Thriller

On sea days Moiya, Wyona and I are looking for something to do. 

In the ship’s daily newspaper called the Compass I read, "come and learn to dance the Thriller". 

On the list of things to choose that I call “Things I Might Not Do Otherwise”, that item was in the top three. Wyona and I were on the dance floor for the first lesson and Moiya joined us for the second lesson. 

We should have known something was unusual when the dance directors wanted to know our stateroom phone numbers and when we were handed out two pages of instructions about the dance moves. At the end of the second lesson they said that the Thriller dance number was going to be peformed before one of the evening events called the Quest, and that we would be getting front seats in payment for our performance. 

That is when Moiya and about 8 others of the dancers went to the side saying we/they were opting out. The cruise staff are adept at twisting arms and giving positive feed back: don’t worry, we will be in the front line for you to follow; no one will be noticing you through the smoke and strobe lights; people who have done this before on other ships have said the performance was one of their cruise highlights.

This didn’t seem possible to me. In the first place, I had been on a previous cruise and the participants that time had been given 5 hours of practise, not the 3 that our shortened cruise had assigned for the dance practise. I told Wyona the next morning that I couldn’t sleep all night, waking all night to practise in my mind all of the phrases I could remember – boogie to the left, boogie to the left, swim, swim, turn to the thriller pose, etc., imaging where my feet would be going. She laughed and said she was having nightmares – that she was mad at the cruise dance directors because they had changed the steps and so she had mutinied and got a group of the other dancers to agree with her that they would do it the old way ... against the wishes of the instructors. 

Jewellery compliments of Seattles Best Coffee Shoppe

In real life, Moiya was absolutely OUT – with every excuse in the world. She folded (but just barely) to group pressure and stayed in, if she were to be allowed the middle spot in the chorus line-up, – thinking that there she would be hidden the most from the view of the audience.

Alex came to the pre-performance practise – in the ice rink where a floor slips over the ice so that there is a place for dancing and for the quest events that were to follow. 

Alex filmed us on the video of Wyona’s camera – a clip worthy of u-tube.

Here is the problem for the three of us – we know no Michael Jackson songs – not even Thriller, nor have we watched the Thriller videos. 

3 of Royal Caribbean's Independence of the Seas most talented dancers

As Moiya whispered to me weeks later, “Why would I have the lyrics to any of the Jackson tunes in my mind. Twenty years ago I put that music in the category of wickedness that I should never listen to."

The three of us persisted on board, practising our moves in the cabin, pre and post breakfast, lunch and dinner. 

When we reached the point of the final choreographic touches to the dance (a place none of us thought the others would reach) Wyona was identified as a confident looking dancer and assigned a place in the back of the line – which at one point turns into the front of the line -- an assignment that made her shoulders slump and her feet stamp a bit and her head shake in disbelief, but what could she do? Look confident! The reward is front line billing – at least when the back line turns into the front and the front to the back.


“Nope,” she said. “We seem to be the only ones in the theatre that are hearing these words for the first time. We are listening cold. The rest of the audience is hot – look at them silently mouthing the words along with the singers.”

After the intermission we were changed. Perhaps it was the Pepsi we drank. But we were actually, entranced. I wonder at this moment what the word transmogrified means, for that word pops into my mind about us. The lyrics, the dancing, the miming, the band, the gymnastics, the costuming, -- magical moments on stage. A fantastic show. Following the audience’s wild clapping and cheering at the end of the show, the cast did a reprise – many more numbers – among them, the Thriller song and the moves that Moiya and I had learned on the boat. People in the boxes were standing, their bodies swaying, doing all of the steps that the cast was doing on stage. Moiya joined in, doing the moves we had learned on the boat, her feet stamping and her hands clapping – the deadman walk, the steps where the head and shoulder meet to simulate a tick, the lion pose – I was crying, I was laughing so hard watching her.

Image from Website

Moiya wants me to mention that Thriller is not really a show with a plot. All they do is play Michael Jackson songs which are both sung and choreographed. There is a child who comes onstage at first, singing one of Jackson’s earlier songs. And there is another figure that looks like Jackson as an older performer ... but no plot line ... just the songs.On the way home in the subway, we began to plan our costuming which is going to go over the top the next time we get on a boat and there is a chance to perform the Thriller dance. In fact, we were five long tube stops past the place we should have alighted to get the Northern Line home by the time we stopped our conversation and tried to think of how we were going to get home. Moiya was right. There is mortal danger in being Michael Jacksonized. 

Move on a few weeks – to yesterday. Wyona left Woodside Lane for Calgary. Moiya and I left Woodside Lane for downtown London, wondering which of the yet unseen West End Musicals we could add to our agenda. We slipped into the theatre where Thriller is staged, not believing that we would get a ticket since Wyona has been there many times and she had never been able to get tickets. But the stars were in alignment – we got producer tickets, right in the middle of the theatre, about 8 rows from the front for the very cheap price of £32.50. We warmed up to the ambiance we could feel in the crowd in the first part of the show, though we napped a bit. I turned to her and asked, “Moiya? Do you know any of the songs. Ever heard “Dirty Diana” or “Bad” before?”

A Sea Day

People laugh when I say that sea days are so busy that I don’t have time to eat.  Wyona and Greg don’t have time for it, either.  There is a destination lecture, a bridge lecture, a dance class, a lecture on historical events around the port we will be entering.  Then if I take a mile walk around the deck before all of this happens, and try to get to the evening entertaining – well, those days are exhausting. 

The Bridge Lectures are attended by the same group of people – the others meet again in the afternoon to practise their skills with duplicate bridge on each other. But Wyona and Greg go off to dance lessons instead. If Wyona does go to play, and Greg goes to dance alone, she ends up getting the high board points, but she claims the stress of having to do so well wears her out for the rest of the day. She comes back to the room, throws herself on the bed, and gives me strict instructions.  Vehemently she says, “Don’t ever let me go up there and play bridge again”.  Not believing I have that power, I have no idea what tools I am going to use to stop her.

Still, I am enjoying learning about the rule of 20, the rule of 15, the rule of 11 and the instructions on the four rules of what to lead should you get to play the first card.  “The gods of bridge will punish you if you don’t memorize these four leads,” the instructor said, looking up to the heavens. “And I mean it.  You will be punished.”

This threat scares me more than it scares Wyona.

- Arta

Istanbul

Istanbul --  “To the city”

“These are historic waters we are sailing through,” said Greg as he gazed from the balcony, onto the Aegean Sea.  He was waiting for Wyona to get her shoes on so that they could go to their dancing lessons – today is the rumba.  Wyona had bubble bathed all morning. “Whenever am I going to have a bubble bath in a balcony suite on a boat, again,” she said to us as Greg and I hurried off to the destination lecture entitled Istanbul, not Constantinople.  I met the lecturer while standing in the specialty omelette line-up for breakfast.  “I enjoyed your lecture two days ago.  My brother-in-law and I were saying how we had wished your lecture had been longer when you talked about Corfu.” 

“It is difficult”, he said, “since I am only allowed 35 minutes of presentation time.  I submitted two lectures and the people on board choose the second one, so I have plenty of material.  But the problem on board is just that there are not enough rooms to run all of the programs people want.” 

The people who gathered around the lecturer post-presentation had questions to ask and answers to share.  Most agreed that the best source of information for a traveller is Rick Steven’s Guide to Istanbul, one man there having read 100 pages of it in another Rick Stevens book.  Greg and he went on to chat about good books to read about the history of the Golden Horn.  The lecture had covered the etymology of the name Istanbul, the best reading on it being that in Turkish it sounds a bit like “to the big city”, which would make sense given the rural roots of the people who  finally ended up living in the city.

That was the historic destination lecture.  Later in the morning and better attended was the shopping lecture, highlighting the way to purchase Turkish leather coats (lightweight for their cold winters of 70 degrees Fahrenheit), rugs, coffee (better at waking people up than Red Bull), apple tea, Turkish delight candy (created for a Sultan with a sweet tooth but no way to eat hard candy) and tourist paraphernalia, all decorated with the sign of the evil eye.  I am going to a market with 4009 shops and 16 entrances and exits, hoping I can buy at least one pashmina, a wool scarf that is so fine it will pass through the circle of a wedding ring.

I took my early morning walk.  The sun rose from behind the distant horizon and lifted its face over the right over the water in the time it took me to only walk one length of the boat. I will be that sun rose in less than to minutes.

We had been promised a stormy sea with high winds today.  I wanted to beat the turbulence and the water on the deck by getting up early.  The wind had already beat me to the deck. I had to lean forward to stand upright.  A few chairs slipped across the deck in front of me.  Some of the backs on the deck chairs banged forward. I casually wondered if I shouldn’t have brought a whistle with me, in case I was blown overboard.  Soon I was thinking of wearing a life jacket in case no one noticed I was gone for a few days. 

Wyona and I came back from the Turkish Grand Market without buying anything ... a sad comment on the shopping energy Wyona and I had. Oh, that is not to say that we didn’t find a beautiful red silk scarf, wider than the usual scarves, but when we went back to get it, we couldn’t find that shop again.  That is what is wrong with shopping in a place where there are 4009 shops.  Not that there are that many kinds of shops – there was leather (coats, purses, shoes), gold, diamonds, silver, ceramics and the usual tourist paraphernalia (the evil eye on key chains, ash trays).

We sat down to eat.  What are the chances that someone you had eaten breakfast with would be at the table with  you – but there they were, Frank and Joan on the side of me, and on the side of Greg, a couple that he calls his chicks.  They were fabulous – older women on their first crew and full of lots of interesting chatter. The dinner companions are always interesting because they have had as many adventures in the market as we have had.

Arta

Sheringham, East England

Wyona and I left for the east coast of England this morning, not a trip most people would choose.

Lurene is coming for three days and we are saving Hadrian's Wall and Wales so wse can do those trips with her.

But few people who have only a week or so to spend in England want to go as far east as is possible and dip their toes in the North Sea.

That is what was intriguing Wyona about moving east -- not getting her feet wet, but going where others might not go. 

The ticket seller at Cambridge said that she would recommend us ending up in Sheringham, a quaint English seaside town.

And that is where we headed after we had gone down to see King's College, Cambridge as well as Trinity College.

On the bus Wyona asked for directions on how to get to the college, and that is how we picked up our guide, John. 

He was an 81 year old man who said he would show her a sight few people have seen before -- a new gold clock install on the university campus, purportedly costing one million pounds.

When Wyona asked for directions, she thought she was asking an old couple who were sitting together on the bus, but the old woman seemed to be deaf and soon got up and left without the old man, which is when she surmised they were not together.

At any rate, John raced us through the streets of the campus, and took us back to the bus, and didn't leave until he had seen us safely on our way.

Wyona and I were the last people off of the train at the resort.

I wanted to see the sea.

She said we should follow the crowd who had also got off the train, as they walked up the hill. 

We were too far behind them, soon, and a man caught up to us, happily chatting to us, telling us about coming to the resort to meet his old friends from Birmingham for the day.

"Where are you going," he asked us.

"To the sea," said Wyona.

"Well," said he, "if you continue to walk that way, you are going to have to go all of the way to Wales on the west coast. The sea is always downhill and you are walking uphill.

That is why I took this picture for you. To show you that Wyona and I can change directions and find the sea, with a little coaching from the English.

I had a little more energy than she did by the time we got to the coast.

She sat in the square and watched the families having picnics and enjoying their children.

I set out with my camera to see if I could capture what it is people love about this seaside resort.

I went out of control today, taking pictures of people, since they were around us in their infinite variety.

I started when I saw a man in fabulous dreadlocks saying good bye to his girl friend at a country train station. 

We have stopped at many towns, picking up one or two passengers on a platform. 

This couple were outside my window, less than one yard away and before I knew it, I had my camera in my hand.

I didn't want to miss that image, for I would have expected it in the city, but not on the platform in a rural eastern district of London.

When the girl friend got on the train Wyona was poking me for another picture.

She had a lovely string of Japanese orgami birds, tied together as though they were on a kite string and they hung from the back of her dress and gently flew behind her.


I didn't catch her in that pose, but here she is later talking to someone and you can see the birds, now hanging down from the front of her dress.

By this time she was tired and had her shoes off, but you can still see the string of birds hanging down from her waist.

I hadn't walked more than a block down the streets of small coastal town of Shearingham, but I saw an older lady walking along the street.

I watch older ladies carefully, knowing that some day I will be one of them.

This one had on a heavy winter coat and hat, even though it was a sweltering in the 80's and everyone else had on a shorts and t-shirts, were lining up at the ice cream shops to cool themselves down with a cone or were sitting on the grass having picnics together.

She was alone.

She sat on a park bench and the heat must have been getting to her as well, for she gently peeled away on layer of her coat to give herself a chance to cool off with a little of the North Seat breeze that was whispering by us on the streets.

I caught some English folk dancers who were doing a round dance with a pipe and a drum as accompaniment.

I loved the hat this man was wearing, as well as the bells on his shoes, and the sticks in his hands that had ribbons flying from the ends of them.

"Oh, the English in the Midlands love this kind of dancing," Greg said when I was trying to explain to him what I had seen.

I told Wyona that by mid afternoon we were looking so tired, that I was not taking any pictures of us. Too cruel, I thought, to get us when we are at our tiredest. 

Wyona had just rearranged our luggage. 

But even after a long day on multiple trains and taking care of me every step of the way, she still looks good. 

I brought along my computer today, since yesterday we were on trains where everyone had their laptops plugged in.

Today the trains were downscaled and instead of riding first class, we rode with those who got cheaper tickets. If you buy a ticket but don't sit down, you get a cheaper rate.

As well, there was no air conditioning in the coaches, no complimentary snacks, and the train was only 2 coaches long. The windows were wide open to give us some breeze. The 2 seater sides were filled with families where there were 2 and 3 children on the laps of the parents, all in a festive mood, for the weather was beautiful and they were going down to the sea-side to enjoy the afternoon.

I liked this picture of the church. The service must have ended by the time I got there, for most of the town was at the Antique Motor Car and Bicycle Show down at the boardwalk.

I think it was the crayoned sign inviting people to church that I liked about the image: "The Fire of the Holy Spirit at Pentacost", done in crayon on the bottom right hand side of the picture.

Another lovely day on the train in Britain.

Arta