To the Black Sea - Leixoes Page

A reduced breakfast & lunch. The ship was not due into Leixoes until 10:30 but was nearly an hour early. However, there was little useful to do in the morning, as the tour was due to muster at 13:00 & we always go a bit early. There was a tour of Porto, a bit of a waste of time for us.

Then, the boat trip. Until late in the tour, the light was good & it was a bit cooler than it has been. The boat trip was very good but the Delaforce sign seems to have disappeared. There was a stroll, steep in places to & from the boat.

While waiting for the bus, there was a downpour while I was talking to a South Shields Councillor, who said their new MP replacing David Milliband, was rubbish & wanted to support Owen Smith, although the local party was pro-Jeremy.. We went back to Leixoes a quicker way & were back just before ‘all guests aboard’. There was a Chinese Buffet in the Secret Garden, so we ate there. The show was a variety one, so we had the three useless entertainers & the useful one, Anthony Stewart-Lloyd, sang rubbish, so I was under-gruntled.

Saturday 5th November 2016 At sea

Walking round the deck was inhibited for a while by the crew emergency exercise, so in-between, I edited the last slides. The choir sang after lunch & were not bad but not as good as the one 5 years ago with Avis in it. They combined quite good songs, Irving Berlin & “My Favourite Things” with crap from Les Mis & Phantom of the Opera. Paul Roach gave his last law talk & I signed him up for my U3A class, although he lives in Lowestoft. It was a formal evening, so glad rags on. The show was the crew & very good they were.

Sunday 6th November 2016 At sea

Quite a heavy sea during the night, which died down somewhat as the Sun came up. However, there was a strong wind & I only managed three circuits of the deck before deciding to write up this diary in InDesign & add phtos. There were talks by Geof about Henry the Navigator, who said at the end that someone had told him something interesting about Greensleeves (me). Paul gave a scary talk about the Bribery Act 2010, which was a bit of overkill by Labour, as it would have made our business unviable. There is no way small firms can check if foreign clients are corrupt or not. The fines & prison sentences are so swingeing. he called it a company killer & it makes Brexit look even more stupid. At dinner, Pam outed herself as a one-time member of PAT (Professional Association of Teachers), which I described as the Pathetic Association of Tories & Valerie said she crossed picket lines. In the ‘comment’ section of the cruise questionnaire, I put, “I use ‘Prof’on the booking form to try to save us from buffoons & lower middle class Tories on our dinner table. This failed on this cruise”. The show was the show team & quite good.