It's Tuesday, and in less than a week, I will be travelling down to Portsmouth for another cruise assignment.

There are still loads of things to do; my art-materials suitcase (as opposed to the clothes suitcase, which sits on the bed two rooms away) yawns at me from across the living room, alongside which I have piles of stuff that need to be packed snuggly and securely; paints, paper, brushes, prints, DVDs etc. There are is the promotional/networking stuff; business cards, product flyers, leaflets advertising my courses. I feel unprepared, and certain that I've forgotten something; oh, the workshops are all ready an raring to be foist upon my unsuspecting audiences; its the other stuff; the nitty gritty that I'm sure I'm missing something from...

I'm looking forward to the trip; it's 3 years since my first cruise outing to the Meditterranean. I have wonderful memories of my first ocean-side workshops on board the Saga Ruby, my first view of the Pyramids, the excitement of walking the streets of Palermo in Sicily, and the sheer 'foreign-ness' of Libya. This trip will be taking me back to Sicily, touching on Tunisia, grazing Croatia and, for me, what I expect to be the highlight of the trip, a two-day stop-over in Venice, which is somewhere I've never been before, but where everyone I meet, who has been there, insists I should visit before I die...

This time, I will be on the good ship Boudicca. The last time I was on her, we spent two miserable days in Cherbourg to avoid a force-12 gale in the Bay of Biscay before heading out to the Canary Islands and Madeira. On the plus side, I did get to see the Bayeux Tapestry, which was pretty awesome.

Who knows what adventures lie in wait... a lot can happen in three weeks! Whatever happens, you can be sure I'll be dashing up to the computer room to put it all down in this blog, pretty much as it happens. I'm looking forward to not having to deal with a huge time difference, something that I'm  always conscious of when cruising around the Caribbean.

Watch this space...

Just a little more packing to do.....