Who's The Daddy: All together again, sort of (thanks to FaceTime)

Daughter #1 was back home for two days to see some friends in Lancaster, and after they’d all been out for tea Daughter #2 FaceTimed us from somewhere hot and exotic, roughly halfway through her third five-month stint working on the world’s biggest cruise ship as it sails around the Caribbean.

Daughter #2 was literally all at sea, but the day before had been in Costa Maya in Mexico where she’d WhatsApped me to say she was doing her laundry (note, not washing, laundry) and it was raining. Even in paradise, chores don’t do themselves.

Still, it’s better than North West England in mid-December where it has rained more or less incessantly since October, it starts going dark at 3pm and we’re lucky to see eight hours of daylight. So, swings and roundabouts really.

It was good for us all to talk together, and ask Daughter #2 if she was enjoying her advent calendar that The Boss packed into one of her two giant suitcases before she jetted off a couple of months ago.

What advent calendar? She said. And when she had a proper look, there it was, and soon 14 days’ worth of advent calendar doors opened all at once, in the name of good housekeeping and accuracy if nothing else.

This reminded us of the time Daughter #2 went on a two-week, once-in-a-lifetime trip to Los Angeles and Disneyland with her dance school when she was 14, and The Boss packed and told her about an emergency fund of a fistful of dollars (and a few dollars more) in a sealed envelope in her suitcase. When Daughter #2 arrived home and we did her washing, there it was, in her case, unopened. Laid back doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Nine years later and all that’s changed is the length of time Daughter #2 is out of the country. Things like money and advent calendars don’t seem to turn her head all that much.

So far on her most recent tour of duty she’s worked Halloween (basically Christmas 2 in the US) and Thanksgiving. Next up is the big one, Christmas Day, where the 40-strong team at her kids’ club dress as elves and Lapland comes to the warm, sweet air of the Caribbean. I’m guessing there’s some sort of downside to working (and relaxing) in those conditions but it’s pretty hard to see it through the wintry gloom 4,000 miles away.

After that, it’s New Year’s Eve and the opulent onboard parties that would make the Great Gatsby think he’d gone a wee bit too far. Then mopping it all up before dawn as the ship sails into 2026.

Daughter #2 got her return flight details over the weekend. A direct flight from Miami to Manchester that lands at dawn on what will be a nippy March morning. We are counting the days - 91 at the time of writing.

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