Around the World Cruise with a Twist

This book is from a daily blog kept during our Around the World Cruise on Oceania Insignia.
If you are considering taking an Around the World Cruise, I recommend you read this first.
If you can not afford to take six months off, read this instead and take the journey with us. You won't be disappointed.
If you are down in the dumps, come with us, and learn about places you have only dreamt of and some you have never heard of. Every stop is described with accompanying pictures. Learn what it is like to live on a cruise ship for six months.

As a kid, whenever I saw an old clock at a jumble sale or going cheap, I would buy it and take it apart to see how it worked. I don't think I ever got one back together again, but I enjoyed tinkering with them.
Twenty years later when I was getting married, now living in the USA, Auntie Florrie wrote to me saying I could now have my Grandfathers clock.
I arranged to have the clock shipped over and it was proudly placed in the entrance hall to my home. It was built in about 1880 in Maghull England by a local clockmaker, [before the electric light was invented], had a stately mahogany case, hand-painted dial and ran nicely.
After a few years, it stopped. I was frustrated that I didn't know what was wrong with it or how to get it going. I ended up having it serviced by a local repair shop and it ran again. I was fascinated with the clock.
In 1995, my family decided to spend a year in England including putting the kids in school. It was a big challenge to arrange to swap houses with an English family. Finally, we were settled, and the kids started school, my wife was volunteering at a local charity shop and suddenly I had time on my hands.
I read the paper that morning and came across an ad for a clock course starting nearby at Manchester City College. I called the college and they told me it was a three-year course, one day per week. I explained I was only in the country for one year, so I persuaded them to let me take the course, coming all three days.
I enjoyed the course and did very well. The final exam took several weeks, making a 'suspension bridge' from scratch to exact specifications, restoring several old clocks and watches. I documented the process and took the extensive final written exam all set by BHI [British Horological Institute]. I did pass the exams and became a Horologist.
25 years later I teach clock repair classes and 'pass it on'. This is the class workbook.