Blog 77. Who Fancies a Cruise?

On the face of it, Jane’s request was quite reasonable: could I make the breakfast smoothie tomorrow morning while she was exercising, so that everything could be ready for when she came down?  Her supporting instructions were comprehensive, exhaustive even: she had prepared all the ingredients and all I had to do was pour them into the liquidiser with 300ml of milk and some spices (jars on the counter) according to the recipe (also on counter), then blitz.  Before we went to bed she repeated the above instructions and underlined them metaphorically.  She even started to read out the recipe before I stopped her:
“Yes, yes, whatever.  I‘ve got all that.  Even I can follow a recipe Jane”, I said.
The next morning, when I went to make the tea at the usual un-Godly hour before dawn, I switched on the ice machine (ice cubes to chill the smoothie) and glanced at the recipe book, helpfully propped open by two spice jars: no problem, a piece of cake.
The minor ripple in the space time continuum began when I came downstairs, fully dressed, ready to embark on this exciting culinary exercise while Jane was hosing herself down in the shower and bracing herself for the daily door-propping-up manoeuvre that dominates her leg exercises.  I looked at the recipe book: 
“Take half a cucumber…”, it started. But then I remembered that she had done all the preparation already.  So I opened the Main Fridge and searched: no, there were no ready-assembled ingredients with a cucumber in there…I then went to the Auxiliary Fridge and searched there: nope, nothing there either…I wondered where she kept the cucumbers and pulled out the chopping board (forcefully labelled Vegetables Only in stern writing after that time when I prepared a fruit salad on the onion board).  Then I realised that I was reading the wrong recipe: it was not the Green Smoothie that I was supposed to be doing, but the Mango Smoothie (bottom of page).  I put away the chopping board hastily and started a second search pattern in the two fridges.  I could find no pre-prepared ingredients.  There was a tray with mixed unidentified fruit and half an orange that looked promising, and a bowl of cut-up pineapple, but no other candidates.  Tentatively, I removed the tray of fruit, but thought I should page the oracle to provide some helpful feedback that, contrary to assurances, the pre-prepared ingredients were not, in fact there.  I called the Head Chef on Alexa.  The conversation went something like this:
“Are you there?  Hello?”
“Yes?”, was the somewhat terse reply.
“These ingredients: there are no pre-prepared ingredients in either fridge”.
“Yes there are”.
“No there aren’t”.
“They’re in the Main Fridge in a porcelain bowl”.
“No, I’ve looked in there and pulled everything out.  Definitely no fruit apart from this tray of half an orange and other things, and a bowl of pineapple”.
There was a thump from upstairs (as if someone had just lost their balance) followed by an uneven clumping noise that suggested that a poltergeist was coming down the stairs.  The kitchen door swung open to reveal Jane, still in her knickers, muttering with growing volume,
“What did I say to you?”
I drew breath to reply.
” I said everything was in a bowl ready”, she continued before I could speak.
” All you had to do was add milk and spices.  You Never, Ever, Listen”.
The last sentence was set in italics and bold for emphasis.
I was standing with the Main Fridge door open holding the tray of obscure fruit and I pointed out, confidently this time, that there was, quite definitely, no bowl of prepared fruit.  Easing me to one side she reached in and took out what I had thought had been the bowl of pineapple chunks.
“Here”, she said, taking away the tray of fruit that I held in the other hand.  “All it needs is milk and spices.  It’s all prepared.  It’s all in there”
“You never, ever, listen” was her parting shot as she stomped back upstairs.
I looked at the bowl of yellow fruit.  I still thought it looked like pineapple, such assessment being driven by the fact that I thought a mango was green (which it is – on the outside).  I placed the bowl on the counter and re-read the recipe. 
“Add the juice of half an orange”, it said.  “Ah ha”, I thought, “I can do this”: only a minute ago I had seen just such half an orange in the Main Fridge.  There was an orange squeezer conveniently drying on the draining board and so I set to work.
“Add two centimetres of root ginger”, continued the recipe.  Easy, I thought, I even know what it looks like.  I opened the Auxiliary Fridge and there were three twigs of the stuff. 
“Oh, we’re on a roll here”, I thought, but which one to use: the oldest perhaps?  Better check.  I called Jane again on Alexa (getting good at this),
“Hello, are you there?”, I said in mollifying, oleaginous voice.
“Yes”, said a world weary voice, grunting as if propping up a door.
“I’ve found the root ginger”, I said, not without a certain pride in my initiative. “Which one would you like me to use?”.
“What did I say to you?”
“Errm….”
“What did I say to you?  I said EVERYTHING is already in the bowl: the ginger, the zest, the mango, the lot.  All you have to do is add the milk and spices!”.
“So I don’t need to add any ginger…?” I said in my little boy voice.
“NO!”
“Right. Right.   Sorry to have bothered you”.  There was another thump upstairs as if someone had fallen over again.
I looked thoughtfully at the freshly squeezed orange juice. 
“So I won’t need that then”, I decided, “best get rid of it and clean up the evidence before she comes down”.  So I drank it off and just managed to get the squeezer washed and cleaned before she appeared for the final time in all her awful majesty.  There are no prizes for what she said,
“You Never, Ever, Listen”. 
No dear.  Peace be upon you.

As a footnote, the smoothie was delicious.  The next day I heard her rummaging in the Main Fridge muttering, 
“I could have sworn I left half an orange in here…”, 
but I was all right: I had buried the orange peel deep under some smelly rubbish in the bin where she would never find it.

Of course, we are still in lockdown and daily deaths from Covid are still greater than April last year, currently 1,401 in the last 24 hours.  Positive results of tests are still plummeting for the country as a whole, however, and the time lag between infections and deaths seems to be coming into play so that daily hospital admissions and fatalities may be flattening.  Inoculations are continuing apace, currently at 400,000 a day, and 5.4 million doses have been administered to date.  Almost all the over 80s in the UK have now been done, with the focus now on the over 70s.  Everyone I have spoken to who has had ‘the jab’, no matter where they are in the country, has reported a very slick and well-organised vaccination operation so I think we should mark that down as a success story and something to be proud of.  The government has stretched out the gap between the first dose and the second from the recommended three weeks to three months, the laudable aim being to concentrate on getting as many people partially immunised as soon as possible.  Unfortunately, the vaccine manufacturer, Pfizer, has cautioned that the vaccine was never tested for that extended gap between doses and such an approach may render the vaccination programme less effective or even useless; the debate continues.
To my dismay, I am beginning to sense that the government may be about to move the goalposts with regard to the immunisation programme and the current restrictions.  In Blog 75 I praised the Chief Medical Officer for his pragmatism and what looked like a recognition that once everyone at risk had been immunised, then hospitals would not be overloaded and society could return to normal, accepting a certain amount of risk and – essentially – living with the virus just as we do with other illnesses.  Now, there seems to be a drift towards wanting to totally eliminate the virus in the entire population before there are any moves towards relaxation.  Heaven knows when that situation will be reached, if ever; if we are to wait until all 66 million British citizens have been vaccinated then it will be September at the very earliest before we reach that stage.  That is totally ridiculous, in my view.  Next, they will be imposing lockdown to stop the spread of the Common Cold or the flu.  The experts are also saying that, even when we have had both doses of the vaccine, we must still isolate, wear masks, and avoid contact with others. The reason given is that an inoculated person might still be infectious.  I don’t follow that: surely if you have had the vaccine then your body will overcome any potential infection so you won’t have the disease; if you don’t have the disease then you cannot infect anyone.  Dear oh dear, just as you see the light of hope on the horizon then the fog comes down. Are we downhearted?  No, but I’m starting to get angry again.  Give us some hope, for heaven’s sake.

A stiff drink might help my blood pressure, but we are still on The Diet and that includes no alcohol.  I can’t say I have missed it most of the time, and the meals we have had continue to be very palatable, if somewhat heavy on the green vegetables.  We are still losing weight, Jane’s weekly weight loss being only a fraction of mine, but then she was quite light to start with.  We are keeping on with this low-carbohydrate stage until the end of the month but then, sensibly, we will be coming off the extreme measures and moving onto a more steady régime: the gentle jog after the short sprint.  For the first time, after just over two weeks of The Diet, Jane has complained that she is hungry at the end of the day and that she could do with a glass of wine; it hasn’t affected me quite so badly.  It is curious, both physiologically and psychologically, that she should have lasted 18 days without any pangs; she now talks wistfully of Shepherd’s Pie and Steak and Kidney Pudding on a daily basis.

The 20 January saw the inauguration of the 46th president of the United States of America and ex President Trump retired to Florida, refusing to attend the ceremony.  For the first time Jane and I thought we would watch the inauguration on television but, my goodness me, how it went on.  I had no idea.  We kept changing channels in order to get warm (it looked freezing in Washington, and apparently it was), but every time we came back the ceremony was still going on.  We actually missed the swearing in of Joe Biden, but we did see the singing of the National Anthem by a lady known, apparently, as Lady GaGa.   She looked like the Widow Twanky to me, and I thought she sang a bit flat at one point (why didn’t they use a proper opera singer?), but she certainly made one heck of an entrance: very showbiz.  That’s America for you: modern, bold, and the land of the free.  I wish our cousins well under the new administration.

With a loud ‘clunk’ the mail fell through the letterbox and Jane immediately leapt up to retrieve it.  It is a characteristic of our confinement that the simple visit of the postman should inspire such enthusiasm and activity.
“Anything exciting?”, I asked.
“Regency Cruises”, she said in a disgusted voice, “they never give up do they?”
Indeed.  Who would contemplate a booking a cruise in the present circumstances?  In our case, not for fear of catching Covid, but rather for fear of cancelled bookings and losing our deposit.  Oh yes, and the small minor matter that we no longer have money for such luxuries.  We thoroughly enjoyed our cruise to Australia and back (Blog 1 – Blog 26) and would do it again if we came into a small fortune, but the likelihood of that is not great.  Glancing through the hefty glossy cruise brochure from Regency, I wondered – in my usual pessimistic way – just how many cruise passengers ever considered how they would get off a cruise ship in an emergency: very few, I would imagine.  Sure, you can pile into the lifeboats if you have the time, the weather is calm, and the ship is on a reasonably even keel; otherwise, however, you could be on a bit of a sticky wicket.  That assessment is just for the able-bodied of course: I remember in Blog 1 commenting on the very large number of wheelchair and walking-frame users onboard QUEEN MARY 2 and deducing that they did not have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting off the ship in an emergency, even if (as we were assured) a member of the crew were detailed off to assist each disabled passenger. In 2019 a cruise ship lost power in a storm off Norway and was drifting ashore.  The sea state prevented lifeboats from being launched and attempts were made to evacuate the 1,300 passengers by helicopter but, inevitably, it was a very piecemeal effort lifting people off the deck by wire, and only 500 were removed over a long period.  Fortunately, the ship’s anchors held and she eventually managed to restore power and make port under her own steam, but it was a close-run thing and – I hope – a salutary lesson to ship owners and cruise passengers.  In normal times I lecture on disaster at sea and I always tell the audience that, when they embark for a cruise, the first thing they should do is work out how to escape from their cabin in the dark or in smoke and to know their lifeboat assembly point.  I do the same thing on ferries and in hotels, and Jane thinks I am an old woman but, as I keep telling her, I will survive and she will go under.  The second thing that I tell the audience is that the ship is your best lifeboat and that they should stay onboard and dry for as long as they can (mind you, the trick is knowing whether the ship is going to sink or not).  There is a common tendency when abandoning ship to leap overboard, but that is one of the worst things you can do: if the fall doesn’t kill you then the shock of hitting cold water probably will, particularly if you are old or have a weak heart.  Once in the water you start losing body heat rapidly and hypothermia sets in, even in the tropics: you gradually become disorientated, lose the use of your limbs, ingest water and die.  You will die of exposure in any sea temperatures less than 37C, though it might take a while in warm climes (in 2018 a woman survived a record ten hours after falling overboard in the Mediterranean); however the sharks or barracuda will probably get you in that time, so the end result will be the same.  Yes, far better to wrap up very well and step, dry, into that nice lifeboat having, first, taken a seasick tablet because the change in motion will otherwise make you as sick as a dog.  Anyone for a cruise now?

I remember when I was the aircraft carrier HMS CASSANDRA in the Western Approaches and we received a distress call from a yacht that was in trouble.  She was reasonably nearby and the ship immediately worked up to full power and headed for the yacht’s position.  Main steam throttles were opened, the boilers roared and gauges quivered.  It was all very exciting.  When we were in range we launched the Search and Rescue (SAR) Helicopter and the beast clattered away in a whiff of paraffin while the sick-bay team under the Surgeon Commander sharpened their scalpels and prepared to receive casualties.  The SAR helicopter eventually found the yacht, but she had inconveniently beached herself in a safe, though isolated, haven and the crew could be seen strolling along the beach.  The helicopter landed and contact was established.  The yacht crew said they were all right, thank you, but the airmen weren’t having any of that: didn’t they know that an aircraft carrier and its entire ship’s company were, as they spoke, pounding along towards their rescue? They unceremoniously bundled the protesting yacht crew into the helicopter, citing safety concerns, and took them back to CASSANDRA for a health check. The disgruntled yacht crew were eventually landed somewhere, safe and dry and we all smiled smugly: job well done – please, no thanks.

Clearly my cooking skills at breakfast earlier in the week had impressed the Head Chef.  I know this because I offered to help prepare the dinner on Friday night (hoping that she would decline, so that I could scuttle off and watch Wheeler Dealers in peace), and she unexpectedly accepted.  Would I be preparing the sauce for the Prawn Korma with Cauli Rice, I wondered?  Peel a prawn, perhaps?  Well, no, she didn’t go that far: I was directed to pour the pre-chopped Cauli Rice into a frying pan and stir it while it was heated; and don’t let it burn, on pain of death.  Oh well, strong oak trees from little acorns grow, I thought philosophically.  Half way through this onerous and demanding task I was diverted to remove the Korma sauce and blend it with the hand liquidiser.
“But I can’t”, I said, “I’m doing this!”
“Nonsense”, she said. ”You can do both jobs. Women multitask all the time”.
“Well, I don’t know…don’t blame me if the rice goes brown…”.
I moved on reluctantly to parallel Task Number 2.
I was, of course, stick gathering.  You probably are not familiar with the term so I will explain.  At the Royal Navy Leadership School, where Senior Ratings are trained as part of their advancement, the students are set a series of outside tasks involving leadership, initiative and teamwork: get the whole team and a dummy across a chasm using an old washing line, two nails, three logs and a roll of sellotape, that sort of challenge.  Now here’s the thing: whatever the course going through, the instructors always found that there was one member of the team industriously beavering away on a a totally non-contributory task, trying to look busy whilst carefully avoiding any actual useful work – neatly rolling up a hose when others are fighting a raging inferno for example, or gathering up twigs and branches when others were bridging a chasm.  Stick gathering, in fact.  When that ‘stick gatherer’ was challenged and directed to stop doing that and, instead, do this, then he would invariably argue,
“But I’m gathering up these sticks, sir.  Very important job.  OK sir, but I must say that if I leave it then those sticks will never be collected…”
Anyway, to return to the cooking, I was actually quite flattered to be asked to do something mechanical that involved machines, and picked up the hand liquidiser with relish.  It was fortunate that she did not see me press the button and eject the business end of the liquidiser into the flask (wrong button, fool), but I managed to recover it (licking my fingers to hide the evidence) before she returned and I did a creditable job of blitzing the sauce, though I say it myself.  That the sauce looked like it had just been sucked from the starboard sullage tank after a particularly severe case of oil contamination could hardly be my fault: that was just the way it was.  As it happened, the meal was delicious and the team work that led up to it was most satisfying.  Oh yes: this week, smoothies and Prawn Korma; next week, who knows?  Sauce Béarnaise perhaps?

Be careful out there.

23 January 2021