Getting over jet lag – or indeed large diesel-electric engine lag – isn’t helped by a morning with no requirement to get out of bed. I didn’t even wake up until after 9am and that wasn’t a trigger to get up, another 40 minutes snoozing in and out of dreams.

I’m not a fan of trying to interpret dreams and find it terribly rude to force others to listen to poor recollections of their nonsensical content. I do find dreams tend to reflect underlying stress levels so it was interesting that this morning’s comprised stressful situations that I just didn’t care about. I must be nice and relaxed, at least on the surface.

Popping out for coffee got me my first (and probably only) sight of Cuba. Hi Cuba. Bye again. Cuba looks like a hill by the sea, trees, a small town on the coast, a beach.

Back in my cabin I heard a tannoy announcement in the corridor. General “It’s a lovely day, the wind is low, we’re sailing past Cuba and at 11am there’s a chance to buy chocolate diamonds in our onboard boutique” announcements only go to the public areas of the ship so I assumed this was another of those.

Moments later the emergency signal went off. Only the first of three possible signals, but they’re all always followed by a tannoy announcement with details. These go to all parts of the ship, including cabins. Sat in my cabin I heard the tannoy beeps from the corridor, and muffled tones as an announcement was made there but not in my cabin. I went to the door, opened it, “…helicopter crash on deck four, bow, fire zone…”

I’d been on the bow during the Panama transit. You would indeed crash a helicopter trying to land it there, there’s no space and plenty of obstacles.

The announcement repeated itself and this time I could hear when he said, “This is a crew emergency drill.” It would’ve been useful to know this when the alarm was sounded.

An hour with the ship’s captain, half an hour with the singers and dancers then the day’s film. I have a lot of respect for Kevin Hart, he works very hard and is very good at creating commercially successful films. I still hold hope that one day he’ll make one that’s good.

It’s a gala night and since they enforce a dress code on normal nights I pull on socks for the first time since South America and head to the main dining room. I appear to be on a list somewhere, the couple ahead of me are handed a pager but I’m shown straight to a table. It’s a two person table; I haven’t been put on a shared table since providing feedback. I think that’s primarily due to their desire to seat me swiftly rather than a fear of putting me with other passengers but who knows.

I had the veal, which was ok. Because of the lack of company I read an American newspaper’s stories regarding the continued inability of Mrs May to find a way out of Europe. Out of Downing Street come to that. The American commentators appear to have a Russia fixation: I knew a segment of the US populace feel that Russia unfairly influenced the election of their current president but they’re also blaming Russia for the UK voting to leave the EU. No darlings, we did that ourselves and it’s ok, we know you can’t understand why. It’s the same fucking reason you can’t understand why your own country voted in its current president and has nothing to do with Russia or the voters themselves.

Back in my room I kept my socks on. The schedule had a 9pm event titled “Chocolate Surprise” on deck 5. At 9pm I went up to deck 5, explored the whole deck. The casino had people losing money in it, the sports bar was busy, the cafe was quiet with just a few people doing jigsaw puzzles, another bar had live music, the expensive shop bit was shut and some bloke was sat at a piano doing a dodgy cockney singalong. The surprise appeared to be that there was no chocolate at all.

The schedule also had a 9.30pm event titled “Chocolate Surprise” on deck 5. At 9.30pm I looked at my watch and went, “Not a chance. Not falling for that one twice.”