twotravellersLondon

Met an old friend on my evening walk in the rain last night. He's a keen birdwatcher so I thought that he might be looking out for owls. But when asked, his answer was ... "No chance to see the pair tonight in this rain... ... It's just too wet to woo!"

In the good old days... Fred used to offer a guarantee that if he dropped prices that he would also refund the difference for anyone who had booked earlier but... he dropped that idea... maybe it would have been better not to. In the ten years before Covid, Fred lost passengers to such an extent that his loading went down from over 90% to just about 70%. The real problem was that Fred just wasn't able to recruit passengers in sufficient numbers to replace those that he was losing. We think that the reason was that when Fred tried to increase his prices above inflation... his loyal passengers' reaction was "How much?" and just didn't book. At the beginning of lockdown, the FOCLs Board made what the company accounts describe as a "strategic" decision to modernise the fleet by disposing of the Black Watch and the Boudicca and replacing them with two old, redundant HAL ships. So despite having less and less people cruising with them over ten years prior to covid, FOCLs increased the number of lower berths from about 3,879 to 4,900. He clearly and expected a flood of loyal cruisers to beat a path to his gang plank after covid. In an interview for the trade press, the FOCLs MD suggested that the idea was to maximise the potential of the old HAL ships and set the cost of what he described as the "premium" cabins (everything above that red line on the hull) by about 20%. Perhaps that's why loyal customers were to be charged top rates on the "special loyalty days" and then watch helplessly as the same cruise was discounted again and again, free drinks, free gratuities and free onboard spend were added. Selling cruises like a Dutch auction may be as good a way as any to destroy a loyalty base.. Perhaps FOCLs have been reading far too many of the reviews that they pay to be collected and published on their site as part of a marketing strategy... two or thee percent of the people who cruise with FOCLs may think that the company's "first class", "fantastic", "couldn't be better" and is "good value" but... the other 97% of people on the same cruises... no comment. We don't like the old HAL's ships for lots of reasons. We're certainly not going to be paying out more to travel on them. Looking at FOCL's accounts and occupancy figures, it would certainly seem that we're not alone. Now a blast from the past... lots of cruisers on Fred enjoying a lovely sea day sunning themselves along the entire length of the promenade deck... not a terraced cabin or a reserved sun-lounger in sight... Fred knew how to attract customers, fill his ships and make people happy in the good old days! 😎

That's what we need on a grey morning.... levity!

Thunderbolts and lightning, can be very, very frightening but no need to worry unless Scaramouch does the Fandango... whatever that means... always wondered!

Oh what a wonderful morning! A super mega grocery delivery is due this morning. Grub for tonight's Trafalgar Day Dinner, ingredients for an Indian night for Dwalli this weekend, a weekly shop, Christmas goodies for the freezer, topping up the cans and packets in pantry (shed) and so on! Even have the charity Christmas cards being delivered. And... there's a few bits and pieces that will find themselves to neighbours and friends who need them and help us out if we ever need a friendly face, a cheerful word or a bit of support. They do the same for us! The email has arrived. It tells us "Your order doesn’t have any substitutions, everything’s present and correct." Whoopie! So the wallet may be thinner but... but the cupboards are full... and the pressies for folk at Christmas are secured. Happy days!

That sounds like a long story!

That sounds like an ideal recipe for a good night's sleep, sweet dreams and waking up to enjoy a fresh new day... with the promise of even more juicy raspberries off the vine tomorrow!

We have a light drizzle and 15˚C here on the edges of Epsom Downs. So hopefully later today or tomorrow we'll have a walk. The other day we had the first real signs of autumn... glorious crops of mushrooms on old tree stumps. We used to sit under dappled shade of this tree and have a picnic. Now we get excited by the fungi!

Well... that's really simple... you've just got to go out gathering winter fueeeel! But even better... if the snow all about is deep and crisp and even... grab a pizza from someone who has a wood burning pizza oven! Very seriously.... We have a neighbour who BBQs when the snow's falling! Frost, snow, candles... juicy burgers and sausages fresh off the grill... he's always ready, resilient and resourceful! He even uses the snow to chill the beers!

You can get tiny little torches that fit on a keyring. We bought a couple in the local garden centre.

Well it's 12˚C here this morning and 22˚C inside with no heating on... so at least some of our heat conservation measures have worked! The switching of the cooker hood to recirculate using the carbon filters seems to have made one of the biggest differences. We had a small local power-cut the other day... something to do with an underground cable... and we learned a lot. We'll now keep the torches in an easy to access spot where we can find them in the pitch dark! We'll leave matches by the candles and we'll keep the mobiles powered up so that we can receive the texts from our energy supplier! As a back-up we have about a dozen remote control electronic candles (Christmas decs!) spread throughout the house so that we can have a little immediate light. The thermal mugs have been retrieved from the shed, the camping stove has been filled with gas and the food flask has been washed and freshened. We've even bought two little microwaveable bed-warmers for next to nothing from the local chemist. I need to eat at regular times and so we've easy instant meals that can be produced in just a few minutes and kept hot in the food flask. It's all from cans or we've batch cooked it... beef casserole and dumplings, lamb hotpot, chicken in white wine with rice, curry and naans, mince and (instant) tatties, stewed steak and (canned) carrots, pasta in bolognaise sauce... not exactly "haute cuisine" but we must have learned something in our camping years about producing quick, easy, filling grub! Anyway on this occasion...our power was on again minutes later. We had regular texts keeping us informed what was happening, we were given an emergency contact number. Neighbours even came out to check we were ok! But... it did cross our minds that... cruising might be a very, very nice alternative!

That's the question! One hundred sightings could be of one bird or several birds. Very unlikely that it was one hundred different birds.

Could well have been the very rare North American Red Eyed Vireo which was spotted there today... again a life-time siting for many people who get excited about these things. Only about 100 have ever been spotted in the UK. Again probably brought over by the weather systems over the North Atlantic. Very unlikely to survive a European winter. Just to add... we usually spend our time looking for much bigger creatures with fins popping out of the waves... just see what the dreaded C has done!

Apparently it's the first recorded siting of the bird in England... Some people were wading through the sea at Bryther on the Isles of Scilly on Thursday just to catch a glimpse. Its left many twitchers ecstatic. A fair number of very rare American birds have turned up in the last fortnight due to the weather over the Atlantic. You just can't underestimate the knowledge, skills and expertise of many of these people who take what we call "bird watching" onto a whole new level. On the other hand, our picnic on our local heath on Tuesday was interrupted by a family of four buzzards each with a wingspan of over 1 m. We did hide the sarnies... just in case. They're intelligent birds and who knows what they may have learned from the seagulls! 🤣

In May this year we glanced at FOCL's 2023 Around the World in Eighty Days Cruise on board the Borealis at a start price £14,499 pp. It was advertised as with "Last Few Cabins Remaining." Five months later, we've Just had a mailing from FOCL's about "Last Few Cabins Remaining" on the same cruise at a much lower start price of £9,999 pp. That's a minimum of £9,000 per couple less than we would have paid in May. We've just checked the website and found that there are cabins available in every single grade... so there are no shortages of cabins. We can now have a cabin six grades higher for the same price as the least expensive interior cabin on offer in May. But if we buy now... is there any comeback if the cruise price drops even further in the next few months? (We don't want to spend more than we need to for no good reason.) Will FOCLs give us the same food, entertainment, access to excursions restaurants, etc if we pay £9,000 less per couple for the cruise than the neighbours either side in identical cabin grades? Has anyone who bought the cruise earlier and paid the higher prices had a refund of the £9,000+ more than the current price that they may have paid in May?

Believe me we tried but he was so full of praise for the wine... he possibly thought that we were just too mean to let him finish the bottle!

A few years back, we had some friends including a self-confessed 'wine-buff' around for a meal. As a lark, we put some supermarket own label plonk into an empty bottle that had once contained a very expensive red wine... fully expecting said wine-buff to choke and splutter on it and declare that it was absolute rubbish... and we could all have a good laugh. Not at all... he waxed lyrical about the bouquet, the terroir the fruit flavours the balance the subtle tannins... nobody had the heart to tell him that he was drinking plonk at less than £5 a bottle... a fraction of the cost of the original contents of the bottle! Best of all... at the end of the evening he complemented us on our improved wine taste and knowledge! But back to the point... if we have to drink and entire bottle of wine in the MDR... maybe we just won't bother if we're not in the mood.

Agree but if it becomes fleet practice, 25 mins here, 25 mins there, a bypassed port and the odd shortcut will all add up. Some other lines seem to be adopting the same corner cutting.

I've been called once. Everyone else, including my wife were all safely onboard, but I was out birdwatching just a few hundred yards away from the quay... still with time in hand before the "on-board" deadline. It wasn't a problem; everyone was very nice about it... the ship wanted to leave early but didn't want to risk accidentally leaving me marooned. Ships are now increasingly keen to leave early. If they have more time to reach the next port, they cruise more slowly and that can save a lot of fuel. This “slow steaming,” is a very effective way to reduce fuel consumption. The American Bureau of Shipping, has estimated that a 10% reduction in speed allows the ship to save about 20% in fuel.

Really excited this morning to watch Hawker Dragonflies on one of the ponds on the local heathland... it really was good to get out and have a few miles stroll in the bright sunlight.

You're absolutely correct... it's not. It's none other than a rather intelligent Psittacula krameri which has worked out exactly how to operate those feeders designed to stop bigger birds! A creature with the attributes that we all want; good looks, intelligence an air of excitements and a little bit of cute humour as well!

Enough to make ordinary garden birds green with envy!

Don't you remember the retired couple whose son ran the filling station in one of the Midsomers? Ghastly end it was. They were just sitting in the front room watched telly! Only answer is to switch over to Bergerac... John Nettles was usually able to have a less fatal ending in those days!

Temps here in Surrey dropped to 7˚C last night. The inside temps fell by 3˚C to 20˚C. However, still no heating on. Today the cooker hood will be switched to the carbon filters to recirculate warm air back into the house, a new insulated letter box will be fitted and one kitchen window will be cleaned down ready for some draft-proofing. Curtains will remain closed this morning until there is some sunshine... which should be from about 8.30 am. Evening meals are now ever-so-romantic with candles... each producing 80 watts of heat and light. Ah yes... we still remember the "good old days"... no central heating, no fitted carpets, no double glazing, no loft insulation and no heating in any of the bedrooms or the bathroom. We still remember sleeping in rooms at below freezing and waking the next morning to scrape the ice-ferns off the inside of the bedroom windows. Those were the days we used to dress in the morning... socks were de riguere... vests were practical items of underwear rather than "statements" and there was no lounge wear or onesies on the sofa! We still remember the clouds of steam in front of our faces over breakfast. Way back in the "good old days"... no electric kettles, no hot running water until the baxi-burner was lit but then there was no mobile phones, no internet, no computers, no calculators, no Sky, no Netflix and only the really affluent could afford tiny little cabinets containing cathode ray tubes which could, for a few hours each day, produce a grainy, grey, fitful image send by some alchemy from the only TV channel in the country. The rest of us had the wireless! Ah yes... we still remember the "good old days"... so... a pullover for breakfast and an extra-warm mug of coffee just doesn’t seem so bad!

It's really bright and sunny here today and the sunlight is streaming into our main bedroom and our study... curtains are wide open to encourage the "greenhouse effect." The. rooms soon warm up and become two or three degrees warmer than the rest of the house... and it's free!