The Last Ukelele

 

Borealis Thursday 11th May 2023

The morning looks promising. It is colder now at sea, but the clouds are intermittent and the sea is calm.

Albina has resumed her packing and she has a further 3 cases packed. All our smart clothes have been packed already, including my winning champagne, the mezcal from Jack and the model of Borealis. That is 6 cases in all now. But initially we arrived on the ship with 6 just suitcases. We still have extra goods to pack so, not only have we gained in weight, we have gained in material possessions as well. I went to Roy Paul's lecture on the history of Fred Olsen. It was interesting to hear how this sensible unshowy company which was founded in 1848, had developed from a local vessel on the North Sea run to a fleet of tankers, planes and cruise ships. I introduced myself to Dr Paul, as he knew of my earlier lecture, and his earlier talk on Jules Verne had filled a gap which he acknowledged had been partly already filled by me. 

That took up the whole morning. When I eventually left for lunch I got there too late to the buffet restaurant and settled for a fresh portion of fish and chips at the Poolside. I then slipped into the Art Room on the rear of Deck 9 to view the paintings and etchings by various passengers, including Lisa's husband, Steve. It was great to see the hidden u sung talents of so many of our fellow passengers. They must have spent many quiet hours in the remote Arts Centre on the ship, often completing projects suggested by their art adviser, and drawing fromthings they saw and experienced on the route. 

                            

So each one had their version of the Taj Mahal, or the Pyramids, or of Japanese cherry blossom, or    Colombian ladies in costume. The most interesting were the sketch books of some of the artists with priceless gems hidden inside the pages. Here too was another hidden world, revealed like the wall paintings in Tutankhamon's tomb only when the exhibition was opened.

At 4pm we had the much heralded Guest Ukelele Concert in which Sharon and some thirty other ukelele minstrels put on a show, despite their instructor having earlier left the ship. This was followed by a final performance of the choir with Sharon again participating. Both groups had played songs connected with world travel, to the extent that when the choir played the Japanese tune Sakura, they showed slides of the cherry blossom season in Japan, individually photographed by choir members.

Everything seemed to be rolled up in some kind of denouement, as we all contemplated the end of our voyage and searched for mementoes of the last 80 days in whatever form it could take, whether as a play, a concert, a ukelele production, a photo competition or a painting display. 

However, one fresh item on the programme for today was a series of Broadway musical songs by Anya Spencer-Turner, one of the Borealis Theatre Company vocalists. She was appearing at 5.30pm in the Observatory on Deck 9. As I left the cabin on Deck 6 with Albina now packing an extra bag, I could hear the sound of her voice coming down the staircase four storeys above, a bit like the voice of Doris Day drifting up the staircase of the hostile Embassy. Anya’s voice was clear and powerful as I mounted the staircase and eventually reached the Observatory. She had just finished singing “The street where you live” from My Fair Lady. The audience was no bigger than thirty people, of whom ten were from her Borealis troupe. But then it is quality and not quantity that counts. She continued with her numbers, consisting of quite sophisticated difficult songs from lesser-known musicals. Each song met with the exuberant applause of the audience She sang a song about a girl living in Flat 14 g, whose peace and quiet is being disturbed by a singer practising in the flat above, and another in the flat below. Her song covered the voice of the timid girl and the loud cacophony of her awkward neighbours. It was at this point that I interjected that her voice could be heard four storeys down, which amused everybody.  She performed for half an hour ending with Barbra Streisand’s “Don't Rain on my Parade”, another difficult song. I wish her well in her career.

At dinner I met a "young" couple in their sixties who had enjoyed the cruise, mostly hiring cars for each port, and travelling with their own programme. I was surprised initially that they were retired at such an early age, but then it transpired that the lady had been a Colonel in the British Army, at one stage the most senior woman in the British Armed Forces. They revealed that that very afternoon, people on the Observation Platform had spotted a whole school of whales, which they had observed more than half an hour. Ah well, another sighting I had missed. 

Albina had stayed in the cabin all day and again I brought some food own for her. I was late getting to  a Variety Showtime, which included performers who had got on at St Kitts, and whom I had been too busy to watch until now. Baritone Gordon Cree and female singer Cheryl Forbes did a fine duet singing songs about the moon, before making room for the cheeky ventriloquist Jimmy Tamley. I find these variety shows somewhat bewildering as each artist does not have time to deliver a rounded memorable performance. Obviously they have other their own performances as well, but this is more like watching a frustrating series of film trailers, rather than the film itself. If you import these performers all the way from Britain to appear on stage, then surely you get your money's worth with a series of full dedicated shows. Obviously, I am being too picky, as other guests appear happy enough with this arrangement.

It was a near thing again with the General Quiz. We were in full compliment again and we gave 14 correct answers out of 15, guessing that Obama taught at the University of Chicago, that Toronto was the most populous city in Canada, and that a stapler was drowned in jelly in an American rendition of The Office, which none of us had ever watched. The only one we failed to get was a question about the makers of butterfinger biscuits. There was one other team which also got 14 out of 15. The tiebraker was a question on the height in centimetres of a Turkish peasant who was the tallest person in the world. After arguing among ourselves we settled for 265 centimertes amd the other tram offered 240. The right answer was 251 so we lost by just a couple of centimetres. Nothing to be ashamed of, but still another bottle of champagne missed us by an inch, literally. 

We decided to make an early night of it. In bed before 12.