DAY 1 All aboard!

The time of departure is finally here. The mooring ropes have been released from their quayside bollards, the passengers are madly waving goodbye on the decks, and when the ship’s horn blasts a final farewell to dear old England, the hull begins to judder and rattle from the main engines coming alive. Well that’s how I imagined it would be. After all, this is Southampton and we have all seen how it was done in the film Titanic.  The reality was very different, however, but in no way a letdown.  What actually happened was this.

At the muster station

First we had a life-vest drill. Everyone was herded up on deck and made to stand in the warm sunshine as we were counted at our designated muster station. Unfortunately, a few of the passengers had managed to get lost in this exercise and two of the more elderly passengers who had found the right location eventually keeled over from the heat in the wait to find the others. This then sent the medics into action and we were all impressed at how efficiently they were revived. Everyone agreed that we should survive a sinking.

Spitfire flypast

Anyway, no sooner had we returned to our cabin, as the ship was leaving Southampton waters, when the captain announced that we should all go back up on deck again for a little surprise. I thought this was probably going to be for a little singsong with the house band or something similar. However, what happened next was totally unexpected. Suddenly some great patriotic music began blaring out over the speakers, which was soon accompanied by the unmistakable throaty growl of a world war two aircraft engine. Would you believe it, the captain had organized a Spitfire flypast just for us. The stage has been set for a very interesting trip.