This year saw us off on yet another cruise to celebrate (nominally at least) Annette’s 60th birthday. I let her chose and despite me dropping heavy hints about how lovely the River Plate is at this time of the year, and the natural beauty (full of penguins) of the Falklands Islands, she finally selected the Caribbean. I thought we missed a chance here to do a weeks cruise and then spend a week on one of the islands exploring and swimming in the clear warm waters, but perhaps Annette was right for once as it transpired there wasn’t all that much to do on any of the islands but, the beaches and seas were brilliant.
So, we selected the holiday to suit our needs, fairly quick get away as we were both sick of the freezing cold wet British weather. It is surprisingly difficult to understand the holiday brochures of most cruise companies; Fred Olsen, for example are not exactly cheap but, they have the cheek to expect you to make your own arrangements to fly out to the port of departure, which by and large means the flight costs more than the cruise. Not a big fan of Thomson holidays but, they did do two cruises of the smaller Eastern islands at a reasonable price and we stayed on the same ship for the two weeks so there was no more transfers once on board until it came time to leave.
We booked up at Co-op travel because as an employee Annette gets a good discount (10-15%) and they are generally quite helpful. We got doubly lucky because the manageress of the Sedgely branch wanted to transfer to funerals and so they started talking about “dead people!” As it was an eight hour flight the assistant advised us to pay the extra for the better class seats with more leg room and inside toilet. This I thought was a splendid idea and so did Annette when she realised she got free drinks with the upgrade.
I had blackmailed Adam into looking after the dog and left enough food and instructions with him to take care of her so it was pretty much all sorted. I just had to work like a lunatic to get all the photocopying and planning done for my lessons while I was away and pack my bag. Of course the bag packing was like a regimental kit inspection; Annette would not be seen dead with me wearing that! 
Then came the ironing! Apparently, crumpled up t-shirts are not acceptable to the human race 🙂
So the day of departure arrived, a flight from Birmingham at a reasonable time and as we had checked in on-line we did not have to hang around for hours before boarding. We turned up about forty five minutes before scheduled take off to find two young Thomson cruise women waiting to book us in and show us where to dump the cases. We were the last on their list. It all went incredibly smooth, top marks for that Thomson and the seats lived up to their promise, being quite comfortable and roomy although we were seated one in front of the other as I refused point blank to pay yet another bounty on the upgrade price to have seats side by side! I do feel this is a big con making people pay extra to sit next to each other when clearly people travelling together must have been allocated seats at the same time.
Anyway, it meant I got poked in the bag most of the way there for various misdeeds, such as the heinous crime of not asking for vodka with my coke to pass back to Annette, or simply for an update on some trivial matter. Worse still I was next to a bloke that wanted to ‘talk’. Not that I’m against conversation but, not the sort of chatter you expect old women to pass over the garden fence.
Mercifully he gave up when they switched on the in flight film and tv shows. Not a bad mix but, awful selection of music with the exception of the Beatles and Neil Diamond and Mr Diamond was removed on the return flight! The journey was long but, not overly tedious with them serving drinks and some awful pretentiously bland but, trendy meals. I remembered to ask for Vodka with everything and dutifully passed the alcohol back to Annette as soon as I was able. It was quite a smooth flight apart from the time I went to the loo when they decided to lamp on the ‘set belts’ sign and a stewardess told me not to be too long and hurry back to my seat. Well there was only one answer to that: 
Eventually we arrived at Barbados and were greeted by the usual over enthusiastic tour rep who hustled us onto the coach to take us to the ship. Very pleased to know they collected all the luggage and delivered it down to the cabin for us. Temperature was enough to make me take off my coat. We walked up the gang plank to the music of the shipboard ‘Los Lobos’
They were playing a strange mix of Mexican rock and roll and calypso music and on-board they proved to be well worth a listen. I kept Annette in check by threatening to tell them it was her birthday as they made a point of serenading the victim with their very own ‘Happy birthday’. I don’t think it was going to be such a bad holiday after all.