My month in numbers - January (with a little bit of December thrown in too!!)

I missed contributing last month to Julie Kirk's My Month in Numbers as we didn't get back from our Christmas cruise till the 5th January and I came back with the lurgiest lurgy I have ever had which stuck with me for 30 days.  I am over the worst of it now, though I still feel pretty rotten by evening time most days, but I am now back in blogland and virtually the land of the living.

The most important number to share as always is how many days left to the Marillion convention in The Netherlands next month - so exciting that there are now only 30 days left!!!

Well despite going down with the lurgy at the end of our cruise we still had the most amazing holiday and the most relaxing Christmas ever.  As I can't separate out the numbers for the cruise I am going to do a joint Dec/Jan blog post about them.

Our cruise took us from Portsmouth, down to Tangiers, round the Canaries, up to Madeira and then home via Lisbon - a round trip of 3869 nautical miles. After 4 at sea days Christmas Eve was spent in a hot and sunny Tangiers, we did a trip to the artist community at Asilah and Mr P did very well with his wheelchair driving (we have a points system where he loses points for bad driving like hitting people's ankles, bumping me into things and bad kerb negotiation).  Despite there being no dropped pavements anywhere and the highest kerbs to the pavements I have ever seen, he managed to lose 0 points!!!!!  I think he was showing off to all the naysayers who had said that we wouldn't manage with the wheelchair.

That evening we had the most wonderful carol service on board and then midnight mass, followed by a very relaxing Christmas Day at sea.  Christmas Day evening was a formal night and a chance to have some nice photographs taken.  We posed nicely for the first 2 photographs and then the photographer asked us to look lovingly at each other - oh dear, big mistake!!!!!  After about 5 minutes of us collapsing into a fit of giggles and 10 failed photographs, he managed to get this one of us.

 Boxing Day we arrived at our first Canaries stop - Arrecife, Lanzarote and we visited a different island for the next 5 days.  My favourite island was Tenerife - it was my turn to select which shore tour to do and I chose to go to Loro Parque.  The dolphin and orca shows were spectacular and I loved the penguins too.

Our final island stop was the beautiful island of Madeira on New Year's Eve - we went on a lovely full day tour to Porto Moniz and we then enjoyed an evening of entertainment in the countdown to the end of the year.  We had a big deck party on the rear deck whilst waiting for the famous Funchal fireworks - we were not disappointed by them!!

Earlier that evening 8 ships and smaller boats took part in a Last Sunset of 2012 ship's horn symphony.  It lasted for 8 minutes and one of the bizarrest things I have ever heard - we sat out on our balcony for it and it was deafening!!

Well it was the best ever New Year's Eve celebrations that I have ever had - the champagne flowed freely - I lost count after glass no 6 and it was such fun to dance the night away whilst Boudicca slowly moved away from Madeira and out to open sea.

We then headed back for home via Lisbon, so another 4 more days at sea. 

Some more numbers from our cruise -

The ship was full with 900 passengers (its maximum capacity) and 355 crew members.  According to the galley records 2,060 kg beef, 2,504 kg poultry, 2,316 kg pork, 590 kg lamb and 3,192 kg fish were consumed during the 16 days plus 9.34 tonnes of vegetables and 3,635 kg of potatoes.  Interesting that there are no figures for the number of bottles of wine and champagne drunk for that period!!

Right I am off to check out what numbers everyone else has posted - if you fancy joining in you can find out how right here