Back to basics

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<strong style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Tuesday 27^th March 2012:

It doesn’t seem possible but one month from today we shall be docking in Southampton so that means we’ve been away for 2½ months and already have 27,250 miles under our feet. But still a fair few to go so no need to panic … yet!

We broke our promise today and didn’t go to the gym, even though today is a sea day. But we walked so far in Hong Kong that our feet are still hurting and it’s now 6 in the evening after doing next to nothing all day. Our dunk in the pool was hardly a replacement for a workout but we couldn’t face it today. Must try harder tomorrow!

We did walk out of a lecture this morning though. It read well but was not great in the flesh. It was billed as an historical perspective on the Dunkirk expedition but it made us very uncomfortable. The guy was talking about us – the Brits – and them – largely the Germans, Russians and Japanese. And guess what? Apparently “us” were great and “theym were all bad. When your fellow passengers are made up of lots of Germans, Russians and Japanese, it felt really wrong. Facts I’m fine with; judgemental opinions I wasn’t.

But this afternoon we had a great lecture from a chap by the name of Professor Richard Holdaway. He’s a big cheese at the Rutherford Appleton Space Laboratory in Oxford and he was excellent. Today he talked about many of the ways we benefit from the billions spent on space research. He also talked about what that money is being spent on and reckons the next men to walk on the moon will be Chinese in 2020. We are both children of the space age and remember sitting up to watch the first moon landings. I wonder what the next ones will be like.

We’re off for some posh nosh tonight – not that we’ve exactly slummed it anywhere so far! We’re booked in to an Asian à la carte restaurant on the ship and if it’s anything like as good as the Italian one we went to a couple of weeks ago we are in for a treat.

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