.:[ Maritime Mintballs in May ]:. - JamelUK, Norway 2013 - PreTrippie

[JamelUK]

Maritime Mintball's In May - JamelUK's May 2013 Norway Trippie

ATTENTION!

If you have no sense of humour and don't find observational, satirical humour amusing then PLEASE MOVE ALONG!
There is nothing for you to see here.

For the rest of you who should know the drill by now, the jokes don't get any better. Consider yourself warned.

The Pre-Trippie

Every hour, of every day, there's one of them happening somewhere in the world.


Be it natural...


...man made...


...or just a result of Murphy's Law.


You can't escape them.


Disasters happen.


But just lately we seem to have had more than our fair share.


They say a man's home is his castle. Well just lately, ours has looked like this...


Many of you might already be aware of recent happenings at Mintball Mansion.

However, I am now going to bring you the full tale of recent events, just so that you appreciate how ready we are for our forthcoming holiday.

And besides, you really couldn't make this stuff up.

I promise that, for once, the following tale has not been embellished in any way for comedic purposes. This account is accurate to the best of my knowledge and tracks our troubles exactly as they happened. I am currently negotiating with John Cleese for the movie rights.

[JamelUK]

I blame Slimming World. That's when it all started.


Having returned from our last Disneyland Paris trip and, already horrified by the growing double chin I seemed to have aquired on all the pictures without any use of Photoshop, stuffed ourselves plentifully over the Christmas festivities, Mel and I decided that 2013 was the year we really should make an effort to get fit and loose some weight.

Inspired by Rob, who can now wear a twiglet sized t-shirt with pride, we opted to give Slimming World a try.

Mel came back from the first meeting.


"It's really easy", she said. "You can eat as much steak & chips as you like."

"Are you sure?", I queried, not convinced that she hadn't just spent the £5 membership fee sitting round the corner at the local MaccyDs.


But it's true!

You can eat as much tasty, healthy, nutrionally balanced food as you like.


Just so long as you cover it all in this...


...and make a daily pilgrimage to the Black Monolith.


Amazingly, somehow it works and you really do loose weight!

You can even eat as many of these as you like.


Sehr geehrter Herr Müller, jede chance auf einen rabatt?

I had intended to rant a little about his recent attempts to try and confuse me by changing the packaging of these fat free delights, but alas, the efficient German has me covered...


..although I'm not entirely sure how he could squeeze any more fruit into the Original one.

So we dieted. We even hopped on the treadmill.


Pounds were shed. Inches were lost. Jeans were found to be snagging around ankles unless belts & braces were used.


Now you may remember how toasty warm it was over winter.


And how that wonderfully warm weather continued through into Spring.


It was damn well freezing and without the usual hug of excessive body fat to help, and curled up at home, we'd had a problem we'd never really fixed from last year.

The lounge radiator was stone cold.


I bled it, I read various tips on plumbing forums, but it remained stubbornly as cold as Maleficent's stare.

No problem, we thought, we'll sort it out later and just huddle up in the bedroom instead.

All the other radiators were working perfectly, efficiently and were very warm.


Unfortunately, the radiators in the two rooms we probably use the most - the living room and our bedroom - didn't want to play and remained stone cold.

We can take a hint, so we reluctantly called British Gas.

Yes, yes, we know now. Of course we know now. Thieving

The pleasant chap turned up some days later in his freshly ironed blue dungarees complete with embroidered logo. He's called Dave.

He turned the water off, unscrewed a few pipes and then gave me that well known, "Ooooooohh. Mmmmmm... Yeah... " look.

You know the one? You can see it regularly at Kwikfit garages every Sunday morning. It says "I am going to bleed your bank account dry and then laugh, smugly at you whilst I casually tighten up a bolt."

He informed me that we had a serious sludge blockage in our pipes and that we would have no option but to rip up the floor boards, investigate and replace the pipes.

I smiled politely, and showed him to our front door, assuring him I'd think about it.

I did. For about 30 seconds.

Our house is about 10 years old and doesnt have floor boards. In fact the majority of the pipework is in the walls.

[JamelUK]

It's then Mel remembered we'd been given a good offer by the company who gave us our free solar panels.

We've been mightily impressed by them and couldnt fault their service on that side of their business, so their new venture into offering super effecient boilers for life had to be worth a look.

Mel got her spreadsheet out and worked out the maths. It seemed like a reasonable deal so we signed up.


Two weeks later and we had their install team on site.


Now this scheme works on the principle that you pay them a monthly fee and that they will provide 24/7 call out in the event anything goes squiffy with the boiler or your central heating. So of course it makes sense for them to ensure that the piping they are attaching their brand new efficient boiler to is also working to its optimum performance.

To guarantee this, they power flush your system free of charge. Something British Gas had already quoted me over £600 to do.

This ordinarily should take the install team a day. Ours took two.


But the lads were brilliant and were determined that they were going to get all our radiators working before they left, so long as I kept feeding them tea and biscuits.

And they did, leaving us with this...


...and a house full of blazing, red hot radiators even with the thermostat turned down 10 degrees lower than we used to have it. Result! I sign off the job with John, the install team leader.

The new boiler also had an added bonus. Stick with me, this is where it starts to get interesting.

[JamelUK]

Approximately 5 years ago, we decided to have a new bathroom suite. We paid a small fortune for it, having made the decision to set it out as a bath room and so buying the largest spa bath which would fit and that we could afford.

The bespoke design featured some really nice waterfall taps we had spotted that were a new line just launched.

However, in order to run them off our gravity fed water system, we would need to use a Hansgrohe power pump to provide enough water pressue.

No problem, all plumbed in and working, yet we did have a noisy pump whirring away every time we used a bathroom tap.

Roll on to now and our new super effecient combi boiler. We could remove the noisy pump as now we had hot water at mains pressure.

Excellent! We can now run our bath in about 15 minutes rather than 30. I did tell you its a big bath!

So all sorted, Mel treats herself to a selection of Lush Bath bombs and heads in to the bath for a nice long, hot soak.

Marvelous. Everyone is happy.


Errrr, no.

The following morning, Mel heads downstairs on her way to work and turns the Living Room lights on. They dont come on, and we soon realise that none of the downstairs lights are working. Something, somewhere has tripped the isolator.

Suspecting a blown blub, I head into the garage to reset it. But it wont. That's never a good sign.

Its at that point that Mel sticks her head around the garage door and suggests, "I think you should come and look at this..."

Back in the Living Room and, with the blinds open to provide some light, I am presented with a large and ugly bubble on the Living Room ceiling.

"" !

A quick dash back to the garage to turn the water off.

Where the hell is that coming from?

I make an urgent call to the boiler company while also digging out our home insurance details.

It's while phoning the insurance company that I wander into our Dining Room and see this...


"NO!"

The boiler team are soon on site and between us we try and track the source of the problem.

All roads seem to lead to the bathroom though.

Now again, our beautiful bespoke bathroom was superbly designed. So incredibly crafted in fact that the panel on the side of the bath was not any of your flimsy white piece of fibreglass. Heck no, it was a 6ft piece of plasterboard that had been screwed in place and then tiled.

And there was only one way into it. A stanley knife and a hammer.


It took me about an hour to get it loose without damaging any more of the tiles than I needed to.

Underneath the bath it's more than just a little damp.

The boiler guys, although very helpful and suggestive, tell me without doubt, thats something to do with the bath's spa system plumbing and not anything to do with the regular house plumbing. I thank John again for his help and wave him out of the front door.

So my next phone call is to Airbath, the company who made our lovely big spa bath.

Its a very short phone call to their old phone number. The company no longer exists.

Luckily, Im quite handy with Google, so after a little bit of research I discovered that they had been taken over by a new company.

A quick chat with the very helpful lady there, and I have an appointment booked with one of their engineers.

Bill the engineer arrives the following day, gets on his hands and knees under the bath and pokes and prods around with a torch for a bit.

He then gives me that "Ooooh... Mmmmmh... Yeah... " look.

You know the one? You can often see it on the face of your Dentist as he prods around the remains of your molars after many years of coca-cola abuse.

The problem is easy to identify, but sadly isn't going to be easy to fix.

Now to be honest, we'd first had some issues with our bath about 6 months ago. The air pump stopped working and wouldnt restart. The rest of the bath was still fine though and, in our grand scheme of "tomorrow" jobs, we never got around to sorting it. In hindsight, that should have been our first clue.

Bill tells me that we have a faulty bath.

During manufacture, Airbath needed to glue the air chamber on to the bottom of our bath with glue. The individual responsible for ordering this glue decided that she could save the company a fortune by ordering a wax based glue, rather than an epoxy based one.

Now hands up who knows what happens to wax when it gets warm?

Well done you at the back - you're right, it melts.

So effectively what had been happening to our bath over the last 5 years is that the bottom of the bath we could see was delaminating from the bottom of the air chamber we couldn't see, and was slowly letting water in. That water had been slowly dripping into the air pump, which is why it had failed.

Fast forward to our recent boiler installation and the new, improved hot water pressure.

"She canna take it no more Cap'n!"...


...and the little non return valve, the only thing which had been preventing an earlier flooding, gave up and burst.

So, in short, we needed a new bath.

Not a problem, our Airbath is covered under guarantee.

Errrr, no. It was covered under guarantee.

I am advised by both the engineer and later their customer service director that when customers were identifying this issue, most likely as a result of the drips on their heads, Airbath were obligated to swap them out free of charge.

As a result, the company went bankrupt. That glue really saved them £s didnt it?

I have to credit the new company with understanding how to do Customer Service.

Appreciating our situation, their director apologised that they weren't liable for a free replacement. However, they would sell me a new bath at the factory price - so that's hundreds rather than thousands. In addition they would provide free of charge, engineer Bill again to fit all the air pump and electronics side of the bath if I could organise a local plumber to swap the bath.

[JamelUK]

Still with me? Okay...

Meanwhile, the insurance team turn up - Dom and Pete.


A quick survey and they find that the water leak has tracked along the gap between two plasterboard panels which spans both the Living and Dining Rooms. They agree that the ceiling is going to need completely replastering and skimming. That would mean that the walls would need to be repainted. So lets just say that we'll completely redecorate most of the downstairs of your house for you.

All good, all covered, peanuts to pay for excess and can all be sorted within a couple of weeks.

We should be happy about this right? Professional tradesmen completely redecorating 2 rooms for us and covering up all my dodgy attempts with a paint brush?

Well yes, but for one, fairly major detail.

They need us to complete empty all the affected rooms.

Where to?!

We all take storage for granted these days.


We'd already camped out in our bedroom, given that the ensuite was now the only usuable bathroom.

Much of the bathroom had been moved into one of our spare rooms, which meant that everything else had to be moved into the remaining spare room. The garage was storing our new bath.

If the acoustics on the last couple of DIBBcasts have sounded a little odd from the West Wing point of view, please understand that Mel and I have been recording while squeezed between several large cardboard boxes!

The following week Paul the plasterer turns up. The job has been scheduled to take them one day.

Looking up at my two ceilings, Paul gives me that "Ooooh... Mmmm... Yeah... " look.

You know the one? You can often see it when you order two pints of beer at a bar in London and you only hand the landlord a tenner.

He tells me that the office regularly do this, and underestimate the work involved. He'll get what can be done today, but will bring his mate to help with the job tomorrow.

Of course there is no additional cost to me, other than the amount of time this is taking to fix.

I am relieved though when the following day, with a good team between him and his buddy Ken, they quickly finish skimming the ceilings and do a fantastic job. He tells me that they are regularly contracted to the local National Trust and his prior job had been to sort out all the celings at Levens Hall. My ceilings have never looked better.

[JamelUK]

Now, they just need to be painted.

Allowing time for the plaster to settle, Keith the painter turns up the following Monday.

He double checks what paint is going where, explains how he is going to go about it, and he makes a good start.

Sadly however, he's been white as a sheet since he turned up at 8am and spends most of the morning coughing up a lung.


At around 2pm he apologises, but says he has to go home as he feels awful. Not to worry though, the office will send someone else to finish up tommorow.

On Tuesday, a new painter Leonard turns up. By this point I've marked out a reserved parking space on our drive for his Transit van.

Well I call him a painter. I'm not entirely sure what his area of expertise was, if indeed he had one.


I spent a good 15-20 minutes walking him though the job, explaining which paint for which wall and showing him how the coving we had chosen was to go up in the Living Room.

All sorted, I headed back up stairs to juggle my time finding a job and sorting a local plumber to swap the bath.

Around lunchtime I wandered back downstairs to make my lunch and to offer Leonard, the alleged decorator, a brew.

I find him in the Dining Room, putting coving up on a third wall.

We exchange words. Not many, but enough for him to understand he's made an almighty mistake.

To make matters worse, or funnier depending on your point of view, he was actually cutting up the coving next to the two large rolls of bright orange border we had chosen for the Dining Room.


The Dining Room is a tangerine colour, the Living Room has a purple theme. I should have made him take the Ishihara dot test.

By about 3pm, he has managed to remove the coving from the wrong room and put one strip up half a wall in the right room. Then he went home.

I thought he'd just nipped out to his van, but realised that he'd had enough when I heard it racing down our road.

Time for another phonecall to Dom, the co-ordinator back at the insurance company.

Accepting his grovelling, I am assured a qualified decorator will be on site the following day.

It's fortunate I'm not working at the moment isn't it? I think I missed my vocation as Site Foreman.

It's now Wednesday and at 8am there is a knock on the door. Its Keith again from Monday, and hes looking much healthier.

Over an obligatory cuppa, he tells me he thinks he had that horrid 24 hour flu bug, but feels fine now. I spend the rest of the day disinfecting everything he touches as he gets on with the job.


He curses the other bloke, calls him various things I cant repeat on a family forum and tries to make the best of a bad botch job. After about half an hour, he gives up, rips down all of the coving and tells me that hes off to B&Q to get some new stuff.

Later on that evening, when he'd finished around tea time, we have two beautifully decorated rooms. He did an excellent job.

[JamelUK]

Meanwhile, I've managed to find a local plumber who is prepared to sort out my bath, and retile after the mess for a figure Im happy with. He's called Bill and by now I've worked out that proper, professional tradesmen must have a single syllable name.

Co-ordinating with the bath company, we arrange that their engineer Bill will be on site on the Friday with plumber Bill. So Ill have a house with a broken bath and two Bills. I promise Im not making this up.

Mel and I were both at work the day they originally installed our bath, those 5 years ago. It took them a day and half.

On that Friday morning, with me watching over their shoulders and providing regular hot beverages, the team of plumber and airbath engineer took a little under 2 hours to remove the old bath, heave it down the stairs, heave the new one upstairs and plumb it in.


During the afternoon, the airbath chap has sorted all the electronics and fitted a brand new air compressor.

The plumber meanwhile is trying to fix our gorgeous waterfall taps to the bath.


You need a masters degree in mechanical engineering to fathom how they come apart and then go back together.

Eventually, I call up the Tech Support team at the manufacturing company responsible for them. They email me a schematic diagram.

This helps enormously as within just a few minutes of studying it, the plumber manages to snap the tap in half.

As plumber Bill presents me with the two halves of my very expensive tap I nearly brained him with them, had engineer Bill not been standing nearby as a witness.

Another call is made to the tap manufacturers.

I like them. Our taps have a 10 year guarantee on them and it seems she's happy to sort out a new part for us free of charge.

This is all well and good, but does of course means that our bathroom will not be finished today.

Later that Friday evening, Mel bounces home, fully expecting to be able to leap into a nice, new shiny bath.

She is stopped in her tracks by me and a large notice I had placed on the bath - "Not Yet!"

I agree with plumber Bill that I'll phone him once the tap arrives, as it should only be a couple of days.

The tap arrives the following Tuesday. I call plumber Bill.

He's busy doing another job, so wont be able to get to me now until the following week. I express my displeasure in a number of short, but carefully chosen words. He tells me he'll give me a call on Wednesday as he might be able to pop around later afternoon.

I think it was my persistent calling and texting him that Wednesday morning that resulted in plumber Bill arriving just after lunch.

The tap is soon fixed, but of course our bathroom still needs retiling. In addition, as a result of all the trauma to get the air pump fixed, several of our floor tiles need replacing.

We agree that he'll be back tomorrow to sort that.

Thursday morning arrives and Im up extra early to expect plumber Bill.

By 10am there is no sign of him, so I call him.

"The number you have called is unvailable..."

, and double

I have his business card and so try an alternative number. Mel is already busy at work, making good and valid use of the very expensive NHS internet connection by checking he's not featured on the BBC Watchdog website anywhere.

Thankfully he's not and actually has a reasonable local reputation. On Friday morning he finally returns my calls.

"Im really sorry", he tells me, "I have a contract to maintain the boilers and heating in some flats and they've had a major gas leak the other day. This is a priority."

Mmm. Understandable, but where does that leave me?

He tells me that he's going to have his friend finish the tiling for him. He's a full time tiler anyway, so will probably do a better job than Bill would have.

That sounds promising. When he tells me that his friends's name is Mark Im sold. Mark will be able to finish the tiling next week.

Bored, and with no tradesmen to keep me company, I decided to have a go myself and completely repaint the hall, stairs and landing.


Shortly after I put my paintbrush down, Dan the carpet man turns up to industrially clean all the carpets in the Living & Dining Rooms, the hall, stairs and landing.

[JamelUK]

The weekend starts and with at least downstairs now looking normal again, Mel and I start returning furniture to the Living and Dining Rooms.

With the professionally applied paint now dry in our freshly decorated Living Room we decide to take the opportunity and finally organise and arrange our space a little better.

Soon, we decide we need some shelves.

Exactly which shelves we need are discussed in further detail down at our local Starbucks.

With most of the Dining Room, as well as some remains of the previous baths plumbing still taking up the majority of our kitchen, planning and cooking Slimming World approved meals hasn't been entirely easy.

We've done our best, but admittedly there have been a few slippages. Starbucks is our greatest vice.

I wouldn't say that we're regulars.

The barristas would!

No word of a lie, Beccy, the regular girl who runs the night shift on the Drive Thru, embarrasingly just shouts "Usual?" at us when we approach the order point.


So it is whilst enjoying yet another Grande Skinny Vanilla Latte and Grande Mocha Frappacinno that we found some nice corner shelves and a set of super thin LED display downlighters to go with them. Perfect for showing off our growing Swarovski Disney collection.

Mel spent the afternoon waxing and polishing the shelves with some great Ronseal stuff to match the rest of our Living Room furniture.

I then fixed up the LED lights to them. Electronics I can do.

So it came time to fix the shelves to the wall, in two opposing corners of the room.

From a box full over 100 screws I bought from Wickes, I selected one to use. This is a genuine photograph.


Starting at the first corner I carefully drilled holes, pushed in the rawlplugs and screwed the 3 shelves in place. They're almost straight, if you've got one short leg.


"It's so beautiful..."


Full of confidence, I strode over to the opposite corner and continued to drill holes to mount the shelves.

Now Im not completely daft. I never drill holes in walls without at least some idea of what's behind them.

Taking into account there was a power socket nearby, I had already figured that cables must run vertically from the floor or ceiling and so I gave them a wide birth.

I also own one of those posh pipe and stud finding metal detector gizmos.

We have a modern house. It uses modern plastic plumbing. The gizmo is about as much use as a Tetley prophylactic.

So with some trepidation I continue to drill more holes.

There are 3 tiered shelves to assemble, with the biggest at the bottom.

Measuring sufficient height so that I don't crack my head on it when Im sitting on the sofa, I marked up and drilled a hole for the bottom shelf.

Then, taking measurements from the other set of shelves in the opposite corner, I then marked up and drilled the hole for the top shelf.

All good so far.

Then, using a spirit level to ensure a true vertical line, I marked a third hole mid distance between the top and the bottom.

Then I started to drill.

Bzzzzzzz...

WHOOSH!


The jet of water reached about 8 feet across the width of the Living Room. Thankfully we hadn't yet moved the sofa back to it's usual position so it missed it by about 2 inches.

I am now getting drenched and Im holding a mains powered hammer drill.

I quickly dropped it before carefully unplugging it from the nearby wall.

Then I stuck my thumb in the hole in the wall.


Then I swore.

A lot.

Even Mel learnt some new words that night and remember, she's from Wigan.

It was about 8pm at night. I picked up our landline to call the insurance company.

Nothing. The line is dead as a dodo. No dial tone.

I use my mobile to call our landline number. I get an unobtainable tone.

What the... ? !

Can you believe it? Earlier that day someone had stuck a JCB through a major power line in Blackburn. It had wiped out much of the twon centre all day and the telephone exchange was still off line. A quick call to our broadband supplier confirms this.

At this point I wondered if I took a handfull of numbered tennis balls and a very bright light up into the bathroom whether this woman would meet me back in the living room.


Racking up even more 08 premium rates on my mobile, I called the insurance company. A number that is now programmed as a speed dial on my iPhone.

"Is this a fresh or an existing claim?"

"Errrr, this one is new."

"I see Sir... but have you had work done there recently?"

"Errrr... yes..."

"And what is the new problem?"

I would like to thank the insurance representive for his professionalism and for muting his mic to laugh his socks off.

They're very helpful, as always, and its all soon sorted.

Just before midnight, the emergency plumbers van pulls into the reserved space on our drive.

You could see all the neighbours curtains twitching. With them knowing Im currently jobless, I reckon they all think Im running some sort of illegal trade in tea leafed copper.

The emergency plumber is called Geoff, a good sign, and he soons creates a large hole in our freshly painted wall frighteningly quickly with his hammer.


The cause of this accident soon becomes apparent. The plastic pipe which runs about an inch away from the corner of the wall has a kink in it. And that's where my drill had gone right through it. I couldn't have hit it again if I was trying to win a prize.

He soon fixes up the plumbing, but leaves us with a large hole in the wall as we're going to have go elsewhere for a plasterer.

Sadly Paul, the original ceiling plasterer, is busy away on another job so can't help.

Once more I turn to the Yellow Pages and find a local lad called Lee. Maybe there's some kind of City & Guilds for professional name selection?

Lee turns up later that afternoon and studies the hole intently. Leaning back, he gives me his best "Ooooh... Mmmmm... Yeah..." look.

You know the one? It's that look you get from the advisor at Thomson Holidays if you simply ask them what time it is without previously booking an appointment.

In actual fact Lee is a perfect gent and quickly suggests that there isn't much to this job and he can't bill it normally. If Im happy for him to do it after tea time the following evening, he's happy to accept a couple of £20 notes and a can of Stella. Deal.

The following evening Lee does a speedy and superb job restoring the wall not just back to it's previous standard, but better still. He removes a small blemish he had found that you would never had noticed unless you had the eye sight of a super hero. The wall is now smoother than your offspring's derrier.


I stick several coats of paint on it and we leave it to dry.

And what do you do while you're waiting for paint to dry?


Mel is still keen that we put the corner shelves up. I'm now nervously pacing around the house, staring up at all the ceilings and freaking out at the faintest creak, squeak or buzz.

Not sensing my mood, Mel goes on to suggest putting pictures up along a wall that has never, ever been touched. We have no idea or concept what perils may lie within its inner confines.

Quickly a solution is agreed.

No More Nails!


This stuff is fantastic. We genuinely believe that the set of shelves which are held to the wall with nothing more than the sticky stuff are sturdier than the screwed in set on the opposite corner. I wouldnt suggest putting your late great aunt's Ming vase on them, but for a few light nick nacks, they're pefect.

Finally Mark the tiler turns up to finish up the bathroom and so, finally, over the last 24 hours normality is slowly returning to Mintball Mansion.


And it's a good job to, as we're about to set off on another holiday venture.

[JamelUK]

Yes, well done persistent reader, there is, after all, a point to this Pre-Trippie.

Mel and I will shortly be setting sail on Royal Caribbean's Independence of the Seas, saling with her for 6 nights on a short trip to Norway.


We will visit Olso, Stavenger and Kristiansand before returning to Southampton.

I know what you're thinking.

Surely, after my current track record, we would stay as far away as possible from water, let alone take our chances on a 155,000 tonne, 1,100 foot long steel behometh that somehow stays afloat thanks to a theory concocted by some Greek bloke in the bath and his rubber duck.

But that's the least of my worries.

We're going with Linz.


Yes, the van Topp family will be joining us, along with Mel's mum Christine and dad Bill who once again is kindly helping to fund this voyage.

Those keeping up with our travels may remember that we usually travel with P&O, as this has previously been Bill's preference.

We have often laughed and joked with him that P&O is about 30 years to old for us and we prefered the entertainment on Royal Carribean when Mel and I cruised on Navigator of the Seas some years ago.


Recently Bill has been of the same opinion. Returning from a cruise in 2012, he proclaimed the entertainment to be the worst he had ever watched.


We'd heard this story before though and knew that Bill was so entangled in P&O's loyalty scheme that it was unlikely he'd look elsewhere.

It came as a shock to all of us then when he phoned us to say he'd booked this cruise on Royal Carribean.

With a huge grin, Mel and I have been really looking forward to getting back on board one of their ships. Our original plans for The Big Long One had actually been to spend the last week floating around the caribbean on Oasis, but in the end the heavily discounted rates on Saratoga Springs proved too much of a lure.

One of the other issues that had been frustrating Bill with P&O was the increasingly daft rules or lack of sensible support for wheelchair users. With Christine being a full time user and unable to easily transfer from hers, finding excursions whih they could enjoy together was becoming both impossible or expensive. Odd really, when you consider what their traditional target market audience is.

I'd previously done some research on this over on some Cruise forums. For those of you who are in any doubt how wonderfully moderated The DIBB is, you really should spend an evening on cruisecritic.co.uk. Be sure to take a fire extinguisher.


Flaming and trolls aside, there's actually some great info on there and I had learnt that both Royal Carribean and it's sister compand Holland America always score well when it comes to special needs.

So, with a trip to Norway booked and with Bill's pocket in mind, I decided to do my own little bit of plannning.

A few well targeted emails and I quickly obtained the telephone number for Royal Caribbean's Accessible Shore Excursion Team at their headquarters in Miami. The fact they have a whole department dedicated to this service is already decades ahead of P&O.

There are a number of strained telephone calls and emails exchanges, mainly as a result of timezone differences and Sky deciding through the middle of all our other issues to unsuccesfully try amd migrate our email over to YuckBoo.

However, they soon come back to me with an answer to my query. Can they supply transport for 9, including one full time wheelchair user, to Dyrepark Zoo in Kristiansand for the day and return us back to the port later?

Yes they can. How much?

$245 including tax and the Royal Caribbean guarantee that in the event our transport is delayed the ship will wait for us. Credit Card details are soon exchanged.

On board the more able bodied in the family party will be enjoying "Indys" many facilities.

I will be going ice skating with my niece Katie.


Mel will be drinking cocktails.

I will be climbing the rock wall with my nephew Daniel.


Mel will be drinking cocktails.

I will be wiping out on the Flowrider with my nephew Ben.


Mel will be drinking cocktails.

Linz and Mel will be enjoying a day in the spa.

I will be drinking beer. Lots of beer.


So we are now less than a week away from embarkation at Southampton.

The long range forecast is anyon's guess. It's looking more random than the Eurovision final at the moment.

I blame the sun's coronal mass ejection.


That's going to need one mighty big Kleenex.

It might explain why there are weird ufo shaped clouds over Yorkshire...


..but might genuinely give us a chance to see the Aurora Borealis as we sail north.


With everything that has been going on and with much of upstairs still a bomb site of temporary storage boxes, we are very much behind schedule with our packing.

Now regular readers will know from our previous Trippies, which will always be available for you to read here on the DIBB, completely free of charge, that this is nothing new or unusual.

It has become traditional for us to leave packing to the very last minute for fear that introducing the unfamiliarity of organisation to this task will enivatably lead to us forgetting something.

Have no fear though, the Mintballs have already been aquired and we will soon be packed, Dora programmed and on our way to Southampton.

Please join us for the journey. I'll be posting my report as soon as we return as June is going to be a busy month for Team Mintball!

Finally, and you can try this out for yourself, I must share the product of some earlier research looking for pictures.

Do a Google Image search for "Heroic Failures" and look what it suggests as a result!

[Eeyore rocks]

You will love Independent of the Seas...my parents came off of her this morning after a 2 week cruise.