Rather like our house has a washing machine and TV the Azura has facilities for day to day necessities and amusement. There are several laundrettes which always seemed busy. There's a variety of places to eat, perhaps because of the number of passengers (3000+) at times like scrums. There are talks and and dance lessons and performances to divert one from looking at the sea.

(Watching the line dancing was mesmerising in its way - it made me think of Aboriginal dancing where the tribe dances as a single individual. We're not that far from when we used to ritual dance before flame lit images on the cave walls.)

I went to a series of introductory talks on the iPad and other tablets, and learnt some facts I didn't know from them! Obvious stuff like the control bar you get from swiping up from the bottom, the magnifying glass which appears if you hover with pen down, thoughts on charging, Safari and reading lists. So many things are obvious once you know, but not before.

We went to some of the shows in the evening. The best shows were those done by the P&O theatre company Headliners, energetic and committed. I was most thrilled by excerpts from shows I knew well, perhaps you need to have the buzz from seeing the whole show before you can be trilled by a single song? There were a number of singers which didn't do so much for me, some of whom were beyond their sell by date. I got dragged along to the crew talent show - the best being the second singer who with integrity avoided singing any correct notes.

There wasn't a proper cinema on board which was surprising. We watched the colourful Lego Movie (the only two people to do so at the time!) Next time I may bring some films on the iPad and watch those!