It Could Have Been A Blue Blue Christmas!

For those of you who have not heard, we have just had our Christmas conference/party on board Fred Olsen’s Boudicca sailing out of Liverpool to Dublin.

Dawn and I

Our first night was an 80’s theme fancy dress night and my friend and colleague Dawn and I had come up with the idea of going as Smurfs back in October when we were in Lake Garda. We had matching clothes and I had managed to find exactly the right shade of blue face paint.

Conference is not all partying and we do actually have presentations by various cruise lines as well as by our own directors and catch up on all the latest news in the cruise industry whilst wearing the now obligatory Christmas jumpers. After our first afternoon of this, Dawn and I headed off to our cabin to transform ourselves into Smurfettes for the evening’s festivities.

The face paint took about 3 coats to get the desired shade and, as we proudly admired the finished product in the mirror before heading off to see what everyone else was wearing, we realised that our hands were now stained blue, despite having washed them several times. With no time to worry further, we headed off for an amazing evening and mingled with the cast of Hi De Hi, He-Man, several Madonnas, Freddie Mercury and even a couple of Rubik’s cubes. We had a lovely dinner and danced the night away to the greatest hits of the 80s.

It was only once we were back in our cabin in the small hours of the morning that the reality of being blue really hit me. Would I really be having a blue Christmas? The long train journey back home would certainly be interesting and exploring Dublin’s famous Temple Bar looking like a reject from Avatar was not an exciting prospect.

Thankfully, a whole packet of make-up wipes and not one but two showers saved my dignity.