Across the Ionian Sea

 We are sailing across the clear and calm blue waters of the Ionian Sea without any land or even any other vessels in sight. The captain made his usual midday announcement about our position, passing along the Greek coast which was about 25 sea miles away and still with 725 miles to cover before reaching Port Said. He also repeated his usual warning about washing your hands for 20 seconds after every visit to the loo, and using hand sanitizers at every point where possible to protect against the winter bug of Norovirus, as well as Covid. Ah well, I suppose Covid, like taxes, is always with us. Certainly, there are plenty of easy to handle little hand cleansers dotted all over the ship, particularly near the restaurants, with earnest polite staff urging us to use them.

I have noted that Barclays have finally signalled that they have carried out what was agreed with them on February 16th, namely, that the core of our 2 year Flexible Bond would be renewed on February 28th when it matured and any excess profit from the earlier bond would be transferred to our everyday saver account. However, I had been very concerned about this as it should have registered two days ago. I wanted to be sure that the excess interest would be accessible for us to spend, especially if we would not have a financial buffer to pay off whatever high extra costs we incur on the ship. One problem with this cruising is the poor internet connections preventing us from making the simplest bank transactions.

Another problem is the registering of pictures. Mounting photos for this blog and for my occasional Facebook bulletins is getting increasingly problematic. Currently, I can transfer holidy pictures to my laptop, but my laptop refuses to download any of my pictures. I can still register them as pictures, but I have a problem identifying them as I cannot locate the instruction "to rename". Am working on that now and foregoing other events on the ship. 

Tonight is a Formal Night evening. Albina is still not intending to make an appearance, though she has a sufficient number of cocktail dresses to wear. That very day she had bought herself  a pretty blue and white shawl. She was still complaining that she did not have the right shoes. I decided to make a solo appearance in my dinner jacket in the Borealis Restaurant, just to show the flag. Albina is happy enough to eat upstairs in the View buffet restaurant alone. She even helped me fix the bow tie, after telling me which one to choose. I turned up at the Borealis and sat down alone at my table. I was there but half a minute when an elderly lady came over to me from an adjoining table invited me very generously to sit with her and her husband. The were both retired magistrates from the West Midlands, Mary and Bev. In fact, just 5 days before, Mary had celebrated her 80th birthday and the restaurant staff had made the usual song and dance about it and even preprared them a special breakfast the day after. He was a big figure in the local masonic lodge and they had been on a number of such cruises before. My move at Mary's invitation caused temporary confusion to the staff, especially as I had brought my half finished bottle of red Chilean wife from Albina's birthday, while the older couple had their own bottle of white wine. They served my coq au vin to Bev, and his steak Diane to me. They quickly sorted themselves out, being the professionals that they were.

I popped upstairs back to the cabin to check on how Albina was faring. She seemed happy enough as she had already eaten at the buffet. We watched the surreal drama comedy Jojo Hitler together on our TV. Next, I went upstairs to enjoy another session of a general knowledge quiz. We were all in our finery, and Ranald wore his tartan trousers displaying the colours of the Robertson clan. Helen was in a red dress and Tony wore a bow tie in Welsh colours. We only get a rather dismal 8 answers right out of 15, but the winners got 12. We were put out by a question about which continent covered all four hemispheres of the earth. How can "hemi"-anything mean 4, when by definition it means just 2? It transpired that the answer was Africa, covering north and south of the Equator, and east and west of the Greenwich mean time logitude. Also we all gave the answer about the author of the first English dictionary as Samuel Johnson. Not so, it seems. Robert Cawdrey published a short description of 3000 English words as early as 1604. And who knew that the the country with the largest number of islands was not Scotland or Greece or Indonesia, but Sweden? 

The night still seemed young, people were still wandering around in their formal attire, so I tempted myself upstairs to the Observation Room on Deck 9. There was live music from the Stattus Band (three guys and a girl) and about eight ladies in their sequin dresses dancing. I took a table and ordered a Russian vodka and lemonade.The waiter told me a few minutes later than nobody had ordered a Russian vodka before, as they just ordered the house vodka. So what nationality was the house vodka supposed to be? Smirnoff. As usual not served from the freezer. I just lift my eyes skyward in dismay. Oh, never mind. There was live music from the Stattus Band (three guys and a girl) and about eight ladies in their sequin dresses were jigging about on the dance floor. Mostly I did not recognize them, but the majority wwre here without a husband. A dance floor of ladies without even one male is like a meadow withour buttercups. It looks incomplete. Somebody had to fill the void. After a couple of minutes I felt it my duty to join the ladies on the dance floor, obviously much to their delight apparently, as a couple of them sidled over in my direction, and shadowed my last century dance moves. After all I was still dressed in dinner jacket and bow tie. I danced with them for about twenty minutes and chatted for a few minutes more over my vodka, when the band took a rest. After which I bid them adieu, and made my way back to the cabin.