Football madness, Des O'Connor and the Adventure Squad!

Happy New Year everyone!

Today we will embark on the world cruise, so it seems like a suitable time for another blog! By now I’m nicely tanned and relaxed from the Caribbean sun, and looking forward to spending the next 2  months travelling the world to Hong Kong. 

Over Christmas we had a bumper cruise which included 9 islands in 10 days – the day off was xmas day.  We visited the 5 usual islands and on top of that St Kitts, a wealthy American island that was unfortunately pouring with rain,  St Maarten, a Dutch/French island swarming with fat Americans buying cheap jewellery, Curacoa, a colourful Dutch island off the coast of Venezuela, and Tortola.  Unfortunately we arrived late in Tortola and since the tender ride to shore was so long and time was limited, crew leave was banned. However we did sunbathe on the top deck and when we sailed away there was the biggest, clearest rainbow I’ve ever seen and we seemed to sail right through the middle – amazing.  The ship often arrives late at ports, and on this occasion it was due to a deck party the night before.  The passengers had a Caribbean style cocktail party for about 3 hours at the back of the ship whilst we were sailing to Tortola, and several passengers complained that the smoke from the ship’s funnel was blowing into the party, so the Captain had to change course slightly so that the wind would blow it elsewhere, resulting in us adding extra mileage and time to the journey. 

We had another huge case of Norovirus, and at one point 10% of passengers were estimated to have it.  If you have it you are supposed to be quarantined for 48 hours and fed boiled fish and water. Since passengers have spent thousands of pounds on their cruise, a lot of them will refuse to do this, making it very difficult to contain.  There were talks at one point that the last Caribbean cruise would be cancelled in order to fully detox the ship in preparation for the world cruise, but luckily it didn’t come down to that.

Just before Christmas I joined the QM2 football team! Having not played for ten years I donned some childrens shin pads and some Ascots that were 2 sizes too big, and we boarded a minibus in Greneda to play a local team.  The opposition were rubbish, but unfortunately we were even worse.  It was a totally random bunch of players, and no one knew eachother’s name.  I was supposed to be playing right wing but since no one was keeping to their positions I went up front and scored our only goal within 10 minutes.  It was quite spectacular - the goalkeeper kicked the ball in my face and it bounced over his head and into the net. After playing for 20 minutes in 35C heat I was absolutely exhausted!  Luckily we had enough subs to rotate whenever we got tired (every 5 mins).  All of their players were middle aged, placid, black Caribbean men except for one English guy called Dave who must live there.  He took it a bit too seriously, wearing his Chelsea kit and f-ing and blinding at his own players every time they didn’t pass him the ball.  In the end we lost 2-1, but returned to the ship feeling quite proud as the previous match they apparently lost 7-0.

Entertainment wise, we were blessed with the company of John Prescott and Des O’Connor.  John did 2 lectures, I only saw one of them and there was no mention of the egg, so maybe that was in the other lecture.  He spoke at length about his partnership with Tony Blair, and why they made certain decisions in the Middle East – things that would interest both English and Americans.  He brought his wife up at the end as it was their 50^th wedding anniversary.  So that was interesting – as also were the reactions of the miserable old American woman next to me who kept scowling and hissing at me and my friend Simon every time we so much as crossed our legs.  Honestly, some of these passengers seem to just come onboard to moan, complain and look grumpy the whole time.  On embarkation day I sometimes play the piano in the lobby, and loud American women will interrupt me whilst I’m playing to ask where their room is:

‘RROOM 188, YOU KNOW WHERRE RROOM 188 IS?!’

‘No’

‘THESE PEOPLE KNOW NOTHING!’

On New Year’s Eve we gave two performances with Des, who actually brought his own pianist/Musical Director Ray Monk from the BBC, so I was relegated to playing strings on the keyboards, but it was good fun.  He told lots of clichéd little jokes and stories amongst some big band numbers, and the audience lapped it up, although the rest of the band - being non-UK and of a younger generation - thought it was pretty naff.  Later on in the evening we were all ballroom dancing and he was there with his 6 yr old son, looking rather worse for wear.  We got photos with him but unfortunately I’ve been rather lazy with my camera and don’t have one to post!

At the start of the xmas voyage, my friends Jesse (sound engineer) and Bryan (saxophonist) formed the ‘Adventure Squad’.  Getting bored of sitting on the same beaches at each port, we now get off the ship and challenge ourselves to an adventure.  The first one was in St Thomas, where we swam out about half a mile to an anchored yacht, just to have a look.  Luckily the owner was an old guy from Wigan, and invited us on for a tour and a drink.  He and his wife sail around the Caribbean whilst renting part of the yacht out to guests.  I lost my goggles diving off the side but apart from that we returned to shore unscathed.  Jesse is quite a character. He’s 22, from Plymouth, and is the most chilled out and upbeat person you’ve ever met.  Always looking at the bright side of things and never complaining has made him an easy target for practical jokes.  His production manager sent him an electricity and water bill for his cabin the other day, which he tried to pay without hesitation.  He was also sent up to the top deck by the officers one night on ‘Fog Watch’, again with no complaints.

Other adventures have taken us running, hill climbing and snorkelling in the rain in St Kitts, surfing in Barbados where we met the former windsurfing champion Brian Talmer, sailing in St Lucia and jet skiing in St Thomas.  Jesse has a skateboard that he takes off the ship with him although he almost lost it in Manhatten when he got pulled over by the police for being wreckless.  He also got pulled over by the police in St Maarten for riding a Segue full pelt down a shopping street and almost knocking over a group of small children.  The Adventure Squad or looking forward to possibly shark diving in Cape Town and bungee jumping in New Zealand!

Aside from adventuring, I have been working hard too, believe it or not, and was nominated by the musicians for Employee of the month in December.  A few days ago I attended a little awards ceremony with the captain, officers and about 10 other nominees. We had a nice buffet and then our managers gave a little speech about us – part of the reason I was nominated was because I got up at 7.30am on Christmas day to play for the church service after having played for midnight mass and then staying up at the Christmas party until silly o’ clock.  The prize for Employee of the month is 1000 dollars, however I was warned in advance that there was no chance I would get it over the other nominees, some who have to work 80 hours a week in the kitchen.  I didn’t get it, which was probably a good thing as I probably avoided being assassinated by a Filipino!

Apologies again for the lack of photography – will promise to make an effort on the world cruise!  Hope everyone is well!

St Maarten

Crushed bus in Dominica

Champagne Reef, Dominica

Jesse on the pier after attempting to swim round the QM2 and consequently being reprimanded

Mike (guitarist, roomate) Bryan (Saxophonist, Adventure Squadist), Me, Eric (Bassist), Simon (jazz pianist)

Caribbean Delights

Installment 2!

So we left for Cherbourg for a ‘taste of France’ which involved a group of us taking a break from the ship food (which seems to be getting worse – some of it you wouldn’t even feed your dog) and eating at a French restaurant by the port.  It took over an hour to get my Moules Frites de Camembert, and when it did come it seemed to be lacking in cheese,  Then half way through the meal a waitress suddenly appeared opposite me, whipped it away Basil Fawlty style and disappeared back to the kitchen.  It came back 2 minutes later with big chunks of Camembert all over it!

Since the DJ has left I now have a new room mate - Mike the guitarist from Canada.  He’s a great guy, very laidback and can talk for hours.  He obviously thinks I’m a bit smelly as he suggested we buy an air freshener after I’d over done it a bit on the lentils one day! We had our first rough crossing over to New York.  Not many people getting seasick though – if you don’t turn up to work due to seasickness then you don’t get paid! We have had to cancel a few shows though as it’s too dangerous for the dancers. Since we are sleeping in the depths of the ship it’s very noisy at night with waves crashing around, and when they drop the anchor it sounds like we’re being bombed.

Working on the ship is more like being in the Navy than I expected.  We have a cabin inspection each week, random drug tests and lots of safety briefings.  I know everything there is to know about fire extinguishes, or at least I thought I did until Nigel, the Chief Officer and angriest man alive interrogated me during the passenger drill in New York:

‘Where’s your nearest Powder extinguisher?’

‘Over there’

‘What colour is it?’

‘Blue’

‘What sort of fire can you extinguish with it?’

‘Any type of fire’

‘Where’s your nearest Co2 extinguisher?’

‘Over there’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Not 100%’

‘I can see from here that it’s a water extinguisher you idiot! You need to know where your Co2 extinguisher is incase there’s an electrical fire!’

‘But I know where the powder one is, and that extinguishes everything’

‘Don’t answer back, I’m chief officer!’

There is an ongoing joke during the lifejacket demonstration.  The teamleader of our station announces to the passengers- ‘ladies and gentleman, please do not attempt to put your lifejacket on until the crewmembers have finished the demonstration, I repeat, do not put on your lifejacket until AFTER the demonstration.’ At this point we start demonstrating how to put the jackets on, and immediately 90% of passengers copy us, so that all you can hear is the rustle of Velcro as they manoeuvre their jackets.  I always shake my head in disbelief and share a smile with the handful of people that have actually been listening.

We left New York for the Caribbean, and after 4 weeks of miserable North Atlantic weather we were finally able to bask in some sun! It takes 3 days to sail down to St Thomas, where I stepped off at 9am to hunt for the nearest beach.  First of all you need to wade through a jungle of duty free shops and taxis to get to the road.  The place was crawling with big lizards.  I had been given directions to the beach but somehow took a wrong turn and slogged up a massive hill in the boiling heat only to find farmer Giles at the top.  I tried to ask him for directions but I had no idea what he was saying (supposedly they speak in English).

It turned out the beach was just ten minutes walk down to the road.  It’s owned by a Best Western Hotel, so you pay 5 dollars to get a deck chair, and then relax and enjoy the paradise – palm trees, white sand, warm clear water. I can’t believe that I get paid to sit on tropical beaches!  Leaving St Thomas I spied a huge fin swimming past the ship which I like to think was a massive shark, although it could have been something else.  The next day was St Lucia, which has recently been hit by a hurricane, so was a lot of flooding, but a group of us got a taxi to Rodney Bay where locals were constantly trying to sell us bird tables for some reason! I had a go at wakeboarding, which was good fun.  The taxi driver told us he was the St Lucia squash champion and had competed in the Manchester Commonwealth games a few years ago.  This I understood through hand signals and asking him to repeat a few times.

Next stop was Grenada., land of spices.  Here the ship is too big to dock so we anchored a few hundred yards out and arrive by tender boats.  Once on land we boarded a water taxi that took us across to a bay which is amongst the National Geographic’s top ten beaches in the world. It was very nice but not as good as the beach at St Thomas which doesn’t make the top ten.  I fancied a bit of time on my own so walked to the end of the beach and sat under a palm tree to read my book.  After a while I stripped off to go for a swim, only to find that when I’d got back my watch was gone!  As much as I’d like to accuse someone of stealing it, I don’t remember seeing anyone walk by, so it must have got lost in the sand or washed away.  I spent half an hour searching for it until a guy came wandering along with his guitar and asked me what was wrong.  I told him I’d lost my watch and he told that ‘time don’t matter man’ and that I should just chill and take it easy.  I tried to explain that time did matter and that if I wasn’t back by 4.30 I’d be stuck in Grenada and would get sacked, and  then he sang an improvised song about me losing my watch which cheered me up a bit. Unfortunately I didn’t have any money to pay him for this pleasure so I told him that if he found my watch he could keep it.

Barbados was great fun.  Everyone heads to a place called ‘The Boatyard’, which is a huge beach bar with a live band, volleyball, jet skiing, banana boats, ropeswings off a pier etc – great fun! The sea is a bright green and you can see fish swimming around you.  I got stung by a jellyfish but it was worth it!   The final destination was Grand Turk, which unfortunately I couldn’t see as I had In Port Manning, but we just found out that we won’t be going there any more as the ship was too big for the dock and it took too long to get everyone off on tender boats.  So for the upcoming cruises we will go to Dominica or St Maarten instead.

So everything is going very well. The other day I received a white star card which means that a passenger found my service excellent and has taken it upon themselves to write a letter of recommendation to Cunard.  I was delivered a copy and it turns out that 2 Canadian blokes enjoyed my playing and think that I have ‘verve’.  They also mention that they had the ‘pleasure of discussing musical topics’ with me on deck, which is weird because all I remember talking about is what would happen if you jumped off the side of the ship in the middle of the night!  I also received a gift from some guests who know Dad – they basically left me a bag full of their left over suncream, shampoo, toothpaste, gin and rum which was nice!

I’ll finish with a ship horror story that keeps cropping up...apparently 2 years ago there was a couple of Filipino guys (apparently this is the correct way to spell it) who were competing for a promotion on the ship.  When the news came out and the successful guy was celebrating in the crew mess, his competitor strolled in with a copper hammer and smacked him twice in the head, killing him, before throwing the hammer in the bin and walking back to his room.  This caused an angry mob of Filipinos to congregate outside his room with various weapons in the hope of doing a similar thing to him, but the ship security arrested him, and he’s now serving a life sentence in an English prison.  There’s a plaque on the crew mess wall in memory of him.  So we don’t mess with the Filipinos!

Autumn Colours

Hello,

I’ve made it back to Southampton after my first voyage!

After being flown to Heathrow the night before embarkation I met up with the rest of the band at a Holiday Inn.  We’re a 9 piece band, and I was surprised to learn that I’m the only British guy, and am also the youngest by about 10 years.  The rest of the band are a friendly bunch, and they’re all extremely good musicians.  We have 4 Americans, 2 Canadians, an Australian, a Ukranian and myself.

At 6am on the 19^th we got on a bus to Southampton, embarked the ship and got unpacked into our cabins.  I’m sharing a room with DJ Gary King who does a radio show every afternoon and then plays in the nightclub, although most passengers are past the age of going to nightclubs! The cabin is medium sized, clean but a bit grim looking, with a bunkbed, desk, TV, bathroom.  We pay a cabin boy 2 dollars each to clean our room out/change the sheets (Sarah – it only takes him 10 mins so I reckon he’s getting fair-trade rates!).  With 14 decks, 2400 passengers and 1500 crew, the ship is absolutely huge!  After 3 weeks I am only just finding my way around the maze.  The ship has everything from a 1100 seated theatre, a planetarium, a gym and spa club, tennis courts, the biggest ballroom at sea, countless restaurants, bars and swimming pools, a library, shops, and kennels!  Passengers are mainly British, American and German.

Most the crew are Filipino, but there are also a lot of Russian workers, and the officers are all British.  There are 33 musicians in total, including 3 cocktail pianists, a harpist, string quartet, Caribbean band, jazz trio, ballroom orchestra and us – the theatre band. As a musician we are free to roam the ship but we must eat in the crew areas.  The food isn’t too bad – a bit repetitive but I’m happy as I don’t have to do any cooking.  The Filipinos seem content with just a massive plate of rice - they’d rather eat that than a nice shepherds pie!

The first few days were full of health and safety inductions, learning how to use fire hoses, different sorts of extinguishes and how to survive on a lifeboat for a month at sea.  At every embarkation port we have to do an emergency drill with the passengers.  My job is to stand on stairway D deck 11 with a yellow cap on my head, pointing in the direction of deck 7 (the lifeboat deck) and trying to explain to passengers that they must use the stairs and not the lift. The British guests always comply no matter how frail they are, whereas the Americans usually reply with a very angry: ‘I didn’t pay 20,000 dollars to climb down no damn stairs!!!’ When every passenger is on deck 7 we have to join them and give them a demonstration of how to put a lifejacket on.  Unfortunately on my first day I hadn’t got round to trying one on myself so I looked somewhat of an idiot fumbling around with my jacket on back-to-front and loose straps dangling around everywhere!

So we crossed the Atlantic to New York in 6 days, and travelled up the East coast to Canada. During the first crossing we had a man-overboard alert – a passenger raised the alarm and the whole ship had to turn around only to find a fishing buoy which someone had mistaken for a lifejacket.  The commodore didn’t sound too impressed when he made the announcement that it was a false alarm!  We were also on red alert for Norovirus as 70 passengers and 15 crew went down with it, but after some severe health restrictions ie lots of hand washing and no use of public toilets we seemed to get over it after a few days.

  I managed to get off at all the ports (New York the 2^nd time round) we can usually get off between about 9- 4pm if there are no drills that day.  In New York the dock is actually in Brooklyn, which is a 40 minute subway ride to Manhattan, so I haven’t ventured that far yet as there’s the fear of missing the ship and losing your job especially if you don’t know your way around.  However there is a fabulous view of the skyline from the ship.  Up the coast, Newport and Bar Harbour were cosy little towns ideal for seeing the Autumn colours as advertised for this cruise.  Halloween is a big event in America and you couldn’t move for pumpkins and elaborately decorated shop windows and front lawns.  Seafood is also a massive enterprise with countless lobster diners with big plastic models of lobsters stuck all over the place.  Boston is a favourite port for everyone, and seemed like an exciting city, high rise buildings, lots going on and teeming with politicians trying to get votes.  St John wasn’t quite so nice, too industrial, but Halifax was an interesting town.  As soon as you get off the ship you encounter a line of gypsy fiddlers, guitarists and recorder players all trying to grab your attention by playing as many notes in a second as possible. In general the weather has been a bit warmer than the UK, but quite foggy – not seen much sunshine yet.  Everyone is excited about the Caribbean!

As far as work is concerned, we generally meet at 4pm everyday for a rehearsal, and then perform 2 shows at 8.30 and 10.30pm.  Shows will alternate between guest artists (singers, comedians, ventriloquists etc) and production shows with the onboard singers and dancers.  For the guest artists I get to sit at the front of the stage by the grand piano with the artist.  As the rest of the band are behind the curtain before the start of the show they find it hilarious to initiate a round of applause when I walk out to assume by position, tricking half the audience into thinking that I am actually the guest entertainer.

I’ll leave you with an image of Bill.  Bill is American, about 55 yrs old, plays the trombone, doesn’t have much of a sense of humour, but likes to eat.  Each meal time he’ll sit down with his tray piled high with food, and then reach for a red plastic bag under the table.  The red plastic bag contains a selection of his favourite sauces, chosen from what is apparently a whole shelf full of lovely sauces in his cabin.  First he’ll take out his ketchup, then his tabasco, then his chilli, then his pickle, mix it with a few beads of sweat from his forehead for good measure – but really he’s just preparing for his secret weapon.  He licks his lips, takes out a huge bottle and starts shaking it feverishly, eyeing the rest of the room to see who’s watching.  When he’s sure he has an audience, he opens the lid and starts wildly spraying garlic all over his dinner for several seconds.  Fifty percent of the spray never reaches his food and spreads out into the air all around him and into the faces of other people on the table.  The smell is absolutely foul!  At first, being new, I had to politely hold my breath and try and stifle the inevitable coughs and splutters induced by garlic spray, but now I’ve learnt that it’s better just  to cram your food down you as soon as he sits down and quickly excuse yourself before he gets the wretched stuff out.

Hope everyone is OK and look forward to hearing any news, bye for now!

Itinerary

19th Oct - 8th Nov 'Autumn Colours'
Southampton - New York - Newport - Boston - Bar Harbor - St John (Canada) - Halifax - New York - Southampton
8th - 10th Nov 'Taste of France'
Southampton - Cherbourg - Southampton
10th - 16th Nov 'Transatlantic Crossing'
Southampton - New York
16th - 27th Nov 'Caribbean Delights'
New York - St Thomas - St Lucia - Grenada - Barbados - Grand Turk - New York
27th Nov - 8th Dec 'Caribbean Delights'
8th - 19th Dec 'Caribbean Delights'
19th Dec - 3rd Jan 'Festive Caribbean'
New York - Grand Turk - Tortola - St Maartan - XMAS DAY AT SEA - Curacao - Grenada - Barbados - St Lucia - St Kitts - St Thomas (NY's Eve) - New York
3rd -13th Jan 'Caribbean Delights'
13th Jan - 18th March 'WORLD CRUISE'
13th Jan - New York
15th - Fort Lauderdale
18th - Barbados
23rd - Salvador (Brazil)
25th - Rio de Janeiro
28th - Montevideo (Uruguay)
4th/5th Feb - Cape Town (South Africa)
7th - Durban
11th - Mauritius
17th - Fremantle/Perth (Australia)
20th - Adelaide
22nd/23rd - Sydney
26th - Christchurch (New Zealand)
28th/1st March -Auckland
7th - Guam
10th - Osaka/Yokohoma (Japan)
12th - Nagasaki
14th - Xingang/Beijing (China)
16th - Shanghai
18th - Hong Kong - Fly Home!

1 month to go

Look out for my blog that I'll be writing from the QM2 from 19th October to 18th March!