Twinkle, twinkle...

I'm sure, if you're "of a certain age", you're familiar with visiting the loo during the night. Let's not get into too much detail, suffice to say it's a regular feature more reliable than the phases of the moon.

Now I've never been one for turning on the light during these short excursions. Except where it's unavoidable because the lights turn themselves on. Yes, I'm looking at you, with your posh motion-sensing bathroom lights. The darkness is never an issue where we live because... well... it's never dark. What with the street lights and next door's driveway searchlight, there's always enough ambient light to see by with dark-adapted eyes.

Not always the case in other places though. When we honeymooned in Carpenter's Cottage there was no ambient light at all. The cottage was in the middle of nowhere, and the master bedroom didn't even boast a bedside clock to illuminate the route to the en-suite loo with little glowy numerals. There was a lot of groping about that week, I can tell you (stop tittering at the back, there!).

So with her early warning systems operating at full tilt, Nikki had a slight concern (mainly on my behalf, it has to be said) about the bathroom in our cabin, or "the head" as I believe it's called when aboard (look, I've told you once about that tittering). I mean, it's gonna be dark, right? That's the whole point. It needs to be, for the best star-gazing and Northern Lighting experience. So no light coming in through the porthole, plus the head is on the inside of the cabin, in its own windowless cubby-hole. 

The solution? Battery-operated tealights. They arrived today. Slight overkill, you might think - the best deal was for a box of 12 - and they really didn't need to flicker or pretend to have wicks, but hey, they'll do the job. With their nice, warm, friendly yellow glow we're pretty sure we'll only need one to light up the whole head (a head light! LMAO), but as you can see they pack neatly into a small box, so if the active one gets tipped down the toilet in rough seas at least we'll have eleven backups.