It’s Always You Bing Crosby sang it to Dorothy Lamour, in Zanzibar of course . . . Christmas Day 1964 – we arrived off Mombasa and berthed alongside the Chakla, another Company ship. Also, in port was a BI passenger ship named ‘Karanja’ and this name had a family link for me. My father was […]

The light rail from Port Melbourne to the city takes about fifteen minutes, and costs $7.50 return, if you are a pensioner or $15.00 full fare. After the Golden Princess docked in Melbourne, we caught the light rail to the city centre. The cost includes a reusable card that can be ‘topped up’ over the […]

This was the second part of our ‘back to back’ cruising from Sydney in Diamond Princess. We spent a day in Yokohama before sailing to cruise the Japanese coast and a single foreign port in South Korea, Busan, which is across from Japan via the southern part of the Sea of Japan. We would stay […]

I’ve managed to trace my family back to John Woodland, who was born around 1610, near Newport Pagnell. His grandson, Richard, married Mary Exon, a girl from Ware in Herts , which is 50 miles (80 km) from Newport Pagnell. The distance today is less than an hours drive, so to marry someone so far away in […]

With such a long time at anchor off Doha, Qatar, there was not any excuse not to write home – at least we didn’t pay for the postage. We handed our letters to the purser or chief steward, which was then handed over to our agent, along with any Company communication. The Company mail was […]

The normal high standard of Princess cruising has, in my opinion, slipped somewhat, but for us it started last year when we sailed in the Majestic Princess from Rome to Singapore. We have completed a total of nine cruises, seven of which were with Princess, so I think we can judge when standards are falling. […]

Not long after we arrived home from our South American cruise, we were ‘invaded’ by the family, who wished to celebrate our Golden Wedding. We never turn down a party particularly when we don’t have to prepare anything :- o) During the party we were presented with a voucher for two nights in the city […]

Writing historical fiction is time consuming to say the least. Each scene that surrounds a character must be true for the reader, and the easiest way to make this scene true, is research and more research. You cannot afford to be wrong, unless of course you do it deliberately, because you are writing an ‘alternate […]

Shigeru Mizuki is a Japanese Manga author who was born in 1922 and lived in Sakaminato. Shigeru Mizuki When he was a child he was a prodigy and during his time in primary school his skill with a pencil was so good that one of his teachers arranged an exhibition of his work. When he […]

Lifou Island is part of the Loyalty Islands, which is part of New Caledonia, and Noumea is the capital. We approached the island and anchored. The tender boats from Ruby Princess would take us ashore to the small piers. The island is 80 km (50 miles) long and 16 km (10 miles) wide, and is […]

Sea cruising might not yet be allowed due to the fear of Covid but land cruising is still available. I never get tired of driving around the Australian countryside – an open road with little traffic and a sunburned country, what more could we want? In our latest ‘land cruise’ we managed to ‘cruise’ 1,800 […]

Writing historical fiction is time consuming to say the least. Each scene that surrounds a character must be true for the reader, and the easiest way to make this scene true, is research and more research. You cannot afford to be wrong, unless of course you do it deliberately, because you are writing an ‘alternate […]

I’ve always loved North & Mid Wales, perhaps because my mother was Welsh and only when the family moved from Caernarvon (Carnarfon to be PC) to Birkenhead, when she was thirteen, did she start to learn English. When my mother spoke of the move she would comment that she moved to England, which sounded strange to me as […]

Perhaps A Brief Encounter should have been the title of this blog. Celia Johnson & Trevor Howard in a 1945 romantic drama, which might have links to Punta del Este. A British lady, Margaret Elizabeth Douglas, was born in Punta del Este in 1918. Her mother was Anglo – Argentinian and her father was Canadian […]