Southampton
14/9/03 7:33
Sitting on the top deck, having just finished packing, I thought about
how I would describe Southampton if it were a foreign port. The answer
is that it's something of a dichotomy. In one direction there is
peaceful morning scene of yachts swinging serenely at their moorings an
hour after sunrise, backed by green forests. Fawley Refinery only adds
to this picture - it's far enough away that it's just a forest of
shadowy spires in the distance, looking quite mystical.
In every other direction, however, is a busy port. One side are the
cranes of the container port with it's fields of steel boxes. In front
of this is a pair of car carriers (which, as always, are incredibly ugly
ships) and their inevitable car parks, which stretch around and merge
into the car parks full of cruise passengers. On the next side are grain
silos and then the city of Southampton and finally, at the other end of
town, the huge and ugly outline of the Golden Princess.
No, there wasn't a point to all that, I'm just sitting in the sun
watching a scene that I may well be seeing for the last time, and
feeling descriptive. This will probably give way to boredom fairly
soon...
On another note, I'm sure there must be potential for some great
abstract photography in this ship's funnel. I've never been able to
figure out the right angle though. For anyone interested, there should
be a picture somewhere around http://www.pocruises.com/ships/oceana/
though if you don't use IE, good luck... For a sense of scale, if you
have long legs you can just about walk up and down the slats at the
front and back - I've seen seamen doing this. (lucky people - it looks
like fun!)
posted by Simon Sunday, September 14, 2003
Somewhere off Cape Trafalger
12/9/03 0:17
Well, I'm on my way back to Southampton for the last time on this
contract. I do feel relief - I'm ready to get off now, and it's only
been two months on this ship (although four months away from home). I
think that is partly because I didn't have long enough off inbetween,
and perhaps because this time there was no period of novelty before the
job set in. I'm not yet bored with the job on here - I still care about
this ship, which is more than I did about Aurora when I left after seven
months. So my wearyness must be with ships in general.
After Sunday I have three and a half months off. This is a long time,
and I will need to find other work to avoid spending too much of my
savings. But it's needed. I've a lot of thinking to do, and quite a lot
of relaxing... which is not something I'm good at.
posted by Simon Sunday, September 14, 2003
Meditteranian Sea
10/9/03 10:29
Well, last night we had the first bit of heavy weather that I've
experienced on this ship. I found out something: I always thought that
I'd sleep through most weather. What I know now is that I'll sleep
through most weather provided by body is oriented fore and aft. For the
first time on this ship I have a bunk that runs across the ship, and I
couldn't sleep much!
This ship is really not designed for open seas and heavy weather.
Everything from the hull shape (she doesn't pitch or roll, she lurches
and bounces, unpredictably!), to the lack of handrails along some of the
walls, down to teh details of the catches on the wardrobe doors which
are not strong enough to stop them banging open and closed and
disgorging contents across my floor!
Fortunately, out of habit, any expensive or heavy equipment in my cabin
is blu-taked to the the shelf... the wardrobe is now held closed by a
Biro wedged through the handles.
posted by Simon Thursday, September 11, 2003
9/9/03 13:05
How's this for comedy management?
In the past, at the end of the month or before leaving the ship, I used
to have to complete my timesheet, sign it, and hand it in.
Now it's changed so that I have to complete it, sign it, hand it in,
wait for somebody to enter it into a copmuter, recieve a two-page
printed version of the same information, and sign the front of that to
say that I still agree with it.
The upshot is that I'm now required to hand in my timesheet at least two
days before I leave in order to allow time for it to be entered into the
computer and signed the second time before I get off. So I'm expected to
write fictitous working hours for those last few days, as I have no idea
when I'll be working.
Hmm. This would be a case of the procedures making the final product
pointless, then...
posted by Simon Thursday, September 11, 2003
I've found those missing posts, and the problem that caused them seems to have gone away... I've inserted them in sequence, so it's worth re-reading from the start of September.
I've discovered that when I send in posts by email they appear with the time stamp of when they arrive at the server, rather than when they were written - as a number may be queued on my palm and get sent at once, this may mean that they appear in the wrong order. I'll try to bring this to peoples' attention, but in the meantime those that I send by email will ahve a timestamp in teh text, which will be correct.
posted by Simon Monday, September 08, 2003
7/9/03
Well that was a strange but good afternoon...
I couldn't climb the cathedral dome as I'd hoped; I couldn't work out
whether this was because it is Sunday or because of maintenance works.
Whilst ascertaining this I met three random girls holidaying in Florence
who were also trying to climb the dome. We were able, however, to cllmb
the adjacent clock tower, from which there was a nice view, and so I
spent a pleasant hour doing this in company.
I then returned to my tour group at the alloted time, and discovered
that one of my pax used to work for National Grid!
BTW, ignore the dates and times that appear with my messages. I'm now
sending posts in by email, and for some reason the system uses the time
that the email arrives rather than the time it was written. Which is
stupid, because it will frequently sit on my Palm for a day or two
inbetween. Posts will probably be in the right order, but there is no
guarentee as if they're queued together they'll be sent close together
and may not necessarily arrive in the right order... I'll start to put
dates into the text.
posted by Simon Monday, September 08, 2003
Florence
Or, I should say, Firenze. I don't know why English has such a
completely different name for it.
My initial impression was of a horribly crowded place in the middle of
the tourist season, with some impressive architecture visible only to
the tall. Then I went away from the cathedral and the famous bridge (the
best views of which are not from *on* the bridge anyway), and everything
changed.
I wanderded pretty streets with centuries-old shuttered windows, found
churches with the same architectural styles as the cathedral on a
smaller scale (why is it that the Florentines of the 19th Century only
found it necessary to decorate the front facades of most of these
buildings?), and ate much Italian ice cream, all with only a few
tourists in sight.
I'm sitting writing this in the basement of a yuppie-style cafe near the
station, where they took a perfectly nice-looking slice of cold pizza
and did something nasty to it in a microwave (it seems that yuppie-style
cafes are the same anywhere), and steeling myself to go back to the
cathedral, because I really do want to climb the dome before I rejoin my
coach for the 90-min drive back to Livorno and the ship.
posted by Simon Monday, September 08, 2003
Interesting...
The Captain made an announcement an hour ago that due to a mixup with
our berth in Livorno we'll be swaping the order of the next two ports.
The only catch (apart from everybody, and the tours dept in particular,
scrabbling madly to change things) is that he didn't see fit to
broadcast the announcement to crew areas. So there will be a lot of
confused people tomorrow morning...! :-)
posted by Simon Sunday, September 07, 2003
Monte Carlo
Well... a famous place with many interestinly shaped lampposts, which I
suspect will make far too many very uninteresting photos.
I didn't actually get as faras the casino, as it was the other side of
the harbour and I Couldn't Be Bothered. ;-) Instead I spent a couple of
hours in the Oceanographic Museum and aquarium, and had a quick look at
the cathedral (nice exterior, rather boring interior)
I forgot to mention while talking about Barcelona that there were six
cruise ships in (!!! - we were about half a mile further down the quay
than usual), all with tours running. The only non-annoying aspect of
this was the amusement of finding that Festival name their tours after
fruits (or maybe colours) - the sight of people walking around with
large stickers saying "Lemon" (bright yellow) or "Plum" (not bright
yellow) was chuckleworthy ;-)
posted by Simon Sunday, September 07, 2003
Barcelona
This is the fifth time I've been here since I started cruising (and so
not counting school trips and such like), but the first time I've got
beyond the main shopping area!
This morning I went on a tour entitled 'Antonio Gaudi Tour', which went
to various places designed by... well, you can probably guess who.
Gaudi's odd shapes are a black and white photographer's dream. I like
the architecture, and could quite see myself living in one of those
houses. The only trouble might be finding furniture to fit... We only
saw the outside of the Sagrada Familia (the enourmous half-finished
church that is on all the postcards of Barcelona), and so in the
afternoon I dragged a friend over there on the Metro to look inside.
Which really wasn't worth 8EUR, although it doesn't seem quite as bad if
you think of it as a contribution to the continuing building work. We
raced back on the Metro and nearly missed the last shuttle bus... but
made it.
In three days we're in Livorno, which is the place from which to visit
Florence, but I'm still trying to figure out how to get there - all of
the tours get back too late as I have a rehearsal, and apparently taxis
are exhirbotant (well, it is a 90 min drive). I'm hoping there's a train
or something... Otherwise I may have to give that one up and visit Pisa
instead, which is much closer.
Tonight I have Paul Daniels performing in my theatre... I've never met
him before, so it should be interesting.
posted by Simon Saturday, September 06, 2003
FROM 02/09:
It seems our Trumpet player resigned this turnaround day with zero
notice, and walked off. Which means that the shows now sound a little
odd...!
The ship feels very quiet now - it's the end of summer holidays, and the
number of kids on board has dropped from ~350 to ~50. The mess is quiet
too, as most of the youth staff have disappeared!
This cruise has three tender ports, which is not good. On the plus side,
this means we're going to some places that are not big cities, which can
be nice. Livorno is visited in order to run tours to Florence and Pisa
(yes, you can do both in one day on one tour...), but unfortunately I
have to start work about half an hour before any of the tours get back.
I shall have to try to make my own way into Florence - apparently there
is a train.
posted by Simon Tuesday, September 02, 2003