mrsgoggins

Am I the only one who thinks in Celsius for low temperatures but understand high temperatures better in Fahrenheit? I was good with your 10C but I’m currently in central Florida where I’ve just heard that temperatures are going to go over 90F for the next few days! No ….. too hot!! 🥵 As my mum would have said ‘there’s no pleasing some folk’. Leaving for the coast tomorrow so hoping for a breeze. Wishing you all a good weekend, and to my fellow poor sleepers, some good nights 😴😴

I'll bite, what's Yorkshire caviar 😁?

I’ve been awake since 3 am Florida time (8 am UK) despite less than 6 hours’ sleep. I don’t travel, or cope with time differences nearly as well as when I was younger. As with most other things 🙄. So, spurred on by all the food photos, I thought I’d add one of yesterday’s Virgin Atlantic lunch, which was surprisingly good, and I don’t think I say that often of airline food. It’s the veggie main of macaroni cheese with mushrooms and the dessert was a light lemon mousse-type of cheesecake. The barely visible dinky silver salt and pepper pots have on their bases ‘Stolen from Virgin Atlantic’. It’s sunny and with temperatures in the 80s - I think most posters here can still understand Fahrenheit 😉

Interesting. I haven't had any herb pots for quite a while but I do have a 'suspect' indoor plant, which has spent the last 2 nights outside ..... if it survives it survives, and it may be innocent, but I want the little flies gone before I leave tomorrow. My fear is that there are fly eggs lurking, the vinegar will lose its potency, and we will open our front door when we return in May to be greeted with a swarm 😱. I think I will get my BIL to pop in and replace vinegar. Just 'talking' about it has helped to formulate a plan 👍

😁 In a shallow dish. This morning 5 were floating in it with a couple more hovering around the dish ready to dive in! The house now smells of vinegar, as flushed with success, there are a few more 'just in case' dishes of vinegar around the house.

I have sailed mostly on Celebrity and on each class of ship and I am with you on preferring the layout of the older fleet, especially the Solstice class. Not as keen on the Edge class and as Constellation was the first Celebrity ship we ever sailed on (and we have sailed on Infinity) I have a soft spot for the Millenium class. Whilst their cruises are undoubtedly expensive compared with P&O, it is possible to get a bargain and I've had a few in the past. My sailing on Silhouette from Fort Lauderdale to Amsterdam later this month was £103 pppn and that is all inclusive with $400 OBC (includes $100 for booking on board). I also have a cruise from Fort Lauderdale to Southampton booked for March 2025 and that was £70 pp per night including gratuities only but with $100 of OBC for booking on board. These bookings are mid-ship balcony cabins. We are mostly doing these sailings because I loathe overnight flights and will enjoy the TAs on favourite ships. We are Elite Plus on Celebrity and therefore get free drinks between 5-7 pm - DH will have a couple of glasses of wine and I am likely to get water and a soft drink as I have never cared for alcohol. We will get 125 minutes of internet time each, 2 bags of laundry each and the perk I value most of all, free speciality teas and coffees. I have never had any interest in the Martini Bar of course 😉

I was up just after 6 am this morning. I knew that today was the day to book my one-way Premium Economy reward flights out to Florida for next March, using points and taxes. All done! 45k points and £738 for the 2 of us with the back row in PE booked, yeah! As with this year, we are sailing back from Fort Lauderdale but next year into Southampton. This year we are sailing into Amsterdam and flying back to Manchester. No overnight flight and no jet lag; result! On to more mundane matters, we have been besieged by small black flies. Ugh! The sort you don't pay much attention to when there's only the odd one but then you do start to notice when they multiply. We really don't know what has caused it, old bits of fruit in the kitchen bin? Except we have never seen them around the bin. Anyhow we found some old (and probably now illegal) fly spray which got rid of some of the blighters yesterday, and then thanks to Mr Google, I tried a dish of white vinegar last night and this morning, discovered that IT WORKS 🙂. @indiana123 I hope you get some permanent relief very soon. Off to finish my last minute packing for tomorrow's Florida flight, but I hope to pop in from time to time 👋

I'm a cat person but I do like dogs too. Haven't owned cats for about 8 years since my two 20 year old litter sisters had to be put down, six months apart. Every time I see a big pet cat with chunky paws I just fawn over it. It's only holidays and 'our time' that prevents me from rushing to a cat rescue centre and getting another one or two. Old cats though, not kittens; I'm sure I don't have another 20 years!

I bet you challenged that forcefully! Did they relent?

The emboldened part was always our view, especially DH's, so we even travelled to the USA with the cancer cover excluded since he said if there were any problems (very highly unlikely; we had taken advice from the consultant on that) we would return home self-funded. I was still happier when it went back as being covered, but DH was totally disinterested! You are quite correct, it was Cigna and is now Aviva.

We are with Barclays for annual insurance and they excluded my husband's cancer initially. However, after one year they would cover this and with no increase in the premium, just the regular travel pack price.

I bought a new Yaris hybrid a few years ago, after having my old much-loved Jazz since 2006, but neither of us really enjoyed driving it, and so we sold it to a Yaris dealer for £1k more than we paid - I can't imagine that ever happening again! So it was back to a Jazz, but I had to wait until last autumn for delivery because I wanted heated seats and a heated steering wheel and their current models at the start of the year didn't have the heated steering wheel, plus I expect it to be the last car I ever buy given than I am happy to drive an old car, so wanted it to be 'right'. Much happier with a Jazz but we both like our comfy old Jazz, which we still own and has less than 50k miles on it. We also own a diesel Skoda Superb estate (which we use for long journeys) and a long-wheelbase VW van, which is DH's pride and joy (it's old but well cared for). It's essential for his hobby 😏. Fortunately, we are not short of parking space ...... but I know it doesn't make any sense owning 4 vehicles for 2 of us 😁

Such an entertaining email 👍. I've also enjoyed your CC 'rants' but now wish to congratulate you on your magnificent achievement with the butter chicken sauce. I feel I must now seek it out ..... see what you've done? 😉 For my part, I've just had my own 'rant' to Travel Which? about an issue with Cunard, which I choose not to share .... so there!! 😁

Absolutely this! We have thought of looking at Fred cruises since the haul down to Southampton from the NW gets to be tedious, but this information has just put the lid on that idea, rather than the prices.

I enjoyed reading your account so far, so thanks for doing it. Looking forward to an update 👍

@Beckett Just caught up with your unfortunate and very unpleasant fall, what a shocker! Thank goodness you were able to get all the checks you needed Jane, despite the A&E being 'rammed'. I'm sure you'll be taking it easy today, so I'll just add my own good wishes along with everyone else's 💐

+1 Our experience of leaving Ventura after our 35 night January/February cruise was awful - trying to find luggage in the scrum that ensued, made worse by the fact that people probably had more cases than normal. I agree with you about fresh disembarkation labels being a much better system. If disembarking in the UK, we generally self-disembark as DH wants to be off from the car park at the first opportunity and so have not experienced this before with P&O. This time we were on a coach and so went with the ship's arrangement to put out luggage the night before. When disembarking in other countries (never with P&O), we are unlikely to be in such a rush to get off and go with the ship's 'fresh labels' approach and have never had the experience we had in February.

It gets better as it goes along .... by series 3 I was willing my day away so I could catch the next episode 😁

Lol, I suggest you Google the series for other opinions but 'charming, elegant and nostalgic' appear and do sum it up well. No violence but interesting story lines, a bit of whimsy and good characters.

As someone else said in this thread, the face cloths are useful to wipe splashes around the outside of the sink after use. I also carry a few j-cloths for this purpose just in case they are not provided.

I had facecloths on the 35 night Ventura January trip. Again, they were replaced daily and were provided as soon as I requested them.

Seaside Hotel does have subtitles. I thought we were going to watch series 7 last night and much to my dismay, I discovered that 4's streaming service only carries up to 6 series - which did end well and tied up ends, but still ...... !! DH tells me we can buy the other series elsewhere (not checked where yet) as series 10 was released at the end of last year. I will be buying. Do try at least 3 episodes and I bet you will be hooked. It really is 'charming' and that's not a word you would use often about a TV series.

You have my full sympathy. I was awake, and so got up, between 3-4 am. I made a drink, ate a banana, listened to a radio programme which celebrated Tony Blackburn's 80th birthday and did today's Wordle and Quordle. I don't normally get more than one night a week like this so tonight should be okay - I hope 🤞

I have seen, and enjoyed Mrs Caldecott’s Cabbage War 👍 and also the 2 Mamma Mia films and the Bridget Jones ones. I too only enjoy happy films! There is plenty to depress me in real life events and so for entertainment I generally want ‘light’. Do try Seaside Hotel, I’m sure you would love it.

Avril is quite correct. Romantic comedies - the sort of thing that DH would not choose to watch, or if he went along with it (which he would do) could be guaranteed to nod off during the film! I have been saving pre-recorded Shirley Valentine for such an occasion and was hoping for Pretty Woman, The Proposal (Sandra Bullock) or Overboard (Goldie Hawn) to be on somewhere, but I think I'm out of luck. I'll find something though. The documentaries can wait ....... 😉 What I would really love to do is binge watch 'Seaside Hotel' on 4+ (channel 4's free streaming service). I won't though, because DH likes it too, and as we are on series 7 of 9 series, I want them to last. If you have not heard of Seaside Hotel, a Danish hit series, I can recommend it as both charming and interesting. The Times said that it would be appreciated by fans of Downton Abbey, which I didn't watch, but I pass that along in case it is of interest to others. The fashions from the 20s and 30s are fabulous IMHO. I may just have a go at Avril's custard tart recipe, but because I love a good custard tart and I will be alone.... maybe I should wait! 😋