Many years ago when Heidi and I first met and when we thought about nothing but rumpy pumpy and traveling we flew to the other side of the world to have rumpy pumpy in a place that the brochure called a “paradise.” It wasn’t. It was one of those destinations where everyone — from the airport staff to the taxi driver — gave us a necklace of flowers so that by the time I arrived at the hotel I smelt like the perfume counter at Macy’s and was walking like the hunchback of sodding Notre Dame. (more…)

A compact car……a sodding compact car. Are you kidding me? My fat, flaccid arse, Calvyn’s huge oil rig thighs and three suitcases……in a Ford Focus. Oh, FFS. “So upgrade,” I hear you all cry. Ummmmm……….I can’t. It’s strict company policy that no upgrades are allowed and if I did ignore this policy, the lady in charge of the entire company’s travel and expenses credit card bills would not be happy. The lady in question is De and she is the most wonderful lady and has been with us for many many years and we all love her. In fact I think I am right in saying that she has been with the company as long as anyone and is an icon at Carnival HQ. But we live in fear of her because if we lose a receipt, upgrade or do anything that is not in the company guidelines she will be very cross indeed.

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Five straight sea days and meetings with frumpy guests and hosting loads of shows and activities and meeting guests, so many guests who are having the time of their lives is both rewarding but ………….sodding exhausting, as well. Usually a cruise will have one or maybe two sea days and then a port here we have five straight sea days and my job is to pack as much in as I can to those five sea days and be visible as much as possible and that’s what I am doing. There are sacrifices with this such as now because as I sit here in my underpants writing this blog the clock says it’s 6:43 am and I long to return to my bed and to return to the dream I was having about me, a naked Latvian supermodel and Calvyn dressed as a French maid.

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It’s great to be back with a blog today after a couple of weeks away and it will come as no surprise that I will start today by talking about toilets…….actually, it’s not me talking about toilets it’s a lady called Sarah.

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As I sit wading through the questions and the reviews here on the blog, I often wonder as I reply what’s real and what is as fake as half the breasts in California. You see, that’s the problem, isn’t it, with review sites or any social media page that allows people to post what they want. In the beginning, way before I had even started my blog, there were cruise ship sites that were full of great information and honest reviews but all of them, this blog included, have now the a magnet for bastards and revenge seekers who will punish cruise lines because simply, they can. Most of what’s written in the comments section on this blog and on my Facebook page and on Cruise Critic is still rational and useful but if you took half the moaners seriously, the closest you would come to taking a cruise would be watching re-runs of the Love Boat.

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Last week Eric the Beard launched a contest on my blog to for you to submit a slogan for the T-shirt for Bloggers Cruise 6. Now, I know that the prize was a fantastic cruise for two on BC6 right here on the Carnival Breeze, but I was shocked that 260 of you entered. And while that is wonderful and somewhat humbling to see, I am bemused even more by something and that something is why would anyone truly want a T-shirt with my name or picture on it? Obviously, putting your face or name on a T-shirt is OK if you are a superstar like LeBron James, Justin Beaver or Captain James T. Kirk …….but me …….. I am confused.

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So here I am back in the cruise director chair again which up until this morning was brilliantly occupied by Butch Begovitch who will return to be the permanent CD here after the crossing. He has left the ship in good order and really has left me with no major headaches…… except one. You see we have a new staff member who is going to require some “counseling,” as tofu eaters would call it.

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There is a book called “Women Are from Mars and Men Are from Uranus” or something like that and, judging from what’s happened here on the Carnival Breeze in the last four days, the author of this book was sodding well right. Within hours of the ship sailing from Barcelona on Thursday, a guest from Canada had contacted the guest services desk and had requested immediate debarkation as he and his partner had decided they hated each other. Now, obviously, he had to wait until the following day when we were in Marseilles before he got off the ship as we were at sea. Luckily, we had one open cabin for the night as some guests had missed the ship in Barcelona and would rejoin us in Marseilles and so, after four years of being together, he buggered off back to Toronto leaving his partner on her own to cruise without him for 11 days. What a true shame. (more…)

Before I was a cruise director or a bar waiter even and before I worked in the city of London as a…well, actually, I have no sodding clue what I did, I worked for a local newspaper in my home town of Southend selling advertising space. It has been nearly 30 years since I did that for a holiday job while I was at college and I hated it and what I hated most of all was cold calling. Calling local companies and seeing if they wanted to advertise their business in our newspaper was a dark and lonely job that usually left me with the ringtone resounding in my ear hole. For these reasons, I always try to be nice to cold callers when they contact me.
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So during the show last night, I took some people from the audience for some pre-show fun before the Divas revue. It included a young couple who, when I asked for their names and where they were from, they replied they were from Denver, Colorado. I then shocked myself by instead of saying, “Are you having fun?” or “What’s your favourite port so far?” or “Bugger me your wife is gorgeous, are they real?” I went straight into the, “I am so sorry, how dreadful, it’s awful, I hope they cut his bollocks off and shove 50,000 volts through his arse.”
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