The English Channel

 

Borealis Friday 12th May 2023

The day started just a little acrimoniously. Albina decided to cancel her massage appointment at the Spa. As usual I made a mess of announcing it to the Spa at 8am and they were not too happy about it.

 The morning evolved slowly as we searched our room to make sure everything will be packed. We will submit 6 cases and 1 bag as luggage which we will have to leave in the corridor for collection before 2am. We know now that we will all have our passports checked on board. As we have blue labels allocated to our luggage and we are housed on Deck 6, we are likely to be in the second wave of disembarking at around 7am. The vehicle is due to collect us at 10am. We will then be collected from Horizon Cruise Terminal by Addison Lee whose representative will arrive with a placard bearing our name.

Albina ate breakfast in our cabin, while I went upstairs for a hurried breakfast and lunch. Perhaps it was just me, but I felt there was a febrile attitude in the buffet restaurant as if they wanted us to leave quickly. At midday the Captain announced that we are now off the Lizard in Cornwall and therefore in the English Channel. The waves seem a little higher here than in the Bay of Biscay but it is hardly felt at all on board. However, the weather is clear and the temperature currently around 14C.

I went to the last lecture by Roy Paul on the history of Fred Olsen, with plenty of in-jokes. At least it is clear now where Canary Wharf got its name. It came from the Fred Olsen owned warehouse which stored bananas from Canary Islands. 

That afternoon I visited the Craft and Pottery Exhibition in the Arts centre in the same room which previously displayed the passengers' best paintings. In fact many of the paintings were still on the wall, but now acting as a back drop to a table displaying a colourfest of grotesque clay masks and another  dotted with the motley multicoloured display of clay parrots (or was it toucans?).  Another table was covered with sumptuous collages relating to highlights from the cruise, including an extraordinary display picture, showing a bright woollen red and white balloon floating over what seemed like a background of stormy sea and cloudy sky, created from strips of mohair and attached by a rope to an elephant's trunk. The final touch was a happy looking woollen Loch Ness monster emerging from the sea. Other exhibits included masquerade masks and dolls and two extraordinary detailed bound chronicles with every page containing the most colourful memento of the cruise with a page dedicated to each of the 26 ports we visited. I looked through them thinking that perhaps their version of the voyage may have more substance and be a worthier depiction of our glorious 80 days than my meagre and very wordy written offering. Sharon was at the Arts Centre as she moulded one of the horror masks and I came across her chatting to Lisa. I gave Lisa her customary hug and kiss. Sharon simply erupted. "Well I like that," she called out, "we've been friends for months of this voyage and he's never kissed me." Hastily, I gave the lovely Sharon a close hug and explained to a laughing Lisa, "You see, we'eve never actually been properly introduced." Now we have been.

 There was a melancholy concert of classical music in the Neptune Theatre with a Spanish guitar player interspersing some of the haunting Lennon-Mccartney numbers with Spanish and Latin tracts from Segovia and his XIXth century predecessors. It was such a calming atmosphere and there were not too many in the theatre to appreciate it. Still some of my fellow passengers who came were taking a rest from frantic last minute packaging and jumping up and down to close their suitcases. While our six suitcases were standing to attention around our bed, all appropriately packed and labelled, Albina was just finishing off our final bag. She had bought it hastily in the Borealis shop last month when she sensed that some of the extra clothes and the presents might be a little excessive in terms of the amount of luggage we brought into the ship. 

I watched the crowd at dinner as passengers hugged both each other and members of the buffet restaurant staff, posing for joint pictures and handing out generous tips, whether discretely or not. Inthe case of gratuities, discretion is vital here for good order.  I certainly don't feel that other waiters or cooks should be discriminated against by seeing their colleagues getting a gratuity which is denied to them. By all means have your favourites, but do not make it public. I much rather preferred the discrete method of Fred Olsen handing out the gratuities in accordane according to a hierarchy that can still be tweaked with discreet particular payments. Of couse if you want to thank someone in particular for special service, then do so with a few kind words, whether spoken or written, but if you want avoid ill feeling among the staff then give your handouts through the company. I still had the odd cash payments given quietly to some staff, like the chap who brought us canapes each afternoon and described their contents to us with relish, or the guys who delivered a morning breakfast to Albina in the last of couple of weeks. I remembered to leave something for the staff picking up the luggage on the last evening to deposit it on the quayside tomorrow morning, particularly as we had more luggage than most. That is impersonal and for that they will be pleased and feel pride that their work is appreciated.  

Certainly over the last months I noticed more and more passengers were calling kitchen and waiting staff by their first names, and this was reciprocated. I feel a polite distance should be the norm as too much over familiarization undermines the quality of the service. Close friendships between guests and staff may be permissible, but should be the exception, rather than the norm. If you try and befriend tham a present of money for their service could demean the friendship. And if your relationship has deeper emotional connotations, as I know in some cases with fellow passengers it did have, than a final tip could be considered an insult, and would make the recipient feel cheapened, if they had any self respect. 

The exception should be the professional relationship with your housemaid. They see you at your worst, or most slovenly, The saying is that no officer looks like a hero to his valet, even if there os mutual respect. If the maid has done a good job then give her the biggest tip of all, certainly a good few hundred pounds after an 80 day service. But you can also ask her about her family, if she wishes to tell you the details, and you can disclose your own little family secrets to her. But unless she saved your life, or looked after you during an illness, then respect her professionalism and her time, and don't wallow in overfamiliarization. 

The nine mmbers of the Borealis Theatre Company put on a final dramatic and colourful show, based on an antholgy of some of their earlier numbers. They gave a rendering of an operatic uet called Barcelona. In fact it was Anya from yesterday who sang the female part, and her voice was as strong and passionate as during last night's solo performance. They also repeated at least two songs from their wonderful Paintbox presentation. But again, it is not just the attractive physique, the grace and athleticism and the rhythm of the dancers. Nor is it just the wide range of voices of the vocalists. Success lies in the whole package, including the choreography, the lighting and the extraordinary costumes into which the performers change four or five times in any one 45 minute performance. And to that should I should add the fact the all the performers appear to be enjoying what they are doing, their expressions nearly always smiling (unless the material requires something more sombre). That enjoyment and energy imparts itself to the audience. And let us not forget that they put on this energetc performance twice in a night, after barely four or five days of rehearsals between the shows. The Theatre Company is one of the best features of the overall excellent service provided by Fred Olsen on this cruise.  

We all five turned up for our last General Knowledge Quiz. The actual theme was the voyage itself, a subject on which I personally should have done much better. I failed to reread my lecture notes, for instance, which would have given me half of the information required.  Sure, we knew, or at least could calculate, how many stops there were on the tour, and what stop came after Hong Kong, and when the Borealis was built, but I should have remembered the number of passengers on the ship, and the number of crew, particularly after my visit to the bridge. We only got a sad 8 out of 15. But we mostly just sat there absorbing the fact that this was our last time together. This was helped by the fact that this time we were no longer suffering the distracting music of Howard Johnson, who for the last 80 days, always drowned our conversation in the lounge with his noise, immediately before and oimmediately after each quiz. Now we could talk, and reminisce and simply enjoy each other's company just a little lobger, before we finally kissed and hugged and went our separate way.

This may sound a bit unfair to Howard Johnson, primarily a guitar playing rock singer, who had spent the entire cruise as musical wallpaper in the Morning Light Lounge, singing in the background every evening. He had also laid on special appearances at every on board festival held at the Poolside, and held late evening concerts at the Observatory. He had recently completed a series of one man shows singing all the published songs of Queen. He had his fans, who included Sharon, and I take my hat off to him for his resilience, and his willingness to broaden his genre by singing ballads or even Scottish country sings when the occasion required it.  It's just that I have never been, as they say, "into" rock music and he was always scheduled to play when all I wanted was silence to be able to talk and listen to my friends. Nothing personal, Howard.

Before turning in I went up for one last time to party and dance for half an hour or so at the Obesrvatory on Deck 9. It was already 11pm and I knew Albina would be waiting and watching TV, but I just wanted the last night to end with a bang. Sammee and Tom had doffed their entertainment manager roles and were singing a series of lively dance music. I found myself dancing with the girls from the Borealis Theatre Company. It is great how after a single drink and with the accompaniment of the right music such a farewll party become emotionaol as you hug and kiss people to whom until now you had merely been polite and exchanged small talk. Suddenly you feel how nice it would have been to have spent more time with each and every one of them, and now that opportunity is gone. You can then sample the rich sweet sauce of an aching regret, to give your future nostalgic memories about the cruise that much stronger a taste. The last person I hugged, just before I left the room, was Sammee herself, the queen of entertainment and most certainly the most charismatic outstanding personality of the cruise. 

I made some notes of the day and put out our six suitcase plus one bag out in the corridor.  before 12 they were gone. We would see them again tomorrow waiting for us on the quayside.  

 

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