Every part of my body is cold. My arms, my feet, my eyes, my hair and my hemorrhoids ………….global warming my arse.
I just returned from standing next to Alan for two hours watching his son play rugby for his school. “Would you like to come along?” asked my mate and like an idiot I said “yes.” I dressed in a pair of jeans and T-shirt over which I wore my favorite leather jacket. I have had this jacket for many years and I love it. The leather still creaks like the decks of the Carnivale used to in bad weather and, along with a pair of underpants I have had for ten years, this jacket is my favorite piece of clothing. However, as much as it may be comfortable, standing on the sidelines today I realized that it wasn’t going to keep out the cold.
My nose is running like a fireman’s hose, my head is full of what feels like molten lava, I have a temperature of 200 degrees Fahrenheit and I know that if the Guinness Book of World Records were to come round, he’d verify that no human being has ever been this sick and survived.
“I have Ebola,” I said to my Heidi. “No. You have a cold,” she replied in the icy way women have when they don’t realise just how ill a man is………..and it’s all from watching rugby.
Anyway, let me explain the rules of rugby. It’s the same as American football except they don’t wear big girly pads. There is no quarterback and the players don’t date sexy women like Jessica Simpson who is apparently having rumpy pumpy with that restaurant chain owner Tony Roma’s.
The current world champion (rugby is played all over the world) is Australia. Australians go to work in shorts and that’s a good enough reason to hate them. Also, they have cookers in their kitchens but choose to cook their shrimps in the garden. And the only invention to have come out of Australia, ever, is the rotary washing line and Russell Crowe
The rugby referee, instead of sending people off the pitch as in soccer or off the court in basketball, don’t bother with flagrant fouls, etc. They just stop the game while the more badly injured have their noses and ears sewn back on. Flick someone’s ear lobe in a game of basketball and some jumped-up little dwarf will mince over and order you off the court.
I like rugby very much. You have to love the collisions, the moments when someone with thighs made from oak and a chest the size of a John Deere tractor smashes into a player with such ferocity that you wonder how his skeleton hasn’t disintegrated into a million pieces. That and the fights, those cherished moments when a man mountain smashes his fist, which is the size of a Christmas ham, into someone else’s face and all hell breaks loose. Brilliant
I like American football, as well, and today’s Thanksgiving Day game is being shown here and I will watch it for sure. I just don’t understand it all. It makes no sense when 240 tons of All-American beef all lands in a big muddy lump on top of the ball and you have no idea what on earth is going on in there. Not until the referee blows his whistle, does some signing for the deaf and decides that someone at the bottom of the pile has let go too soon, or not at all, or was down before contact or if he really is bad apparently the player will be sacked and have to look for work elsewhere. And just when I start to understand the game they take a break and we go to commercials for Budweiser and Preparation H.
Anyway, I digress. So there I was today watching a 12-year-old boys play rugby. Now, I don’t know if this will translate to parents watching their kids play sports in North America ……..but bloody hell …….Mum and Dad really take this seriously. I do not know what it is that causes normal, nice, cuddly and reasonably intelligent people to lose their grip on reality as soon as they find themselves standing alongside a school sports pitch.
But having watched everyone behave like a pack of hyenas squabbling over the carcass of a dead zebra, I have decided to think ahead to when my thingy plays sports and share with you my thoughts.
Firstly, Mum’s and Dad’s must remember that they are an embarrassment to their children. Mick Jagger is an embarrassment to his kids as is Madonna to hers. I will be an embarrassment to my Thingy and you are or have been one to your kids, as well. Everything you do. Everything you say. Everything you wear. It’s all completely wrong. So here’s a tip when on the touchline or courtside or by the side of the pool… Be normal.
If your child’s team scores a goal, a touchdown or a three-point basket with only one second to go, you may applaud but do not – and this is something I witnessed just two hours ago – run onto the pitch, bellowing like someone has just shoved a cactus up your bottom, with a red face, a jugular vein standing six inches out of your neck like a Klingon and your arms held aloft like you just found out Donald Trump has left you all his money and all his Just For Men hair dye.
Because after you have reached the middle of the pitch and sunk to your knees in a puddle of gratitude and happiness, you will realize you are the managing director of a major cruise line or a Baptist minister……and you have just made yourself look like a total and utter doughnut.
Massive demonstrations of pride are acceptable if you are a Miami Heat supporter and Dwyane Wade has just scored 40 points, 10 rebounds and 10 steals all in the first quarter. But when you are watching a bunch of muddy 12-year-olds running about like puppy dogs, they are not.
Also, no matter how knowledgeable you might be about the sport you’re watching, do not feel free at any point to offer loud and hectoring advice. This will make everyone on the team want to kick you in the scrotum and, since it’s against school rules to attack visiting fathers, they will simply wait until they are in the showers after the game and kick your child instead.
Furthermore, offering helpful hints at the top of your voice will irritate the officials, who may at some point come over and ask you to be quiet. This – and I’ve seen it happen twice – can end in a fight. And no one wants to see Doctor Bernstein rolling around in the mud trying to punch his son’s math teacher in the face.
Also, school sports are great places to start an affair. I know this because today there were many “Mums” watching the game without their husbands who were probably at work. The women were all dressed up as though they were going dancing – not to watch rugby. It was hard to concentrate on the game not just because of the cold but the woman next to me was the spitting image of a young Meg Ryan.
I, therefore, took it upon myself to talk to her and turned on the cruise director button.
However, and this is critical, when you have become engaged in small talk with a pretty mother and you are arranging to meet for tea afterwards, do not get so distracted that you miss your child scoring a goal, touchdown or a basket. It was therefore while I was talking to Meg Ryan, Alan’s son scored a try which is the same as a touchdown.
Now, had this been my son I would have fainted hoping that Meg Ryan would have given me the kiss of life. Of course, this might irritate your boy if he were to turn around and find his dad being French-kissed by his best friend’s mum. But since just standing there will annoy him anyway, I suggest you give it a go……….I know I will.
It’s just one of the joy’s I have to look forward to when the Thingy pop’s out in May.
I want to show you these two photos which were sent to me by ex-Carnival cruise director Bob Hamill. You see Bob in the photo (the one with the moustache) along with his lovely wife Marty. She started off as a ship’s nurse and fell in love with Bob. She then became part of his hilarious ventriloquist act. Bob’s catch phrase was “Hi gang” and you would hear passengers and crew say it to him wherever he walked around the ship.
In the first photo is Captain Sbisa who embodied whatever a captain should be. A brilliant sailor and a true gentleman. He has retired and is living in Italy. Ask any Carnival employee who remembers him and they will tell you he was……simply the best.
Also pictured is Rand Woodbury who still works for Carnival thrilling guests with his huge illusion show. I would have been an assistant bar manager when both these photos were taken and aged about 24…and yes……I was supermodel skinny. Have a look at these then and thanks to Bob for sending me these via my Facebookspacetube thingy page.
Yesterday’s news started with a story about two birds in Washington. A lame duck yesterday pardoned a turkey at the White House. As the U.S. and the world grappled with the biggest economic crisis since my ex-girlfriend spent all my savings on a new BMW, President George Bush had only one public engagement: offering a full and unconditional reprieve to Pumpkin.
“Welcome to the Rose Garden for the pardoning of the National Thanksgiving Turkey,” he told about 200 White House staff, schoolchildren and journalists. He made a three-minute speech, had his picture taken with Pumpkin and flew to the presidential retreat, Camp David, for today’s Thanksgiving holiday.
Heidi and I were having a giggle about this when the news turned much more serious and the terrible atrocities in India came to light. The cruise industry has many crew members from Mumbai (formerly Bombay) working on-board and I am sure some may have families and friends who have been affected…….we think of them and all involved tonight.
In a few minutes I will head to the kitchen and help Heidi cook a non-pardoned Turkey. We have decided to have a Thanksgiving dinner and Heidi is preparing turkey, roast potatoes, parsnips and sweet potatoes. I will assist by being told to bugger off and not get in the way. This will give me time to reflect how thankful I am. I have Heidi, a wife who loves me and who will do everything for me …….except apply my hemorrhoid cream which she makes me do myself.
I love her very much and, of course, we have been blessed with the miracle that is growing inside her tummy. We never thought we would be so lucky. I am thankful that I have a wonderful family. The best Mum and Dad in the world, a wonderful mother in law and a sister who, despite being a little smelly at times, has brought two wonderful kids and a good friend in her husband Paul into our lives.
I have many super friends both at sea and ashore and of course……..I have you …….my extended family of bloggers. ………..the thousands of people who daily read my stupid musings about cruising and life in general……….I am eternally grateful that you are all part of my life.
And so, Heidi and I wish you and your families a brilliant Thanksgiving Day and I hope you will join me here on the blog thingy tomorrow.
Right, time to head to the kitchen where Heidi has spent the day feeling sorry for the dead bird currently turning a golden brown in our oven. “It’s a turkey,” I keep telling her, which I added are basically vegetables. We’re talking here about a bird which is so daft that it can operate normally with no head.
I honestly don’t understand this. Out there in the real world away from the 21st-century supermarket/freezer/microwave chain of catering, there are insects which eat their partners after rumpy pumpy, there are snakes that will vomit on you when threatened, there are spiders that crawl out of the toilet and bite you on the bottom while you are reading Carnival Currents and doing your number two’s. And there are leopard seals that play aquatic tennis, using penguins as the ball.
So in the big scheme of things, having your head cut off quickly and without pain so you can nestle on my plate surrounded by roasted potatoes is a good way for the turkey to spend his or her last days.
Happy Thanksgiving
Your friends
John, Heidi and the Thingy
Filed under: Destinations, Europe, Tales from the Ship, Travel | Tagged: Carnival Celebration, Rugby, Thanksgiving
Good evening John. Thanksgiving to all my American friends and you also John & Heidi. I lov e turkey but unfortunately turkey doesn’t like me. But what the heck. Just keep putting the gravey on and I will continue eating it.Yes John , life is great and we are should be thankful for what God has given to us. I’m a happy man having a fantastic family and friends especially the bloggers whom I didn’t know 2 years ago but today they are part of my life. It’s amazing how these things suddenly come into our lives. Like you John, I didn’t know what a cruise director was nor a thought of going on a cruise. Now I’m in the process of going on my third. Knowing you and Heidi, I feel like we are friend of old, each day just the fact of knowing your life and what goes on. Thank you again for allowing me to be part of your life my friend. Arrivederci.
Paul F. Pietrangelo
John, first of all congrats on the new thingy.
Now the real problem.. We have taken 14 Carnival cruises and think they are the best with one exception…that gawd awful sausage at the breakfast buffet. It is always greasy and floating in oil and water plus it doesn’t look like the sausages that I have ever seen anywhere else.
With all the power you have can you get better sausages for us?
Thanks,
Your friend,
Tom
John, I’m sure glad I spent 40 years at Ford Motor Company and not 20 years at Carnival. If your the example of what 20 years on a ship does to the human body I will stick to just taking a cruise now and then. You went from a Elvis Jim Nabors mix to Rodney Dangerfield in just 20 years. I hope Carnival doesn’t have before and after pictures of you hanging in the recruiting office because they would have prospects tearing up their apps.
John I sure many of us today gave thanks to you for the family you have made us all into. In fact you were even part of our dinner conversation. As I said at your birthday party on BC1 “We all started as bloggers then we became friends but now we are a FAMILY” and for this we all give thanks to you on this day of Thanksgiving.
BIG ED
To the Thingy’s Daddy…..Hi John, we are celebrating Thanksgiving here in Texas and I know I should be thankful and I truly am for many things, but just have to tell you that we truly missed you on the Splendor for the TransAtantic crossing and I expressed this to many people,but you set the record high for other cruise directors and I guess I expected the same attention you give to your guests. My husband and I did the back to back on the Splendor and I wrote a note to Goose and told him that and also that my husband and I were celebrating our 70th birthday and it was also my husbands retirement cruise etc. He never responded. I didn’t expect a gold brick, but just a little note would have been nice. This was a very special cruise for us. Was I expecting too much? But I have to add that Kevin and Jaime are such a delight and we enjoyed our time with them. We are looking forward to our next cruise in Feb on the Freedom. Maybe we’ll be lucky “For the fun of it” John, please respond and tell me I’m not a fuddy-duddy and just be thankful that we had a wonderful time on the Splendor. Hope you are feeling better and appreciate all the updates on Heidi’s condition and “Little Thingy” Any names to post yet? Thanks for listening. Regards from the Beast….
HAPPY THANKSGIVING from Texas!!
I know that this isn’t a holiday in the Isles, but maybe you & Heidi will start a new trend.
Sharon
Well John, here it is bedtime and I should be sleeping. 5am will come very soon and I’ll wish I had slept instead of sitting here at the computer reading about Alan’s son playing rugby. I’m just too excited about going cruising on the Splendor saturday for a glorius week. We are leaving about 6 in the am, Don says he won’t get the car backed out of the driveway before I am asleep.
I can’t wait to meet Nanni and her family. We get to see Ken again, I hope. I hope he is still the Maitre’D on the ship. Gloria and I are going to go straight to the dining room when we get on the ship to see if we lucked up and are assigned to Ken’s dining room.
We’ll both fill you in on our trip when we get back.
Hug Heidi for us and pat the wee little thing.
Sure wish all 3 of you were going to be on the ship with us.
Carolyn….. the excited one, and Don…. the one that is sleeping like I should be……….
Hi Stephanie….. I’ll be thinking about you 12/2
John,
Although I hate to admit it for obvious reasons, I must correct you on two of the points you made in your latest blog.
Sad to say Australians are not the current World Champions of Rugby, that “honour” goes to our southern hemisphere mates in South Africa, the Springboks, but we’ll hopefully rectify this soon. Make sure you brush up on the game this weekend when Oz plays Wales in Cardiff. You’ll need all your coaching skills if the Thingy turns out to be a boy.
Secondly, although he lives here a lot of the time and owns a Sydney Rugby League team, Russell Crowe is a Kiwi and Oz claims him only when he’s good and disowns him when he’s a “Man Behaving Badly” elsewhere. We have to get our priorities right!
No special Thanksgiving for us yesterday of course as every day is a blessing living here in such a great part of the world, but a mixed blessing sometimes when we learn that once again our citizens have been caught up in the terror in Mumbai this week and lives have been lost.
Stay cool but not cold and enjoy your life back home with Heidi.
Regards from Oz.
Here’s hoping you had a wonderful day.
I’m sure that most, if not all, of us are thankful for this Blog thingy as well. It’s a source of laughter, puzzlement, emotion and information.
Please thank Heidi for letting you play with us and thank Stephine for being Stephine.
Ciao!!
Host Mach
Happy Thanksgiving John and Heidi!
Jeff
Good morning, It’s the day after Thanksgiving -Black Friday here in the states. Hope your turkey was as good as ours! Larry cooks the bird outside in a bucket which leaves the whole oven for me to stuff with other goodies. Yes, the turkey tastes like it’s roasted not fried! Our two kids, one grandchild and one friend joined us for dinner. Which made me think about embarrassing your children. I hate to tell you that it never ends but it’s the truth. Our kids? are 51 and 50 and still cringe at what we do, say and wear – only once in a while but it never really ends! Jeri
Happy Thanksgiving!!! It was a wonderful Day!!!
I must share with you that I took time to serve the troops Thanksgiving Dinner. They came from Ft. Hood, Camp Mabry, and and where-ever they found themselves. This was to offer Honor and Thanks to them for all they sacrifice and give defending our country and giving us the freedoms we take from granted!!! I felt truly blessed!!! We also honored families of those who have loved ones deployed… What a smile and fullness this gave me!! Our Congressman, John Carter, came to lead the blessing and welcome and it was WONDERFUL!!!
Now, I love rugby. We had a team in college in Idaho. I was a Rugger Hugger… a pep team who cheered, but mostly mended and comforted the wounded!!!
It is an AWESOME sport!!
But now, I just sit and watch football, American football… And I did enjoy our game last night. Out local team… University of Texas… whooped up on another team… Aggie-something…
John… I love to picture you in the Range Rover, smoking that Monte Cristo #2, eating sweets from the green bag, and gathering fodder for your blog. It’s truly a wonderful vision!!! And Heidi getting plump with child, glowing and beaming in her mummie-ness!!! Whipping you into shape when you’re in her domain… the house!!!
THANK YOU!!!
I look forward to seeing you again in February, with Stephanie and Big Tex…
Lambie
John, I’m glad that you were able to spend the Thanksgiving holiday at home with Heidi. With your schedule, that is truly a gift! Indeed, you have so much to be thankful for, as do I. I spent the day with my husband, son, daughter-in-law, wonderful granddaughter, and extended family members. It was a wonderful day!
Although I don’t know anyone, personally, affected by the violence in Mumbai, it makes me so sad. I know there have always been wars, but this is so senseless and saddens me deeply.
Also, I know you love your leather coat and I know that you look quite debonair when sporting it. However, you may want to invest in something a little warmer.
The days are ticking away, getting closer to the February Bloggers Cruise. I’m sure there will be lots of warm Caribbean sunshine greetting us!
Thank you Big Ed for stating it so well.
“We all started as bloggers then we became friends but now we are a FAMILY” and for this we all give thanks to you on this day of Thanksgiving.
BIG ED
Bless you all.
P.S. Glad you received the gifts.
Love
Cruising Grandma
CarolAnn
We remember Bob and how no matter were everyone was in the ship he would go on the PA and said Hi gang!! and everbody went Hi BOB!! It was funny.That was onboard the Tropicale, 1991.
Hi John/Heidi/Thingy!
Hope you had a nice Tukey Day enjoying your non-pardoned turkey.
What you described at the rugby match is sp similar to school soccer/football matches here. The parents are unbelievable.
I hope you start feeling better soon.
Take care and Happy Holidays!
David
To Carolyn & Don, Yes Ken is the Maitre D’ in the Gold Pearl dining room, we were in the Black Pearl dining room with Bonnie & Charlie, had a wonderful cruise, you will love it! Meeting Nanni and family was the best part of the cruise, sure wish John had been CD on it though! That would have made it complete.
John, you handsome devil, no wonder Heidi fell in love with you, WOW!
Paul, Yes Thanksgiving is a great time to be with family and friends!
Nanni, Miss you already!
Bonnie & Charlie, can’t wait to see you again!
A belated Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! Linda
Wow what a cute young man you were (still are of course). Have to correct you on something though.
Russell Crowe was born in New Zealand and we also invested the wine cask plus a lot of other handy things which we can’t quite remember but sure they were good.
Suzanne & Lisa
(Downunder)
John, it’s okay to start planning now for special ways to embarrass Desk as s/he grows up. Why, just yesterday I was embarrassing my 23-year-old son for the second time with the same incident. A 2-for-1 Thanksgiving weekend special!
When he was 15 and our daughter was 12 we went to Boston and Cape Cod. In Boston we took a Duck tour. (The amphibious vehicle like a tank that drives you all around then goes down the ramp into the Boston Harbor.) Prior to boarding I visited the gift stand and bought a Quacker.
It’s a big yellow beak and makes a quack, like a whistle but a quack. I thought both kids would disown me as we drove all over town and quacked at the pedestrians. Most waved back. It was a hoot.
The guide in Boston signed it with a Sharpie indelible pen, with his name, city, and date. It seems to be a tradition to have this done. Well, I took it to Ketchikan in Sept. ‘07, rode the Duck, and the guide there signed it too. Plan to take it to Halifax in 9/08 too.
But I digress.
I got extra mileage out of the embarrassment by telling his girlfriend the whole story this weekend. Yahtzee!
You will not have to search far for actions to embarrass your kids. Hahahaha it’s one of life’s great pleasures.