Who Wants To Be A Polywog? Not Me!

Thursday 29 March

Colin was feeling slightly better this morning and still seemed eager to go to breakfast. I had just a snack before attending the third and last of my “well-being” classes with Bobby – this one about nutrition. He advocated a diet based on ‘blocks’, which I had seen before – eating a mix of carbohydrates, proteins and fat at each meal, in very small quantities – I am only allowed 9.5 blocks for the whole day and one protein block equals one ounce of chicken! But I he’s probably right – eating loads less must make you lose weight – but it’s very difficult on a cruise.

Colin had been taking advantage of fresh air on the balcony, and seemed to look a little healthier today – despite his sun tan, for the past couple of days he has been very pale. I passed the next hour blogging on the balcony with him - am getting behind again with the days being so full – while Colin watched out for more flying fish – he saw several, but I still missed them.

At midday we had a date on the pool deck (or for us on the jogging track above) to celebrate crossing the equator. We had now traveled 1,650 miles from Rio, with another 1,000 miles to go till we reach land at the Cape Verde Islands, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Rob asked for all “pollywogs” (those who had not crossed the equator before on a ship) to congregate in an area by the pool, covered by a polythene sheet and wet towels – it had to be messy. We had seen the trays of eggs and large vat of something nasty being stowed at the end of the deck! – so decided to watch the fun from above. At 12.10, the captain announced we were just a few nautical minutes from crossing the line. “Into the Hall” from Peer Gynt blared from the speakers, and King Neptune, together with his “wife”, doctor and harem marched around the jogging track and down to the poolside. The “harem” turned out to be staff who had not crossed the equator on a ship before. One by one they were brought by the doctor to kneel in front of the King, made to kiss some large grey scaled fish (looked a bit like steely eyed barramundi) on the mouth, sometimes up to five times, before being “crowned with eggs and shells and vegetable “soup”. The recipients were led away to the pool, where they were able to jump in and “clean up” – not sure I would want to go swimming too soon after this event. Sadly, once it was the passengers’ turn, it began to rain – we had seen heavy rain clouds all around us earlier, but we seemed to be sailing through the middle – now they caught up with us. There was quite a strong breeze and the temperature seemed to plummet as we all got wet, so the ceremony was completed as quickly as possible. But the sun came out again later and temperatures rose back to the top 20’s C. Apparently the water is a few degrees warmer than the air temperature – it doesn’t look it as we gaze at the vast expanse of sapphire blue rolling waves, which turn an angry steely grey when it rains.

It was now time for lunch – definitely got to be a light meal – and on entering the Terrace Café, I met the four men from the Quiz team – they wanted to be introduced to Colin and ask how he was faring. They also wanted to know more about our trip – they obviously travel a lot – well cruise anyway - as they were aboard the sister ship “Regatta” at Christmas and have another cruise booked for the autumn. Chatting so much left little time for eating, before we had to be at the bridge class. Today’s lesson was about “conventional minors” – that’s clubs and diamonds in bridge speak. The game is getting complicated now, trying to remember what messages the bids mean to your partner, and when actually playing at the end of the session, the hands in no way resemble those used as examples – but we are getting there slowly.

After class we had a few spare minutes before it was time to present ourselves at the Trivia Quiz – Colin came and aided our team today and we managed second place – again we discarded a couple of correct answers. Question: in which decade did the world population exceed 4 billion? We collected our points at the end – we are beginning to accumulate a small collection now – and spent a while chatting to Colin and Maureen. It was then time for me to do my exercises before we readied ourselves for dinner. I popped up to the Polo Grill (walking up and down half a dozen flights of stairs is supposed to be good exercise too) and made a reservation for later. There were a couple of men in the gym tonight, but they were doing very advanced exercises – nothing like my simple movements. I did manage to cycle for thirty minutes and covered six miles, but I was a bit wobbly by the time I got off although I blame my stumbling on the way back to the room on the boat as it was still lurching.

Colin was feeling quite a lot better tonight, but still wouldn’t trust himself to drink anything alcoholic, so I was still relegated to glasses of wine, as opposed to a bottle. Colin chose Caesar salad as a light dish to start, followed by rack of lamb chops, which came very pink and he thought was the best lamb he had eaten since being away. I chose prawns to start, with roast chicken as my main course, which, although a “signature” dish of the chef, was disappointing – slightly dry and unexciting. We still cannot manage dessert. There was a clarinet concert as the main entertainment tonight, and we didn’t want to take part in the sing-a-long at the piano in the Martini bar, so we decided to return to the room to see if there was a suitable film, which didn’t mean staying up till 01.00. There was nothing, so we went to bed and read.