Selbourne ‘Live’ from Aurora’s 2024 Grand Tour

[Selbourne]

4 minutes ago, Red Ray said:

I can't see, hear or read about Cheryl Baker without rather unkindly chuckling to myself about her real name - Rita Crudgington.

I didn’t know that, but it explains a lot 😂

[Megabear2]

19 minutes ago, Selbourne said:

I didn’t know that, but it explains a lot 😂

It is her birthday tomorrow, born March 1954.  

[Thedonkeycentrehalf]

22 hours ago, Selbourne said:

Today’s MDR menus. Final Black Tie night. 

 

We had an almost identical menu on Britannia last night with the addition of lamb rump to the main courses.

[terrierjohn]

1 hour ago, Megabear2 said:

It is her birthday tomorrow, born March 1954.  

Poor thing still having to work at 70.😉

[Annemarshall1952]

I can only say that we saw Cheryl in the Limelight club and it has put us of going there again. Some people may like her approach but for us it was embarrassing. 

[Megabear2]

3 hours ago, terrierjohn said:

Poor thing still having to work at 70.😉

Yep, she's had to sell her house to pay her bills.  She did a big interview in the tabloids about it after guest starring in Eastenders last year.  Did gardening for her neighbour at £10ph to make sure she pays her way.

 

Apparently the band never made any money from the big hits, they got 5% to split between them and then there was the big accident where she broke three vertebrae and her bandmate suffered severe head injury.  On top of that her replacement while she was recovering stole the band's name and patented it so they never even got to cash in as Bucks Fizz during the furore of Eurovision last year.  They perform as The Fizz.

 

Personally I admire her attitude if nothing else.

Edited March 7 by Megabear2

[jh1809]

3 minutes ago, Megabear2 said:

Did gardening for her neighbour at £10ph to make sure she pays her way.

I wonder if I could get her to come and mow my lawn. I pay the bloke who does it £25, and I think it takes him about 45 minutes. 🙂

Edited March 7 by jh1809
fix typo

[Megabear2]

1 minute ago, jh1809 said:

I wonder if I could get her to come and mow my lawn. I pay the bloke who does it £25, and I think it takes him about 45 minutes. 🙂

Sounds like you have a huge lawn! I pay £15 for mine.

[Selbourne]

3 hours ago, terrierjohn said:

Poor thing still having to work at 70.😉

I think that about a lot of these ‘minor celebrity’ types. I’m sure a lot of it is because they enjoy the attention but also, from many interviews I’ve read, most of them have been self employed throughout their careers, and few seem to make adequate pension provision, so probably don’t have much choice but to keep working. 
 

As for those who appear on cruise ships, I can’t imagine that the pay is great and unless they are on board for the entire cruise (which few seem to be these days) it doesn’t strike me as a terribly glamorous lifestyle having to fly out to join ships for often runs of sea days. Several of the entertainers on this cruise have talked about their long flights, often involving changes, missing luggage etc. 
 

 

[Selbourne]

12 minutes ago, Megabear2 said:

Sounds like you have a huge lawn! I pay £15 for mine.

and at the risk of sounding like the Monty Python four Yorkshiremen sketch, we can’t even get people to mow lawns where we live! Plenty of landscape gardeners and tree surgeons, but nobody prepared to just do run of the mill gardening 🙄

[Megabear2]

1 minute ago, Selbourne said:

and at the risk of sounding like the Monty Python four Yorkshiremen sketch, we can’t even get people to mow lawns where we live! Plenty of landscape gardeners and tree surgeons, but nobody prepared to just do run of the mill gardening 🙄

We had a great guy for 12 years while we were both working who retired in his late 70s four years ago.  I now have a really nice young man from South Africa who used to run a garden business over there.  He supplements his full time job working for the local council in schools with gardening on Saturdays and summer evenings to save for trips back to South Africa to visit family and to save for his two children's college and university when they're older. 

 

We too are overrun with tree surgeons and hedge trimmers.  General gardening people are between £12 and £16ph.

 

[jh1809]

1 hour ago, Megabear2 said:

Sounds like you have a huge lawn! I pay £15 for mine.

It's a fairly big garden that is about 90% lawn and 10% jungle. And I live in Surrey, which is probably one of the more expensive areas if one wants gardening help.

[Megabear2]

14 minutes ago, jh1809 said:

It's a fairly big garden that is about 90% lawn and 10% jungle. And I live in Surrey, which is probably one of the more expensive areas if one wants gardening help.

Yes, we all think grass is easy but when I got past 50 I realised not quite so much! My lawn has shrunk over the years so now we have far less thankfully.  Actually sounds like you get a bargain then.

 

[Presto2]

1 hour ago, Megabear2 said:

Sounds like you have a huge lawn! I pay £15 for mine.

I do mine so it costs us a bottle of wine and a warm radox bath 🤗

[Grandad John]

1 hour ago, Selbourne said:

I think that about a lot of these ‘minor celebrity’ types. I’m sure a lot of it is because they enjoy the attention but also, from many interviews I’ve read, most of them have been self employed throughout their careers, and few seem to make adequate pension provision, so probably don’t have much choice but to keep working. 
 

As for those who appear on cruise ships, I can’t imagine that the pay is great and unless they are on board for the entire cruise (which few seem to be these days) it doesn’t strike me as a terribly glamorous lifestyle having to fly out to join ships for often runs of sea days. Several of the entertainers on this cruise have talked about their long flights, often involving changes, missing luggage etc. 
 

 

Not uncommon at all. Billy J Kramer who was part of the Mersey sound and had several hits in the sixties is still working at 80 and actually had to beg on social media for funds to pay his bills after his wife died.

[Snow Hill]

We have a small lawn, but large borders takes me about 20 mins to mow and same time to edge. I invested in a cordless hedge trimmer a few years ago which trims the hedge quite quickly, then I just stick cuttings in shredder and stick them in the compost bin.All this gives me some exercise and saves having to find a gardener to do it, plus I enjoy doing it. 

[happy v]

We have a robot. I love it and call him Robbie. Not very original I know. It was that or plastic grass😀

[Megabear2]

1 hour ago, Snow Hill said:

We have a small lawn, but large borders takes me about 20 mins to mow and same time to edge. I invested in a cordless hedge trimmer a few years ago which trims the hedge quite quickly, then I just stick cuttings in shredder and stick them in the compost bin.All this gives me some exercise and saves having to find a gardener to do it, plus I enjoy doing it. 

Even a tidy up with the hand shears led to 3 hours in A&E for stitches a few years back.  If one of us used a hedge trimmer of any type with our very dodgy arms and hands, I dread to think what bits we might end up missing ... 

 

[Megabear2]

1 hour ago, Grandad John said:

Not uncommon at all. Billy J Kramer who was part of the Mersey sound and had several hits in the sixties is still working at 80 and actually had to beg on social media for funds to pay his bills after his wife died.

My husband has worked in pension provision and compliance for very many years and has had contact with a large number of people in the music and theatre business amongst others for over 45 years. 

 

He tells me that those from the 60's and 70's in particular mainly earned pennies for their efforts and when dealing with pension provision and financial planning their pots are actually tiny in comparison with the average worker.  The money men and dodgy management seemed to lock them in to virtually impossible to get out of contracts.

 

On the other hand he's dealt with some superstars of the pop world who don't even know how much money they have or indeed where it's been going through long careers.

 

As I said Cheryl Baker having reached stardom after Eurovision was proud to have enough money from that success to buy a semi detached house in Kent and yet her husband was a fully fledged member of The Hollies who were superstars in their day.

 

[Selbourne]

Day 65 - Thursday 7th March - Sea Day

 

Having thought that we would get back to Southampton without the rough seas that we’d experienced on our outward journey, we had a rough night and woke to heavy seas and plenty of motion (still not enough to reach for the Stugeron though, given that after 65 days we are salty sea dogs).

 

Although the clocks had gone forward (for the final time) we managed to get to the MDR in good time for breakfast, prior to attending  Paul Stickler’s final talk - The Long Silence, about the A6 murder. Another excellent talk, well delivered. He has been a major factor in making our return transatlantic (which we really struggled with the last time we did one) extremely bearable. 

 

At midday the Captain informed us that by the time we reach Southampton we will have covered 16,452 miles, visiting 26 ports in 21 different countries. He mentioned that some of the crew will be heading home. We had previously been told that 40% of the crew are ending their contract with this cruise, which I guess is no surprise when it’s been equivalent to around 5 or 6 normal cruises, each of which would usually see some rotation. It was a shame that the Captain blotted his otherwise exemplary copy book by repeating the daft request for people to score 10s in the feedback survey. My view on this is simple. If they were confident that people would genuinely be scoring 10 out of 10 as an honest assessment, then there would be absolutely no need to ask people to do this. It seems to smack of an insecurity and concern that they won’t that causes them to request it. I shall make this point in my feedback survey. 

 

We managed to pack 1 of our 3 large cases before lunch. As a point of interest, we were asked to have most of our cases packed and outside the cabin by midday. We ignored this and I’m glad that we did. The corridor was rammed with cases by midday and not a single one of them was removed until 5pm. As well as having a nice meal in the Glasshouse, we wanted to thank Dennis, the superb wine host, who has been a real enhancement to our enjoyment of this venue. He won’t need to ask for great feedback, as he will get it of his own accord. 

 

After lunch we attended An Audience with Captain Simon Love in the theatre. A few points of interest. He is over 60 but has agreed to stay on for 3 years as long as he works on Aurora. He’s not a fan of the newer ships! Apparently, Aurora struggles docking with any wind above 20 knots due to the lack of control at the aft of the ship, so above this requires a tug (helps explain what I’d heard about our aborted Key West stop). He reckons Aurora has another 7 or 8 years, but as we all know they have form of saying that only to sell the ship months later. In fairness to him, he wouldn’t be told until the deal was done, as he’d be personally affected (which may help explain his pleas for scores of 10 in the satisfaction survey). 

 

This was followed by an Audience with Cheryl Baker, but after our experience last night we gave that a miss. I’m sure that her style appeals to many, but we aren’t amongst them! We spent the rest of the afternoon packing with a half time break in Raffles. 

 

Our last dinner in the MDR and, thankfully it was quite a decent one. We had the Chefs parade (where passengers are asked to shake their napkin debris over their fellow diners 😂). I didn’t catch the name of the Executive Chef but it wasn’t ‘Ronnie’ as I’d been told, but an Italian sounding name. The satisfaction survey was mentioned yet again but the member of the entertainment team very sensibly added “or let us know about anything that we can improve on”. Thankfully she realises that these surveys aren’t worth the paper that they are written on unless people give honest and balanced feedback - a fact that was sadly overlooked by the Captain and Entertainment Manager, who are only interested in 100% scores. 

 

The final show was a double act of Tucker & The iHoppers. We didn’t go, so we shall be leaving the ship without having seen either, so I’m afraid that I can’t offer any feedback. 

 

When we are home tomorrow I shall report on our disembarkation experience and then, when I get chance, I shall do a ‘final thoughts’ post. 

[happy v]

Wow after all this time and you keep telling us you're nearly home. I feel quite odd, slightly bereft 😂.

It is truly amazing the effort you have put into this. I would have given up weeks ago.

I hope embarkation goes well. I very much doubt you will have time to post before you are home. So best wishes for a safe journey.

An after thought. You will definitely sleep well tomorrow,.....in your own bed 

[July morning]

Well done Selbourne,  I've really enjoyed reading your posts about the cruise it has brought back many happy memories

[TigerB]

Where has three and a bit months gone? 

Thanks for taking us along on, and sharing the ups and downs of, your grand voyage.  Have a safe trip home, where you're going to have to think about what to have for tea on Saturday, Sunday, Monday.....     Something tells me it won't be green beans!😂

[Ardennais]

It will be strange not having your daily report. I’ve so enjoyed reading about your adventure and hope that you will soon make a full recovery once you’re home. I’m glad that you’ve enjoyed the Paul Stickler talks as I know that this aspect is important to you. I’m afraid that I wouldn’t be in the least bit interested in his area of expertise - never watched any crime programmes/dramas. So it’s luck of the draw I suppose! Safe journey home from Southampton. 

[Purdey16]

I can’t believe it’s been just over 3 months you have been away!! It’s gone so fast  but so enjoyable to read every morning before I get up , I’m sure your family will be glad to see you back . Safe journey home and I hope your throat is much better and maybe gone once you start breathing in the English air 😁 .

Safe travels for you and mrs Selbourne.