And another 3 Days

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And finally, a slideshow of some photos ! Hurrah !


Oct 31st Halloween....

Oh my goodness the ship was awash with small ghouls and witches all trick or treating and running amok in the technical bowels of the QM2. My 4 year old grandson W told me very excitedly that 'I have seen the big man on the bridge thing and he was wearing a hat' ? A wizard hat I wonder, and was he driving the boat by magic wand?

The Playzone Halloween Party was a triumph of E numbers and improbably coloured cookies with hundreds and thousands which were like an explosion in a nuclear reactor or a Star Trek Warp Core! They were, however still being greatly enjoyed at 10pm that night and as a pre breakfast snack the next morning!

We adults had a great day, and went our separate ways for peace and quiet. I had a gorgeous coffee in Sir Samuel's Bar along with an Alsace Apple Tart with an unbelievably crunchy and sugary top, followed by another gorgeous coffee and a majestic giant profiterole. This may sound very calorific, and indeed it was, but it was the first time in the entire cruise when I had enough 'peace time' to do this, so I was not going to allow any guilt to penetrate the bliss! Staring at the waves, gently rolling along, I forgot my duff leg, naughty children, endless Disney films and being wakened at 6am with tumbling children, and revelled in a moment of my usual cruise itinerary!

I could Mastermind in Disney movies now. Wow!

Monday Nov 1st

We docked in Brooklyn New York at 5am ish - not that I was there to see you understand! We were up at 7.15 to shower, breakfast and vacate the cabin by 8.30am, then much to my delight, we were given tickets for a New York coach tour, lunch stop and shopping before a transfer to JFK Airport for our 6.45pm flight home.

I say 'delight' because I had no idea it came as part of the bargain! I had been dreading a long stint at the airport with children rampaging and exhausted before we even boarded the plane, but it was not so !

The coach and our guide who was a strange mixture of US and Dutch and whilst vedry knowledgable, pronounced words in such a way that we had fun deciphering exactly what he meant. Our first stop was Ground Zero. I had not been before, even though I have been in New York for holiday and work a number of times since 9/11, so it was very interesting. The children were a little perplexed, and I was lost for words when W said to me as we arrived at the building next to the actual site, 'Seanmhair, what exactly happened here?'. How do you explain it to a 4 year old without minimising the horror, or scaring him to death and refusing to get on the plane later in the day? I did my best.

We had a lunch stop at the South Sea Port, a commercial and rather touristy old port revamped for we visitors, but lunch was fine, and we all ate from different food stops. The children chose the inevitable Pizza and I had a Teriakyi Chicken from the Japanese stall, which was delicious if rather large, so in the end we pooled our gargantuam plates and tried something of everything!

After a stop at a gift shop, where many 'last dollars' were spent on noisy and luminous toy versions of NYPD Police cars which were purchased by the smalls, and then taken on the coach, where they proceeded to annoy the other passengers, until S took control and confiscated the afore mentioned vehicles, to the death throes of temper and tears. Children are majestic in their dramatic talents are they not. We drove through China Town, Greenwich Village and Little Italy before we headed on to JFK and Virgin Airlines.

Tuseday Nov 2nd

It was a painless and very short flight home - just 5 hours and a few minutes..............and fell, still almost asleep into out taxi back to Petworth.

The resilient children and S went off to school and work respectively, as S though it would turn their days around more quickly. I, however spent the day drifting between snooze, wakefulness and coma until school finished and 2 very very tired bodies managed a plate of beans on toast and fell to sleep with knives and forks in hand, to sleep the sleep of the dead for the next 15 hours.

I drove to Yorkshire the next day after depositing two much more sparky babes at school, and arrived at J's by 6pm.

Tomorrow, I am 'nunning' once more, at Stanbrook Abbey, Wass.

It feels good to be back in the saddle, and I slept for the first time in 17 days in a bed larger than a under nourished mariner's bunk.

Aaagh............................

PS I have no idea if there is WiFi at the Abbey, so it may not be until the weekend that I can regale you with more 'Tales of Lampard' !