We are in the Finals Season, with both Rugby League and Australian Football League – that’s Footy Rules semi-finals this weekend and the World Cup Rugby Union contest across the way in New Zealand. Had to watch both Footy finals of course – there’s eight hours gone - and my team the Mighty Hawks lost by 3 points in the last 3 minutes, so they’re out of next week’s Grand Final. Only watched one of the Rugby League semis to see the local team Melbourne Storm unexpectedly blown away by New Zealand team the Warriors. On the other hand watching the New Zealand All Blacks whacking the French Rugby Union team was a pleasure. Not so sure about Australian Wallabies beating up the US Eagles though. Should have been a higher score.
Apart from all this sports ‘activity’ – if you can count sitting on a couch as sports activity, we are also attending my stepmother’s birthday today! Dear old Lucy will be hitting the 98 year mark on Friday, but as we will not be here, we’re celebrating early. She only has two great-grandchildren, but we’ll all be there with her.
However, a good deal of my non sports activity, non-celebratory time has been taken up with dusting and polishing and vacuuming: cleaning the fridge shelves and chucking out old food.
I have tried to argue logically over the years that this is something of a waste of time – well, apart from the old food. While Fleming discovered penicillin from leaving old stuff lying around, I’m not sure an old pizza slice covered in mould would have the same scientific value, so I agree that anything of the sort should be eaten or dumped earlier rather than later.
But all the cleaning??? By the time we get back in a month’s time the house will be dusty again but before then, or even after then, if we’re shipwrecked in the Baltic, who’ll see it, who’ll be looking in the fridge? Well, burglars might if the house is broken into while we’re away, but otherwise it would be our heirs and executors and to be quite frank, I’m not too fussed as to whether any of these folk think we’re untidy wretches.
This logic has no effect on She Who Must Be Obeyed and so I get on with doing it as thoroughly and quickly as I can. That’s after we’ve worked on tidying up the garden, of course!!
I think it is all down to what I term the CUS – Clean Underwear Syndrome. Although my dear mother was not too concerned about my underwear being in good condition when I left the home, Rab’s Mom had different ideas and always questioned the state of repair and condition of these garments. "They must be clean!", was her mantra. Her logic was that if Rab was bowled over by a bus, it was important for the hospital staff to know that she was a clean and tidy girl from a good home. I personally wondered about the state of anyone’s underwear immediately before being hit by a bus – or indeed afterwards - but never challenged my mother-in-law on the subject.
Talking of clothes, a feature of all cruises longer than five or six nights is that there is a formal evening when everyone gets dressed in their best. We tend to give this a miss if we can – and it is getting easier. There seem to be fewer men on cruises who are prepared to get into a suit and tie, let alone a dinner jacket – and I am counted in that group, although I gather I might be taking a jacket and tie along this time.
There were two Balls on the Reina del Mar after we left Rio de Janeiro back in 1969 and I had lugged along a dinner jacket to go with Rab’s long frock. The first of the Balls was the night out of Santos on the way to Buenos Aires and we finished the evening with a party on deck drinking our cut price gin and rum. (I had a good laugh there – darned autocorrect almost got me. I as using my iPad with autocorrect and it changed that word “party” to “orgy”. We weren’t quite that liberal despite being putative hippies.)
Santos was the second port on the cruise - an overnight journey down the Brazilian coast from Rio de Janeiro. There wasn't much to see in Santos, although we bought some really top clothes there at a very reasonable price (my yellow and orange vertical strip trousers with my matching plaid belt was a sight to see), but the first thing that struck us was the smell. Back then much of the enormous amount of coffee exported from Brazil went through the port. It was said that coffee beans which had fallen into the water as they were being loaded was the cause of the foetid stench. We were not sure that was the only cause and wondered where the sewers emptied?
Apart from the smell, the literal high point of Santos was a small hill described as a "peak" - Mont Serrat - reached by a funicular. We had a good view of the place from up there which confirmed our first impressions - that it was not a very big and rather dull. From there we caught a bus down to the local beach, but it turned out to be a stinking mud flat with a thin covering of dirty sand lapped by filthy water. Not quite up to our expectations or the quality of Ipanema or Copacabana and after a couple of beers we headed back to the cool of the ship.
As I say, we tend not to haul ‘good clothes’ around the world when we travel, although we don’t quite get down to Mike C’s level. He’s one of my cypberpals and when he and Terri were in Melbourne last year and we agreed to meet for a meal he mentioned that it would have to be fairly casual as he only had shorts. I’ve had my DJ with me on two trips since that first one. Once was on a trip to Asia where we were invited to a Christmas Dinner in Hong Kong Club by a the chief executive of an associated company. It was only after we had accepted that we were told that the venue was the Hong Kong Club and that dress was formal – too late to back out then! So I hauled these outfits through Sri Lanka, Singapore and Thailand before finally getting to Hong Kong.
The only other time we got dolled up was for the Millennium Ball on our cruise in the China Sea from Hong Kong to Singapore at the end of 2000 – the True Millennium. We thought it a memorable moment in history but didn’t view it is as quite such a grand occasion as many of the other passengers. One of the joys of travel is the observation of our fellows and there was plenty to observe that night. Although I must say that the pick of the viewings was on a cruise from San Diego to Acapulco. The women in their long gowns and glittering jewels with a good deal of 'big hair' made quite a show, but the men also attracted a deal of attention. One group from Texas in their black satin Stetsons, frilled and pleated shirts, Wyatt Earp ties and patent leather boots took the prize for us.
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