Timezone changes are great for assuring a lie-in. I got up at what a week in New Zealand had taught my body was 3am, had a shower and found coffee, which I took to the Crow’s Nest bar just in time for the 10am event. It was titled ‘Paper Flowers’ so I half suspected it’d be teaching people how to make them.

Entering the room there were trestle tables laid out, at the head of them one at right angles, on it stacks of tissue paper, pipe cleaners and scissors. I took a seat to one side, watched the room fill with women, eventually outnumbering the men 40 to 6. Three of the men were the Mexicans teaching, one of them the dancer from yesterday, the lady teaching that dancing also there.

I now know how to make paper flowers.

I also have a blister starting. I’ve washed my sandals three times and they’re still impregnated with skin destroying coral. Just an hour, most of it spent sitting, and I’m taking damage: I’m going to have to get new sandals.

Then again, wearing them to afternoon tea (hey, have to do something to break up the afternoon) seemed to be fine. Maybe that extra scrubbing has done the trick.

Afternoon tea was not good. Nice enough company but the sandwiches were 2 inches by an inch in size and there were 8 of them between six people, and although there was a nice selection of miniature cakes there were at most two of each type, so almost nobody got to eat their first choice.

I had dinner in the lido, later than planned but entirely my own fault. I was having fun, as you do. The chap behind the counter seemed frightened when I kept asking for more cabbage but my body was making demands.

I ate it all, except the fat on the beef.

The entertainment tonight was an American comedian that’s apparently been on network TV. Hopefully not to do comedy because he certainly didn’t do any tonight. 45 minutes in which I smiled once. The biggest joke was introducing him as a comedian.

I immediately had proof that he was the problem, and that I was receptive to humour: I laughed at some of Adolf Eichmann’s jokes in the film I watched afterwards, a curious blend of neutrality, compassion and hollywood silliness. I’m not sure how to rate it, the wordplay gets it boosted, having Ben Kingsley automatically bumps the score but a lot of it felt invented and trite.

A quick drink (water from the lido), two days’ clothing washed and in bed before midnight. The ship’s due to dock just before 7am and it’ll only be my second ever visit to Mexico! (Sadly timezone changes meant I was still up at 2am. Oh well).