Day 9 Wednesday 14th – we can both paint a robin and dance the square tango!

Amongst all the new skills we are acquiring, painting robins and dancing the square tango are the best bits, but we have also started to look at the programme of talks and events during the day.  Today we had a lovely lunchtime hour with a young guitarist, half of a duo, who talked about the history of the electric guitar, origins of guitar music and styles and characteristics of famous guitarists.  He was a good player, I especially liked his Peter Green style rendition of Black Magic Woman. He was also really knowledgeable, encouraged questions, did many demonstrations and referred the audience to a couple of guitarists autobiographies that are in the ship’s library. I’m impressed.

Easa, the art teacher said Khachik’s robin today was beautiful, and it is. It is amazing how much we achieve in an hour, and after the class I feel I want to carry on.  This is good.  (“Compare the robin” will also be appearing on Facebook to entertain you in another 2 days when we are in St Maarten, high speed wifi permitting.) We will be changing media as we go round the world, using pencil and charcoal.  This pleases Khachik who unfortunately can’t distinguish colours.

After the dancing lesson today we were both aching a bit, probably because we’ve upped our game on the walking track.  We have walked. 7 laps today and danced the square tango for an hour (with a couple of breaks for demonstrations).  So to ease our aching legs we used a hot tub on the decks to soften up ready for a good stretch.  It was in the hot tub that we met a journalist and author, who  also called himself political activist. He and his wife are from Guernsey.  He is called Michael J, Milford and he was selling his latest book, even in the hot tub, sounds like sci-fi, called the Mansion, about someone who goes back in time to 1912, and tries to warn about the fate of the Titanic.

I have just found this on Amazon:

"Biography

I was born in 1938 in Guernsey Channel Islands, an Island just off the coast of France. When the war started I went to Halifax in Yorkshire England, and lived there for five years, returning to Guernsey at wars end. I did three years in the British army and five years in the merchant navy. I left school semi- illiterate. I could read, but my spelling was poor. For three years I lived in Australia, and went to Perth technical collage, and took courses in English and radio announcing, and passed on both subjects. I took up writing after I retired, as I had more time on my hands. My first book was called 'The Hypnotist' my second was called 'The Mansion' my third is called the 'Ernie Prettle story,' and my fourth is called 'Rainbows End', and I'm writing that now.

I'm 76 years old now, with no children of my own, and no-one to remember me, so I thought if I could leave something behind like a book on some persons book shelf, or in some-ones library, then in future some-one might remember me." 

With the extra walking, dancing, painting, immersion in water, stretching, lots of fruit, veg, seeds and fresh water we are feeling healthy.  We just have to deal with the quantities of food before we are worthy of body-is-temple status.

In our search for sea life I am delighted to say that the flying fish were active today, and where there are flying fish, there must be predators, so hopefully I will have some more sea life news tomorrow. We have passed the underwater mountain range, if you are familiar with tectonic plates you will understand why the sea was 1000m deep yesterday when we were travelling over it yesterday, and the sea is today much deeper, 3000 metres deep.

Signing off now, time is going very quickly, two more sea days until we get to the Caribbean. Back with you tomorrow.