I’d arranged to meet the rest of the band in the corridor outside our cabins at ten to go exploring ashore; my first shore leave, Asia here I come. Again, I’d breakfasted early to give myself some time to digest and wake up — and if I needed to — to throw up from the previous night’s drinking. Once more, I’d picked out a decent feed from the trays of food on offer and had loaded up on the fruit in particular. Asian pear, pineapple and several types of melon were all available; chilled and delicious.
Afterwards, I had piled my tray into the used tray cabinet, washed my hands and headed back out to the M1. Dodging bodies on their way to work, I worked my way back to my cabin. The main gangway off the ship into the port had been set-up halfway down the long, blue-floored corridor so there was a queue of passengers to squirm past en route to the lift. They’d be mostly disembarked by the time we tried to get off.
The weather had looked overcast and cold when I’d looked out of the portal in the mess — not as bad as it had been yesterday but still worse than I had hoped it would be for my first excursion ashore. It was September, I had no idea what the weather patterns or seasons were like on this side of the planet. It was pretty grim back in London when I had left, so I guess that wherever we were could also be miserable if it wanted to.
Back at the cabin, I had time to chill out and digest breakfast. I didn’t want to rush. Tom had already gone to get off the ship, so I was free to casually flick through the TV channels. I explored the American channels — I already knew the comedy stylings of Fox News, or Faux News as it was known — so I flicked across the others. Rachel Maddow quickly became a firm favourite of mine; Morning Joe also very quickly gained my respect, even if this was largely down to its own marketing.
I was struggling again to slip loose of the hangover from last night, I was also still trying to come to terms with the weirdness of the first few shows. I had really struggled and it had been a major dent to my confidence. There was a part of me that wasn’t really looking forward to spending time with the rest of the band. But I knew I had to, I knew things would get better with time but right now I felt so sheepish. And they didn’t seem to like me very much. I sat in front of the TV and grew more and more charmed by Ms Maddow. She would like me, I was sure. She seemed nice.
Soon it was time to meet the others and I started throwing things into a rucksack; water bottle, ipad, charger, jacket. I checked that I had my crew laminex card, picked up from the crew office the day before — they had listed my height as 6’2 which amused me greatly. I also had my passport and some cash and stuffed them all into the pockets of my jeans. There were cash machines in the mess which gave US dollars, still the most universal currency for most parts of the world. Making sure that I also had my cabin key card, I slung my rucksack over my shoulder and headed out into the corridor.
Karen and Simon were there, waiting for Lee. I smiled a cheery hello; they looked like they had not long woken up and as though they were about as good with mornings as I was. If I hadn’t breakfasted, I would have been really grumpy — especially with the lack of decent, readily available coffee. I was still training to improve my alcohol tolerance levels for moments such as this, but there was a part of me which was still naturally excited by everything about being on the ship so I at least outwardly gave an impression of being awake. I hoped. I was especially excited about getting off the ship and seeing a new country.
Lee emerged from his cabin, also looking a little jaded but smiling a cheeky ‘Hiiii-iiiii!’ at everyone.
Joe would be meeting us at the gangway. Jon would not be joining us; Lee explained the concept of IPM — In Port Manning — which would be keeping Jon on the ship for the day.
“Basically, in case anything happens to the ship while it is in port, they need to have a bare minimum of crew onboard at all times. So Gordon draws up a rota from the music dept. and four people have to stay on board at each port… in case they need an emergency bit of music or something.”
“Does that… suck? It sounds like it should suck…” I had offered.
“Depends on the port… the rota’s are usually fair, so everyone gets a turn. Also means there’s a little black market of exchanges, covering other people’s IPM. I think the going rate for swapping a shift is about fifty bucks? Plus, if you are on IPM and everyone else is off the ship then you can get your washing done, gym is always empty, you can lark about…” Lee looked at Karen.
“..run around naked, cartwheels around the decks..!” she joked, smiling. “It does suck when you want a group shore leave with the band though.” We headed off down the corridor. Jon would still be asleep in his bunk.
“So what’s there to do round here?” asked Simon from behind his sunglasses, stretching out his arms above his head.
“There’s a shuttle bus which drops us off around the town… there’s a couple of malls and a big second-hand shop, apparently?”
Lee had obviously done his research. “This is the first time we’ve been in this port, so it’s new to the WHOLE ship” Lee emphasized with a big hand movement, grinning.
“Second-hand shop: is that a shop that’s been owned by someone else previously and then sold on?” I suggested, desperate to try and crack a joke through the haze of my hangover.
I cracked jokes: that’s what I did. I’d have to try to crack some for these guys eventually. Tom was already well indoctrinated, it was high time these guys went through it. They looked at me blankly.
“No? Pheeeew… tough crowd…” I pulled my collar for effect. I got a sympathy smile out of Karen.
“Right! Shore passes first, cash from mess and then off. Do you have your passport and Laminex card?” Lee called back to me as he led the way down the corridor.
“Yep — according to my laminex I am six-foot-two: which is nice!” I was going to tell everyone about this. Classic short man syndrome. The others laughed as we wound our way out to the starboard deck and down through the passenger area stairwell to the Ents office. Everything was starting to take on more familiarity to me. My third day and this little corner of the ship was starting to make sense.
Karen helped further fill me in as we all crammed into the tiny Ents office:
“In some ports, we need to get a shore pass from here — I think South Korea and Japan… not sure about China, but worth checking in here in case they’ve left them out in a pouch… much like this!”
She pointed at the plastic, see-through folder clipped onto the wall. It was full of dark orange slips with black writing, some Asian symbology. I could make out some names but Simon grabbed the pile and pulled them out. He leafed through them, passing them out to us when he found our names.
“Nice one — OK, who needs cash?” Lee was definitely the band leader.
Joe had met us by the gangway, looking a lot younger than his big, bearded frame suggested due to a scruffy, slightly torn loose t-shirt and tight jean cut-off shorts. A baseball cap at a jaunty angle completed the slightly hip-hop, slightly hipster look.
We let the security team at the top of the gangway scan our laminex cards and we trooped off down the rickety pathway to the solidity of the concrete harbour. There was only a rickety hut which was serving as a port terminal, several disinterested officials ignored us as we walked out and down the docks to where we had been told a shuttle bus would be waiting.
The weather was difficult; it went from windy and overcast to searing sunshine every few minutes as the clouds broke. Sitting there waiting for the shuttle bus, we were mostly quiet. It had felt like a clean slate that morning after the shows last night, I could only imagine what the others were thinking of my performance — they had been nice in the bar afterwards, but they had been polite rather than understanding.
It had been bittersweet in the smoking room the previous evening after the shows; I’d seen Joe and Jon in the bar after I’d showered, and there had been an awkward silence as we queued up for our drinks. They were kids who were dealing with an older guy — it was probably hard for them to know how to manage someone twice their age. It was a nightmare situation, basically. I’d been aware that it would be difficult for them — anyone — to talk about the shows; it had been littered with some pretty poor mistakes, I was hoping that they were just forgetting about them as early teething pains.
I suspected that they just weren’t that impressed and felt as though they had been lumbered with a part-time amateur who was out of his depth.
Maybe that’s what I was?
I’d been relegated — quite obviously, I thought — to the outside of the circle formed by the band in the smoking room. Joe may not have been aware — I hoped he had not been aware — but he had turned his back to me and was blocking me out of the semi-circle of seats at the back corner of the room. At the time, I had thought that I probably deserved it to an extent, and although I wasn’t happy about it I was still fairly content to sip my drinks and chain smoke my way through the best part of a pack. I had definitely needed a drink or three and I wasn’t in much of a mood to chat.
Eventually, having been thrown a few scraps of conversation, some consolation ‘never minds’ and a ‘nobody’s perfect’, I had eventually wandered out, back towards the bar area and the pool table. I took a seat in the queue and watched different nationalities try not to be defeated by the invisible, ghostly rolling of the balls on the table.
Well, given the choice, I didn’t much want to have to hang out with a bunch of surly teenagers, anyway. I sipped my drink.
Eventually the triangle was passed to me but the two guys ahead of me both left the table towards the bar, leaving me on my own at the table. I racked up anyway, not wanting to seem like I cared. As I placed the triangle down on the side and chalked up a cue, a figure stood up from the chairs in the shadows of the room and approached. Very attractive, but with a tell-tale cropped haircut, she introduced herself as ‘Rob’ and offered to play with me. Grateful and pleased, I smiled and motioned for her to break. It sounded like her English was a little fractured, but we still laughed at the comedy timings and angles of the rolling of the balls when the ship lurched mischievously through the sea.
After grabbing a couple more double vodka sprites — DVS, or ‘deevs’ — I’d headed back to the smoking room for to poison my lungs further. The atmosphere had lightened, the rest of the band were laughing and joshing around, they’d been joined by a few others and the circle was in good spirits. Since I had left?
Jon kicked me a seat and Lee moved his out to make room for me, I smiled and was pleased to join in: drinking games were about to commence, apparently. We played 1-to-11; a game where each person took it in turns sequentially to call out the numbers from 1–11. Incrementally, different rules were introduced so rather than simply go round the group, clockwise, calling the numbers, different actions or rules replaced these numbers and had to be remembered and/or performed. If you forgot or got them wrong, you drank. It was a very entertaining way to see off a couple of drinks in between laughing like a drain.
Jon, the singer from the theatre joined us, as did a few of the orchestra musicians, and before we knew it we were having a riotous evening — helped largely by Lee and Karen regularly dropping shots of different drinks into our hands. The Malibu wasn’t so bad, the whisky stung a little bit as it went down, but the tequila was awful. No salt, no lemon, just straight down the pipe. Bleeeurgh!
After the awkwardness of the sets earlier, it was a huge relief to get really drunk, forget all about them and have a proper laugh with everyone. Bonding — old-school style.
Now, here outside the giant ship, the shuttle bus was due every 25 minutes according to the broken English on the map on the bus stop. By the time we had finished our cigarettes, it came rattling around the corner in the distance and everyone climbed up from where they were sat and gathered their things.
We headed towards the back of the bus, of around a 25–30 capacity which looked suitably foreign from the ones I was used to back home. Like schoolkids, the cool ones always sought out the rear and as musicians it was our duty to try and display some sort of aloof disdain for the front of the bus. That, and as we were at the front of the queue it made logistical sense to push down to the rear. You can view it in two ways, I guess. Social piss-marking or logical pragmatism. There’s a fine line.
Lee, Simon and Karen giggled quietly about something next to me as I stared transfixedly out the window at the alien view. My first time in Asia, my first time ashore since the airport in Japan. Everything looked… dismal, especially under the dark streaks of cloud which threatened heavy rain at any moment. The port was a distance away from any buildings but was soon on a main road where familiar buildings and parking areas filled the view into the distance.
Before long, the bus had pulled into one of these familiar-looking car parks and ushered us off outside an empty-looking corner of an industrial area. Some windows in the wall suggested signs of commerce on the other side but no English signs were visible. We piled out of the bus and looked around.
“What is this?” Lee scowled. It was pretty underwhelming. One or two cars were parked up, but we couldn’t see anyone anywhere. A set of double-doors were set into the wall in the corner so we shuffled off towards that.
“McDonalds — I definitely saw a McDonald’s sign from the road” Karen spoke for us all when she mentioned the internationally-recognised symbol for hangover recovery.
“Want one so bad…” replied Simon. We mooched on towards the doors, where the inside of a clean but uninspiring mall waited for us.
“Errrrr……?” Lee was not impressed as we walked in. There were hardly any shops and the ones that were there seemed to sell old ladies’ clothes.
“..toilet…” Simon headed off in the direction indicated by the sign, but was also passing comment on the mall in general. The band were grumpy and hungover, and not being much fun to be around. Still, I was enjoying being in a new country: the sights and sounds were all fascinating to me and even though the place was a bit grim and practically a ghost town everything had a novel charm to my eyes.
We wandered around the tiny mall and it wasn’t long before we had passed through it and out the other side, where a walkway threatened to lead us to somewhere else. A covered, brick walkway gave some protection from the searing heat of the sun when it appeared but only led us to a supermarket which offered no use or entertainment to us. We headed morosely back to the mall for another sweep, in case we had missed anything in the first pass.
Despite some signs which seemed to suggest otherwise, there was no free Wi-Fi in the mall. The internet on the ship was, as had been explained to me, terrible. Even when you had purchased one of the cards which offered either twenty or forty dollars’ worth of download, the connectivity was sporadic and dubious, even when the ship was in port. It raised a whole list of heretofore unnoticed issues, such as the dangers of automatic updates and downloads to phones and devices. Unsuspecting new joiners could easily see a twenty dollar card emptied in minutes by a phone or a tablet which hungrily sought to automatically download updates to apps behind the owner’s back.
So, it was standard protocol for crew to bring all their devices with them ashore and to seek out the nearest/best/favourite internet spots. Coffee shops and malls were all likely candidates, some Wi-Fi was usually available in port terminals as well but these were notoriously slow with hundreds of people all trying to jump onto the limited technology at the same time.
As soon as I had joined the ship I had realised how much admin I needed to get through back home in the UK. I had a deposit to claim back through a website on my previous tenancy and I had also ordered three tickets, way back in January before I had even thought about working overseas, to watch NFL games at Wembley in early November, way before I would be back. I’d gone last year to two games with a friend and had ordered more tickets as soon as they’d been released. Now, I’d need to sell them on if I could.
I’d brought my devices with me, but I wasn’t broken-hearted about not spending time peering at screens when there was so much new, foreign stuff for me to look at. Despite clearly being a pretty dull and underwhelming port, it was still my first time in a new country.
But the fact that there was no immediate free Wi-Fi here only served to sour the mood of the group. It hadn’t exactly been sweetness and light beforehand.
“Right — this is unacceptable — let’s go find the McDonalds.” Lee took charge.
“It had better not be a rubbish McDonalds like the last place!” Joe joked, but it wasn’t a funny subject. I wasn’t sure I could deal with a bad Maccie D’s; I had already recently eaten breakfast on the ship and back home I would be reluctant to go anywhere near the golden arches if I could help it (although — obviously — their chips are magnificent! With a strawberry shake… mmmmmm!). However, in the name of trying to show some group solidarity, as well as shifting the last of this hangover, I really fancied a cheeseburger.
We trouped out the front of the mall where it had now started spitting with rain. The elements were not helping. Joe and Lee led the way across the lot and onto the side-road leading to the main dual-carriageway. Hopping over a flowerbed, we were heading into the next lot along where, indeed, a large sign proclaimed the presence of the desired fast-food joint.
In through some doors and into an even less appealing mall, this one run down and dingy, and we were presented with a very small McDonalds counter. The approach hid the seating area to the side, we were relieved to see that it wasn’t simply a burger-dispensing window with nowhere to sit and eat.
Despite not speaking any English, the ladies behind the counter worked diligently to figure out our orders from the menu. Somehow, they managed to forget both my and Joe’s fries causing us both to jump back up to the counter — separately — from where we were sat to demand justice. But we were at least happy to be out of the rain and stuffing ourselves with comfort food. The conversation became lighter and we laughed a little. I mostly listened, only joining in where I definitely felt that I had something to contribute.
Happily consuming our Big Mac meals and occasionally snorting with laughter as different memories from the preceding evening had surfaced, we took our time finishing our trayfulls of food and slurping the remains of our drinks.
We laughed about the previous night’s drinking games and the general debauchery that had ensued. I could recall staggering about the rec room swapping stories with the orchestra guys and talking rubbish. I’d met Louisina, an acrobat/performer who had a floor show where she balanced inside an eight-foot ring as it rolled around, spinning and choreographing a routine with grace, balance and power. She was Argentinian and very lovely, charming and beautiful. She was, as required by her choice of career, incredibly strong. I’d talked with Jon (singer) about her; he’d seen her in the gym doing muscle-ups[1].
“Are you kidding me? She looks feminine and beautiful, but if you see her doing her show in her leotard when she’s basically balancing her entire bodyweight on one hand at times — she doesn’t even break sweat. She’s strong enough to rip your arm out of its socket, man! Be nice to her!”
Jon had laughed his deep, belly-laugh. I had joined him. I’d also joined Louisina and a couple of the orchestra guys in the rec room later, where they had been arm-wrestling. Kevin the guitarist had been sweating, straining and cheating in his effort to move Louisina’s arm even slightly, to no avail. She had been coquettish, but resolute — smiling sweetly and trying not to laugh at the contortions on his face. Eventually, she had gently pushed his arm down to the table and smiled kindly at him.
I’d seen this and — being pretty wasted at this point — had laughed my arse off without considering how this might have gone down. Immediately, I had been invited to try my luck. I remember mentioning something about my biceps being 15 inches, I may even have referred to them as my 15inch ‘guns’, such was my drunken bravado. After years of playing rugby and all the training and protein shakes involved, my biceps were still deceptively big. At one point they’d been around 15 inches, not having trained for a while I think they were more like 14. Still not to be sniffed at, especially when you are only 5’7 tall. Kevin, fabulous musician as he was, had not been equipped with such large limbs.
Louisina had let me win, there was no way I was going to shift her arm, either, but I guess she was a little conscious of gaining a reputation for beating all-comers and wanted to maintain a more feminine reputation. Plus, the way she smiled at me made me think that she wanted me to think that I was stronger than her. She blushed a little when I smiled back.
John, the trumpeter, was the fourth party — and he was a big guy, probably pushing somewhere north of 17 stone. Cabin-mate Tom had described John as being a super-good trumpeter (“One of the best I’ve played with on ships, truly above and beyond the normal standard you find on cruises”) and a relentless fitness enthusiast who apparently liked to train for a couple of hours each day.
I had already decided for myself that John was incredibly likeable, I was about to discover that — as well as being equally as sloshed as I was — he was fiercely protective of his friends, notably (in this case) Kevin. They both had a likeable, slightly reprobate, frat-boy charm — they were both very smart (Kevin would call it ‘book-learnin’’ in his fake southern drawl) and both were fierce party animals. Musicians, eh?
Before I knew it, John had gripped my hand in the classic arm-wrestle scenario on the table-top and said, smilingly:
“Go!”
Nothing, I couldn’t budge him at all. He was twice my size; I could feel the veins pulsing in my temple. John looked over at Kevin and grinned before slamming my hand down on the table. I’d asked for that, and saw it coming a mile away, but what the hell. There had been real venom in that, but luckily for me I was good and drunk and able to laugh it off. Louisina stepped in on my behalf and berated John for endangering my arm.
“He needs that arm!” — laughter from everyone, including me. Self-deprecation was likely my one and only finer point.
“Help me, Louisina! They’re bullying me!” I joked, and cuddled into her for protection. She cuddled me back, I pouted at Kevin and John. They seemed happier now that justice had been meted out, although Kevin was still fuming and had looked a little stern as all four of us had clinked drinks before moving onto other parts of the rec. Assuming that they had both been hitting on her — or trying to — I was sure they secretly hated the way that I had cuddled into her and had received a warm squeeze back.
Happily consuming our Big Mac meals and occasionally snorting with laughter as different memories from the preceding evening had surfaced, we took our time finishing our trayfulls of food and slurping the remains of our drinks. Once again, Ronald MacDonald had proven his efficacy at clearing up hangovers with stodgy, undigestible food.
Afterwards, we walked around the rest of the mall building just in case there was anything of interest — judging by the dilapidated buildings and lack of natural light we assumed that there would be no free Wi-Fi on offer. A random bric-a-brac store lured us in for a quick forage through its rows of ancient clothing and archaic toys.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a much more modern-looking clothes store with trainers on racks out the front. I leapt out of what must surely have been labelled the ‘general tat’ section of the store we were in, arrowed over to the new shop and studied the trainers on offer. They seemed reasonably priced, mostly brands which I did not recognise but all looked of good quality. Ah, a problem; they used different size labelling. I was looking for a size ten, and was staring at a size 36.
I scanned the shop and the friendly-looking assistant for any sign of a conversion chart for the shoe sizes but with no luck.
“English?” I enquired optimistically of the assistant.
His reply was completely lost on me, the ignorant Brit abroad.
I thought for a second. It wasn’t long enough. Eventually, I mimed at the assistant that I was after a larger shoe than the one I was holding. He may have replied that I was holding the largest of the type in my hand… but the language barrier was going to be a complete impediment to understanding. I continued my search around the shoes and the boxes piled underneath the stands. Luckily, a pair of Adidas trainers had a universal chart listing all the equivalent sizes, so I knew that I was looking for a pair of size 273 shoes.
I went round all the men’s trainers but could find nothing above a 267, not even amongst the boxes of shoes on standby below the rack. I eventually smiled my thanks at the assistant and returned to where the others had been, only to discover that they were no longer there.
I looked around in the distance, hoping to see Joe meandering along, his baseball cap tilted at a jaunty angle and towering way above the smaller frames of the locals. Nothing. I headed outside, where it was now really raining. I pulled my hoody out of my rucksack and donned it. Dancing from sheltered area to sheltered area, I decided to head back to the original car park where the shuttle bus had dropped us off and head on to the next, trumpeted, stop: the second-hand store, whatever that might be.
I didn’t mind being on my own at this point. It wasn’t as if I wouldn’t be able to find my own way back to the ship when I needed to, and the regular whining and moaning of the others had only stopped occasionally when they’d been shovelling burgers into their mouths. I preferred not having them sour my first time ashore in Asia with their ungrateful, spoilt bitching. True, it was a pretty depressing port that we were in, but there was no need to keep whingeing about it.
Looking around in the car park where we had first been deposited, some people were sheltering from the rain under a lean-to. I joined them, nodding a friendly alien hello, until the next shuttle came round about ten minutes later.
More gawping at the scenery as the bus rattled along, further up the main road that hugged the coastline in the port surrounded by shops — some familiar, western, names: most not — and wondering if I recognised any of the vaguely-familiar faces on the bus with me. I’m sure they would forgive me after only a handful of days on the ship; I hoped that I hadn’t been introduced to them before.
The shuttle dropped us out into a new carpark, rain spitting down from a great height. We all trotted hurriedly towards the door way nearest to us, which was on the corner of a large building with lots of hand-written signage in the doorway.
We do not speak English
We only accept cash
Please do not smoke
So that was fair enough. I walked in, and saw Karen and Lee sat down on a bench just inside, checking phones. There must be Wi-Fi here. I wandered up to them, eyeing the inside of the large hall with widening eyes. It was huge! Aisle after aisle of section after section. It was obviously all — maybe mostly? — second-hand, but for all that it was still a superstore of sorts.
Lee and Karen noticed me approaching from outside.
“Oh, hey! We lost you and didn’t know where you’d gone…”
“I was looking for trainers, need a pair before I turn into a completely unfit chubber” I replied, grabbing my belly for effect as I headed past them, peering into the mall.
Asians were odd. The stands before me looked like an endless row of children’s fantasy/cartoony/ martial-artsy figurines and collectors cards, but there weren’t any kids browsing — only middle aged men. I didn’t want to draw any conclusions; I chalked it up to just looking weird. I carried past and saw the items on display go from a hunting section to t-shirts to DIY tools and other random sections. I turned a corner and came face to face with a beautiful, honey-blonde Fender Telecaster in a glass case.
I hadn’t been expecting much from somewhere that had been advertised as a ‘second-hand mall’ but looking around the music section in front of me it quickly became like an Aladdin’s Cave of delights and intriguing, fantastic-looking, bargains. It was one of the best-equipped music stores I had ever seen, with all sorts of guitars across three, double-decker racks, another three rows of amplifiers of different sizes and brands… and everything that an enthusiastic plank-spanker could hope to see.
Immediately I thought of my TC Nova unit and the malfunctioning overdrive… they had guitar pedals and effects processors but they were all second hand. I didn’t want to take a risk — if I was going to get anything, it would be new. Still, I loved looking around at everything and it was only after I’d had a thorough nose through all the racks and cases that I thought I’d better try and touch base with the others. Karen was still sat on the bench, glued to her phone.
“Hey — how’s it going? What’s the plan — people heading back soon?” I checked my watch; we had to be back onboard at 5pm at the latest: it was only 2pm.
“Yeah, we’re just waiting for the shuttle — the next one is in ten mins.” Karen went back to her phone.
I stood there and looked out for any free spaces to sit down but the rain had driven people inside, it was standing room only.
Meh; I walked back down the aisle in the opposite direction round the cavernous mall. I may as well see what else was on offer while I was here. There was a lot more on offer, including a rack of trainers that protruded out from a darkened corner, seizing my attention as soon as I saw it. They were arranged by cost, rather than sizes, and were all obviously second hand and in different states of use. Mostly ‘Very’.
I did need some trainers — I’d only had room in my luggage for some deck shoes, flip-flops and smart black show shoes. Up until about 2 months before I flew out, I’d be in the gym three to four times a week in an attempt to prevent myself looking like my father. He’d been retired for a few years, I had inherited his exact frame size and build and he was very much the ghost of Christmas future as far as waistlines were concerned.
I’d played rugby each winter for the previous 7 years and enjoyed being fit and strong, most gym sessions would involve covering a total of around 5kms via a variety of forms and shifting a fair amount of weights in different ways. My recent lack of exercise was catching up with me; I was struggling to get into one of the waistcoats I’d brought on board with me: it had fit me when I bought it…
The ship was furnished with two excellent gyms: the passenger gym was large, spacious and decked out with modern, high-quality equipment for every conceivable form of self-torture. There was also a crew-only gym tucked away near the crew rec room. This was much smaller, you could only fit about 10–15 people comfortably in there at once but it too was stuffed full of new, high-tech kit. Jon (singer) had shown me around and had pointed out that because the majority of crew worked normal 8–5 shifts on the ship, the crew gym was mostly deserted during the afternoons. I couldn’t wait to take advantage.
I also couldn’t immediately tell the sizes of the trainers on display in the glass cases until I noticed the colour-coordination of the tags and the chart on the wall. Great! That was going to make everything much easier. I was looking for purple tags… There was a special, locked case for Nike Air Jordan’s; big, brightly-coloured basketball boots which I would have loved to have had a pair of, but they weren’t what I wanted for the gym. Despite being second hand and fairly battered in most cases they were still commanding hefty fees.
I scoured all the racks and narrowed it down to a choice of different cross-trainers which were in my size, but which both looked pretty worn and were — according to my maths — pretty pricey. I ummed and ahhed before deciding against buying anything. Like the guitars, if I was going to buy something, it would be new. I’d just have to get a little fatter along my quest for trainers.
I headed back to the front of the store and found it mostly deserted — apparently the bus had come and gone, taking the band with them. Oh well; I was pretty happy not to have to travel with four stroppy kids moaning about everything. Plus, there were seats now. I sat down and pulled out my phone and tried to figure out the Wi-Fi situation. There wasn’t a lot; by the time I had reached that conclusion, tried to check Facebook and been able to investigate other WiFi options, the bus had rattled into view.
Once I had been scanned back on board, I headed straight for the crew smoking room and found Lee and Karen making their way in there as well. We smiled our re-union hellos and walked in to the smoking room together, I held the door open for them. Inside, MD Jon was already there and looking relaxed in a loose t-shirt and what looked like pyjama bottoms but were probably more like beach wear, or those baggy trousers MC Hammer was fond of.
“Hey! Alright? how was the mall?” he asked.
“IT WAS SHIT!” Lee and Karen unisoned, laughing at each other afterwards.
“The mall was shit, the weather was shit, the McDonalds was shit, the second hand place was shit… it was shit.” Lee rolled off all the points that he found less than satisfactory.
“There was no Wi-Fi! None!!!” Karen added.
“Ah… guess I didn’t miss much then!” Jon grinned, backing away from the subject.
We smoked some more cigarettes and recounted the day’s events to Jon before heading back to the cabins. I grabbed a few words with Jon before he headed inside his. I asked him if there was a master itunes library of the set that I could get hold of to learn the songs.
“You have an ipad, right?”
“Yeah?”
“You really need to download an app called iReal Pro, it’s what I use for music scores and set lists. You’re not really going to be able to download it on the ship tho, because the internet is so bad… when you get off next in port, remember to get it — I can share my set lists with you then.”
“OK… I’ll do that.”
And that was that. Seemed like the Musical Director was happy just to have me making things up for now.
[1] Google is your friend. Safe to say this woman had no difficulty in supporting her own body weight in a variety of positions.
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