Rain?

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Saturday 18th February:

Phew, we are out of the Tropics so the temperature has crashed all the way down to the high 70s! It even rained a bit this afternoon but as we were already in the swimming pool it didn't really affect anything.

Today has been a normal sea day with the usual rigours of breakfast, lecture, snooze, lunch, swim, snooze, swim again and just manage to cram in one more snooze before dinner.

This evening we had one of those really out-dated events that Cunard places so much store by and that was the Captain's cocktail party. Having had all the day time activities it's quite a challenge to haul your body through the palaver of layering on make-up, bling and evening dress. And then you join a formal line before finding out if you are shoved in front of the First Engineer, Hotel Director and Head Chef or, holy of holies, in front of the Captain. I think we must have scrubbed up OK tonight because we got picked out of the line for the Captain himself. He is a man with a very distinctive personal style which was best ripped to shreds by one of the visiting comedians. But the best bit was the fact that once you have duly bowed and scraped, you get handed a glass of rather nice bubbly and a plate of blinis with caviar piled nicely high. We've made a couple of friends on board so we joined them and managed to scam ourselves quite a lot of extra bubbly and nibbles. And then there is lots of wonderful people-watching to be done. I lost track of what tonight's ball is supposed to be about but if the posh people are anything to go by it is blatant branding and stupid hats. Oh, and for the guy who looks a dead ringer for a circus ring master, the stupid outfits are not restricted solely to the ladies!

And talking of circuses, the friends we've made here are a great couple. He used to work as an investment banker for Barclays in the city. When he took early retirement he got offered a very odd job: managing Zippo's Circus for a year while Zippo needed to take his eye off the ball to get divorced. Miles tells us that when he had meetings with either the bank or the Health & Safety police, he would don a pin striped suit and everyone assumed he must be important and fully in charge. He just made sure he had people near him who knew the business of circuses and he got away with all that he needed to. This may provide hope for the rest of us who are still employed in the banking fraternity!

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