The final formal night

 Borealis Wednesday 10th May 2023

A day like any other. Alone at sea with no land and no ship in sight. Sea calm and weather overcast but possibly improving. Temperature 17C. Spent the whole morning in the cabin writing while Albina was sleeping all the way to 3pm. 

At 4pm I went to the Neptune Theatre to watch the show Astound the World in 40 Minutes that Helen, Sharon and Ranald and their colleagues in the Borealis Amateur Dramatics (cryptonym BAD) put on as a spoof of Around the World in 80 Days. It was a recreation of the story but with hilarious reinterpretations of the interplay between the characters (Aouda was played as a vamp) and constant references to our daily grind on the vessel, including spoof announcements from the captain's bridge. In fact, the ship used by Fogg was the Borealis, and later the crossing of the Pacific was by one of Olsen's sister ships. The amateur company made itself even more amateur by overstressing when they needed a prompt and by pretending to have French or American accents and then dropping back into their native tongue when being misunderstood by another character. They even had a joke in the prologue about the balloon not being part of the original story. I normally watch shows and lectures at the far back of the balcony on the left side, particularly to remain inconspicuous when I inevitably doze off. However, on this occasion, to show my support to my friends, I sat in the front row. I was so entranced and so amused by the show that I did not drop off to sleep once. Not only that, but I also forgot to take a single photograph. Incidentally, Albina watched the show on the cabin TV. 

Next we were invited to attend a farewell reception with Captain Stoica. A glass of champagne was offered to everyone on arrival at the theatre and the captain thanked us for our cooperation. He gave some gift vouchers to three members of the staff who had been proposed by their departments for being exemplary employees. He asked each of them how they would spend the money, which I thought, was none of his business, especially as he joked about the amount being £1000, and then made it clear that it was not a big amount. One replied contemptuously that they would use the prize voucher for hair gel, which got a laugh. 

It was a formal night and I finally convinced Albina to change into something a little more formal (i.e. not her pyjamas), if only to have a photograph together. It would be good to show to our friends as a climax to our 80 day cruise. In the end she did not put on anything too glamorous, because in every sparkly bit of clothing hanging in the wardrobe she found a last minute flaw, or because it did not match another portion of her wardrobe. Finally, she put on an elegant black dress, and I was grateful to her for that. Reluctantly we went to the Borealis Restaurant where the service was again reliably slow and the menu was still incomprehensible, especially to Albina, who again ordered something she could not eat. Also the dessert basically offered 5 choices, all including chocolate, which Albina did not like either. She ended up with the cheese board option again. However, the chicken we both ordered for our main course was quite good. Well, something had to go right. 

We went to have our photograph taken by the staff photographer. While we waited in a queue by the Ocean Lounge we watched the Dance Class couples rehearsing their many steps while dressed in their dinner jackets and evening dresses. The couples, as well as the ladies dancing with Olsen's professional dance partners, must have had a sense of achievement that they had now returned to everyday life with new dance steps to wow their friends and make them jealous. 

After the picture was taken we went to watch the Borealis Crew Show. It was wonderful to see members of the crew from all departments in the vessel, including the cabin maids and the engineers from the boiler room, showing off their talents and strutting their stuff as dancers. At one stage I thought the boys from the boiler room were going to do a carefully choreographed Chippendale strip show as they removed the tops of their overalls. Certainly the audience would have appreciated it. The Filipino crew members presented a number of stately dances from their country.  For a finale they sang movingly about being children of the world and that they wanted the world to live in friendship and harmony. It was something resembling one of those feel good Coca Cola adverts, and more a song for children than for young adults. However, in view of the relative age of most of the elderly audience and the youthful figures, mostly in their twenties, appearing on the stage, the message of the song was not out of place. The whole show was met with rapturous applause and even a standing ovation.

It was noticeable thar Sammee introduced each of their acts by naming them individually, at least with their first names.  Thankfully to her they were not a nameless collective, but individuals, no matter how humble or remote was their daily task. She congratulated them for finding the time and being willing to make the effort to rehearse, particularly for the group dances, amidst their daily routines in different parts of the ship. Although all of us as passengers may have got to know a little about those members of staff with whom they were most frequently in direct contact, to most of us they appeared as shadows, only there when we most needed them. That is partly because we only see them when they are directly serving us. Just as in Hogwarts, hidden beneath the areas frequented by the pupils, there was an underground of secret passages with various ghosts and spirits living in parallel with the teachers and the schoolchildren above. They only had access to the main building by secret portals. So too it was with the Borealis. Hidden from us passengers was a whole world of corridors and stairs leading from A Deck, below Deck 1, of which we would only have a glimpse when we needed access to the gangway to leave the ship on excursions. Yet this secret world stretches all the way up, as far even as Deck 9, and its only link to our world was behind a series of unmarked doors on each deck, where these staff members woud suddenly make an unheralded appearance to take up their scheduled task. We as passengers would pass these unmarked doors every day without giving them a second thought, unless by chance we witnessed the sudden emergence of one or more of crew members from their parallel world. It was pretty surreal, but it was also the reason why so many of them would remain like shadows without individual personalities and life histories. Yet when asked, while they prepared our food or served us a drink, they could reveal sufficient information about their lives to give us an inkling about their country and how they provided the funds to help their families, including children, from whom they would be seperated for many months at a time. At least their Crew Show gave us the opportunity of humanizing them in our eyes, before they returned to their mundane daily service. I salute them.

Helen and Tony did not appear in the Morning Light Lounge for the daily quiz. Probably Helen was just too tired, just as she was after the Coronation Fayre. However Albina did join us, which was a pleasant surprise, especially for Ranald and Sharon. It was not one of our more  succesful nights with scoring only 10, and the winners were at 13, but then we were two of our members short. We chatted for a good half hour after the quiz and Sharon and Ranald were fascinated by Albina's life history and by the story of how we met. Sharon still had a ukelele concert and a singing concert next day, so we all retired before midnight. We also had to move our watches forward by one hour. For the last time. We will now have the same time as London.