Who's The Daddy: Trading bunk beds and buffets for silence and sleep
The Happy Wanderer has returned. After working 148 days in a row on board the world’s biggest cruise ship as it pootles around the Caribbean with 7,600 passengers and 2,350 crew, Daughter #2 is home for a couple of months for some well earned rest. Before she’s off again.
She’s even brought the weather with her, sort of. Our watery sunshine is no match for the golden rays of CocoCay, but it’s a damn sight better than the wall-to-wall rain we’ve waded through all winter.
I picked her up from Manchester Airport’s Terminal 2 first thing Monday after her eight-hour flight. The first thing she noticed was how freezing cold it was, on what in North West England we’d class as a beautiful spring morning.
After the drive home, one of the first things Daughter #2 noticed was how silent our house is, compared to the constant drone of a cruise ship that’s a quarter of a mile long and is home to a population of a small town. She said: “It’s so quiet I can hear my ears ringing.”
Then after an afternoon two-hour power nap so deep she woke up at 3.30pm thinking she was late for school, followed by a chippy tea, she slept for 15 hours straight, in a proper bed instead of a top bunk the size of a cot, where if you woke with a start you’d knock yourself unconscious on the ceiling.
Because Daughter #2 has worked abroad on ships for the best part of two years, where free catering is provided by world-class chefs in the staff restaurant, or by one who thinks he is here in sunny Lancaster, she hasn’t cooked a meal since Labour came to power in a landslide general election result in July 2024.
Actually that’s not quite true. She made a fried egg butty for breakfast this morning, which she noted the yolk was a more natural colour than the neon yellow preferred by our American cousins.
At the time of writing, 36 hours after landing back in the UK, she hasn’t left the house. To be fair, for the vast majority of that time she’s been sleeping off jet lag and a work schedule that would crush a teenage boy band of the early Noughties.
Anyway, it’s fantastic to have her home for a few weeks, that is before she’s off to Poland at the start of next month with her mate from uni, who has just won a WhatsOnStage Award for her production of Young Frankenstein, and has already drawn up a spreadsheet of sights to see while they’re away. Outside of work, Daughter #2’s so laidback she’ll fall over. They make the perfect pair.
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