Lift me up

There are large numbers of elderly people on board ship in various stages of decrepitude. Many are obviously very experienced cruise travelers (happy to elbow you out the way at the buffet table) but some are less so. I took the lifts up from the fifth deck (coffee) to my lecture room on the 14th at 8 am this morning, and a frail couple followed me in. They wanted to go down to deck three but they  managed to persuade each other that it was sensible to take this lift (one of four) up and then ride it back down again. We stopped at a number of different decks on the way up, and each time they gave a little twitter of unhappiness as the light for deck three went out and they had to press it again. By the time I got off, the lift had filled up and they couldn’t even reach the buttons and they stood together at the back looking sad and defeated. Perhaps they don’t have elevators where they are from? Poor things. Of course the moral of the story is, is that I should take the stairs up to the conference each morning. I don’t need this sort of drama in my life.