Monday's never Blue!

Hello and welcome to another week!

The 'blues' uniform that we wore yesterday is our traditional uniform for colder climes and day time dress occasions. The 'whites' uniform is our tropical uniform for warm weather cruising and then we have the formal 'mess jacket' kit for the formal and semi formal evenings. The picture at the top of me in 'blues' is one taken on Arcadia last June on Cruise J812 ' Land of the Vikings' when we called at Ny Alesund - Spitzbergen. Here there is an international base for research in natural sciences and it is also the centre for Norwegian Artic research. In the afternoon of that call I was ashore by ship's tender on 'polar bear watch' - as you can see below. It is another world up there, you really do feel as if you are on an 'out of this world' planet! It is a long sea passage to get there but well worth a visit. We are one of the few cruise lines who go there.

On board ship you never have that Monday morning feeling as we work every day and just catch up with rest periods over the week. Busy today with meetings, including a Hotel Refit Meetings with my Seniors to get our guns in a row for the forthcoming Refit in Germany.

We had the Portunus Lunch to host and it was interesting to here what special moments have made it for passengers. Cyril and Mary said that for them it had to be sailing into Sydney Harbour. For Tom and Mary it was sailing out a night from San Francisco and dancing to ' I left my heart in San Francisco' as the ship sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge. For Derek and Mavis it was being able to visit the Holy Land and also San Francisco as they do not fly and if it were not for P&O Cruises they could never have fulfilled their dreams. For James ( not me!) it was to dine at the Hilton Hotel in Istanbul after arriving up the Bosporus in a P&O Liner.

We have received lots of good comments about the Remembrance Day Service yesterday. It brought back memories of the time my brother and I attended the Saturday night Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall back in 1982 when I was working in London as Duty Manager at the Sherlock Holmes Hotel in Baker Street and the Park Plaza at Lancaster Gate. Also of the time the Royal British Legion charted the Canberra for the Special VE day 50 year celebrations and we visited the beaches in France from the port of Cherbourg. Commodore Ian Gibb took the service around the Bonito Pool on the open decks on the Canberra and the one thing we learned that day was that if a wreath of remembrance was to be cast to the sea then it has to be weighted as the first one was not and instead of being cast into the sea it was blown over the top of the ship and past the yellow funnel!

Wishing you a great week ahead - and just think one nearer to Christmas! After dinner this evening I will be meeting up with our Fabulous shop team who run my PICCADILLY Empire on Deck 3 where we love to delight you with that specail treat that you know you deseve - Shop till you drop! Keep posted and this will be a treat!

Best wishes,

James.

'If one does not know to which port one is sailing no wind is favourable'