Who's The Daddy: Home from the high seas daughter #2 drops anchor
The Prodigal Daughter has returned, safe and sound, after a five-month tour of duty on the world’s biggest cruise ship as it floats around the Caribbean, entertaining kids while their parents take full advantage of their drinks packages.
We’re guessing Daughter #2 has the taste for life at sea now, as she’s already signed up for what will be her third stint which starts in mid-October and runs until next spring - and is already mentioning a fourth, this time closer to home around the Mediterranean.
To be honest, we haven’t seen that much of her since we picked her up from Manchester Airport last Sunday. A long overnight flight from Miami, a seven-hour layover at Heathrow and then a delayed short hop up to Manchester meant she’d been awake for 35 hours. Life-threatening when you get to our age, merely hallucinatory when you’re 23 and made of Kevlar.
She just about kept her eyes open for a chippy tea when we got home (it’s amazing what you miss, even in paradise) and then proceeded to to sleep, off and on, for 19 hours.
Daughter #2 said the lack of sleep was like back in the day when she was at Primary and had sleepovers at friends’ houses, and The Boss would ask/demand, “You did get some sleep, didn’t you?” and Daughter #2’s head would be falling into her top pocket from noon onwards because they didn’t nod off until dawn.
It took until late on Tuesday, once six loads of washing (two massive suitcases) had been done and dried, that Daughter #2 was anything like her usual self - but said her new bed we bought in IKEA last month was like something out of a hotel.
I suppose any upgrade on bunk beds squeezed into a cabin the size of a bathroom is an improvement - which was so small that Daughter #2 said she was too tall to lay on its floor.
It hasn’t taken Daughter #2 long to adjust from working every single day since mid-March to doing slightly less than nothing. In many ways she’s like yours truly - either flat out or horizontal, on the verge of sleep so deep your dead relatives pop into your dreams to check you’re OK.
To be honest, it’s great having her home. Our occasionally snooty and aloof sighthound Walter, who sees anyone who isn’t me as a “spare hooman”, hasn’t even feigned interest, and the fact that her childhood cat Mr Robbie died, aged 15, after getting a horrible mouth cancer a few weeks after her departure has been hard to take.
Finally this week, if you look up the word “cathartic” in the dictionary there’ll be a picture of Morecambe FC’s Mazuma Stadium losing its collective mind as Daniel Ogwuru smashed in a 98th-minute winner against Altrincham only a few days after the club was in serious danger of going to the wall.
If the Shrimps had lost 5-0, I doubt anyone would’ve moaned. It felt like everyone there was just happy to be able to watch their team.
Mind you, when the winner went in, in front of a packed terrace behind the goal, it did feel like the roof was about to come off.
Good luck to Ashvir Singh Johal and the lads for the rest of the season. See you on Saturday for Woking.
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