Our Cabin

Our cabin is posh in an Ikea sort of way.  It has a door bell which is considered to be quite a status symbol on a cruise ship.  A door bell proclaims that the cabin is so large that a knock may not be adequate to attract the attention of the occupant (particularly when they are playing the piano and the butler has popped out for more canapés).

Our living area isn’t as large as the doorbell suggests mainly because of the naval architect’s bathroom fetish.  It’s enormous (for a cruise ship) and has two wash basins!  It also has a separate toilet with a frosted glass door that only allows you to see the silhouette of your partner sat on the pan. More proof of the designer’s failure to understand his elderly British customers can be seen in his decision to put windows in the bathroom walls. These can almost be obscured by almost closing venetian blinds.  This designer was a young naval architect.  This was a designer who had never seen an old person naked.

The self closing hinges on our Ikea wardrobes are not strong enough to resist the force 8 to 9 gales that we have encountered and the doors have been flapping about a bit. This would not have been so bad if they hadn’t lit up every time they opened.  With the wardrobes strobing like a disco and the toilet lights illuminating the bedroom at every call of nature we found it hard to sleep for the first couple of nights.  Fortunately, just as I was about to rip the wiring out of the wardrobes with my bare hands, I discovered tiny switches on the strip lights.  The solution to the toilet lights shining through the venetian blinds has not been as easy. Both of us have had to learn new skills.

The last time we were on the Braemar I complained about a toilet blockage and the lack of furniture on the balcony.  In an open letter to Fred Olsen I suggested that the solution was to retrain their furniture procurement team to something they could manage like drain cleaning.  They don’t seem to have listened.  I suppose the head of furniture procurement is related to Fred and this is the only position they can find for him/her that will not endanger life at sea. 

Anyway, the problem is no longer a lack of balcony furniture. On our relatively small balcony we have two full size loungers, two chairs and a table. The loungers are of course very heavy to stop them blowing away and, presumably on the advice of the health and safety Nazis, can’t be folded to prevent finger related injuries.  Moving the furniture about is like one of those sliding block puzzle games.  I have been thinking about putting the loungers in the bathroom and sending a photograph of them to Fred Olsen but I don’t suppose the furniture procurement team does irony. Come to think of it I’m not even sure that they could do drain cleaning.

Dave C