Thanksgiving Day.
The day on which the first settlers stopped working and being generally miserable and ate all the harvest they had so painfully grown, and now a National holiday in America, the high point of which is a turkey meal, parades and so on. The ship is like the Mary Celeste, with hardly a soul about, apart from the poor old duty officers. The rest of the world was ashore, enjoying the very considerable hospitality of our American hosts, and still invitations kept on rolling in throughout the day.
Possibly rashly, I accepted one, from a couple of girls who wanted to come and have a look over the ship, so, after arranging for Ron Weetman to cover my AOOD duty (as I had done for him yesterday), I roped in Mike Prior, the Captain’s Secretary, and we pottered off to the main gate to the base, in one of the ship’s Landrovers, as it was bloody parky.
The girls duly appeared (Sylvia and Priscilla, and rather better than those names might suggest, too), and we took them on board and down to the Wardroom, where we fed them drinks, followed by the Illustrious version of the traditional Thanksgiving Dinner, which, according to them, was very close, though they were a little puzzled at the sight of our sausages and bacon rolls (they don’t have things like that with their turkeys, apparently). We then adjourned to the bar again, and finally, at about 2300, went off out into the streets of Philadelphia intending to find a bar or something in which to continue the evening, but, as we had more or less expected, Philadelphia was shut. We couldn’t even find a gas station (English translation – petrol station) open, and there were very few people about. So, we returned to the ship and the girls went home. A nice change, though.