When we were in Cannes on our last cruise, we were excited to see this ship again! it is so distinctive with lips and eyes and so on.

I have been doing some searching through all the discs and so on of photos, to find all the copies of Bill's photos for his new laptop.

I came across four or five things that were of interest to me, my own stuff, so put them in a file on my external hard drive and called it work in progress. When I dipped into it, I found the photos from the last Marco Polo cruise that we were on, the Mediterranean cruise that had so many Australian and New Zealanders on board. I didn't use Picassa at that time, so I had a ball, going through all the photos and remembering things as each photo went up on the screen.

When I came to this photo, I was cropping and so on and suddenly noticed that the name of the ship was different! The one at Cannes was called the AIDA diva, and to my surprise this one was the AIDA aura ! I had always thought that such an outrageous design for a ship would be a one off, didn't even consider the possibility of it being the regular livery for a whole fleet ! Well, I was wrong, and I am going to look up the internet so see what other beauties they have in their fleet.

Hope you like this photo, unlike Cannes, we were able to get really close up, and all we did was complain that we couldn't get a shot of the whole ship!

I got a new book from Audible yesterday, the House Sitter by Richard Lovesey.
It's a detective novel and I am really enjoying it, listening to it on my mp3 player.
I am always surprised at how many books are on this very small mp3 player, I've had such pleasure from it. When I first joined Audible I was using another player, and unfortunately the Audible site didn't like it one bit and refused to put any books on to it. After a few months, I treated myself to a new player, first checking that Audible was compatible with the new one, a Creative Zen Stone. Since then it has been a breeze, Audible had improved their site and the book just zooms on to the player without any effort from myself, brilliant!
I get one book each month, about the fifth of the month, and have had very few disappointments.
Most of the readers are marvellous and really add to the enjoyment of the book, I find.
Also I use the talking books when I am doing some boring job around the house, sometimes I get so interested in the book, I finish the work without any effort.
I often can't get to sleep at night, especially if I am overtired, so I use the talking book to get myself off to sleep. I listen to a book that is not too exciting and one I have read and re-read several times.
I also rent a DVD about once a month, from LoveFilm.
This time I got "The March of the Penguins" in the Blu-ray format, to play on Bill's new flat screen TV. It was fantastic, the photography was marvellous and the quality of the picture was stunning, of course.
Bill and I had been to Antartica so we knew some of what went on, including the leopard seals and the skuas. They didn't have any skuas in this film, but an equally nasty bird was trying to eat the penguin chicks alive, as I watched through my fingers.
On this disc, there were three or four really interesting additional films, one by the camera men about their work, really wonderful.
I waited for them to tell me about the difficulties they had with the digital photography in low temperatures but they didn't go into that unfortunately.
This DVD is well worth watching, I remember when it came out at the cinema, and regret not seeing it there at that time.
Next week we are going to see the new Daniel Craig film, probably at the cinema in Edinburgh.
We enjoy going there to see a film and plan to go at least once a month this year.
We've been a bit disappointed in the TV over the festive period this year. I expected it to be much better, and planned to record several goodies, but so far nothing has grabbed our attention except for the Royal Institution Xmas Lectures.
This year the subject was Computers and we were amazed at the facts that were given out, things we had wondered about, but never thought anyone would explain to us.
These lectures are a must for us, along with the concert from Vienna on New Year's Day.
I recorded the concert and all five of the lectures, and we plan to watch the concert on the new TV at Bill's house. The conductor this year was Daniel Barenboim, who was quite amusing.
I was a bit surprised at his humour, he looks pretty serious these days.
I must say that, this year, the programme was different and very interesting and lively.
We will probably watch it during the year several times.
Our favourite morning programme is "the Wright stuff" with Matthew Wright, but he went off for Xmas and hasn't returned yet. We are so disappointed and hope that he will be back next Monday, we love that programme.

Speakers

I got new speakers for Xmas. The old ones were tied up with string!
They were a cheap item from Aldi and the plug was coming apart as well as the string, so time to get new ones and I put in a request with Santa, alias Bill.
These speakers are lovely, piano black and made by Creative, same as my wee mp3 player that holds all my Audible books.
They make my old beige computer and monitor look even older that they are, which is six years and a couple of months.
I had a difficult time trying to identify the cables and so on, but eventually got them installed, and while I was at it, identified the plug for the printer and put a label on it.
All of this with Bill's help, I wiggled the cable from the back and he grabbed onto it from the front, real high tech stuff.
I've been told that I shouldn't keep my printer on standby as it gobbles up the electricity, so now I am going to keep it unplugged until I need it.
I have long since given up leaving my TV and its other stuff on standby and put the power off at the wall every night. Also the microwave oven used to be on standby all the time and I only use it about once or twice a week, so that is kept switched off as well. I hope that I am saving a lot of money with all of this palaver.
I now reckon that there is at least a mile and a half of cable in this house.
Everything that I buy has a charger or something similar and a couple of yards of cable, and we have four digital cameras working at the moment. All of them have these other cables that you plug into the TV to show your photos to friends, so that is added to the others. I got a laptop last year and had to buy an ethernet cable, which measures about five yards. Also I have various gang sockets, these white ones that you can plug four or six thing into. Most of them are not too long but three of them are quite long, especially the one I use for my iron. What a joy to be able to iron in the room with the best view, by the way!
I wonder if everything will go wireless one day, maybe we'll have a black box in the corner powering up every attachment and tool in the house. Dream on, I hear you say!
Talking of these long cables with the sockets on the end, why are they all white?
Often I imagine a lovely lounge, in specially chosen relaxing colours, a lovely new flat screen TV in one corner and so on. There with the TV, BluRay player and so on plugged into it is a large white cable with sockets attached, sticking out like a sore thumb!
Do they make them in any other colour ? I haven't even seen them in beige.
Bill has a new TV and needs only three sockets behind his set, so he has hidden his cable attachment under the stand, but he has to kneel down to slide it out and switch it on, each time he plans to watch TV.
Sort of spoils the effect............come round to see my new TV, but first you will have to watch me kneeling down and bowing to it before the programmes come on!

the festive period

Among my Xmas cards this year, I got one of these interesting letters, sent in lieu of a card.
Every new job, new child and so on was documented for another year.
I immediately thought, first "wish I had written one of these", then " this would make a very good blog!"
I told my daughter, and she said, "Why don't you do one yourself?" so here I am.
I had a very disorganised festive period this year, everything seemed to go too fast for me, and I just could not catch up........old age, I expect, but my first New Year's resolution was to be better next year.
I do enjoy Christmas and the New Year, and have very happy memories of the New Year especially.
My mother (Agnes, or Mrs Harrower to her acquaintances) was a gifted pianist and could accompany a singer in four or five keys. She often accomplished this in the course of one song at the New Year.
Everyone had "their song" for the New Year when they went to first foot.
My mother had four brothers working at the pit, and, since their friends and workmates knew they would be at their sister's house (she was the one with a piano) they all came to our house.
There seemed to be an unending stream of them for hours after midnight, each one putting a whiskey on the piano for the hostess. They would tell Mum what song and she would say, "just start and I will follow you."
If the singer was good, she would simply put in some fantastic chords and let him have his head, but others needed to be supported.
(Come to think of it, as the night wore on, more and more of them needed some sort of support!)
I grew up thinking that everyone's mother could do this piano business, although I didn't get around to playing myself.
Every New Year there was a splendid dumpling, wow, what a marvellous aroma!
Food was rationed so I don't know how she managed it, again, I thought it was pretty normal.
It was years before I realised what a talented woman she was, and finally realised one day when she was about 80 years old, that she was quite unique.