'watching the ships roll in'

Sunday 11th May 2008

5:02 p.m. CET Last night got off to a good start, as after my first (instrumental) set, two men separately asked me when I would be playing again. Just as I was about to start my first vocal set, there was a large group of French school children in, their teacher hushed them and inadvertently hushed the rest of the room as well! This made it feel more like a performance, which I enjoyed despite it putting a bit more focus on myself. I carried on as normal though, people were generally attentive throughout the evening, and I think I did a fairly good job of appealing to as much of the audience as possible. I played a couple of requests, including The Way You Look Tonight, and Three Times A Lady, to which one couple danced. By my last set it was fairly quiet, and I rounded off by playing a couple more instrumentals, most notably Autumn Leaves which I improvised to.

A perfect day weather-wise in Belgium today, and I spent some time outside on deck earlier on. There were a couple of very large cargo ships, and I got some pictures of each of them. There has also been another cruise ship moored up in the dock today. I don’t know whether it is going to be leaving soon or laying over but I am off to investigate now.



Monday 12th May 2008

10:32 a.m. BST Without doubt my best night so far last night, the bar was busy all evening and I had a good response throughout. There was one fairly large group sat next to me for most of the time who were quite rowdy but were singing along to a few of the songs, including Ticket to Ride, Easy and Walk On By. Mid-way through the evening one guy requested the theme tune to M*A*S*H, so I played it during my last set and it went very well despite it being unrehearsed.

I did go to investigate whether that cruise ship was still around yesterday afternoon but unfortunately by the time I got outside it had already left. I did manage to get a photo of it from a distance though.