After breakfast we took a walk around the top deck. Another lovely day, blue skies and a balmy temperature, the ship cutting an iridescent wake through the vastness of the steely blue Pacific. No cares in the world from any onboard, other than what shall choose to do next and more importantly for some, what shall I eat?

Our walk led to the discovery of the climbing wall, we chose not to. We next came across the wave surf machine. 30 000 gallons of water per minute are pumped across a very shallow pool that is built up at the back to form a wave. Passengers use what looks like a snowboard to ride the rushing water like a surfer. Some were more successful than others but it looked like great fun and something I would love to do. But not today, it will have to wait for the emergence of the  regeneration pill (hopefully available on the NHS).

Our morning lecture on how to manipulate people was interesting, but notable because we met our first English couple, they were from Leeds. There is supposed to be 130 Brits on board, but as a lot of Brits who emigrate, keep their British passport, I guess the scarcity is accounted for by those.

Coffee in the cafe gave us an opportunity to practise our new found manipulative skills on an Australian couple we sat with. They certainly worked with the wife, but the husband was not so keen on divulging so much about their family and life and he left when he twigged what was going on. When she eventually left to find him, we knew all about them and she knew nothing of us, but went away thinking we were such a nice interesting couple.

At lunch, we played the game again, this time we came up trumps. Half way through our meal we were joined by another Aussie couple. Reticent at first, but soon warmed to us and were speaking freely about home, family etc. A couple of times they made to leave after their meal but stayed chatting as they felt so comfortable in our presence. I asked them what they had planned for the afternoon and bingo we hit pay dirt. They were Gold Card carriers and members of the Crown and Anchor Club and as such they had been invited to a special showing of the very first prformance of a new ice show at 2pm. Only members were invited and other passengers were not to know. The gave us their invite cards to read and be impressed with. When we left, on our return to the cabin Sue suggested that we attempted to gate crash the show. So that’s what we did.

At 1.55pm we were outside the venue watching the Gold Card carriers filing into the rink handing their invites over to security and  proudly displaying their Gold Cards on a variety of glitzy name tag ropes around their necks. Its a status sign. Sue had a word with with security and with a bit of minor manipulation we were in. One other none GC carrier joined us and surprise, surprise I had seen her earlier at our lecture. Watch out D. Cameron, your job is in jeopardy.

The performance was brilliant. No costumes as in the previous show, just the same skaters but they were dancing to music they listened to and using steps/routines that they had worked out. It was explained at the beginning that all their skating lives they had eaten, breathed and danced everything to the orders of their coaches and this was totally their own work. You could see they were having so much fun when they performed.

Afterwards, Sue found her favourite place on the upper decks near one of the pools to read her book. No idea where it is, every time I have gone to look for her I have failed, the ship is too big. I read mine by the round window in the schooner bar, dead to easy to find.

Later she found me there and we stayed awhile listening to a talented oriental couple play some beautiful music on the violin and acoustic guitar. All the bars on board have musicians playing one sort of music or another and I guess passengers frequent the bar that plays music to their liking. I chose the Schooner bar because it had a lovely view of the sea through large round windows, and it sold beer.

The evening meal was formal so the DJ got brought out and Sue put on her best glad rags. Again we ate alone, the dining room was noticeably low on numbers. The Aussies seem to hate dressing in anything other than shorts and t-shirts and consuming anything that hasn’t come off the barbie. Still, they are lovely people for all that.

After our meal we tried another bar. This one specialised in Karaoke. We retired hurt after three different attempters at murdering well known songs. We moved on to some rather adult entertainment in Studio B. It was a game show called ‘The Quest’ that pushed the boundaries of decency. By good fortune Sue and I were in Team 2 of 6 teams. Suffice it to say we won, but this blog is not the place for any description of the games played.

We were snug in our bed by 12.30am.