after hearing how inhospitable the place (not the people) is; droughts for decades, everything but the fish imported, high unemployment and the concurrent curses that go with it. But as the sun rises and lights up the bay I see that Mindelo (for that is where we are to dock for a few hours) is quite a sizeable town. One of the band joins me as we circle the bay. It turns out he, and his colleagues are from Hungary and I wish we could have some whirling reels and dervish dances instead of Eurovision renditions of ‘I just called to say I lurv you’. Perhaps the band and the quartet could get together and create an ELO on the P&O? The ship docks and we disembark at 8.00 for a brief tour of the island. Fernando is the driver of a small bumpy bus and Ivan is our local guide. The tour begins with a visit to the fish market (where the day’s tuna catch lies waiting to meet a circular saw) then the fruit ‘n’ veg market where imported yams await the pot to be served up to accompany the grilled tuna. I get the impression that there will not be a great deal to see here. Ivan is a very tall chap – about six feet six. Not what you’d expect of an island native. Cabo Verde is a poor independent nation eeking out an existence on a remote and rough terrain. Though once part of Portugal the present population is mainly slave descendant and Catholic. They sought, and were given, independence some thirty odd years ago. Apart from bail-outs from the IMF they have had to be self-sufficient largely relying on remittance returns from nearly half the population that now lives and works abroad. They’ve not learned to turn themselves into a financial tax haven like the Cayman Islands. They don’t have the beaches of the Caribbean or the access of the Canaries and cannot benefit from EU handouts. What can you do with, and on, a dry rock in the middle of the ocean? Not even NATO or the Americans seem to regard it as a great place for a base. After our spin around Mindelo we are taken to the other side of the island where an entertainment has been laid on. A group of musicians, some capoeira dancers, people dressed in carnival costume and others carrying drinks give us a ‘taste of the island’. I see that tattooing has reached the islands as one of the band is sporting some fine ink. It is deeply depressing that their economy has to depend on such displays. We buy postcards and t-shirts, return to the bus and bob back along the cobbled road to Mindelo. Scant vegetation, like windblown maize, clings precariously to the unyielding earth.

We push off at 13.00 and start a five-day journey at sea, missing the planned stop at Recife and head further south along the Brazilian coast to make our first stop in South America at Salvador.

At 18.00, our Inestimable Leader, Cruisin’ Paul Number One, makes his daily address to the proletariat: we must row faster, we mustn’t drink so much water, we shouldn’t be trying to lasso the albatrosses to supplement our meagre diet of brine and flotsam, we should be showing more deference to the Yellow Guards by bowing below groin level…

(Most of us haven’t clapped eyes on him for days and were beginning to wonder if his daily speeches were pre-recorded or sent from some distant atoll. Indeed, many of my fellow passengers are noticing the Reps by their absence.)

He also asks the Scrabble snatcher to return it, no questions asked, to the games cupboard in the library. We could lose sleep in the anticipation of its return. Still no sign of Steve’s cosmetics.

DAY 12 – Friday 21 November

Clocks have changed again. We’re going back in time faster than Dr Who. I wake up at 4.15 to find more paper under the door. Normally it’s the somewhat pointlessly printed daily schedule. Not enough happens to call a change in lectures a ‘schedule’. It would be more amusing if they printed a daily sheet of who’s who, what’s what and who’s doing what with whom. Today, oh joy, there is also a piece of additional paper asking if there’s anything we wanted to know about whales and dolphins. I toy with asking if they are better fricasseed, curried or deep-fried. I go for an early morning mooch about the ship and see if Roberta’s at the jigsaw puzzle. Michael is polishing the doors of the card room, then the smoking room. ‘hygiene very important’ he tells me. ‘We not want diarrhea.’ I heartily agree. There are lots of hand-disinfectants around the ship. We are supposed to squirt every time we enter a dining room. Michael also tells me his shift is 5.00 til 9.00 then he kips for a couple of hours before getting up to do the lunch shift and is then on til 21.00. I had heard someone saying that they thought they heard rain the other night but it may be the early morning hosing as the deck gets swabbed and scrubbed as dawn is breaking. One of the Russian engineers comes out on deck and begins his exercises. He pushes and pulls and pumps and squats. Show off! I take to the treadmill and attempt some pushing and pumping of my own. I shower and realise that, as I haven’t had a haircut for two weeks, my curls are practically cascading to my collar. I go to the games cupboard and, lo & behold a miracle has happened. The Scrabble is there! Someone slipped it in whilst decks slumbered. What joy! After breakfast, Professor Stillman gives a lecture on Darwin and the shifting continents. Some of us resemble our forebears more markedly than others and the noble professor’s physiognomy should convince most Creationists that we are, indeed, descended from apes. Lunch is fish bought from the market at Mindelo and is grilled at the poolside barbecue. Anthony, our sizeable chef adds to the flavour by dripping sweat onto the swordfish. Mary brings out the returned Scrabble set and lifts its lid with reverence and awe. Anne joins us and proves to be too darned smart. Penny is not amused as Anne piles on the points and slips soundly ahead – though, obviously, only into second place. There are three computers in the library and everyone can buy internet access. I have become techno-guru for many of the folk here who are slowly coming to terms with new fangled devices like potato peelers and flashlights. I type a reply to Jean’s daughter and get Vida into her mailbox. Tonight is jacket and die dinner with Bill, Trisha, Anne, Peter the painter, retired Captain Malcolm, Roberta and John. Cheery Greg, the cross-eyed Geordie Maitre d’ greets us and seats us. The fish tonight is a potato bass. I order it to see if it has tubers or is served under a layer of soil. It is another of these odd species landed at Cabo Verde but tasty all the same. After dinner, there is another quiz arranged by, Paul Number One, the Cruise Director. Only Roberta and I abandon our puds for the quiz so we are joined by another couple to make up numbers and fair quite miserably. There is a picture round whereby we are to name the faces. To make it easier for the majority of the players, the pictures are of personages who are mostly dead or over eighty.

Afterwards I join the smokers in their den for a cigar. There are half a dozen, or so, puffing pariahs on board and they have bonded over their Benson & Hedges and sneak into the smoking den for a fag or few. Purser Yvonne, clutching a pot noodle (we’re not sure if that indicates what she thinks of the Chef’s cooking), and Nurse Helen occasionally join in (though I don’t think I’ve seen anything in Helen’s lips). After everyone else has headed to bed, I take leave of Steve allowing him to continue the debate of the decline of civilisation, as he would prefer, on his own.

DAY 13 – Saturday 22 November

I try a lie-in but, since moving cabins, I am near the staff door and there is much swishing and clicking at all hours so I get up and go to the gym. There is some rain and the day dithers between fleeting cloud and muggy sunshine. The weather has created a queue for the laundry where half a dozen ladies are squeezed into a room the size of an ironing board, staring at the clock on the tumble dryers, ready to pounce and remove any, even still damp, underwear and load them with their own fine frillies. I decide to leave mine ‘til later. I continue to peek in throughout the day – there are always ladies there: shirts folded, arms folded, socks twinned - waiting and watching the wash tumble in its suds. We are at a momentous point mid-ocean, Prof Stillman tells us. Some rocky outcrops poking above the waves indicates that we are traversing the divide. We are about to leave all vestiges of the Olde Worlde behind and cross between the European to the American plate. I see motels looming and a theme park. Farewell history, hello young sprite.

I decide to dine tonight informally and join Linda & Jock, Peter the Painter, the good Bishop and wife, Brenda, and also Lieutenant Commander Alastair and his Missus, Deborah. For some explicable, though not fully understandable, reason, the Lt Cdr is aboard because of some arrangement between Swan and the Royal Navy. Who gets what out of it, apart from the Lt Cdr & wife enjoying a free hol, is unclear. Deborah has taken to the role of naval spouse effortlessly and hob-nobs and chats with one and all. She has a wholesome and historic sea-faring attitude to ‘rations’ and plies herself liberally with booze. Husband Alastair wears, what looks like, a red poppy over his flies. I wondered if this was a naval commemoration of Remembrance Day. But that was a week ago. Maybe he just likes people to notice his decorations. He is also slightly cross-eyed and I wondered if this would be an impediment to steering a ship but he told us he was an engineer. That’s alright then - if shipping only depended on some small sprocket being placed off-centre. It would be amusing to have the Lt Cdr and Maitre d’ Greg play spot the ball together. The Captain gives a talk and slide show about the Antarctic – all seals and penguins and looking magnificent in its wild and emptiness. I could be tempted to travel further and think about signing up for the additional leg which leaves Ushaia, the southern tip of Argentina, when our time aboard terminates. Before bed I make the most of an empty and hushed laundry room and set my shirts to cleanliness.

DAY 14 – Sunday 23 November

I am up at 6.00 to retrieve my clean and tumbled togs only to find that some rotter has taken them out the dryer, still dripping, and emptied them in a bucket and loaded their own. Who would have thought such underhand and despicable acts could be taking place here on the Minerva? Though I am shocked I cannot accuse Penny, who was in there already ironing… Ambassadors are being recalled and Diplomacy withdrawn. The ship is sailing into the conflict zone and we are now officially involved in Laundry Wars. Battle plans are drawn up as the reserves head to guard the dryers and remove the washing powder to safety. A forlorn bra is hanging attached to a note: ‘if anyone has taken another similar white bra by mistake, would they please return it to cabin A21.’ There are also a couple of solitary socks and some underwear which, quite frankly, wouldn’t be used to bung up a mouse hole. They look like the wearer had had a fright in the night. Whilst all this is going on along the ‘A’ deck, I take to bridge. The wind is up but so is the sun. I look out over the bow and, at last, see some sea-life breaking waves in the distance. Should I call and alert Clive that there I have sighted a lesser spotted tanker making its way westwards before it slips over the horizon? After breakfast I take to a sun-lounger but the wind is high and my book is in danger of blowing away. Soon the sun slips behind clouds so I head to the library. Margaret, who has a house in Argentina, has asked if I could sort out her photos as she and husband, David, are thinking of giving a talk on being brought up in the Argentine. She suggested it to the Yellow Guards but they have not responded with enthusiasm. We spend the afternoon choosing and filing the photos. I worry that, after all that, my lappie will refuse to co-operate and burn to disk. Zero hour is almost upon us a zero line approaches. We are about to cross the equator. The Cruise commandants have organised an hilarious entertainment by (and in) the pool. Those who have not ‘crossed the line’ by sea get chucked into the pool. I can see those with legal training tensing and ready to litigate if they get lobbed in the water. Peter the painter is dressed, and acts, as a Lord High Executioner; the manly Cruise Directors are doing what they do and enjoy best: wearing drag and make-up and camping it up and Chef has a pot of whipped cream at hand to tar the initiates. Unfortunately, Clive has not donated any dead gulls so that they would be able to feather the victims too. Lt Cdr Alastair and his wife are volunteered to be sacrificed on behalf of the ship. They get smeared in the cream, put under a surgeon’s knife, have sausages pulled from their entrails and bunged into the pool. Needless to say they bob to the surface and clamber out unscathed but for the damage done to their dignities. (Or, in Deborah’s case, just unscathed). There is much merriment amongst the sherry sippers and, with the Captain counting down to crossing time, everyone cheers.

It is another Gala Ladies’ Night Dinner tonight and though I dress in black with bow (ie suit and tie not dress with sash) I decide it best not to eat again today and bow out for a late-night read instead.

DAY 15 – Monday 24 November

Would you believe we’ve gone back another hour? It’s only 4.30 when I rise. The Engineer is on the deck limbering up for his early morning exercises, Roberta is engaged in a new jigsaw puzzle (this time, elephants trumpeting through the bush) and I jump into the pool, scrubbed of yesterday’s clots and cream and slosh about as a lovely sunny dawn breaks through. There are some dozen or so birds hovering about us. Their wings are half white, half brown; their necks like darts, they have a smudge of yellow about their cheeks and they seem to have no legs. My expert knowledge and intimacy of all things aviary inclines me to call them seabirds. Just as I think we must be near some land I see a mass of rocks piercing the deep blue. Could this be Atlantis? No, it is a Brazilian outcrop called Fernando de Naranha islands and the birds, Live Clive comes on to report, are frigates. They are so named, I believe, because they’re friggin’ useless at waddling or fishing for themselves but they do get the gold as gliders and hustlers of smaller flappers from whose mouths they suck a half-eaten lunch. I have dined with such types on board. I’m glad I got an early hour in the sun as the climate is changing faster than the departure board at Clapham Junction. Top tanning temperatures turn into a wind-whipped gale (that would blow your thong off never mind your hat), then a spattering of wetness is followed by a chundering of rain. It is a decidedly Good Thing that Maggie is doing a tasting this afternoon so we can get suitably sozzled on some fine wines and forget about the weather. I particularly enjoy her sturdy Lebanese and tightly-packed Californian and the Chilean is a pleasure to slurp about the tongue. I am easily impressed. I have changed cabins again and moving towards the bow that by next week, Paul 3 of the Yellow Brigade thinks, I may be sharing with the Captain. Each cabin has its quirks. I moved from B47 because the air-con was set permanently to perma-frost and I slept, and sat, in a dressing gown over a fleece and under a couple of duvets. In B27 I heard all the comings and goings through the staff door opposite but now, in B17, all is well (so far) and I am soothingly rocked to sleep as Mistress Minerva’s gentle rhythm rises and falls like dainty petticoats floating through the sea (or somesuch). Our morning’s lecture is given by Lt Cdr Alastair. He talks most informatively about the history of the submarine and we look forward to him demonstrating how he can shoot to the surface from the very depths. We have, so far, travelled over four thousand nautical miles. Retired Captain Malcolm explains how nautical miles are measured - by dividing the globe into orange segments and then dividing again. Fifteen degrees of longitude are equal to an hour so the world, divided by 24 hours, gives you 360 degrees. (Note: I am impressed again). He also tells me how, pre-computers and calculators, it all got into a muddle as depths are measured in metres, speed in knots and distances in NMs. Quite frankly, I’m surprised there aren’t more pile-ups on these high seas. I join Sir Peter and his wife, Lady Ann, for drinks. Not only was she a tip-top architect, she also met the Brazilian meister-planner, Oscar Neimeyer, who designed Brasilia. The good lady is originally American and is planning an enviable return to Florida after the cruise.

I conk out after drinks and my trousers tell me it would be advisable to skip supper.

DAY 16 - Tuesday 25 November

I wouldn’t be surprised if the clocks had gone back again. All is bright and light and superbly sunny by 5.00. The friggin’ frigates have sloped off to find a regurgitated lunch elsewhere but the flying fish are a-jumping in the sea, scuttling over the waves. We are now five days at sea. Clive has gone quiet as the cetaceans he seeks have slipped away to pester other marine life. All is nicely bobbing along. Our laziness has become comatose. The sheer exertion and effort of heaving our expanding trash-can selves from sun-lounger to dining lounge is taking its toll and many need a restorative snooze to recover between feedings. Though, for all of our sedentary shuffling, the constant upping and downing between cabin and promenade decks – some five floors – keeps the calves curvy and the thighs lithe. Sir Peter tells us about Brazil and the Captain has opened the bridge. He shows me his books on the Antarctic, the Falklands and South Georgia Islands – the picture of albatross nests even had me awed. Also there is Jack, a retired chemist, who asks the Captain to explain the ship’s plumbing. Apparently, all our excretions are slowly pumped through the pipe-work to a tank of fecal-feeding bacteria. This becomes nitrite and is then shoved into another tank for a second-sitting where it is further chomped by some other beasties who then turn it into nitrates whence it can be dumped into the sea. It appears that pigs are not the only creatures happy to live in shit. There is a daily news sheet on board. This is a heavily condensed edit of the world’s most important news – so we are kept abreast of the international ramifications caused by the Brand/Ross scandals. Could this be the cause of global financial turmoil? I also read that Hell has frozen over as Coventry has suffered a Serbian cold snap. Hee hee, it is 27 degrees on the deck and a satisfying breeze blows about the bows. Today is the thirtieth wedding anniversary of Trisha and Bill. Anne and I plan. We get paints from Peter and I make a card. Linda sneaks a snap of the happy, and unsuspecting, couple and we ask the Yellow Brigade to print off a copy of the photo to include in the card. Of course, we should have realised that anything that could be done for a passenger’s pleasure, comfort or making their journey happily memorable is not forefront in the company’s relationship with its clientele. The really glum one at the front desk says ‘no’, they are strictly forbidden, by head office, to enhance the voyage in any way. Indeed, connecting anything to their printers would cause worldwide meltdown and unleash viruses that would jeopardise not only the ship’s navigation systems but all the satellites throughout the universe and we would be susceptible to attack, plague and galactic annihilation. The reckless printing of a photo from a camera memory card would have the ship targeted by the Pentagon and an emergency-powered HP laserjet-seeking missile would be dispatched instantly. However, Anne promised Paul Number One a peck on the cheek and he printed off a couple with the ease of sneeze and the effort of a floating feather. Needless to say, the celebratory couple were well-chuffed. The efficient and cheery Greg, our Maitre d’, had graced the table with place-names, presented a card and attended splendidly. The pastry chef, bless his unknown soul, had made, and iced, a cake to the effect (vis Happy Anniversary) and dinner was, all-round, an occasion.

DAY 17 – Wednesday 26 November

I now understand why a ‘booby trap’ and ‘poop deck’ are so called. The booby birds crap on the stern taking target practice at the blue seat covers. There is land ahoy. We are skimming the coast of Brazil. Sadly, Recife has been dishearteningly scratched from our itinerary due to the delay in departure from Naples. We are heading for our first South American stop at Salvador de Bahia. It is a vast city seen from the sea. It is probably Brazil’s third biggest. It takes us an hour just to pass the built up shore-line before we get to the port. When we dock, the ship is boarded by a bus-load of Brazilian Port Authority Officials – with clipboards and fierce looks. Some have ‘Sanitation Inspector’ written on their natty vests. I take it they don’t operate on shore as much of the country would be condemned but port pickings are probably easier. Some stay for lunch, others for a smoke. Once the required paperwork is pandered to, compliance completed and, more importantly, fees settled, the ship is cleared to disembark and spend ashore. Cruiser Fuhrer, Paul Number One, comes on to tell us about keeping our hands on our halfpennies and removing the Rolex before walking the streets. We should dress like refugees and engage in local habits, like urinating in the street, pester for pennies, hinder, harangue and hassle. I’d been here before and was not overly-thrilled about visiting again. Whilst many of the cruisers took in a city tour I lolled about on deck. In the evening, Anne, Trish and Bill decide to eat in the Marina but a few of the smoking club - James, his missus, Muffy, Steve (still sans toiletries) - and I go for a wander about the Pelerinho area not far from the port on a hill and reached by an elevator. As with Covent Garden, most tourists head here but there is less to enjoy and much to endure. Though the square and churches were built at the heights of Portugal’s colonial power it is all crumbling and decaying with many buildings abandoned. Brazil is a fine country, fuelled and fed with vast resources, yet it still manages to screw things up. There are policemen and various uniformed bodies on each corner such is the crime and thievery. Fagins abound, sending their urchins to poke and plunder. For a tourist attraction there is little to attract. Bars serve vile beer and attempt to charge for the musical accompaniment – a man, a guitar and two very loud-speakers. Too many caipirinhas and you may as well hand over your handbag. Tired of undesired attention we head back to the lower level. There are probably some very pleasant and entertaining parts to Salvador but there is no time to go hunting for them. Later we hear that those who’d gone on the organised evening excursion to a Capoeira show had a very entertaining evening mainly, according to Linda, because the bodies performing were so active, athletic and fit and everyone was in awe of their perfect pecs, broad backs, glistening glutes, thrusting thighs and gyrating groins. I gather that the sweat and steam and constant camera-snapping caused all photo equipment to seize up so I may not get a chance to see what they saw – including the good Bishop being dragged up on stage with these pagan hedonists to bump and grind in a manner not proscribed in any act by any apostle. The smokers, returned to suck some cancer back on board, were agog in wonderment. Dorinda, being quite overcome with what she’d seen, could barely light up and Charles, quite envious of the manner in which the dancers’ physiques were discussed, drooled and dreamed about, took solace in the size of his cigar.

DAY 18 – Thursday 27 November

We are travelling further west yet, oddly, the clocks have been put forward an hour. Not many are up for breakfast even by 8.00. The sun is already high in the sky and I make the most of a sun-lounger, some SPF 3 and a new book. But, by 10.30, clouds gather, the wind whips and the first spatterings of rain hit the deck. Both the Bishop and the Lt Cdr are giving lectures this morning. The Bish talks about tribal South American Indians with an eclectic taste in jewellery and body modifications (the Indians, not the Bishop) and Lt Cdr Alastair is continuing his story of submersibles. There seems to be a patina of midway blues. Some of the staff appears less perky and more weary, though Lesia, my cabin stewardess, is always a perk to see in the corridor – she has spread a double sheet and duvet over the beds now joined up to make a spacious double and, unprompted, produced another pillow for me. The other Steve, the Canadian Hotel Director (for, indeed, the ship has one), is thundering around the decks muttering into his stalkie-talkie and there seem to be dark deeds about to descend. He is also sporting a massive bruise about his face, worse than a black eye. Already rumours abound about him having had an energetic evening with his pert and pretty French wife, Rita, in his cabin. Was he not able to uncuff himself when the riding crop rode too high?

The outdoor barbecue is cancelled and we all have to lunch inside. This would be a good day for lazing about with a book – if it weren’t the routine of many cruisers anyway. I have been helping Margaret to arrange her photos of Argentina and we are editing and putting them into PowerPoint in case she gets round to making a presentation. Daylight lasts a little longer – the further south we go, the more daytime we have. It will be midsummer’s day soon in this hemisphere. Quite a few of us are taking to the gym. Even the Bishop takes to the oars. A trio of the classical musical quartet are there too and have changed the CD. One of them has bought a disc of Gilberto Gil so we heave ho! to a different rhythm. We were beginning to tire of the only other disc of hot hits left in the gym’s music system, beginning to choke and stumble when ‘you say goodbye then I choke, then I walk away and I stumble, if I try to hide it, it’s clear, my world crumbles when you are not there’ comes on again. Instead of supper, I play Scrabble with Steve. He tells me that, as well as losing his bag, they made him pay for new medication from the medical centre. He needs encouragement to throw a hissy fit.

DAY 19 – Friday 28 November

The crew malaise is spreading – not quite mutiny but definitely a sombre air. There are no whales being sighted and the weather is ugly. It appears that Steve, our Hotel Director, is not all sweetness and light in his dealings with many of the staff. I’ve discovered that there is a complicated hierarchy and arrangement aboard. There is the sailing Crew: the Captain and his men that drive the ship and the Chief Engineer, who seems to bring his crew from Russia; there are the other white uniforms (like Purser, Doctor, Nurse, Chef, Receptionists, Maitre d’ and Housekeeper) who operate under the Hotel Director; the cleaning, kitchen and waiting staff are recruited from agencies abroad. The ship is owned and operated by Swan Hellenic and has four, yellow-shirted, Cruise Directors (three Pauls and an Andrew) but it leaves the provisioning to an outfit in Hamburg. Doing the pay cheques must be a complicated business. There are four waiters in the Verandah (‘light’) dining room, six below in the ‘serious’ dining room, eight bar staff/wine waiters, a dozen cabin stewardesses and heaven knows how many down below. Chef Anthony is another of the staff to have had ‘discussions’ with Hotel Director Steve and has told us he is ‘mightily pissed-off’ and ready to walk. There had been much mutterings about the state of the cooking. It’s always going to be difficult to please all of the people all of the time – especially when the menu is the same in both dining rooms. To reflect the mood within, the seas around us are at their deepest. Now the rumour is that Steve’s injuries were caused by the Chef. To lighten the morning, there is a talk today by one of the passengers. Peter was born and brought up in Rio and is taking us on a trip to his formative years and the voyages he, and his English family, would undertake between school in the UK and holidays back home in Brazil. It makes for an enjoyable diversion. While Maggie, the wine, makes merry with her talk and tasting session on fortified wines, I assist folk with the computer queries. Why the reps are not more present or offer services such as this is a much-grumbled question. Now one of the yellow-shirted Pauls is on sales duty, trying to sell future Minerva voyages even before we’ve reached Rio, where some cruiser’s terminate. There are three of us interested in continuing the journey to Antarctic from Ushuaia and ask about availability (which there is) and costs (which are to be calculated, favourably as we are already aboard and saving air fares). There is a farewell drinks do for our dear departing ones but only for those leaving to bid adieu to other leavers. I join Jock and Linda for dinner and Greg ushers us to a table where Joan, Joe, Sheila and Rob are seated. Joe and Joan, it is revealed, were the winning quiz team and are interesting. Sheila talks of her previous cruises and singing on Songs of Praise and Rob adjusts his deaf-aid – probably turning it off.

Exhausted by such numbing conversation it’s time to turn in.

DAY 20 – Saturday 29 November

Many of us are up and out on the decks by 6.00 to see the ship sail into the splendour of the Bay of Rio de Janeiro. Through the morning mists, we see the summit of the Sugar Loaf loom large to our left and then the outspread arms of Christ on Corcovado showing it must have been a really big one that got away. As the clouds dissipate and disperse the sun begins its summery shimmerings onto the waking city. It is a sight that many a Rio residential Carioca has yet to experience as few arrive by sea. The local pilot has boarded and we manoeuvre to our berth. But, by 8.30 the weather has changed again. As we board tour buses the sky is grey and droplets greet our drive downtown. Our Reps do not sully themselves with such tasks as offering information on our destinations – or little else for that matter. Instead, they hire local guides. This morning it is Ricardo whom we soon call Mr Yup. At the end of each sentence, he has to say ‘yup?’ ‘You know we have six million people living here in my city, yup.’ ‘You know Pedro the second built this theatre, yup.’ ‘You know I have worked with Manchester United, yup’. God, he is both profoundly irritating and shallowly uninformative bringing standards of tour guiding to new depths in mediocrity. Instead of showing us the lively and lovely bits of Rio, like the girls in Ipanema or the boys on Copacabana beach, we trundle, at 5 mph, through the dreariest of downtown streets. As it is both early and the weekend, the place is deserted but for drowsy dropouts still dreaming in doorways. Old Yuppie monotonous dronings don’t even go in one ear let alone out the other as the brain is blocked and reverberating with his yupping. So well-timed are these tours that we arrive at the Corcovado (Arm-spread Jesus on the Mountain) station with twenty other tour buses and have to form a line for nearly an hour. The Reps race ahead of their charges and many an ageing, stick-walking passenger is left to tackle the tour traffic on their own. The train takes a good half hour to trundle up the mountain. We get a blast of Brazil when a bunch of bongo banging, banjo twanging music types board and Yuppie insists we join in the fun, loosen up and samba in our seats. Yeah, right. As we ascend, the mists descend and by the time we get to the top all I can see are Jesus’s armpits. There is no view over the Guanabara bay or the city below. We can barely see ten feet ahead but at least we’ve missed the rain storm which had bucketed barely five minutes earlier. The lines are longer trying to get down so it takes an hour to get us all together and wait for our bus. People are grumping about missing lunch but Yuppie insists on doing what he should have done first and takes us through Copacabana and Ipanema. We are bused back to the ship for a lightening lunch before the afternoon tours begin. Two huge cruisers are lined up in front of us and, judging by the queue waiting to board, as different to the Minerva as Red Leicester is to Appenzell. A right rough lot they look too. I bet there’s a casino and disco on board the MSC ‘Slut of the Seas’ and bingo nights on the ‘Discovery’. As these two floating tower blocks are moored nearer the terminal than our, comparatively, petite Miss Minerva, there are buses to shuttle the lazier, or less able, of us the hundred metres between our steps and the terminal. I take the bus. At the port terminal I see Chef Anthony and his suitcase. He really has jumped ship. Will it be cheese on toast for supper? Will Yvonne have to share her pot noodles? Our afternoon tour guide is Marta-Louisa. Her guided tour is deja-entendu: ‘You know we have six million people living here in my city.’ ‘You know Pedro the second built this theatre.’ – though without the ‘yup’. She takes us to Pao de Azucar – the sugar loaf mountain whose summit is reached by cable car and made famous in Moonraker with Roger Moore being attacked by Jaws.

The sky, though grey, is clear enough to give commanding views over Rio. I see Anne and Muffy back at the ship wrapped in plastic. They’d been on a seriously uninspiring jeep tour round some bit of nearby forest and got soaked. Muffy and James have paid a whack to upgrade to a cabin with its own balcony, complimentary mini- bar and evening delivery of canapés. They invite me in for a drink and ask if I can detect an unsavoury smell but I don’t want to bury my nose in their laundry bag. I leave the ship to meet my chum Flavio whom I’ve not seen for about eight years. He is a Carioca and a photographer and is having an exhibition of his work at a gallery near the port. The streets of downtown are damp and empty but for the homeless, who’ve made it their home, and are beginning to party. The art show is, as art shows the world over, derivative and predictable. Still it’s a good gathering and most excellent to see Flavio again.

DAY 21 – Sunday 30 November

They said it was going to be raining for four more days in Rio. Flavio had told me it’s been wet and drab and dull and grey for two weeks – in preparation for our arrival. But this morning the sun is set to scorchio and Jesus is up there in a spotless sky welcoming the world atop his hunchback mountain. There is a trip to Copacabana beach on offer or a tour of a slum. I know they’ll be paying the favela chiefs a fee for access but, to me, it still seems a strange thing to include on a tour. Would Visit London take tourists around Brixton council estates? I enjoy a Marie Celeste-like silence on an almost empty ship and lounge in the sun, suitably basted in factor four, reading. I tan and turn with the pages. Flavio meets me at the port terminal and we drive off to Leblon for lunch and a walk along the beach before it’s time to return to ship and sail away. James, Muffy and Steve have returned, squiffy and sated after a long lunch at the Copacabana palace. They’re still drooling over the lobster and champagne having wanted to kidnap the chef to bring him on board. Surprisingly, there is still no sign of Steve’s bag and it appears that James and Muffy’s balcony is directly above the sewage outlet. Hence the pong. Each time the ship rides above the waves, a ten second fecal fountain spurts into the sea. That’ll be what they’re whiffing three decks above. If they can turn the poop-pipe off in port why don’t they evacuate only at night when we’re at sea? In the bar I meet Yvonne’s replacement, Peter the purser, and a dark-looking chap with a demonic air. He is the Operations Manager come to find out how all is faring aboard. He is keeping a low profile from the passengers. I wonder what he’d heard? We set sail again at six, sorry, 18.00. Khaki-coloured uniforms appear from the lower decks armed with tool bags. This is the technical team - engineers of sorts – who set about preparing Mademoiselle Minerva for rougher treatment in the seas of the South Atlantic where waves and storms could whip her knickers off without hitching her skirts. Side panels are screwed to the beds to stop us lurching through the night or being flung to the cabin walls. Though I don’t think there’d be much sleeping if there is that much lurching. The engineers busy themselves with battening, bolting, clamping and tying most things that move. The tables and chairs in the library, card and smoking rooms are secured to the walls so that having a fag is going to be like sitting in a doctor’s waiting room – if you could find a doctor that would allow smoking in his waiting room.

Rio recedes into the sunset as the pilot tries to get off the ship and on to his little boat bobbing alongside. After much manoeuvring he grabs the boat’s handrail and, amid applause and cheers, steps aboard. Tonight is another Ladies’ Night Dinner. There is no alternative available in the Verandah dining room so James and Muffy invite me to a room-service supper in their cabin and order cheeseburger with chips. A crescent moon is hovering just above the waves and Jupiter is trying to goose Venus in the southern skies above. I leave James and Muffy who may be in the mood to do some goosing of their own. Though, hearing what Muffy had to do to mollify her neighbours after an obscenely raucous ladies’ lunch she held in the cabin a couple of days ago, I think they will stagger straight to bed. Sending flowers and endless apologies for unseemly behaviour has cost them most dear.

DAY 22 – Monday 1 December

A crisis is announced at midday. Caudillo Carter is saddened to inform us that the classical evening concert will have to be postponed: one of the quartet is particularly ill having spent the night necking the lavatory and bringing up his brunch. He will be taken to the poop deck and garrotted with his bow. We are offered a quiz instead and James insists I join their team. Margaret has been asked to deliver her talk on Argentina tomorrow so we have another look at her photos and add captions to the PowerPoint presentation. Lunch is another deck barbecue prepared by our new, contract, chef from Austria who gives us a taste of the Tyrol: there is pork, bratwurst and sauerkraut but, sadly, no Sacher torte to follow. No time for a snooze as I need another spin in the gym. Could I possibly leavek the ship lighter than I got on? I join Jill and Maggie for a swift supper and hear about how they met through some Franciscan order. Jill had been a missionary to Iran until the Ayatollah declared unilateral intolerance and global loathing whence she returned to the UK.

Our quiz team wins and the prize, a bottle of Moet, is popped open. I reckon it was due more to the indulgent scoring given us by Lt Cdr Alastair’s team than for all our, though strident not spectacular, efforts. We share the fizz with them and all go into the smoking room to revel longer and later. At 2.30 I totter out and think it a good time to do some laundry. Roberta is plugging away at the jigsaw puzzle and I slur something as I stagger past. The laundrette is empty - but for the bra (and attached note) which is still looking for its rightful owner and a return to the supporting role it so sorely misses. I settle down for forty minutes of wash and tumble and think it’s the best thing I’ve seen on TV since boarding.

DAY 23 – Tuesday 2 December

There are 6500 miles on the clock and a couple of thousand to go before we reach our destination at Ushuaia. Surprisingly I feel hung-over. I’d remembered to close the curtains last night for the first time and slept until 8.00. I think Lesia may have looked in on me to see if the cabin was ready for a clean and only hope I wasn’t snoring too atrociously or that my bum wasn’t poking out the duvet (or anything else for that matter). I thought I’d give breakfast a miss and take some coffee up to a sun-lounger. The deck is delightfully deserted as many people are down below listening to Sir Peter give his ‘Don’t cry for me, Argentina’ talk. After a couple of hours burning and turning the wind starts to whip up and the skies darken. Sir Peter must be reaching the point where Evita dies. I return to the cabin where Lesia is finishing her cleaning. ‘Such a nice big bed and you here sleeping alone,’ she says. I am sure I detect a leer. Cheeky minx. I think it’s time to rest and recuperate as the head hasn’t quite recovered from last night’s alcoholic onslaught. Tucked up I watch Margaret’s talk and picture presentation (that we’d spent so long organising) about her journeys through Argentina pumped live from the lounge on the cabin TV and then watch a re-run of Sir Peter’s earlier lecture to help me snooze through an ever-increasingly stormy afternoon. The ship is rocking like a grannie on amphetamines. This is not soothing my head. Tonight, the Captain is hosting another gala dinner and though I don’t even have to think about what to wear (being a black tie affair) I decide that I can’t be bothered and so settle with a book and order room service instead. I imagine carnage upstairs as diners are skewered on flying knives or forked to death as the ship churns. The waiter is knocking at the door with my supper tray balletically balanced on his other hand, the unspilled wine sloshing in the glass. Several pictures in the corridor are looking particularly queasy and a couple have fallen to the floor. I sway my way through some smoked eel and trout then a very enjoyable chateaubriand and some cheese and biscuits. Outside the waves are rushing up to the portholes. After settling down to try and sleep, there is a shattering smash. The binocular case has fallen from the shelf onto the dinner tray, smashing the glass and sending the crockery flying. Toiletries and toothpaste have been flung to the bathroom floor. My cabin TV, fixed to a pivot on top of a chest of drawers, is swinging wildly from side to side like a ventriloquist’s dummy watching a tennis final. Channel 1 has ship information and shows the view from the bow-mounted camera – it’s bad out there - sleeting rain and rolling, rising seas. I lie in bed, tossed like a lollo lettuce, looking at the moon which bounces in and out of view as if a goblin had tied it to a bungee. There will not be many getting a good night’s sleep tonight.

DAY 24 – Wednesday 3 December

Indeed, there are quite a few bleary-eyed people up and staggering about before 6.00. Sick bags have been stuck behind many of the rails and banisters on the stairs and around the decks. Fortunately, they haven’t been filled. I take a cappuccino out to the funnel deck but its frothy topping is whipped away by storm force winds. I have to hang on to the ship’s sides; spray even reaches me up here. The seat on the gym’s rowing machine is clacking back and forth like a gob-stopper on a see-saw so I stick a paper towel in it to secure it. As I go back to the bridge deck below I see that someone has put notices on the deck doors: ‘The decks are closed due to adverse weather conditions.’ Indeed, the ship is moving up and down like a lift in John Lewis’s on a sale day. We plunge to basement depths then surge to fourth floor furnishings as Minerva reels and rolls like a drunken sailorette. In the library, an enormous pot plant has overturned, its soil spread on the carpet among the books and magazines which have shot off the shelves and bits of the jigsaw puzzle have reached the far corners.

I meet up with Retired Captain Malcolm in the Verandah dining room and cling to a coffee. The waiters are valiantly attempting to set up for breakfast as all around them, plates crash and cups fly. It’s wise to stay clear of the cutlery. One of the cupboard doors busts its lock and slaps open - the pepper pots break free flinging themselves to the floor. The milk heater has overturned, a large white puddle arranging itself across the carpet. It sounds like a bear is in the kitchen having an argument with a bull – pots, pans, china and flying metal are banging about the walls. A glass cereal dispenser shudders and shatters, its contents crawling to the milk to commit a cornflake kamikaze. ‘The galley is fucked,’ declares Harrison, the head-waiter, wisely. He is not wrong. Breakfast is contained within the main dining room and though the waiters weave steadily we lurch and tack and zig-zag from table to tureen – on our plates, everything as scrambled as the eggs.

There is little else to do but wait for lunch. As there are nine of us wishing to sit together, Greg arranges for chairs to be unhooked and re-positioned. The heaving seas do not diminish the appetite and everyone is festive and feeling quite plucky. When Jock’s water upends over Anne you’d think we were at a spam party in an Anderson shelter. This afternoon, the watercolour artists are showing the efforts of their three weeks’ work under the fine eye and patient professorship of Peter the painter. Some are most impressive. Everyone agrees that Nigel has an eye (well, two and they look like they’ve been lifted, nipped and tucked) and his picture of a pansy posing is reckoned to be one of the best in class. Even Muffy’s parrot on a perch is met with murmurs of appreciation. Tonight is the last supper for many Minervans. Tomorrow we arrive in Buenos Aires where a swathe of Swanners will abandon ship and head home. As we sail into the River Plate we leave the waves and wind to whistle their way to the roaring forties and I dress to join the over sixties for dinner. The shores of Uruguay are visible from the ship and we settle to supper (jellied prawn and beef Guinness pie) as the lights of Punta del Este slip by. Passenger Peter (who’d given the talks about the his days in Brazil when he was a young nut before the kernels took over) and his wife, Birgitta, join Anne and Bill and Trisha and me. People brought up in different places seem to gel. An alien aspic bond binds those whose home, birth or early years were somewhere else. Birgitta’s parents were Belgian and Dutch who settled in China and brought her up, with her sisters, in Shanghai. After supper, the quartet plays its final concert. We slope off to slumber with Dvorak’s ‘America’ unlikely to stir our sleep. Tonight the moon is cradled comfortably in the circumference of my porthole swaying slightly but not staggering about as if it’s had a sherry to many.

DAY 25 – Thursday 4 December

The River Plate is still as wide as the English Channel and almost has as many ships on it. The shipping lane is narrow and we have been piloted already for twelve hours. Minerva takes to the straight and narrows like a tart in a tight corset shuffling along at tortoise speed whilst ships heading in the opposite direction hare along past us. Perhaps they don’t run on steam. We are all very excited about getting to Buenos Aires. Margaret (who is happy and flapping about like a schoolgirl on a first date) and David (happy but not flapping) are heading to their home in Cordoba Province for three months and Maureen and Diana are off to visit family and friends way down south. We were told last night that we would dock at 8.00 and have twelve hours ashore. Many cruisers are disembarking here to enjoy a day or two tangoing around town before flying back to the UK or, in Anne’s case back to the UK and then to Vancouver. Roberta and John have a flight to London booked at 14.00. As the eggs are poaching and muesli munched, Captain comes on the address system to say that we haven’t made the progress he’d hoped and that we probably won’t be docking until 10.00. At which time he returns with the news that it will be more like 13.00. Crests have fallen, gloom clouds hover and Roberta is thundering about their missing flight and, more to the point, who will pay for a replacement ticket. The day is beautifully bright but moods are sadly sombre as we are also told that we would be leaving at 18.00. We feel that we are purely here as an academic exercise to get the ship to Ushuaia to meet its next contractual obligations with more thought-after, higher-paying, customers. The docks at BA are vast and busy. Containers are craned and loaded, lorries and trucks beep between pallets and piers. As we finally reach our berth at 13.30 we see shuttle buses waiting for us and officials ready to board. Twenty or more smart and suited immigration and ship inspectors come aboard to deal with passports and check that the crew have cleaned behind the ears and have scrubbed their fingernails. They are very speedy and those of us who are continuing the journey are given leave to join a whiz-around city tour for our few remaining hours in this grand city. Muffy, Rita and Deborah aim for a taxi to take them directly to Paseo Florida, the main shopping street. Our tour guide is Rosana. We drive through the elegant bits of Buenos Aires and stop first at the Recoleta cemetery where Eva Peron is buried. There are many famous Argentinians buried here, Rosana tells us, but, of course, would we have heard of them? The cemetery is centrally located and magnificently laid out. The family tombs and mini mausoleums are highly decorated – showing status in death is as, or more, important than position in life. Then we continue along the big boulevard, trees in full leaf and flower and make for the Casa Rosada where the President gave permission for Madonna (who’s playing in town tonight) to address the crowds when she played Evita in the film. At La Boca, the tango is in full swing and swingers in full tango. How come morris dancing doesn’t hold the same allure? As Beattie says, ‘what a third rate tourist dump.’ Though it is quite colourful most of the tat on sale is the tat you’d find in any market around the world.

We get back to the ship at 16.45 to see Hotel Director Steve supervising the loading of new provisions, tasting a tomato, pressing a plum and, as his missus Rita returns from her short sharp shopping trip, leaping out of the taxi with Muffy, I see him fondling the water melons with practised ease and appreciation. By 19.00 we are underway again. The remaining eighty or so passengers wave good bye to Buenos Aires almost ready to cry for an Argentina we didn’t get to see, our stay cut so cruelly short. Without kicking or screaming, Minerva is dragged out backwards by a well-powered tug. Perhaps it could push us all the way to Ushuaia. Though we have halved in numbers, we have also taken new bodies aboard. Most of these are the marine team who will be ferrying the Parka’d people to pick up penguins and club seals. Also newly arrived is UberCruiseCommandant Victoria, a big Chief Something or Other from Swan Hellenic, who is here to make sure that, after we, the raff and the riff of Miss Minerva’s floating borstal academy, have departed, all will be five-star, plush and polished for the arrival of the Antarctic boarders.

Everyone is cheered by the flowers that have appeared all over the ship. There are bouquets in reception, displays in the dining room and even stems in the loos. We have a couple of new bar staff too cheerily bringing booze to quench the sun-drenched and loosen the libidos of the late-night dancers. We are out on deck with the house band which is belting out ‘I’m a Believer’, again, as if they meant it. The lights have been turned out so no one can see if they’re standing on the poop. The southern stars are sparkling and the Captain points out Orion’s belt (inverted in these parts so it looks like it’s hanging round his ankles) and Sirius, the brightest in the sky. Peter the purser has yet to unpack so slips off to arrange his sock drawer and neatly arrange his shirts in colour order. Though, as they’re all white, it can’t take him that long.

DAY 26 – Friday 5 December

I wake up to a perfect morning. The days are getting longer as we head further south. The sun is hard at work, warming and shining, well before 6.00 and not retiring from its endeavours (in this hemisphere at least) until 21.00. The early morning promenaders are strutting around the deck all smiles and sun-hats. We are all exceedingly cheery and are of the collective opinion that we’ve never seen a stiller sea. Minvera glides on glass, leaving a lady-like wake of lace fluttering ripples. It is flatter than a frying pan and calm as far as the eye can see. There are 360 degrees of emptiness. Only the sun is in the big blue cloudless sky - colour co-ordinated to match the empty ocean. The Chef’s team have made dough animals to decorate the breakfast buffet; we have a dog, a frog and an alligator lurking amongst the loaves. Melons and grapefruit have been deftly crafted and carved and floral shapes have been made out of tomatoes and carrots. A lovely basket of freesias, hibiscus and gerberas is set amongst paper parcels wrapped in silver ribbon. The buffet itself seems more bursting than usual with smoked salmon and cold cuts, cereals, fruits, yoghurts, cheeses, breads, rolls, toasts, croissants, pastries, muesli, marmalade, marmite, jam and juices. Big Ray, one of the Filipino breakfast chefs gives his customary beaming grins (‘Good Morning, Sir’. ‘How are you today, Ray?’ ‘Excellent, sir’) as he serves up bacon (done both crispy and normal), eggs (scrambled, poached, fried, omelette, boiled or Benedict), tomatoes, mushrooms, black pudding, baked beans, sausages (still inedible) and hash brownies. I feel virtuous with nothing more than a small bowl of muesli and a cranberry juice. James is sitting in the sunshine outside on the deck clutching a caffe latte and is the only blot on the landscape. He usually looks worse for wear and dishevelled even in a suit but this merry morning has taken ‘unkempt’ unto his own. Due to a particularly virulent nocturnal discharge he had to leave his cabin and spent the night attempting sleep on a sofa in the highly air-conditioned and Antarctic temperate Darwin Lounge – where we go for talks, quizzes and painting classes. Muffy was already asleep when he went to bed and, as he wanted to hear the sea and see the stars, he opened the balcony windows but the sewage outlet below was pumping so vigorously, the stench so severe, that he knew he wouldn’t be journeying in the land of Nod if he stayed in the cabin so sought slumber elsewhere. The sun loungers are out already, a rolled blue towel upon each one and each one with ‘Minerva’ stitched on and facing up. I smear on some factor 8 (20% aloe vera) and, sprayed and splayed, open the book I’m reading, ‘Olga’s Story’ to endure more depravation, cold, struggle and much strife. I’m only able to turn the pages knowing that lunch is being prepared, the cabin cleaned and it’s blissfully warm out here on the ocean.

After two hours of toasting and more harrowing episodes of Olga’s life I join the queue for lunch which is perfect roast beef, fish n chips & prawns & avocado. All most tasty. A talk by Sir Peter about the territorial conflicts in these parts, and the Antarctic, is one of his most sterling shows. Crikey. All that, and the most idyllic sunset slipping softly over the horizon, makes for a superb day. I film the sun setting until it sinks into its eiderdown at the edge of the world. All we need now is a clear night sky, some twinkling and a couple of shooting stars. We get that too.

DAY 27 – Saturday 5 December

I must say that the gap in the ozone is helping the tan along nicely. Half an hour without a hat on, though, and my red nose would have Santa creeping up behind and slipping a harness on me. Malcolm is a fit fella for his many years and is certainly putting the rowing machine through its paces. His bushy eyebrows would make ideal nests for the circling albatrossi. Clive, who has been somewhat quiet of late – either because there is less life at sea or he has been quelled by the arrival of more fervent wildlife watchers - says that there are floating penguins out there. True enough, two puffed up penguins, flippers out to hitch a lift to Copacabana are struggling with their suitcases. I hear that some people had been dissuaded from continuing the cruise to Ushuaia and jumped ship at Buenos Aires because they’d been told it would be too choppy, cold and dull. Now we’re enjoying the best weather and the calmest seas. There is much fervent activity since our new arrivals boarded for the Antarctic programme. Minerva is to be shared with clients from tour operator, Abercrombie and Kent, during her first Antarctic turn. They have a Representative on board, another Victoria, to make sure all is ship-shape as it should be. After all, their clients expect more for their money. I notice that the stewardess trolleys, usually left loitering in the corridors, have been well tucked away and the deck lads have been cleaning the windows in the gym. The top crew have changed into their winter weather uniforms. Now it is black trousers or skirts and black ties. Their dress, always crisp and smart, seems to have a deeper crease and all buttons and brasses are polished to perfection.

One of the marine team is the bushy, bearded, American, Larry who will be manning the zodiac dinghies and taking the newly-leds around the ice. He and his gang show great disinterest in us left-overs and we are getting the feeling that we are becoming an unnecessary hindrance to their preparations. Maybe we’re just here as ballast. Hotel Director Steve has arranged for me to chat with some of his top team. Bar chief Chris is a young, handsome Australian who is using his time aboard to save money and travel the world. Mind you, that’s what everyone here is to do. He also adds that he has not been responsible for the choice of wines. Nor is the Chef responsible for the choice of food. That is the job of Esteban (beaming and Costa Rican), the Provisions Manager and what is bought and brought on board is what the chef has to cook. Our chef, since Rio, is another Tony. We’re not sure if they specifically looked for someone with the same name so we wouldn’t notice the change or if it is coincidence. He is another chunky chappy; this time from Greater Manchester (an oxymoronic geographical term some would say – Great and Manchester? What can they mean?) Cooking on ships, though demanding and without a day off, is more pleasant than being on land, he tells me. Especially on the Minerva as cooking supper is over by 2100 – as most of the passengers are horlicked (or if they’re not so fortunate, hot chocolated) and bedded by 2230. Though invited to dine with Muffy, James and a table of ten, it seems that Clive, having first declined, is dressed in his best and ready to join in too. Muffy begs (so she should - and does it so elegantly on knees and pleasingly pleading) if I wouldn’t mind being kicked off the table as Greg cannot add another chair. I see. Fortunately, my other nice chums take me to their table like an unwanted orphan and I am happy to dine with Birgit, Peter, Linda, Jock, Jenny and Stuart. There has been a rush for the crab cakes, Greg tells us, and, after sixty portions have been served up, it is no longer on the menu. I have a very acceptable steak and chips and realise that the quiz has started. Number One Paul is half way through the first set of questions by the time I plonk myself with Muffy, James and Smoking Steve. Who, but someone with a baby buggy and the week’s shopping, would have known that the world’s widest avenue is in Brazil? James is overjoyed when we win and we split the prize bubbly with our runners up.

DAY 28 – Sunday 6 December

The ship shuffles along at 14 knots per hour – or is that nautical miles? I must ask Malcolm or the Captain or probably most other people on board who will know. Jock has worked out that we’ll never get to Ushuaia by 0800 tomorrow as planned. True enough at his midday address, Captain tells us that we are so far behind schedule that it may be quicker to abandon ship and swim. We have travelled over 7000 miles and are now further south than Cape Town, Sydney, Alice Springs or Shirley Temple. It is a bright and breezy morning. Somewhere to the left (port, as these sailors say) are the Falkland Islands – somewhere else we’re not going to. Malcolm explains nautical miles (again) and says a knot is the speed which a ship travels (something to do with feeding ropes tied with knots in ye olde sea dogge days) one nautical mile per hour. Ships at sea are prepared for most incidents. They have spare everything. At the moment, a slim Filippino engineer has surfaced from wherever they live below with a blow torch and a piece of lead piping. Hurrah! I thought. He’s come to play Cluedo and is about to do away with the grumpy Yellow Shirt by whacking him with the bar, slicing through the corpse like a hock of ham and chucking the bits to the petrels that are following in our wake (see how we are no longer wishing the worst on Clive since his pronouncements and announcements have become less pronounced or announced and we begin to like him a lot). Ricky, the engineer, is in fact there to weld a replacement balustrade (or whatever the metal railing is called that goes around the ship) that had been removed during the ship’s dry-docking. It makes for a fascinating performance. We try and think when we last saw something as meaningful and active that didn’t involve food, eating it or thinking about it. It certainly put is in the mood for lunch. Most of us hadn’t realised it is Sunday as there is no Bish’ on board to give a service. Only by looking at the menu do we see that there is a Sunday roast (as to an everyday roast) and today is roast turkey. Sadly, there are only so many things that can be roasted these days and with the new marine team here to save the seals it is unlikely that we’ll get the chance to chomp on a puffin. We’ve had the roast rotation of duck, chicken, turkey, pork, beef, lamb and aubergine. We sway away blaming the ship when it’s probably the wine. Linda is left holding a banana having asked: ‘what am I supposed to with this? It’s so big’. Jock keeps quiet. Some fine cheese is on offer today so I tuck into somm’at like Limmat and Hildegard or Hummel. All new too me but the cracker seems to have been well-acquainted with them before. The ship begins bobbing about so much that the pool spews its sea-water all over the deck - and me, as I was passing by. I need to mop off before Maggie’s mulled wine session then worry about what to wear for dinner. We are so far removed from the ways of the world that I now salivate when the ding-dong comes on the address system before the announcements. Pavlov (the Russian physiologist, not the meringue cake) would explain that it is because the Captain comes on before lunch and the Heil Hellenic Director before supper – so they prepare us fat rats for further fattening and engorged geese for more gavage. I suppose there’ll be an abattoir in Ushuaia where we’ll be led and turned into pasties and pies. We couldn’t taste worse than the breakfast sausages.

As it’s not black tie tonight, I wear one - and a black shirt – looking most Moseley. Muffy looks lovely and Rita is looking glamorously French. Dennis, one of the waiters with braces over a dazzling smile, tells us he is now engaged to Girlie, on reception. We raise glasses and wish him our best and, as the sun sets, Clive tells us about the green flash. Allegedly, as the sun edges over the horizon, you can see a vivid, (though briefer than a Brazilian’s knickers) green flash. We watch while our puds are served (cherry cheescake) and the waiters fuss about us. One of them starts fussing about with the window blinds thinking he is helping us get a bigger view. But the sun is setting fast and instead of a green flash, the only view we have now is of a bigger backside. Dennis is standing behind Muffy, who is laughing, and admiring her rising suns which are shaking in her dress as she guffaws. Rita rises and says goodnight. She has to go and nurse Steve who, today, is suffering from a toothache. Maybe she’ll knock it out with her new boots from Buenos Aires.

DAY 29 – Monday 7 December

We are bouncing about like balls in a bingo drum. The surf’s up and so is the wind. The deck boys are wearing kagools unable to lay out the loungers. As I try and walk around the funnel deck, I have to cling to the rails as we whoosh about the waves. We pass the Magellan Straits that separate Chile and Argentina from their shared, and disputed, southern archipelago Tierra del Fuego. This is where the world stops and the ice begins. The sea calms as we sail up the Beagle’s passage. Not a yelp. It is named after the ship that sailed here with Charles Darwin aboard on his five year pursuit of all things evolutionary. The ship was captained by Robert Fitzroy who was on a par with Darwin in his erudition and invention. We have to thank him for developing the art of weather forecasting. The sun is breaking through and lighting the mountains. William Blake would have something to get excited about - his paint brushes would be in and out of his pot and palate like a spoon in a yoghurt pot. The land bordering the channel rises like loch-side mountains. There is snow on the top. A small island is packed with penguins which are fluttering and flapping and wondering who’s coming to call or what they’ll have for dinner. I bet it’s fish. We pass Puerto Williams on the south, Chilean, side of the channel. It is Chile’s southernmost town. Argentina claims to have the world’s southernmost city, our destination at Ushuaia, further up the channel on the right. They classify a city as having over seventy thousand inhabitants. Are there that many people who want to live at this end of the world? Chile also claims the southernmost community on the planet at Puerto Toro but I believe they’re half seal, half Welsh and completely barmy. The dispute between these two loathing neighbours continues. The Vatican stepped in to resolve some of it, awarding a couple of forsaken rocks in the middle of the channel to Chile. The upper reaches of the Channel, west of Ushuaia, becomes Chilean territory and if your ship has been previously piloted through the Argentinian waters, there is a merry dance to play with the authorities on the other side. As there are also additional pilotage charges most ships enter from the Atlantic, through Argentinian waters to Ushuaia and leave the same way to traverse Drake’s passage to the Antarctic, or round Cape Horn, rather than head through the channel, to the Pacific. Our Argentinian pilot boards as we enter the channel and guides us through the narrow straits.

Muffy and James have employed a relay team of wine waiters to bring drinks outside. Rita joins in, showing off her knee-high boots she bought in Buenos Aires.

The Captain pops by for a fag and Muffy asks if he would like to join us for supper.

Captain: ‘That would be very nice.’

Muffy: ‘Oh good, I’ll ask for the big table’.

Captain: ‘You mean the Captain’s table?’

Muffy: ‘I won’t have to ask, then?’

The bar is busy and buzzing, people are counting the hours til the journey’s end.

Jill thinks my outfit is clashing beautifully. She asks if I know her nephew in London. She’s sure I should as we’re both artistic.

Dinner swings along and we gather together in the naughty room for a last night’s smoke before finally disembarking.

Day 30 – Tuesday 8 December

We were supposed to reach Ushuaia at 0800 and enjoy a day touring the wildlife of Patagonia and seeing some animals too. Guess what? We didn’t. Captain comes on, followed by Number One Paul to say that we’ll be there by 1300. Jock has worked out the speed and distance and reckons we shan’t be dockside until 1600. Malcolm has been hiding on the bridge. Everyone knows he’s a retired captain and they keep asking him about timings and delays. He comes back to say that we probably shan’t reach Ushuaia until 1600 (Jock wins). The Captain then comes on to say ‘sorry, delay, blah, penguins, blah, not arriving until 1700.’ Cruise Director attempts unction, appears unctuous, ‘sorry, delay…’ - this is probably a pre-recording – now there’s to be no tour of park, wildlife or Ushuaia. We are to head straight to airport for our chartered flight to Buenos Aires. Which means we shan’t reach BA until midnight. The wind is wild and makes it difficult for the tug to tow us to our berth. Everyone is gathered about the bar, our luggage labelled and ready to be hauled off ahead of us and taken directly to the plane. There are sad farewells to the crew as we are told we are ready to disembark. There is some commotion in the bar. I see an old chap slumped in his chair. ‘Code Blue, Wheeler Bar, Code Blue,’ comes over the Tannoy and a couple of orderlies rush up with a stretcher as we are ushered out to collect passports and make for the buses waiting below on the port. As we drive out, an ambulance, sirens wailing, hurtles in. We are given a quick tour of the town – ‘there’s the post office, that’s an hotel, these are shops…’ – and then taken to the airport. Stuart and Jenny join us as we wait to board the plane for Buenos Aires. Jenny is very upset. The old boy, who keeled over, has been taken to hospital. Jenny says he had so wanted to take his wife to Argentina but had been denied travel on medical grounds three previous occasions. He finally got to take her to Buenos Aires before he died.

BERLIN - A NIGHT AT THE OPERA

2009-11-23T01:00:00.000-08:00

BERLIN – A NIGHT AT THE OPERA October 16, 2009

Last night I visited the Deutsche Oper in Berlin. It is a modern building, directly next to a metro station ,and was packed to its very ferro-concrete rafters. Operatic Berliner buffs were wearing their finest and German fashion was out for the night – though obviously somewhere else. There were bow ties and suits, lace gloves and floor length dresses. Some had even put on their best pullover for the occasion and polished their polyester.

The auditorium certainly favours the orchestra as we couldn’t hear most of the singers or perhaps they just weren’t of full voice. It was Verdi’s Falstaff – an opera comique, based, as you will all know, on Shakespeare’s ‘Merry Wives of Windsor’ – where the opera is set. It features a fat, fatuous and infatuated Sir John Falstaff and his intrigues with some married women. It would not be written today as fat people are allowed to successfully fall in love too. Sir John was sung and played by Ambrogio Maestri who was well-chosen for his voice, his knack with Italian and his size. Though the role of Mr Fenton was admirably sung by Yosep Kang, I can’t think many oriental gentlemen would have been in Windsor during the 16^th century and there is no mention of Henry IV ever popping into the Jade Palace for a chicken chow mein on his way to war. There are the obligatory opera buffoons and, apart from wet toast, there is little less funny and more annoying than opera buffoons. These ones were particularly ill-played.

The sets were wooden – indeed, there was a lot of wood - which kept gliding about between scenes. The first scene, at the Garter Inn, looked more like a Travis Perkins timber yard and when it moved to the Ford’s house it looked more like the setting for a 1940s Agatha Christie house murder.

Though Windsor is on the Thames, a dockside it is not. Yet, there were extras - sorry, the chorus - by the payroll load. Men were forever moving packing cases about and women were washing and folding so much linen that they could change the beds at a Holiday Inn.

Obviously the state-run Deutsche Oper has too much money, employs on a scale of Ben Hur and their subsidy is grossly overspent. The crowd scenes had more people on the stage than you’d see in Harrods on the first day of the sales. A whole orphanage of kids came on at the end with one dressed as a bunny much to the sympathetic whimpering of the audience and whose hopping made you want to put him in a pot with carrots.

A lot of cloth went into this production. The costumes were an odd mix of from Old Dutch Masters and the whole thing looked dubbed in Brueghel and Bosch. Many outfits caused endless trouble to the performers, but amusement to us, as they kept tripping in their frocks or getting lost in them.

The finale had the whole stage packed with the four hundred extras dressed in an assortment of odd frocks and costumes as for Trick or Treating in Taunton. But, in opera, even a Windsor wood at midnight is an occasion for a masked ball.

There were elves & nymphs, goblins and fairies, pixies and Bubbles de Vere dancing about without much point or direction - and the kids, who were there to look cute. Of course, there is always the upstaging extra. The one who nods and slaps his thigh as if he understands what’s going on and is integral to the plot (‘What plot? It’s an opera!’). We had one here and just as the curtain is about to come down he rushes to lie down in front of the principal singers. Alas, the final curtain didn’t decapitate him.

As the cast took their bows, the audience took to their feet. They’d loved it. A chap behind me was apoplectic with pleasure clapping his hands to numbness and squealing ‘Bravo, bravissimo!’.

Odd being in Berlin watching the Deutsche Oper performing an Italian work dressed as Dutch and based on a play by an Englishman set in Windsor. Opera can be nonsense in so many languages.

Like the cast - how very European.

Pol Ferguson Thompson

CRUISING ON BOARD DISCOVERY - NORTH AFRICA

2009-11-23T00:57:00.000-08:00

DISCOVERY – NORTH AFRICAN JOURNEY 2009

MONDAY 2 November

Our knee-clinging coffin-boxed five-hour flight leaves Gatwick this morning to join the MV Discovery docked in the Egyptian port of Alexandria. This time it’s a cruise around North Africa – mainly Libya. The chartered Monarch flight is full and everyone is squeezed like pips. The overhead lockers are already packed with walking sticks and panama hats when I try to get my bag in. A man leaps - well, shudders - up to tell me that his straw hats are in there, ‘but they should be alright.’ But who would care? It is over two hours into the flight before food is served and many people who’d been up since before Sawn yawned to get to the airport for the 0930 flight are grumbling with rumbling tums. The airline policy is to try and sell everything else before providing what is already included so they sell drinks and snacks and water and teas even though a hot meal is on its way.

Borg el Arab airport is a stretch of tarmac in a rain-spattered desert field about an hour south of the port of Alexandria where the ship awaits. The Egyptians are very cautious about catching swine flu – being a mainly swine free country – and have customs men wearing paper masks as they greet and complete our visa requirements. We are loaded on a bus as our bags are chucked into a truck and Dina, a local guide, accompanies us to the port. Tourist buses are always under police escort in Egypt and given the right to drive everyone else off the road. As Dina says, Egyptian drivers do not abide by traffic lights or road markings – they are there as a suggestion or guide rather than compulsory obligation. The journey from the airport to the ship takes us through date harvesting, shanty towns and salt lakes. Alexandria has sprawled out to meet the desert and seems based around the designs of India’s poorer slums. There are lots of billboard hoardings along the road in emblazoned with Alex West. I wondered if this were the name of some new TV series or an actor - Batman’s brother perhaps? – or, perhaps, some brand of fags. But it is the name of some huge, sprawling and unfinished housing development project south of the city (or quite possibly west of it). It is so exceedingly ugly that it should have been suffocated at birth. Bare and empty building shells sit homeless under these advertisements of women making coffee, children playing golf and men sitting around doing nothing – certainly not with a paintbrush in their hand. It has been raining a lot here and the lack of drainage means that the roads are more waterway than motorway.

The port of Alexandria is enormous, run down and hectically disorganised. For such a well-off country everything is a mess. It looks a dump but by daylight it may improve.

We get to the ship as dusk descends and check into our cabins. Already there are crew-members I recognise and vice versa. It’s lovely to see Monica at reception and Peter the Purser and Malcolm the hotel director. I’m not sure if it’s all mutually felt.

There is a free-seating arrangement for dinner tonight in the Seven Continents restaurant for those on the London flights. Quite rightly, those who flew in from Manchester are to be served their balti and chips on the Lido deck in, what we can only hope is to be, permanent cruise confinement. But some of them didn’t understand that they are to be kept in quarantine and away from the rest of us and took to the dining room so by the time Cathy and I sauntered down after a cocktail or two, there was nowhere left to sit so we had to scramble among hoi polloi of Preston and eat buffet style at plastic tables. You can imagine how that upsets the senses. We meet Connie who had indeed flown from Manchester but who lives near North Berwick and who’d been travelling nearly 24 hours as there is no civilised way to get to the airport from the Borders other than taking a bus from Edinburgh via Glasgow at chucking-out time.

As I have learned on cruises, everyone begins conversation not with weather chit-chat but with how many cruises they’ve been on and see how much oneshipmanship they can play. Connie had cruised the Kiel canal recently and was full of Baltic blarney.

The Discovery shows three themed films on the cabin screens each time it sails around Egypt so insomniacs can enjoy The Mummy, Jewel of the Nile and Cleopatra - again. I’m in bed and reading a book by 2230 – that’s only 2030 UK time – and have fallen asleep in half an hour only to wake again 3 hours later.

Tuesday 3 November - Alexandria

The morning is grey and raining over Alexandria. Cathy and I take a stroll through the rain, the pot-holes and the perpetual pestering. Taxi and horse-drawn carriage drivers tout for trade to take us to see the sights. They begin with 10 euro an hour and then drop the price to 5. Today, being wet and miserable, is not one to be bumped about in a cab. All we wanted to do was to have a shifty about town but the rain is relentless - and so are the men wanting to take us for a ride. There are rickety trams in Alexandria and vehicles that saw better days in Jacques Tati films. The roads are a mess of holes and puddles, the sidewalks similar. Single light bulbs or fluorescent strips illuminate dowdy, drab, dirty and dilapidated interiors. The place hasn’t improved in daylight but few places look good in the rain.

Ancient Alexandria was famed for three things: the world’s first lighthouse on the island of Pharos out in the harbour, its library which was once the world’s greatest and the man it is named after. There’s also a column known as Pompey’s Pillar but should be, more accurately known as Diocletian’s Dick – it is a sizeable shaft of granite erected in the Emperor’s lifetime.

We wander back to the ship. Vehicles entering the port are given the once-over by security guards using a sniffer-dog and an under-carriage mirror to see if there are explosives. I suppose it’s reassuring.

We have a game of Scrabble (according to the Rosemary Forgan Formula Rules though without access to a cheaty book) and the sun comes out. Sadly, the city still looks ghastly. The crew is being most helpful trying to sort out a double plug adaptor as there is only one socket in my room – not enough for my curling tongs, hair-dryer, battery chargers, travel iron and teas-maid all to work at once.

The go-go girls (actually, the girls from the dance troupe) are sunning themselves on deck and cause quite a stir amongst the dock-hands when they stand up to re-arrange their swimwear. So much so that the dock-hands are rearranging the stir in their underwear.

Hurrah there is a quiz at 1715. As Entertainment Social Hostess, Louise, hands out the pens, we are joined by Sharon and her husband. They are from York. Now, how did we know that? Because within minutes of sitting next to us (as with all people from Yorkshire) they tell us. He tells us again when a question about Guy Fawkes comes up (“‘e were a York man, you know”) and when telling about their endless travels through Canada (“ General Wolfe were a Yorkshire man ‘n all”). Of course, this is quite unnecessary as his accent would have cut a stale Eccles cake from behind an iron curtain. How they enjoy cruising. Eeh, by ‘eck! Where they’ve not been, you wouldn’t be able to find a postcard. He even organises the oldest pub quiz team in the world and is most forthcoming with the answers. We lose.

Our dining table is for the widowed, divorced or resolutely single; we’re all solo travellers here. I recognise Chris, another video taker and maker, from the last Discovery cruise round the Red, Med & Black Seas I did earlier in May. There are two sisters; a lady who could have lived a long time in a convent; a smart sounding lady with a colourful blouse and a crisp, cut accent, another woman with a cheery smile but unhappy teeth and a man who shakes like a salt cellar. He may have a palsy of sorts. We are also joined by the Egyptian pilot who is on board til we dock at Benghazi, in Libya, the day after tomorrow. He only drinks apple juice. Perhaps he is also here to control our drinking as we are forbidden alcohol within Libyan waters. So there’ll be nothing to do with a drunken sailor as we won’t be able to get our hands on one.

Somehow I get through a whole bottle of ship red wine. The pilot doesn’t look unduly offended. He’s a cheery sort wondering what to get his wife for her birthday tomorrow. Knowing what would appeal to a lot of female friends I suggest a bottle of champagne, some Ferrero Rocher and a DVD with Brad Pitt.

Wednesday 4 November – Day at Sea

We are well out of Egyptian waters by the time we wake this morning. Yippee, it is a whole day at sea. Activities have been organised to suit our skills and agility. The lectures and cookery classes, which involve sitting down and watching someone else work, are the most popular but even the tap-dance routines and killer golf have a few followers. You can imagine the disappointment when I discover that killer golf is not played to Sharia law so does not result in a public stoning by the ninth hole for the loser. It’s just a bit of pitch n putt.

There are also solo traveller get-togethers and spa secrets to a flatter stomach. I should really go them all, especially the last one but I’m trying to get my video sorted to give a DVD of the previous cruise to Malcolm, the hotel director. He said he enjoyed the video I made on the Minerva cruise to South America - which I did last year - but that he wouldn’t allow me, or my camera, access to his crew as he didn’t think it was positive enough PR. And there’s me thinking it did them proud. Still, unless it’s a continuous gush of anodyne praise the marketing people would wince. Even though everyone who watches British telly knows the difference between sycophantic and sympathetic.

I skip lunch - my own useless attempt to gain a flatter stomach though the only method that works is the Beverly Hills High School Technique – where you jam your fingers down your throat and throw up.

Cathy and I meet up for Afternoon Quiz. She tells me that I have a stalker. The Entertainment Social Hostess, Louise, has asked her for my cabin number. Despite being unnerved by this announcement we battle through the quiz and win more Discovery pens.

Tonight is our first formal night so I whip out the dicky and ease myself into an all-black (dinner jacket). Captain John Brocklehurst is hosting a welcome reception before dinner. We’re told it is to be the last time the bars are open for 3 days. We have been warned that being a most Muslim country, there is to be no alcohol in Libya. Perhaps Allah has ordained this opportunity to detox and not drink over the next few days so I stock up on a handful of margaritas before dinner and then down a bottle of Pinotage.

I learn more about my dining companions. The two sisters are Sheila and Anne and I can’t think there’s anything more interesting to say but they’re nicely pleasant- though I hope to be surprised as the dinners go by. Then there’s Jenny who is, or was, a schoolteacher and looks as severe as a Mother Superior. She would have solved a problem like Maria with a leather strap and would not only have refused Oliver another bowl of gruel but would have had him up chimneys for months. The shaker is John from Liverpool and resembles the Blue Peter tortoise. His chin joins his shoulders without the need of a neck. I’ll see if he has his name painted on his back should I catch him sunbathing. His only jacket is a knitted number that his mother may have bought at BHS. It has bird shit on the shoulder. Chris is another retired schoolteacher with a lot of regrets about what life might have been and Constance is an incredibly well-dressed, well-jewelled and well-spoken, well-retired doctor who was born in New Zealand, studied in Australia and travelled most of the world doing healing things with medicine but sounds like she never left the Littlehampton ladies luncheon club.

Our waiting team is Jerry and Robert. They are, as with all staff, except for senior crew, from the Philippines and these must be made up names to make it easier for us. Jerry is quite a comic and announces the menu with flourish and fanfare listing each evening’s dishes with Olivier-like delivery: “and not forgetting, ladies and gentlemen, our plate of international cheeses.” As far as I can see, the cheese is basically cheddar, though I suppose it has been around a bit and must be so well-travelled by now that its passport would be the envy of any Wensleydale.

(Alexandria – Benghazi 542 nm / 1004 km)

Thursday 5 November – Benghazi, Libya

We have a team of learned lecturers on board. There is the ever-present David who was once a geography teacher and who gives a secondary school talk on some of the places we visit emphasising the need for head wear and comfortable shoes. We also have a chap from BBC’s History Magazine with a fine pair of dead hedgehogs as eyebrows and an unnerving attitude to humanity that disdains most things living in preference to a supposed account of the past. Peter Jones is also an historian and never knowingly undersold. He gives good value and an historic knowledge of how things might have been when empires were great and all was right with the world; if you were Roman, and if you were an Emperor; until you were murdered by your father, brother, son, wife or any other soldier determined to get their face on a coin.

We’re up bright and early though it isn’t bright yet, only early, to meet in the Lounge to await disembarkation for our first big day in Libya. We dock at Benghazi (named, allegedly, after one Ben Ghazi) for a visit to Cyrene, the first of our many Greek and Roman ruins.

Andrea, the Cruise Director (usually found singing jazz tunes late at night and organising the entertainment) announces that we need to be patient whilst dealing with the Libyan authorities. We wait. Then we wait some more. Andrea then announces after another half an hour that the immigration officials have boarded and are insisting everyone go through a thermometer test for swine flu. I wonder where the thermometer will go and, indeed, has been. We are led to a man with a machine gun who points it at our heads. A worrying action in these, or any other, parts. It is an electronic device which supposedly reads our body temperatures. Some of us are pulled to one side. That includes me. The man gestures to his throat. I grin not knowing if he thinks I should be wearing a cravat or if he thinks I should be garrotted. He points his machine gun again and then smiles and says ‘OK’. Phew.

We are told how strict a Muslim country Libya is. No drink and conservative dress. Even Margaret Thatcher’s fifteen denier would be considered racy here and she would have been stoned as an ankle flasher. But, though the local girls have their heads covered and are in jeans rather than full-length jilabas their faces are uncovered and slap-happy especially around the eyes.

Some of the women on board have taken to wearing head scarves as they disembark. They’ve been hearing too many stories of single women of certain ages finding a husband in these parts.

I’m glad I bought a bottle of water as I find out that the journey to Cyrene is over three hours. That’s nearly two hundred minutes of non-too interesting countryside, a commentary about bridges and huge piles of rubbish at such regularity that I thought they were there as mileage markers. No worries of wheelie bin rage here or councils spying on litter louts. Our guide knows a lot of English words but hasn’t got the hang of stringing them together in an order that could be comprehensible. Most of us have already nodded off after fifteen minutes. Fortunately, the bus is equipped with a volume button above each seat so many of us have switched him off.

We’re finally wakened from our daylight reveries (what’s for supper? What’s for lunch? Will I make it to the loo in time tonight?) as the bus jerks into the car park at Cyrene – a vast site built by the Phoenicians, enlarged by the Greeks and taken over by the Romans.

There are some fantastic finds here. The detail of these ancient artists is staggering. The buildings would have been fantastic – even by today’s standards and certainly a lot sturdier and more elegantly designed and planned than anything we’ve seen on the way here. Earthquakes withstanding, it is boggling to think that the new wave of invaders from Arabia didn’t just take over the buildings and make them home.

Our lunch is in a cave near the site. We have spicy soup and some manky mutton with couscous. Though we expected only water and soft drinks, we are offered beers. Interestingly, all the drinks seem to come from the Evil Empire as Pepsi and Coke engage in the battle for fridge space everywhere we go.

We hear that Libyans are most inventive and many make their own home-made wine and hootch but if they’re caught drink-driving they could be banned for SIX MONTHS.

One of our Scottish travellers has bought himself a jilaba and changes into it. He is no Lawrence of Arabia and still looks like Jimmy of Clydebank in a dress.

Friday 6 November – Day at Sea

More of the usual doing little. The Spa is offering five minute makeovers which, quite frankly would be miraculous if it made any difference. There are quoits, quizzes and four ladies determined to conquer the steps to Singular Sensation from A Chorus Line. I see them more in Disney’s Hippo dance.

Tonight Cathy and I dine in the Yacht Club with Malcolm, the hotel director, Peter, the purser and Monica the very lovely receptionist. We also invite Chris, the retired school-teacher from our regular dinner table. The bars are back in business and we down an aperitif before making much merriment at dinner causing consternation and alarm amongst the hearing-aids nearby. The Yacht Club is an additional dining room, considered by many to be the highlight of their voyage on Discovery, which has to be booked and to which you’re only supposed to have one visit per cruise. Tonight the dinner theme is a Jazz supper. I’d been reluctant to go there as I thought Andrea, our Cruise Director, intercom announcer, entertainment arranger and accomplished singer would be there to sing jazz classics. However, it was only the menu which had daft names like Ella Fitzgerald’s Moist Meringues and Satchmo’s sizzling meat. I tucked into Duke Ellington’s rump.

(Benghazi – Al Khums 392 nm/ 726 km)

Saturday 7 November – Al Khums

Chris tells Cathy that he was most honoured to be at the dinner last night. I gather he doesn’t get out much. We’ve plowed the Gulf of Sidra through the night and dock this morning at the port of Al Khums which is busy with its container businesses. The rigmarole of immigration continues so we sit and wait to disembark again. I hear that there are a few Canadians on board who are having a very hard time getting ashore. It turns out that the Canadian Minister for Foreign Affairs made some comments about the Great Leader Gaddafi and in response, the Libyan Dictator of Forty Years Rule has let it be known that Canadians are not welcome here. The Purser is probably having to fork out a bottle of whisky for each Canadian just to get them ashore. A few of the immigration officials are having a right old ding dong on the stairs with much gesticulating and loud voices between them as we are given clearance to land. I suppose the spoils and bribes have not been evenly distributed. We have a cheery guide called Nasser with us today and the journey from the dock to Leptis Magna is only half an hour. Nasser once studied and lived in Liverpool and Blackpool and speaks splendid English – even able to dip into Scouse. Leptis (though we now know it should properly be referred to as Lepkis as this means ‘Fringes of the Desert’) is magnificent. It is the biggest of all Roman ruins and rivals Ephesus for its completeness and magnitude. There are baths and forums, arena and hippodrome, circus and temples. This is what most of us came for and no one was disappointed. It benefited from Nasser’s knowledge and enthusiasm. He was born, brought up and now lives in Al Khums. He used to come here as a lad and play on the ruins which were excavated once by interested Italians but the work has long since been abandoned on a great scale. A few French and American archaeologists occasionally get permission to scratch around but there is still so much to uncover. History is not really a priority here.

(Al Khums to Tripoli 139 nm / 257 km)

Sunday 8 November – Tripoli

It’s not far to Tripoli so the Discovery takes a stately stroll along the coast through the night and we are ready and waiting, and waiting, for the authorities to clear us again this morning. Today the bars are firmly locked in case Muammar decides to make a personal visit. I’m on a tour to another Punic/Greco/Roman ruin on the outskirts of the capital but which takes, due to horrendous traffic, two hours to reach. Water costs more per litre in Libya than petrol so everyone is dying of thirst driving around town and all headed towards the same roundabout which causes the congestion. Our tour guide is appalling – Mr ‘Yes OK’. He talks endlessly in a language incommunicable with any other human being (dead or alive). He has a random only memory which accesses odd words in English interspersed with ‘Yes, OK’ and then thrown out like shit at a fan hoping something might stick. It may stick but it doesn’t make much sense. Everyone has reached and switched off volume buttons and a fellow tourist asks if he could speak lower. In the end he is talking to himself but as we are sitting near the front it is still torture.

The site is another splendid ruin by the sea. What the earthquake or tsunami didn’t wreck then time and disinterest has. Had the Italians not invaded and made this a colony these archaeological gems would have been hidden for ever.

On the way back, a lot of people have moved to the back of the bus but Mr Yes, OK seems to have finally given up and remains remarkably quiet for the return journey.

I decide it’s to be another night without dinner yet I can’t see me any thinner.

(Tripoli – Valetta 197 nm/ 365 km)

Monday 9 November – Valetta, Malta

The ship is trundling along excruciatingly slowly. I try and help by getting on the running machine for 30 minutes but we are sailing slower than a rubber duck. Though we are not due to dock in Valetta until midday we could have been enjoying much of Malta before 1000. I suppose they don’t want to pay extra port fees. Cathy has arranged to meet an old chum of hers here who is on Malta for some high powered meeting, He has a car and takes us to Mdina, a rather ornate and lovely city in the middle of the island. We then have an hour wandering around Valetta and I’m much impressed with its buildings. The island though is mightily over-populated with hardly a piece of land unused. There are a bunch of towns between Valetta and Mdina but they all seem to converge as one long housing sprawl. If Libya only has 3 people per square kilometre there must be three thousand, or even three hundred thousand here. So what makes many Maghrebis and sub-Saharans want to push on to over-crowded places like Malta when there is so much land in places like Libya?

I return to find a note slipped under my door. Louise, the Social Hostess has invited me to another dinner in the Yacht Club. Tonight’s theme is Italian and I join Fiona, the cabaret singer from South Shields and a couple from Essex. The Godfather Tournedos steak is excellent and the Napoli seafood salad is appropriately small but quite well dressed. Cathy sits, like a dowager chaperone, between me and Louise and, as I am next to Fiona, we chat a lot about Geordie things.

Alas, I’m not up to the sing-a-longa Abba after dinner so let the singers n swingers get on with it.

(Valetta – Palermo 243 nm / 450 km)

Tuesday 10 November – Palermo, Sicily

I’d always imagined the Sicilian capital Palermo to be a classically decorative and opulent Italian city. It’s run-down, scruffy and quite miserable. It was ruled by the Arabs for three hundred years. Today’s Palermo has cracked gutters and unlovely buildings. I walked around in the drizzle the highlight being a visit to the Opera house featuring a statue of homeboy Bellini and major maestro Verdi. The backstreets are a weave of washing dangling from every balcony with tenants dropping baskets over on ropes so they can haul up the daily deliveries from the dealer or the baker. Dobermanf dogs run wild in some patch of a park mired amongst the rumbling buildings and quite a few poor and homeless are wandering about. It’s not a place to take your grandfather. I’m told they have enough there already.

(Palermo – La Goulette 194 nm / 359 km)

Wednesday 11 November – La Goulette, Tunisia

The water is shimmering in the shining sun. Tunis has a huge lake between it and the sea. They have built a new port there at La Goulette connected to the capital by a 10 km causeway. The tour buses have left a while ago but I’m trying to use the internet to book flights. The ship has the crappiest of broadband connections and the Star Alliance booking form is still trying to upload after forty minutes (I’m trying to book flights for a Round the World trip). I give up and think it’s time for a wander about. There is a train that runs quite close to the ship from La Goulette into Tunis and takes about ten minutes. I get 10 dinars out a cash machine (about five pounds) and get my ticket. Just walking to the bank and I have a feeling that Tunisia is a good place. There are a lot of school children out chatting. They’re mixed and most girls have their heads uncovered. They are elegant and fashionable and the boys seem to have emptied buckets of brylcreem on their hair. There are a few people waiting for the train – again all easy and patient. No one gives undue stares to me as I whip out my video and film the platform; nor on the train. It’s a slight schlep from the train terminus into the heart of town but no more than a walk down Oxford Street. There are flower sellers along the road with colourful arrays of fine blooms and lots of roses. The main street is a flutter of Tunisian flags and posters of Big Al. They’ve just had elections – it is a very democratic country even though Ali Ben seems to have been president for ever. Avenue B is bustling. People walk, talk, chat, kiss, shop and scurry about just like in Paris. Not surprising. The Tunisians have benefited enormously from the French past. There are trains across the country (unlike Libya); there is an ease and lack of suspicion (unlike Libya); there is a sense of civic organisation and noble buildings (unlike Libya and Palermo); the cafes are as busy as any in Saint Germain and people even look modern and smart. I wander into the medina and get lost. But again, there is no sense of being stared at or about to be mugged or hassled. It’s all carts and clatter, shops and shoppers. I work out where the sun is heading and follow it and come out in view of the big church on the main avenue. There are few Christians left here but the Cathedral is treated respectably and is a major monument in the city.

There are bathing points along the coast and I can understand this being a choice destination for le top Paris at one time. A posh suburb has all the villas of the likes of Yves Saint Laurent. The train even trundles out to the airport and to the remains of Carthage beyond. Alas no time for that. I have a drink and take the train back to the ship where I sneak into the port through a gap in the wall and am whistled at by the customs guard. Instead of being all shitty and shirty he just wants my landing card and we have a chat instead. He wants to know if I’ve seen any pretty girls. Well, I have, actually. I still have over seven and half dinars left but the buggers at the port shop will only accept euro. Anyone going to Tunisia soon? I recommend it.

The rest of our dining table has disappeared to the Yacht Club so Cathy & I join a jolly couple. Roy is a retired mathematician who would look happy in any garden dressed as a gnome and holding a fishing rod.

We could have won the quiz if the girl presenting the quiz 9and the first time we’ve set eyes on her) didn’t ask the tie-break question ‘what is my name?’. We’d been sitting too far back to see her name badge and it turns out she’s been ill the past week so hasn’t been seen, or heard.

Thursday 12 November – Day at Sea

My neck is in rictus when I wake up and I shuffle painfully about the boat as we plough the sea to Barcelona. It is splendidly sunny and nicely warm. The deck chairs are all taken and the paperbacks devoured. There is a drinks do for those who’ve travelled before on Discovery. The on board lecturer delivers the same spiel that we’ve all heard before including the same piece about a politically correct Nelson. We all laughed again though it doesn’t improve with repetition. The internet is still completely buggery useless so I don’t know where I am with a possible Antarctic cruise which begins next week as I have to be in California before 16 December and the cruise finishes in Buenos Aires on 10 December – and most flights between the two are getting horribly booked up.

It is the Captain’s farewell dinner tonight so another chance to slip into my little black suit with a waistcoat of many colours. Sadly there are not many people properly dressed. Of our lot, Constance and Chris have put on the finery but even Cathy has decided she wouldn’t put on her posh frock like the last Captain’s dinner as she felt too peacock in a hen yard. Indeed, there is quite a dowdy shower and the only electricity in the air will be from the static caused by the over abundance of too much polyester colliding with crimplene. The serving staff has to go through two of these sittings but bring out the baked Alaska with cheery aplomb like it was the first time for everyone.

(La Goulette – Barcelona 491 nm / 909 km)

Friday 13 November – Barcelona

Today we dock in Barcelona - the pick-pocket playground where at least three passengers are subjected to a variety of scams including the Romanian gypsy women with babies who rummage through your bags as you try and look sympathetic; the gang who squirt muck on your head from an apartment above the street then rush down and offer to help clean you up before cleaning you out or the moped riders who drive past and pull off your handbag/watch/camera. I never understand why so many hens, staggers and visitors pile into the place to be over-charged and under served. I suppose it’s all that Gaudi and Guell, seafront and seafood. In the intimidating and windy streets in the old Gothic quarter there is a banner on a balcony saying ‘Stop dealing drugs here’ and ‘Tourists go home’. With the rising cost of eating and drinking in Barcelona and the increasing crime it may not be too long before they heed the message and not return.

(Total distance 2198 nm / 4071 kms)