I'm sure many of you will have worked out that the blogs for the past couple of weeks were written before we set out on our travels. Now back home I will post daily blogs, thoughts and rubbish from our trip starting with today's entry.
A year or so ago we booked a major holiday to mark our respective 70th birthdays, but then COVID struck and so we had to shelve it. But the price we paid was kept so we decided to go ahead.
So we sailed (sorry flew) from Gatwick initially to Dubai and then on to Singapore to pick up the Queen Elizabeth.
Took the train from Eastbourne to Gatwick and that was an experience in itself. There was a woman opposite us who had a rather strange looking dog with her. She spent much of the journey talking to him and then made a phone call which cut out every time we went through a tunnel.
This really stressed her out as she declared to whoever was on the other end. "Why do they need proxy tunnels on this f-----g route". I'd have thought the answer to that was pretty obvious. On the other matter, I would suggest she would be less stressed out if she didn't make calls from trains.
Before leaving Blighty we spent two evenings sorting out health declarations, COVID declarations, cricket declarations (sorry I made that up), Insurance, Visas and finding evidence to support the fact that we weren't going to stage a coup in the countries we were visiting (made that one up as well).
It all made us wonder whether it was worth it. Two long haul flights on Emirates were quite pleasant in a long haul flight kind of way. The entertainment packages are now really good although the headsets they provide are really naff but most people have their own nowadays anyway.
So a slight digression here to talk about the entertainment. I started by finding a really excellent music playlist which gave every British number one since the music charts started in1952 which is the same year as I started.
I flicked through these, playing some old favourites and some surprises. I can't remember Gerry Marsden, Paul McCartney and Hollie Johnson recording Ferry Cross the Mersey let alone having a number one with it.
I then watched a couple of Brian Cox documentaries about The Sun as a star and whether there is intelligent life out there. Can't help thinking there may be hundreds of other planets with aliens asking the same question whilst we could answer that question for them- yes there is other life out there but in many cases it couldn't be described as intelligent. I say Brian Cox but was a little confused by the fact that he didn't appear at all and the voiceover was by an American female. I suspect this version was for the American market. Sadly somehow the programme felt flat and they managed to make a fascinating subject sound rather dull.
When I was a youngster, I was certain that we were the only life out there. Now this idea seems inconceivable taking account of the millions of galaxies and the trillions of stars and planets.
I then watched the new Baz Luhrmann film Elvis which I enjoyed. It's Elvis seen through the eyes of his manager Colonel Tom Parker who wasn't a Colonel, whose first name wasn't Tom and whose surname wasn't Parker, which all makes him something of an imposter. His actual name was Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk. He was an illegal immigrant in the USA, although he claimed he came from America.
He actually came from Holland and you know this because Tom Hanks plays him with a slight Dutch accent. By all accounts Parker was a controlling influence on Presley but at times in the film comes over more as a benevolent uncle. That's probably because Hanks is incapable really of being nasty in any way.
Many years ago we visited Lincoln Cathedral shortly after Hanks had filmed part of the Da Vinci Code there. The Cathedral people spoke in glowing terms about how friendly he was to everyone and that's the way he has always come over.
I have never been a Presley fan, although I do recognise his place in rock music history and will return to him in a future blog.
The other film I saw would have been plain ridiculous if it hadn't been based on a true story.
Phantom of the Open may be actor Mark Rylance's finest hour. Forget his portrayal of the BFG or his part in the evacuation of Dunkirk. This was real acting as the quintessential flat capped Yorkshireman Maurice Flitcroft.
Or I should have said would have been if Maurice didn't come from Barrow in Furness which I believe is in Cumbria.
Maurice wanted some excitement in his life and a new challenge. So he decided to enter The British Open Golf Championship. There was only one problem. He had never played a round of golf in his life.
But by pretending he was a professional golfer he managed to get into the qualifying round where he carded the worst score ever with his round largely sprinkled with double figures.
Oh how I laughed until I realised that his score was pretty much how many shots I used to take before I gave the game up and gave my clubs to a friend who has just taken the game up. He's just realised that he's left handed and the clubs I gave him are right handed. You will also get my life as a useless golfer in a coming blog.
Anyway Maurice didn't qualify for the main competition but it didn't stop him trying for a number of years under different names including a Frenchman by the name of Gerard Hoppy and finally under the name Arnold Palmtree😃.
There were periods of laugh out loud slapstick in a lovely film about an eccentric Englishman and his dreams. Roylance is so good in a brilliantly understated performance in which the only thing missing is a ferret disappearing up his trouser leg.
I then watched a documentary on Leonard Cohen and will turn to that into a separate blog shortly.
Two minutes after the end of the Cohen documentary we touched down in Singapore clutching our passports and sheaf of health declarations.
We took a taxi to our hotel and then found a number of waterside bars for an evening meal. Today's photographs are from our evening stroll. More on Singapore tomorrow.