atop the vessel

Tuesday 13th May 2008

1:02 p.m. CET At times last night felt a bit like an uphill struggle, the bar was fairly busy but there was a noisy group of French people sat right by me for most of the evening, although I did manage to pacify them slightly by doing a dedication for one of them (in French) who was celebrating his birthday.

Had boat-drill this morning, but instead of the usual procedure we got are rare opportunity to go up to the very top of the ship for some lifeboat training.



11:18 p.m. BST This evening was not the easiest either, although it did have some good points. During my second set I played all instrumentals despite the bar being quite busy, amongst them were Little Brown Jug (for the bar staff!), which I had never played before, and Take 5, which I had never performed before. Despite that, they both went down very well with the (mostly German) audience, along with most of the other numbers that I played. Later on I played and sang Something by The Beatles for the first time, and Baby Grand, which I don’t tend to play very often, and both of them were also fairly well received. I ended up doing two one-hour long vocal sets instead of the usual three forty-fives.

The spate of excellent weather on both ends of the ship’s route came to an end yesterday afternoon, when the clouds rolled in from the sea, making it overcast when we set sail. Tonight is the first night of any real sea movement since I came back on board.