Nearly at Dubai

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<strong style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Tuesday 10^th April 2012:

Our afternoons on this spell of 3 days at sea are turning into a lovely, relaxing routine of swimming, sun bathing and reading. We are nearly out of the tropics now so the awful humidity has gone but the lovely warmth has stayed. It is absolutely perfect swimming pool weather.

Our morning was more mixed with one good thing and one not so good thing. And I’m sorry to repeat myself from earlier in the trip but Martin Bell’s lecture was the not so good thing. He was a brilliant reporter in his prime and today’s talk was billed as “Lessons of the Vietnam War”. How he managed to justify in his own head weaving in some more of his awful poems is utterly beyond me and in his haste to plug his book he forgot to weave in any lessons of the Vietnam War. He showed a few news film clips of himself doing what he said was a bad job of reporting the war but then, apart from saying he should have included shots of both sides, he didn’t say what the bad job was. We’ve been very disappointed with his lectures but …

… the good bit of the day was the film <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">My Week With Marilyn. Full credit to Cunard for showing some very up-to-date movies and full credit to the people involved with this one. It was absolutely lovely and as it’s based on diaries kept at the time, I presume it shows a true and very different side to Marilyn Monroe. Most enjoyable.

Other good news today is that the ship’s laundry has found my shorts! Old and tattie they may be but they have been much loved – at least by me.

Evenings have become more interesting yesterday and today as we get closer and closer to troubled waters. As I write, we are soon to enter the Straits of Hormuz and the combined threats of war, terror and pirates has noticeably increased security on board. For the previous couple of evenings we’ve all been asked to close the curtains on our cabins but they’ve kept the decks lit. Not any more. They’ve even switched the lights off the deck mounted clock so we really are a big dark shape moving as quickly as possible through the night now.

We won’t be able to blog tomorrow night but worry not – this is a planned leave of absence as we go camping in the sands of the Arabian desert. A camel farm, camp fire, belly dancer, 4-wheel drive through the dunes and then tents under a jet black sky are all getting us very excited about Dubai. There are only 15 people going on the tour so it definitely feels a bit special. Will tell all in 2 days.

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