Our Cabin

We've got a lovely cabin on Deck 9 next to the really posh people.  It's quite big with a couch and two armchairs in the sitting area.  It has an enormous bed with space underneath for a whole family of illegal immigrants.  The bed is surrounded by large mirrors, which, like the bathroom windows on the Braemar, indicates continuing confusion at Fred Olsen about the habits of their over-60s market sector.  As usual the furniture on the balcony is barking.  I'm now convinced that Fred Olsen's balcony furniture procurement must be done by one person who's as mad as a bag of ferrets.  This time, we have two small chairs and a tiny table on quite a large balcony.  The chairs are based on the design of an Olde English ducking stool in which comfort, as a design parameter, came a long way behind the ability to withstand a good soaking. 

My only other complaint is about the energy saving lighting.  A few years ago I suspect that at a Philips Lighting board meeting the M.D. said "We've spent millions on developing compact fluorescent fittings and they're still crap.  Start manufacture,  stress the energy saving aspects and we'll try to persuade the EEC to make them compulsory."  Compact fluorescents are the ony source of lighting in our bathroom.  You can't see a thing when you go in and then the fittings slowly brighten to reveal if it's a hit or a miss.

We've also had a spot of bother with the toilet.  The first time I used it my sixth sense for building defects told me that the flushing mechanism wasn't sucking like it should.  Normally the suction in ships' vacuum systems is viscious and, to stop you losing any bits you are fond of, the flush button is hidden behind the toilet lid.  Occasionally very large ladies are unlucky enough to bend the lid backwards and cause an accidental flush.  You will know this has happened when you hear the medical emergency 'Alpha Code' over the public address system and see the ship's doctor running down the corridor with a tyre lever and a can of WD40.

Anyway, our's stopped sucking, a man came, it worked then it stopped working again, and so on.  Playing Russian Roulette with a toilet is not as dangerous as using a revolver, but it can take the edge off a romantic evening.  Eventually, I went to Reception to explain to the nice young girl that we were both going to have a more enjoyable cruise when our toilet was fixed.  That's how the Malaysian maintenance man came to be in our cabin at 11:30pm when he should have been watching football in the crew's quarters.  He told me that he could not fit a new flucking varve at this time of night.  Because of my technical knowledge I realised that he was probably referring to the 'flushing valves' that are used on drainage intallations that don't have local water cisterns.  He opted for a quick fix which involved sticking what appeared to be the pool vacuum cleaner down the toilet and sucking for five minutes.  It all turned out OK because the next morning the varve was changed and I hadn't wanted to go swimming anyway.

Dave
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