Three sea days left and then we are home. After last night’s partying we stayed in bed and skipped breakfast and our first item of the day was the mid-morning talk by Naga Munchetty. She boarded, along with Alfie Boe, yesterday. There are over 30 different nationalities onboard amongst the passengers which is probably why the talk was not full - all lecture talks are also repeated on the cabin TV so that might be another reason. Naga is definitely a what you see is what you get person: Very competitive; No nonsense attitude; Very open and, as she says, fiery and passionate (some may say argumentative). She is not Mark’s cup of tea but he was impressed with her answers because no matter the questions asked of her by Neil (entertainment host) or the audience, she always protected her impartiality stance without being vague or boring. Basically, she was very impressive.
After the talk, we got some lunch in the Carinthia lounge and played the sequence board game with Andrew and Diane until Pam suffered blurred vision and a migraine set in - we think it may have been caused by the lighting in the theatre during the Naga Munchetty talk.
Whilst Pam slept it off, Mark joined Andrew for the paddle tennis competition. We were paired together again but lost our first match on a tie break. The plus point was that Mark had no further injuries. Next up was the collection of the next scavenger hunt competition. This one is 20 questions based on the history boards around the ship. Last time, they gave us hints where each answer could be found. Not this time so we will not even attempt this hunt.
Mark headed back to the theatre for the RSC’s show “Miss Littlewood” about the life of Joan Littlewood. It was well acted and sung but the show, topic and songs did not really appeal to him who much preferred the RADA performance of “The importance of being Ernest” when we did the QM2 transatlantic a number of years ago.
Mark went back to the cabin and read until Pam awoke. Feeling better, we went off to the Illuminations show about the sky at night in which the astronomer, Paul Fellows, showed what the the sky would look like tonight from deck and ran the night sky forward pointing out stars, star systems and planets etc… it was very clever but obviously not as good as the real thing that we did in Uluru, Australia. They will try and do stargazing on Deck tonight - weather permitting.
Tonight is our last gala night and the theme is Red and Gold. This is our first one of these, for this theme for this cruise, as we slept thru the 1st one because it was the day after we got on in Perth.
The dinner was amazing, and very filling with loads of choice.
After dinner we went to the theatre for the 8pm show by the band called The Bluejays - we had met them last night when doing the silent disco in G32 and had even taken the lift back with the lead singer who told us that his band mates had left earlier due to a lack of staying power. They played loads of 50s, and early 60s, rock and roll songs and were really good, generating a great atmosphere.
Mark went back to the room to get changed so that he could go up on deck, and stay warm, whilst attending the stargazing event. This was held on the open sun deck, with the lights turned off. Mark was glad of the change of clothes as a few were feeling the effects of the cold in their gala outfits. The clouds did not help the proceedings but we saw enough have a worthwhile talk by the astronomer who also had a telescope set up to view a view bright Venus and a not so clear Mars.
Meanwhile Pamela finished her Marple book so we can return that to the library tomorrow. Talking of which, that can be our ship tour area today as we have completed deck 7 now. The library is on deck 8 forward and has a bookshop next door.
Then it was time for the 10pm quiz with Diana and Andrew - Mark joined halfway thru after saying he had had enough of the cold up on deck. We got 17 out of 20 but another team had all 20. No more wine for us.
We left our quiz partners to go to G32 as we had promised Rabbi Arthur that we would be there to support him during Karaoke. We saw him singing House of the Rising Sun - he had a good voice. A surreal experience supporting a karaoke singing rabbi. It got more surreal when it was much later announced that a Michael Ball was up to sing next and it turned out to be Alfie Boe himself, there right in front of us. We had to explain to the rabbi who he was and why he called himself Michael Ball. We got the feeling there were a load of Brits doing the same to other Americans and non-Brits.
Alfie sang “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” with a voice so strong and pure that the whole ship must have heard it. Poor Rabbi Arthur was called up next up to sing again after Alfie Boe. He did fine though.
A bit later Alfie returned to sing again but this time he sang “Shallow”, from A Star Is Born, but in a duet with Naga Munchetty. Yet another unexpected twist to the evening.
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