It’s a sea day. Have a look at the banner image. That’s what we saw all morning.

Here’s what we saw all afternoon:

Yep. Same thing, but with more clouds. The ship does offer a few things to do, but they don’t really pique our interest much. Origami classes, tai-chi, that kind of thing. So we went up to brekkie, then came back to the cabin and went back to bed. Woke up in time for lunch, and had a bite.

There was a HUGE queue at the “cake it away” station, but I didn’t get in it. There is one thing that has been absolutely consistent on the Volendam and that thing is the cakes have all been dry and terrible, even though they look delicious. Figuring that this probably would be more of the same, I bypassed the long queue and had a nice salad, some sushi, and some Mac and cheese (which was excellent). Canadians consume more Mac and cheese per capita than any other nation on earth, so I was just doing my duty to keep us in first place.

The others in the group all went to the cake station and raved about the cakes, so yay. I’m glad they were worth the wait.

After lunch, we went back to bed. Again. I could get used to this. I did a bit of work on Classic Bronze this afternoon, compiling survey results into averages and such and putting them in a spreadsheet, then I hopped into the world of Pete and Bas and chatted with some other folks about what this latest publicity stunt is all about.

It started out a few days ago with a video of Pete watching his clothes being tossed off a balcony as he’s yelling “Sue, please, don’t do this, what have I got to do? Not the Levi’s, for fuck’s sake!” The caption under it said that his wife Sue was leaving him after 50 years of marriage due to late nights in the studio, touring, and “random notes from birds on my phone.”

Then there was a photo of his hand next to a pint with a broken heart emoji and “Miss you”

Them it was a heartfelt plea to fans, saying that he’s trying to fix things with his wife, her favourite singer is Olly Murs, and maybe someone out there knows Olly and can help him get tickets or something.

That last one, we all think, is the final setup before announcing a collaboration with Olly Murs on a future song. Why not just release the song? Why all the setup and the drama? They’re 100% independent. No label, no recording contract, no publicity budget. If they had just dropped a new song featuring Olly Murs, it would get noticed, maybe. But they’ve got a whole chunk of the internet now looking for clues, trying to decipher the words used, and even some who don’t realize this is all staged. Lots of comments have been from people giving Pete advice on how to save his marriage, being mad at Sue for threatening to leave him, telling Pete that he’s getting what’s coming to him what with those messages from random women on his phone….

But none of it is real. I had several conversations with the two of them about how their wives and families are dealing with this newfound fame, the touring, the women throwing themselves at them, etc. I also know that they’re both very strong family men and aren’t tempted to mess around.
Also, Pete’s wife’s name isn’t Sue, it’s Vicky!

And yes, spending time on that’s all rather silly if you aren’t fascinated by either Pete and Bas or marketing- and I am fans of both. But hey, that’s how you fill your time on a sea day in between naps when wifi is even slower than usual, because everyone is using it and we’re far from shore.

Off to dinner! We all had reservations at Pinnacle Grill tonight and I gotta say, my crab cake appys were completely overshadowed by the candied bacon. Beyond yummy.

Some of us decided to throw a few extra dollars at the bill and get fancy stuff, like Brian’s lobster tail…

…and Rob had the Dover sole, which was expertly de-boned tableside.

Then I popped back down to the cabin to get my camera for the show, making a quick detour topside to catch the sunset over the ocean. It’s one of the best parts of cruising!

The show was by the ship’s repertory company, who have been hit and miss. The first show was truly awful, the next two not so bad, and tonight’s… was hideous. It was hits from the 70s and if they’d stuck to simpler songs (the Abba medley at the end wasn’t too awful) they’d have probably been OK, but their music director keeps choosing songs with intricate harmonies (You Can Go Your Own Way was one of them) and both their arranger and the person running the sound board have no idea how to handle that, let alone the singers. It was pretty cringe-worthy.

Speaking of cringe, after the show, we headed up to Mix Bar for a nightcap, where Grace was… um… “Grace”ing us with her particular brand of train wreck. As awful as she is (and she is), it’s entertaining in the same way that watching a really horrible movie can be entertaining. Every single song would begin and we’d all look at each other in horror and someone would softly mutter, “oh no. Oh god, please…” She did The Rose, Total Eclipse of the Heart, Somebody to Love, Sweet Caroline, Unchained Melody (she hit the high F pretty well, then butchered everything that came after it)…. a nice British couple came in mid-show and I asked if they’d heard Grace before and they both made cringe faces and rolled their eyes.

Here’s the odd part… I heard her say that she’s been doing this for four years and I wondered how that was possible… then I noticed that her shows are packed every night. Mostly with the same people every time. Lots of them (like us) are there because it’s so bad it’s good, but about half the crowd unironically love her. [shrug]

I took a quick break from the ear poison and lost $10 in the slot machines in all of two minutes, then we headed off to bed, where we found a towel animal. Not 100% sure what it is, but we’re going with gorilla.

And that was it for today.

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