Liverpool

I pushed myself out of bed early today and went up to the 11^th deck to watch the ship pull into Liverpool. The ship tied up right next to the ferry that crosses the Mersey River, a nice way to start Liverpool Day.

In the breakfast buffet area I heard I couple of people sing the chorus of “Yellow Submarine”. (In the piano bar I sometimes announce that nobody’s ever written a song called “We All Live on a Cruiseship”………..and therefore “We All Live in a Yellow Submarine” is the next best thing. Which hopefully leads to an alcohol-fueled group rendition of Ringo’s memorable vocal.)

The ship had some “Beatles Tours” that were not available to me, and were sold out a long time ago. There was also a non-Beatles tour of Liverpool for those not interested in the Beatles. There was also a non-Liverpool tour for those not interested in Liverpool. For those people the tour bus went south about 40 miles, across the border into Wales to look at castles.

I had my own personal tour in mind, with a specific destination.

Any serious Beatles fan knows that John Lennon met Paul McCartney at St Peter’s Church Hall in Woolton (in south Liverpool) a few minutes before a gig that Lennon was doing with his group The Quarrymen, on July 6, 1957. The meeting was momentous to say the least, considering everything that it led to.

The story goes that Lennon was 16, McCartney was 15, Lennon didn’t know how to tune a guitar properly. After being introduced by a mutual friend named Ivan, McCartney took Lennon’s guitar, tuned it properly, then sat on the side steps of the Church Hall stage, showing off his talent to the Quarrymen. He played and sang “Twenty Flight Rock” and “Be Bop a Lula”, and impressed the hell out of the Quarrymen, especially Lennon. Then The Quarrymen got on the stage for their first set. McCartney listened to a few tunes and left pretty quickly. Within two weeks McCartney was a Quarryman.

I reached St. Peters church a lot later in the day then planned. I got off to a late start, tried to save some money (in this case pounds sterling) by using the Liverpool Rail and Bus system. The double-deck buses were fun, but I made a huge mistake getting off at a train station that was much further away from St Peters than expected. I was using a lousy map. Put it another way -- I underestimated the size of Liverpool, St Peters was a good 7 miles inland from the dock, in a nice-looking suburban wooded neighborhood.

I have to mention -- in my uncertain travels to Woolton and back, I approached two bus drivers and several local Liverpool people for advice and info, and they were absolutely gracious, patient, and helpful.

By the time I got there, mid-afternoon on a Sunday, I had the whole church area to myself. Downright quiet. No tour buses around. (I found out later that the ship tour didn’t even go to St Peters).

The Church Hall was across the road from the church itself. It was closed, locked. I then went across the road to the church itself. I walked around the church graveyard, looking for the famous Eleanor Rigby grave that supposedly inspired the song. There were many hundreds of tombstones, and I gave up almost immediately, feeling a little silly.

Just as I was leaving the graveyard, four young ladies walked past me, led by a man who looked and sounded like a tour guide. Instinctively I followed them, and in a few seconds I was at the Eleanor Rigby grave.

The four girls had paid this guy to drive them around on a private Beatles tour. The Cavern Club, the schools, boyhood homes, etc etc.

And then -- a very pleasant surprise. The five of them crossed the road back to the Church Hall which had been locked a few minutes before. But this time there was an old guy, some kind of attendant, who unlocked the door, obviously by some arrangement with the tour guide. I tagged along, nobody protested, in fact the tour guide stuffed a bunch of business cards in my hand.

The old guy claimed to be a teenage buddy of John Lennon’s, and claimed to have been standing right next to him when McCartney walked in -- a witness to this piece of history -- he pointed to exact spots where this & that happened. It was extremely interesting to this old Beatles fan, a tad spooky, and made my little trek well worth the trouble.

There’s a plaque commemorating the John-Paul meeting on the outside of the Church Hall, and the tour guide’s gaudy tour car was parked nearby. It was great that the tour guide turned up when he did, quite a piece of nice timing, otherwise I would have missed a lot. I’m developing a collection of small rocks from various countries during this gig, and the “England” rock was lifted from St Peters churchyard.

That evening in the piano bar it was Beatle Time, also Gerry & the Pacemakers, Peter and Gordon, and pretty much anything that fell in category of British Invasion. “Second Verse, same as the First.”

close-up of plaque on St Peters Church Hall

some promo for my favorite tour guide

"All the Lonely People..."

business is booming

view from top of double-deck bus. Note the traffic always stays to the left side of the street. Some of you know I'm already a careless pedestrian. With the cars constantly coming from the wrong direction, I nearly got run over quite a few times.

which way to Central Islip ?

Day 50

7 weeks, 7 week-long cruises done, and it is Day 50, the Halfway point of this 98day contract. Geez, it goes fast.

Now starts the “Voyage of the Vikings” -- pretty dramatic billing, considering that the Vikings were legendary rough&tough adventurers/warriors, and the people on this cruise are mostly medicated, retired and almost expired.

That’s somewhat an exaggeration, but not much -- Holland America already has a reputation for older passengers, but especially cruises of this length (35 days) will attract mostly retired people enjoying their Golden Years.

The DJ at the disco figures this to be the easiest and quietest 35 days of his cruiseship career, with everybody going to bed early and the disco empty by 11pm. He also thinks there will be more piano bar activity.

Last year on the Ryndam there was a 23-day cruise, and I worried that I would run out of fresh material to maintain an audience for the 23 days. I was pleasantly surprised -- the piano bar patrons got to know each other very well, friendships were formed, and they kept on coming in to the piano bar, to see each other as well as to hear music. Kinda like Swaggettes actually, and I hope this kind of comraderie will develop during these 35 days.

Tonight I heard an Absolutely True Report that an old couple -- the husband in a wheelchair -- has been on this ship for 6 weeks now, AND is taking the 35-day cruise starting today………..
AND intends to stay on this ship until DECEMBER. AND intends to switch over to a different Holland America ship come January, and keep on living on HAL ships.

Apparently (from what I heard tonight) they sold all their properties, and think (quite accurately?) that they can spend the rest of their lives on cruise ships.

OK OK I know….if one of these geezers gets a serious ailment, that would be the end of this Golden Years Cruise Life, after all, a cruise ship ain’t no hospital. But it’s a pretty cool story, and I hope they last a long time. I guess they’re not too connected to their families or communities.

A notable passenger on the last of the Montreal-Boston runs was Dawn, who cheered me on in the piano bar night after night. During the day she was dazzled by Old Quebec City, perhaps the most charming place either of us have ever seen, and a long stroll around beautiful Prince Edward Island is a terrific thing

I’m looking forward to entertaining at her 2nd annual late summer party, on September 6. Last year’s was really great.

In a nice example of worldwide cooperation, people on this planet agreed to divide the world into 24 longitudinal time zones, each one of course being an hour removed from the adjacent ones.
So as we advanced eastward out of the Eastern time zone into the Atlantic time zone, we moved our clocks forward an hour.

Next -- as we move further east from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland, we will move our clocks……..

…….a HALF-hour forward? From 2AM to 2:30 AM?

Strange but true. Newfoundlanders are apparently a free-thinking bunch who don’t care to conform to Canada or anybody else. If they had their druthers, the world would be divided into 48 time zones of a half-hour each. As a western Canadian might say, “Stupid Newfies”.

Maasdam by the Numbers

(1 )- Horn Player

The ship orchestra has the rather odd 7-person lineup of one bassist, one guitarist, one drummer, one (mostly useless) percussionist, one pianist, one synthesist (who would rather be the pianist), and one sax guy. One reliable source told me that the reduction in horn players is Holland America’s attempt to look and sound “hipper”.

The acronym for this cruise line is HAL (Holland America Line) and the orchestra is called the HALcats. In fact every HAL ship has a band called the HALcats. Every HALcats band reads music and backs up the comics, singers, ventriloquists and other such “guest” entertainers that perform in the main Showrooms.

The Maasdam HALcats are sometimes deployed to a lounge up on Deck 12 called the Crow’s Nest where they get a chance to demonstrate their hipness. A young black female singer is added to the group, they read her charts. They are then billed as “Kalyka and the HALcats”

Oops. Make that “Marisha and the HALcats.” Kalyka got off the ship recently.

(2) - escalators
An up/down pair running from Deck 5 to Deck 6 near the middle of the ship. Passenger escalators are rare on ships, so it‘s very cool if you happen to be in that area. I like it because there never seems to be any waiting time, you just hop on. And you don’t have to hear inane elevator talk from confused old people from Iowa.

(3) - sunny and clear days that I’ve seen in the 38 days I’ve been on this ship
Not the ship’s fault of course. But don’t ever visit Nova Scotia in May or June.

(4) - stripes on the shoulder of an IMPORTANT officer.

There’s only a handful of these 4-stripe guys - the staff captain, the hotel director, the chief engineer, and the master of the vessel…. Basically the equivalent of Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Scotty. (was there a piano bar on the Enterprise?)

(5) - departments the passengers are asked to evaluate at the end of their cruise
Food and Beverage
Culinary
Housekeeping
Front Office
Entertainment
Yeah I know “culinary” sounds like it belongs with “Food and Beverage”. But culinary is responsible for how the food tastes. Food & Beverage has to do with how it’s served.

(6) - pianists on the ship
The two aforementioned pianists in the HALcats, plus the Filipino pianist in the ballroom dance group, the chamber group pianist, the piano bar guy, and one “utility pianist” who get deployed here and there to do cocktail music.

(7) - pianos
Rembrandt Showroom (black)
Rotterdam Dining Room (black)
Explorers Lounge (dark blue)
Crow’s Nest (black)
Ocean Bar (raspberry)
Piano Bar (raspberry)
Half Moon Room (black - nice practice piano, room not used much)

(8) - Whistle blasts signaling the general emergency drill (7 short blasts followed by one long blast)
First day of every cruise - 4:15PM. Put on life jacket with “Traffic Director” apron, go to stairwell that almost nobody uses during this drill. Bring written song lyrics to memorize, to break the boredom. Whole thing last 45 minutes.

(9) - Bars on ship. Best one of course being the piano bar

(10) - Minimum hours worked per day by cabin stewards, culinary and bar/food svc. people. These Filipinos and Indonesians don’t get much time off. “10” is also the typical month-length of their contract.

(11) - Deck 11 - the Lido deck buffet, where all musicians go to eat and angst over the tons of food available there

(12) - laps around the walking deck, amounts to a 3-mile walk
Almost every day - my way of dealing with the abovementioned angst

(13) - decks on the ship
Actually, there’s a deck 14, but only because the labeling system skips “13” -- same triska-deckaphobia (get it? triska - DECK -aphobia ? HAHAHAHAHAHA) that you see in NYC buildings.

(14) - ships in the HAL fleet
The newest, called the Eurodam, just hit the water two weeks ago

(15) - age of the Maasdam
Christened by “godmother” June Allyson in Fort Lauderdale in 1993.

16 - tons, whaddaya eat?
Another year of this, I won’t see my feet