Cheers to Survival – Sydney, Nova Scotia – [09/16/2014]

To say this has been a hard week would be an understatement, as I’m sure some of you have picked up …for those of you on my facebook account, most of you know that whenever the profile photo changes to that cute little clockwork ballerina it’s not really that great a sign.

But, thankfully, the storm seems to have passed and the clockwork gears have once again started to soften into flesh and blood. Politics can get extremely ugly in shipboard life, mostly because – as my manager pointed out to me this afternoon – we can’t go home. This is home. If you live less than ten steps from the person you’re having a problem with, there is going to be a fair amount of tension in the air.

And there was. The situation has been resolved as best it can be, though I suspect deep down no one was truly happy with the outcome – or with the whole mess in general – but at least it’s over.

All of which led to Amras and I sitting in the sunshine at an Irish pub in Sydney, Nova Scotia; munching on Irish pasties (SO many memories of England! Mmmm….cornish pasties) and kalamari and talking out the last of what has been an incredibly stressful 72 hours for both of us. One of those roving afternoons where you talk about everything and nothing and come away from the table with somehow far fewer knots in your shoulders and less tension in the pit of your stomach; where despite the fact that the tab is way higher than anything you ever could have expected, it’s worth every penny just for the feeling that you’re away from everything. From the politics, the drama, the red tape, everything.

And there was one comment which we both looked at each other and said ‘I have the feeling that’s going to end up in a blog’…which now is utterly and totally lost to my swiss cheese mind, but I’m sure it will come to me eventually. Though possibly too late to blog about.

Sometimes I swear that they could base a fictional television off of the real drama that takes place in cruise ship crew quarters…and no one – not one single soul who hasn’t been out here and lived it for themselves – would ever believe it.