A sea day

Friday 25th November

I was in no hurry to get up. It was comfortable lying down. I finally surfaced about 11.15 and headed off for a light brunch. I had arranged to meet Jenny at the dance lesson so I leant against a pillar (having been warned not to sit too much until my back recovered) and watched the Waltz lesson until it ended.

We sat in the Lido and chatted over a drink, but talked for too long and too intensely. Over-concentration is bad for my M.E. I ended up exhausted and had to go to my room and lie down with a book for the rest of the afternoon. In fact I was still not right by the next day – just verging on a concentration headache.

I wasted a bit of time on the internet. The connection was not good and dropped out completely. That meant I could not even log out! You have to be connected to log out. Meanwhile the system thought I was logged in and was taking that time off my free package (I have 480 minutes because I am at the Diamond Tier from taking so many voyages on Cunard). I found that I could log out down at Reception. I then chased around from floor 1 to floor 3 then floor 2 and finally back to floor 1 to find the internet manager, who credited me with 21 minutes of internet time back. She also closed down some of my open internet pages, saying that would speed things up in future. Some of them I had been keeping on purpose, as it was my only record of the site names! It would have been more helpful if she had closed down programmes like my games instead.

It was the Britannia cocktail party at 5.15 so I had to rush to be ready. I wore my grey pants suit. Jenny and I met up with Frances. I introduced Jenny to strawberry daiquiris. I managed to drink one during the party and get a second one to take in to dinner. I much prefer the daiquiris on Queen Elizabeth to those on the Celebrity ships. I suspect there is far less alcohol in them, which suits me better.

After dinner I went back to my room. I was in bed reading by 8.30. I could not keep my eyes open so dozed from about 9 until 10, at which point I was wide awake. I took a sleeping tablet but still did not sleep again until after midnight. It was rather a disturbed night.

Jenny told me the next day that I did not miss much. She had danced quite a bit in the early session up in the Yacht Club but only had one dance in the main session in the evening. Frances was just as unlucky. The Hosts spent a lot of time dancing with the same ladies.