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European Safari – Part 1

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A couple of years ago, the child bride and I did an expedition through the wilds of rural England and Ireland then slummed it round the Baltic on an upmarket cruise ship. Following is Part 1 of 7 describing our adventures.
Well the first stage is over. We left “sunny” England at sparrows this morning (Sunday), flew all the way to Dublin in cloud and drove down to Wexford in the pouring rain. But this is the start of stage 2 so back to the beginning.

After an uneventful flight from Brisbane to London we reached the threshold of Merry England, the immigration hall at Heathrow, and stepped into what can only be described as a zoo. I thought we were queuing up to board the arc. Thousands of people in a mile long queue that wasn’t moving due to a surfeit of processors – tea break I guess. Work to rule and all that. There was a bloke up the back doing a roaring trade selling seats in a Calais shipping container bound for Dover.

A nice touch in amongst all of this chaos is that immigration will process you as a family unit if you are travelling with someone. Consequently, when more immigration desks were eventually opened they were tied up for ages by roly poly, hirsute blokes in Bermuda shorts and polo shirts with their black bagged harem of 10, each carrying a child. Actually I’m exaggerating here. There weren’t 21 people at the desk in front of us. It was 16.
Anyway we eventually escaped to our hotel then picked up our car the next morning. We got an upgrade to a Jeep with all the mod cons – only had 5k on the clock and went like a scalded cat. This was deeply concerning to Nigella the sat nav lady. Plus the car kept telling me when to change gears. So I had Nigella constantly telling me to slow down and the car constantly telling me to change bloody gears. But we managed…..when I found the handbrake which was a button. So off to the Cotswolds.
Oxford was nice. There were cohorts of freshly minted graduates strutting around with proud parents and grandparents in tow. None of the current wave of idiotic political correctness was evident fortunately. I felt inspired….so we went to the pub – The King’s Arms obviously. And next time a Harry Potter movie comes on TV I’ll be able to say I’ve been to Hogwarts.
Bourton-on-the-Water was cute but odd – full of young Asians and old English. But it was a Tuesday so everyone between 20 and 60 was probably working in London or Birmingham (no, not really, that was a joke). Having been less than fully occupied in a vocational sense recently, the fact that people might be working has been a fading memory for me.

Stratford was next. Shakespeare right? Well yes but we found a pub that had been operating since 1594 – The Garrick Arms. That’s almost 200 years before Europeans settled in Aus. Love the history. Then we headed to Manchester and it was downhill rapidly (from our livers’ perspective) for the next few days.

Wednesday afternoon and evening with a cousin and his family was sensational except that the next morning we felt like we’d given Guns N Roses on tour a run for their money. Thanks everyone for never allowing us to have an empty drinking hand. Thanks a bunch.
Next was more great family hospitality from another cousin and family. First a trip to Blackpool to observe the cultural elite of the north-west (there’s my inner snob emerging). We went to the top of the tower which was quite a thrill. The last time we did that we lost any record of it when our camera was purloined in London by one of the south east’s cultural elite. And I can understand why the UK has got so good at athletics. Every second male wears a track suit although they do seem to all walk at quarter to three carrying a cannon ball in their shorts.
We talk about gentrification of tired old suburbs that have basically gone to the pack on all levels. My aunt lives in a street in a suburb that are now respectively the Park Lane and Mayfair of Wythenshawe in Manchester it seems. From being a focus of, as the bureaucrats would say, socio-economic under-achievement, you are now tripping over BMW’s and Mercs on the road and in driveways. The oligarchs have discovered the north west. What a turnaround in a few short years.

Prior to leaving my cousin lead the expedition to find the Hertz drop-off at the airport which had been cunningly hidden in another county.
Manchester airport and more bloody queues. At Air Lingus it was100m long with one check-in counter operating – ONE! After experiencing Heathrow then this I have come to the conclusion that the ability to queue is what made this country great. If the Brits queued like they do in a certain South Asian country there would be anarchy. And while shuffling interminably towards the desk I discovered that like many Asians, some Irish struggle with the concept of personal space. I guess it’s just their natural affection for people in general but what a nation of characters.
More to come.

Looking Daggers

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A while ago I had a run in with a sharp pointed implement. The story is related here as a warning.

You would think it unnecessary to issue a warning against mixing football, comfy chairs, red wine and sharp knives. But it seems there is no limit to the rather unfortunate consequences which can arise when one considers the endless permutations resulting from the juxtaposition of those four variables.
Last night I settled into my favourite chair with a generous splash of red at my elbow and a steak dinner, courtesy of my lovely wife, on my lap (the dinner, not the child bride). A tough game of footy beckoned. Sometime later said wife returned to find me fast asleep with the now food-relieved plate still on my lap and the fork and (very sharp) steak knife clutched in my hand like a drowning man clutches a life preserver. As a consequence, she removed the plate and unknowingly (or was it??) left me and my eating implements to our collective fate.
At game’s end the cacophony which signals victory for the underdog, as happened in this instance, contrived to wake me up. At some point between the knife (the fork is now irrelevant to the story) being riga mortised in my hand and my waking, it had migrated down the side of the chair, nestling snugly, sharp side in as it turned out, against my side, just above the hip bone and just below the left kidney. On waking I swivelled to the side for some unknown reason and experienced a somewhat sharp (pun not intended) pain in my person. As you, dear reader, can imagine, this resulted in my awaking rapidly from my sleep induced torpor and I leapt to my feet.

On placing my hand on the area from which the eye watering pain was emanating, I felt the now located sharp implement protruding from my side. “That’s not supposed to be there” I thought, and proceeded to remove it. I can confirm that withdrawal is just as painful as entry. Fortunately it was only in far enough to not immediately fall out when I stood up as our steak knives are of the cheap variety and are therefore quite light. The upside is that I now have a cast iron excuse to not exert myself in the garden today.
As a consequence of last night’s misfortune (which wasn’t as bad as two Christmas Eves ago when 12 stitches in my arm was the end result) this morning I have been laughed at by my wife and my youngest brother. It’s a sad world when one’s adversity becomes the source of mirth for others although as the brother pointed out, his kids do it all the time. But then he has been raising them to be sociopaths.

Addendum

Another Friday night. Watching the footy. Dinner was pasta and meatballs (not steak) which has been despatched; spoon has been placed in the dishwasher before it attempted to do a King Lear on my Gloucester and no stab wounds to date. Will no doubt wake up with the red wine glass inserted in my forehead.
Visited my dermatologist yesterday to continue the ongoing crusade against the sins of the child visited on the adult (sun-baking as a 10 year old was not smart for someone with my complexion). She commented about the stab wound in my side and I told her someone has to protect the city and risk life and limb rounding up the bad guys. She didn’t believe me. My disguise remains intact.

 

Don’t Drink the Water

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Have you noticed that little sign over the sink in an aircraft toilet. It says “not drinking water”. And just next to it there’s a drawer full of toothbrushes and toothpaste. This raises a number of questions. If we shouldn’t be drinking it should we be putting it in our mouths even if we spit it out? Will the toothpaste kill the greebies that obviously lurk in this ungreen, unsmelly, uncontaminated with obvious wriggly things, water.

In the backblocks of what would be considered lesser developed countries where there is no bottled water, beer is a reasonable substitute for water for cleaning one’s teeth and I have heard of scotch being used although this is a rather expensive way of going about it. Scotch without the toothpaste would be a much more palatable option for a few days.

And if this water’s not to be drunk, where did it come from in the first place. At one end of Sydney airport is the Cook River. Next time I get on a plane parked at that end I’ll be looking out for a bloke in airport high-viz standing next to the plane sucking on a hose dangling in that river.

Anyway, I’ve inadvertently swallowed that water when cleaning my teeth or washing out the taste of the airline food, or swallowing sleeping pills. My GP assures me that the recurring bouts of cholera are caused by breathing contaminated air.

That Looks Familiar

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I may have already mentioned that in the event of my actually writing a book about travel, I already have a title for said book. It took 11 years of regular international travel to come up with it so as you would expect it’s a doozy – one Dickens, Hemingway and Steinbeck (Jason, Barry and Daryl respectively) would be proud of. I was sitting in a taxi with a colleague in Seoul one day and I said to him “You know, there are no yellow cars in Korea” and he spent the next two days trying to find one. And thus a title was born. Of course the stodgy, conservative and superstitious Koreans have loosened up considerably in the years since, what with the threat of nuclear annihilation hanging over their heads. So now you do occasionally see a yellow car……. in a crumpled mess wrapped round a light pole. Actually, to be fair, the “stodgy” Koreans will entertain you to within an inch of your life given half a chance but when it comes to automobile paint strips, they’re Oliver Cromwell.
We all do this when we travel. That is, spot the most obscure differences between our homes and our destinations. Here’s one for you. On a hot summer’s afternoon especially down by the beach you will notice (so I’ve been told) that many young women forget to don a certain item of undergarmentry worn mostly on the frontal part of the torso, north of the bellybutton and south of the chin. Don’t even bother looking for this particular fashion quirk in Japan.
And while on the subject of Japanese fashion, every Japanese male wears a dark blue suit from Monday to Friday. Of course he makes up for it on the weekend and on vacation in the most emphatic way. Witness the garb worn on the golf course and you will be looking at a gaggle of golfers who steadfastly ignore their exasperated wives’ advice on colour and pattern coordination.
We also look for the occasional reassurance. Some destinations go out of their way to accommodate this – fish and chip shops and Boddington’s beer in Torremolinos for the tastefully discerning British tourist for example. In strange or unfamiliar places we appreciate that reassurance. That’s why many people like to travel in pairs or groups so even in the most unfamiliar or hostile of environments we can look at the person standing next to us and think “I can run faster than you if the shit hits the fan”.
We westerners shouldn’t demonstrate our insensitivity to the mysteries of especially the east without pointing out that Australia, for all its banality can be idiosyncratic and mysterious as well. Why, for instance, do we walk into polling booths with our eyes wide open and vote for idiots. Basically because notwithstanding the open eyes, we have our thumb in our bum and our mind in neutral and on reflection, we’re not alone in this regard. And why are there no taxis after 10.00pm? As I have previously mentioned, in Hong Kong, if you close your eyes and step out into Nathan Road at any time of day or night, you’ll be hit by a taxi (or occasionally by a Rolls Royce).
The child bride and I lived in Tasmania for three years. Tasmania is about as big as the park I can see across the road from where I am writing this. Yet Tasmanians wouldn’t travel as far on their holidays as we would to the shops. There were people on the west coast who had never been to the east coast. If it wasn’t for a hilly bit in the middle and a few big trees you could see the west side from the east side. Yes, many people crave familiarity and are terrified of losing it although Tasmanians do have an excuse for not seeking out new and interesting places. Many of them think the world ends at Bass Strait.

Status Quo

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Driving from Brisbane to the Gold Coast hardly qualifies as travelling but if it’s to see one of the greatest rock and roll bands of all time – Status Quo – on possibly their last tour, and certainly last in one regard which I’ll cover below, then I’m prepared to extend the definition. Besides, they came all the way from England so to drive an hour or so to see them seemed only fair. Incidentally, while sitting at our hundredth or so red light I was beginning to think this was not such a good idea. There are more red lights on the Gold Coast than the Reeperbahn, Kings Cross, the Rossebuurt, Roppongi, Patpong and the White House (during the Clinton era) combined. You’ll have to look those places up if they don’t all ring a bell. I’ve been in the same city as all of them except the White House. That’s how I knew.

The concert was held last night at the Star Hotel and Casino at Broadbeach on the Goldie and what an eclectic crowd that place attracts. Everyone from fake ID’d teenagers with their arses hanging out of the shortest of tight, short skirts to 90 year old Chinese grannies. Of course being a casino, the gambling obsessed Chinese are ubiquitous. The crowd that filtered out of the casino and into the theatre to see the Quo were more akin to an Australian Conservatives gathering (in appearance) although I don’t think the average Australian Conservatives crowd would know all of the words to Status Quo’s extensive back catalogue. There were a few outliers with grey ponytails, some sported by women, but since Francis Rossi cut his off a few years back it seemed like a rather superfluous gesture. And there were a few kids who’d been dragged along by their parents (or grandparents) as we had been known to do with ours some (many) years back.

There are some fundamental differences between a Quo/Stones/Eagles (our last three concerts) crowd and a Taylor Swift (for example) crowd, not least minor things like age, fashion, size (individual as opposed to collective) and willingness to pay exorbitant amounts of money for tickets although to be fair, that only applied to the Stones and the Eagles. But one thing is quite similar I assume, although not having ever been to a social media fuelled, hormone busting, like, best everrrr Justin Bieber concert I can’t be certain. Youngsters can be quite rude because many have not been schooled properly in common courtesies and oldsters can be quite rude because “I paid a bloody fortune for this ticket so I’ll come and go as I bloody well please…and spill beer on the person in the row in front as I squeeze past in the dark”. The young country singer who opened for Status Quo was very adept at embarrassing the latecomers, much to the amusement of the more polite section of the crowd. Take a bow Travis Collins.

The show was called “Last Night of the Electrics”. After this tour is finished it’s acoustic or aquostic as they call it, from then on. Not surprising really when you consider the number of shows they do and have done over the years (more than most) and the volume at which they perform. Their ears (certainly Rossi’s) must be mush. Just on the noise thing, the child bride and I saw them in 1976 at Brisbane’s now demolished Festival Hall. We were six rows from the front and my ears were still ringing when we took our seats last night, 41 years later. If Spinal Tap’s amplifiers go up to 11 then Quo’s go up to 12. Having said that, last night’s show was loud but manageable in the aural department but we were two rows further back in row 8 so that may have been why it didn’t seem as loud as in 1976.

Rather than “Last Night of the Electrics” I would have called it “Still Having a Bloody Good Time”. If I could magically transform my very modest musical ability into something a bit more respectable, to the extent that I could hold my own in a top echelon band, I’d want to be in this one. Of course I’ve said that every time we’ve seen the Eagles (five times) but that’s more from a technical excellence perspective than a fun perspective. I also thought it would be a hoot to be in Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers but now that Tom has left the building, it would hardly seem the same. No, when a bunch of musicians laugh at each other and take the piss when they (rarely) make a mistake that we mostly don’t even notice and then let the crowd in on the joke, that’s the band for me. None of this hunched over the instruments, terminally serious Radiohead bullshit for me. Or Eric Clapton demonstrating virtuoso capability but not uttering a word other than “thankyou” or cracking a smile for a whole concert.

I love that there’s no preaching and no sentimentality with these guys. There’s certainly banter and audience interaction but no preachy social justice warrior hypocrisy and promotion of pet causes. There can’t be too many diseases or inequalities left that don’t have some second rate celebrity’s name attached to them. There wasn’t even a mention of Rick Parfitt. Some bands would have put a telecaster on a stand in the corner or a cardboard cut-out or some such tribute on the stage. But they didn’t. But I reckon Francis did his own little tribute. At one point everyone else left the stage, even the drummer and Francis played the intro to a song on his own in semi darkness, a song Rick used to intro. Maybe I’m wrong – doesn’t matter because it works for me.

One more difference between 1976 and 2017. Back then, as soon as they started to play everyone stood up. Not such a big deal when you’re six rows from the front but when everyone in front of you stands on their chairs you have to follow suit. The cute but diminutive child bride was not impressed. Now, we (the typical Status Quo audience) prefer to stay sitting down. Some did get up and dance and good luck to them as long as they don’t dance in front of me. The girls with their Stevie Nicks hair-dos wave their arms around and blokes do Dad dances and think they’re cool. Even I know they aren’t. But as long as I have an uninterrupted view of the stage go ahead and act like a dork.

We got to the second and last song of the encore before the All Blacks front row immediately in front of us stood up. I thought the concert was over because it went dark all of a sudden but I could still hear muffled music, like it was coming from a radio in an adjoining room such was the totality of the wall erected in front of us. I looked at the woman sitting next to me (not the CB, the other side) and we shrugged our shoulders and stood up – what else could we do. No amount of “DOWN IN FRONT” which usually works at the cricket and football, was going to work here.

Brilliant show. That’s another tick on the bucket list.

Sniffing the Wind

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There are some things we just don’t talk about but are so natural and in some cases, confronting, you have to wonder why (because they’re confronting I guess). For example toilet breaks are never written into the script in American films whereas the Europeans love them. Like Kim Jong Un, Hollywood’s elite don’t excrete – neat slogan eh? Well at least most of them think their shit doesn’t stink which gets me to the topic of the day which I will approach in my usual roundabout way.

If you’re in a frequent flyer program, you’ll know how airlines send you those “Help us to help you” forms to fill out or direct you to the profile page on the website. This is so we can tell them we like opera of polo or flower arranging. Why, I’m not sure. My boss did get invited to a golf tournament once by an airline but that’s the only time in 30 years of travel I’ve heard of anything like that happening. And it was about 30 years ago. If an airline is thinking of slinging one my way, can I go to the Superbowl? Cheers.

In said profile, I always put that I want an aisle seat on the lower deck (for double decker planes you understand). But all airlines number their seats differently so unless you ask at check in, you don’t necessarily know where you’re sitting until you get there. Why don’t I ask? Because I bloody forget.

So I’m in 11H which is an aisle seat (woo hoo) but upper deck and right at the front against the bulkhead. That’s right the front row is row 11. I had to get up at 4.15am to get down to Sydney to catch this plane to Singapore so I’m grumpy. And then there’s the smell, which brings us back to where we started.

Smells on planes can be lumped (or wafted) into two groups – those you make and those others make. They can also be ranked according to desirability. At one extreme we have smoke, for obvious reasons and at the other extreme is the alluring scent a Singapore Girl leaves as she floats by. Personal odours are way down at the smoke end.

I once heard English doctor/writer/actor/comic/etc Jonathan Miller being interviewed and he commented on the propensity for air travel to make him fart and the “fact” that that they were “strangely odourless” (his comment). This puzzled me for many years because (1) he’s a medical doctor (2) he’s wrong and (3) assuming the first two assertions are correct, why can’t he smell his own farts. I’m also assuming all olfactory components are present and accounted for.

Anyone who has travelled at least a few times will be aware of that situation when someone drops one and there is nowhere to hide. Fortunately it doesn’t last as long as if you are in a closed room or heaven forbid, in a lift. This is because the air-conditioning in an aeroplane is strong enough to suck the dermis (that’s your second layer of skin) out through your pores.

Having pondered this riddle for many years and refused to ask for expert advice (I don’t ask for directions either), I decided it was because air is pumped into the cabin at the top and sucked out through vents at floor level. This means any olfactory nastiness emanating from the trouser region has to battle against the wind (excuse the pun) to get as high as your nose. But God help your feet.

This theory prevailed in my mind until on one subsequent trip I accidentally listened to the safety demonstration. Apparently a row of floor lights will guide you to an exit if someone in first class has accidentally set his polyester track-suit on fire and the plane has filled with smoke. You hit the floor and as the kids’ saying goes “get down low and go go go”. So much for the theory because this scenario assumes the smoke is being sucked up not down. Of course it’s only relevant in the event of a tracksuit mishap while on the ground. If you’re more than a few metres off the ground and it’s anything other than a smouldering tracksuit, forget it.

So why don’t Jonathan Miller’s farts smell. I have no idea. Maybe he only eats rose petals.

We are now going to leave smells and get onto toilets (another execrable pun which is also almost a pun itself). And if we go right back to the start, this was the original rationale for writing this piece. So let’s cut to the cheese, sorry chase. (I’m on a roll).

Seat 11C isn’t so bad except for what I’ve already said and for one other thing. The convenience is about a foot away from my feet. There is a flimsy inch thick wall between us but it’s not enough to disguise the whoosh which sweeps from the little room immediately in front of me then under my seat (below the floor – this is Singapore Airlines after all) to who knows where.

At the start of the flight it whooshed three times over a few minutes and no one emerged. Funny what you notice isn’t it? But something else slowly emerged and then they wheeled out the brunch trolley. The eggs thought it was their birthday. Harmonizing sulphurous fumes everywhere. Eventually the person who had been sitting (presumably) immediately in front of me barrelled through the door and hastily resumed his seat, having despatched….no no no, we’re not going there.

But some things are indelibly seared into your brain, never to be expunged. And one of them is pushing open an unlocked toilet door only to see a lady who forgot to lock said door squatting on the seat. Needless to say, having a complete stranger barging in on what is generally a most private moment is a reason for considerable dismay and apparently a justification for peeing on the floor. One needs to be very light on one’s feet in this circumstance.

So the upshot is, if I’m unfortunate enough to get a seat next to the khasi and someone steps through that door, I shut my eyes, put my fingers in my ears, thumbs up my nose and think of England.

Addendum to Following the Wine Traders

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Well, this will be the last journal entry for this trip before we fly home tomorrow. We’re now in London again and have just had our first pub lunch. We were here for 3 days 3 weeks ago but it was the 3 days leading up to the friendly between England and Scotland at Wembley. The pubs were full of blokes in skirts speaking a foreign language and Trafalgar Square was turned into a massive beer garden so actually getting through the door of a pub during those three days was somewhat problematic. Anyway, we cracked it today.

 


 Just had a nice relaxing three days in Switzerland, starting in Zurich and then 2 days in Geneva. I have never seen so much conspicuous wealth as in that place. Plenty of Rolls Royces and Ferraris with various Arabic (the most common language we heard while there) number plates. In Hong Kong, if you close your eyes and step out into the road you’ll either be hit by a Rolls Royce or by a taxi. Here it would be somewhat similar except for the taxis.

 


 The train trip from Zurich to Geneva was nice. I didn’t realise that all of the open spaces in Switzerland have been mowed. The whole place looks like a park. And the train trip reinforced something I have come to firmly believe since being here. For the best part of 3 hours, all the way from Zurich to Geneva, two young women across the aisle from us talked….and talked….and talked. In fact they did not shut their yaps for more than 5 seconds the whole way. It reminded me of when we were here 3 weeks ago and were queuing for the London Dungeons. We had to queue for about 40 minutes and two teenage girls behind us did not shut up for one second of that time. Two blokes can sit in quiet contemplation for hours without feeling the urgent need to communicate other than telepathically. Two or more women can’t….at all….ever. But if the word “like” was excised from the English language, 30 million women under the age of 30 would be immediately struck dumb. Do us all (as in us blokes) a favour girls and just STFU occasionally.

 


 It’s been a fantastic three weeks with only one thing left to do before we head home tomorrow. We are having dinner tonight with a good friend and her partner. She works for the same company I work for and he is Welsh so they’ve been over here frightening his relatives in the villages.

It just remains now to get home and see if the cats have eaten each other. We didn’t leave them to their own devices – they are being supervised so, you know, ignore the eating each other bit.

Following the Wine Traders – Part 4

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Just about to leave Seville for Madrid then Zurich tonight. Got off the boat yesterday morning and headed into town to a hotel for an extra day here.

Seville is a magnificent city with all of the monuments you expect from an old city. It also has some relatively new ones including all of the pavilions built for the 1929 and 1992 World Expos. The 1929 Spanish Pavilion is incredible. For a start it’s huge but the attention to detail has to be seen to be believed but then that’s a fairly common trait from Roman times through the Dark and Middle Ages and the Renaissance right up to a few years ago when we were introduced to the joys of graffiti and “just in time” buildings (building unions notwithstanding) with lots of glass and straight lines. Gone are the days when an artisan spent most of his life chiselling out a few statues on behalf of the church. Religions should go back to doing this instead of running political campaigns. By now you will have realised that I tend to stray into these philosophical and political discussions when there is not a lot else to report.

The Spanish Pavilion has been used in 52 movies including Lawrence of Arabia and, believe it or not, the 5th Star Wars movie. It was also used for the old Clint Eastwood / Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns which were filmed in Spain because there is a desert nearby – in the middle of Spain.

One interesting thing I almost forgot is that we passed through a lock on the river outside Seville. Was a bit of a damp squib actually because the river levels were almost the same either side. I didn’t notice any change but someone told me it was about a foot. We then turned around as the river narrowed and reversed up the river to the dock. That was interesting. I guess it’s easier to drive straight out with a full load.

Just before the lock we passed through a lot of rice fields which were being crop dusted by a gang of John Belushi’s it seemed. How they didn’t prang into each other is beyond me. Maybe they do, they just didn’t do it while we were trundling past. One of these clowns actually buzzed the ship. I was sitting on our balcony and this plane was coming straight at me. We were very close to the back and this plane went past us level with me and metres from the back of the boat. And he dipped his wings a couple of times as he went past. In Australia they’d have had the airforce after him (do we still have one or did Rudd sell it?). In Spain – mañana.

Sorry for the stream of consciousness this post has become but I keep thinking of things.
We are in the cruise company club and they had a club cocktail party a few nights ago which was basically an advertising opportunity. They presented an award to the most frequent cruisers – two blokes who have done 38 cruises and were two of the 100 or so (out of about 600 total) who stayed on the boat for the next leg to Rome. Considering the line has only been around since 2001, that’s pretty impressive. One of them must have invented something for them to have the time and money to do that.

That’s the end of our Southampton/Seville journey. More countries and things crossed off the bucket list with many more still to go and a determination to not let other things stand in the way. I’ll regale you with tales of later cruises….later.

Cheers

Following the Wine Traders – Part 3

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Well, we’ve just left Lisbon and are on our way to the last stop (Seville) of this cruise. We did an organised tour yesterday then walked up to the Castle of St George this morning. There is a Portuguese version of this name which I will get wrong if I try to write it – I could go back to the room and get a brochure but I’m writing this in a bar so you get the English version. The castle like most of them round the world, is on a hill and it’s not a small or gently sloping hill so we certainly got our exercise today. And the streets can be as narrow as one person – easy to defend but rubbish in an earthquake and they had the mother of all earthquakes in 1755 which destroyed two thirds of the city and killed 60000 people. Anyway, the castle was well worth the visit. Been there since the mid 11th century although archaeologists have found evidence on the site of people from the Iron Age – 700 BC.

Last night was White Night, a typical cruisey thing – everyone wears something white (lucky I bought that t-shirt in St Jean de Luz) and eventually gets whipped into an all singing, all dancing frenzy by the manic cruise director. It wasn’t bad actually in a, how shall I put this, “gay” sort of way. Amazing what you’ll do with a skin-full so there we were doing all the arm movements for YMCA and I Will Survive and singing along to Ricky Martin songs (I was miming – don’t know any Ricky Martin songs apart from “Doing the something something”…promise). Would have preferred to be on the stage than in front of it. They got together all of the musicians who perform in various parts of the ship and all of the singers and went for it and I have to say they were very good – great musicians and great singers. So even though I would have preferred to be on the stage, I wouldn’t have qualified.

I have to tell you about Captain Johannes (not really Captain Stubbing for all of you under the age of 40). He is Norwegian. We’ve all heard of the wacky Swedes and their riotous sense of humour. Well if this guy is representative of their culture, the Norwegian police force must be run by the Keystone Cops, Billy Connolly is the Minister for Culture and making whoopee cushions is the Norwegian version of Ikea. When we left port today he came on the intercom and said “Good afternoon everybody, this is your designated driver here. As we leave, the ship will be under the control of –insert female name because I forgot – our apprentice officer. It’s her first time to do this so we have painted a large red L on the back of the ship to warn other ships in the area”. And then 20 minutes later when we had to stop and flush all of the jelly fish out of the cooling water intakes (to stop the engines overheating) he came on and said, “- insert female name because I forgot – has asked me to tell you it wasn’t her fault that we had to stop”.

And now I can’t get that bloody Ricky Martin song out of my head.

Until the next instalment,

 

Following the Wine Traders – Part 2

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Greetings once again from the Love Boat or the SS Startled Face.

We left Bilbao yesterday and on our way out of the harbour Captain Stubbing advised us that the swell was going to get increasingly stronger on our way to Lisbon. Consequently I woke up at about 3.00am this morning gripping the mattress and trying not to fall out of bed. This was not another “bench” episode as I’d been asleep for hours – promise. In fact yesterday was a pretty easy day. Couple of wines at lunch time, couple of beers in the afternoon, couple of gin and tonics with dinner and a couple of scotches before bed. Pretty much an alcohol – free day really.

Something we learnt when we were in St Jean De Luz is that they are famous as fisherman, having hunted whales in the 17th and 18th century as far away as Newfoundland. But they were also famous as pirates. Apparently the French king was happy to give them privateer status in return for 50% of the booty. And they attacked British ships. They never told us that in the history books. It was all Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake and how useless the Spanish and French were. But then again, they may have been lying.

Bilbao was a revelation. As some of you may not have heard of it, it’s in Spanish Basque Country, not far from the French border and was famous for producing steel. It is now a haven for architects. You’ll see some incredible buildings in amongst the obligatory history and 12th century cathedral. And it has a Guggenheim Museum which is magnificent. There are three Guggenheim Museums in New York, Venice and…….Bilbao (???).

So the city’s done a good job creating new industries as steel went backwards and their unemployment rate is significantly lower than the rest of the country. Notwithstanding we did see a number of now obligatory (in Europe) wind turbines at the end of the harbour – monstrosities that need subsidies of $500,000 per job in the renewable energy field and destroy another 5 jobs along the way. They put billions into this at the behest of the greenies so no wonder Spain is an economic basket case. Enough of the rants.

After we turned left and headed down the Portuguese coast to Lisbon the swell got to 15 ft. But it was going in our direction so we could to surf the last 300 miles.

This is our second and last full day at sea out of 12. The great thing about these cruises is that you stop almost every day but a day to chill after a lot of walking and happy snapping is welcome. Also, I’ve had a chance to scope out the clientele and have concluded there are no gangs of geriatric Man U or Millwall supporters on board so I am proudly wearing the Manchester City shirt I purchased at the City shop in Manchester. And I found out their official nickname is actually The Citizens and not The Blues. You wanted to know that didn’t you.

It’s now 2.30pm which is almost beer time.
Back soon.