rounding off

Tuesday 7th February 2007

2:03 p.m. CET Neither Sunday and Monday night were particularly remarkable, both were fairly quiet, and I finished early both nights. Last night was a different story altogether. Although we didn’t have an immense amount of passengers on board, the piano bar was busy for most of the evening. During my first (instrumental) set, a large group of young lads piped up jokingly suggesting that I should play a piano rendition of Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana, so needless to say when I launched into it they were both surprised and impressed. I also did renditions of Knocking on Heaven’s Door by Cream, and Paranoid Android by Radiohead. A welcome departure from the norm, and helped me to warm up for what was to be a long and demanding night. Later one group from Hull, including a guy who used to DJ on the North Sea Ferries years ago, were sat nearby, making several requests, and luckily I knew about half of them so they were appreciative. My choice of songs and pieces was a lot more spontaneous than usual, and I played more instrumentals later on than usual, including Music To Watch Girls by (Andy Williams), and an impromptu, partly-improvised, Girl from Ipanema.

By my last set most people had drifted out, and at the end of the evening I played Bridge Over Troubled Water, accompanied by the few more devoted members of the audience who had stayed. Not the most melodious of renditions, but we did manage some close harmonies which sounded good. The last guy to leave was a German whom I had befriended called Sebastian, who tried his hand at some rather deep, frenetic improvisation. It made a nice change to be able to sit and listen to someone else playing the piano, with me being his only audience.

Yesterday afternoon I popped into town for a couple of hours to meet up with James (Ents manager from the York). His three month break concludes at the end of this week, hence he is due to be returning to work (on the same ship) next week. As it stands there are no plans for me to go back to work on the York, but I expect that our paths will cross again.



This morning I finally managed to procure the photos from Dave that he took of me at the piano during my first week on here. Unfortunately none of them actually made it to the Ents board, which I thought was a bit of a shame really as they weren’t too bad. Here is the best one.

Back home tomorrow for eight days, then back to Hull to join Keiron and the team on the Pride of Bruges.

Wednesday 8th February 2007

1:35 p.m. GMT I am currently sat on the train en route back to Nottingham. Had a good night last night, the ship was very busy, unfortunately with a mass of school-children but fortunately this didn’t detract from the evening too much. There were several couples and groups in the piano bar, including many who stayed for most of the evening. I played a variety of material again, including the main theme from Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield, in response to a request I had had from one group, which went down very well. Later on a group of French boys sat nearby requested some Beatles numbers, which I played, and had some banter with them in French which was quite amusing. Also the group from Hull who had been in the night before came and resumed their position at the table nearest the piano towards the end of the evening, and I played several more of their requests that I hadn’t got around to playing the night before.

It was a bit of a shame to leave after just 2½ weeks, as I was just starting to feel like I had settled in, and got to know a lot of the crew. However, it will be nice to have some time at home again, and also I am looking forward to going on the Bruges, as it sounds like there are several benefits of working on there, plus I will already know a few people.