Day Twelve: St Lucia

I couldn't remember where we were meant to be today (the days, by now, merging into one big sunny blur that I never wanted to end), but luckily the good people of this island had the foresight to give cruise passengers a little hint:







....and it was


Again, we were doing the 'Best of..' tour, so we assembled as per normal on the dock, fought our way past tradespeople selling their wares, and clambered onto the bus for our excursion round the island.


First up on the journey was another Caribelle Batik place, where we got another few items of clothing that can only be worn in the summer, fact! Then, after another hour or so, we headed up to Morne Fortune, or 'Hill of Good Luck', which looks down onto Marigot Bay, where we were heading to next.


By the time we arrived, we were grateful for our rum punch, as we hadn't had one for hours and hours, while we watched a steel band play for us all, which was great. After we'd had our drink, we walked down for a bit of an explore, as we had heard the soothing sounds of the legendary Mr Marley, and were greeted by this photo opportunity at the fantastic bar at the end!







..which you have to admit, should be entered for a photography prize, so well done to my aunt!


From there, we started to head back, and our last stop was one of the best times ever! St Lucia, like most of the Caribbean islands, have alot of rum distilleries, and one of the largest, and best, was right here at the St Lucia Rum Distillery (not a catchy name, or website, but hey, its the caribbean, mon, just tak' it eeeeasy!). Anyway, after a short, and relatively informative video presentation (that carefully negotiated its way around the 'British are bad' historical parts), we were shown around the distillery, which was very interesting as it showed us just why rum is the greatest alcohol in the world. Rum is made using Molasses, which is 50% sugar, and as such, when they start the distillation process, in order to get the flavour of the drink, they remove certain ingredients from the pulp, one of which is the one ingredient that causes hangovers, therefore Rum is the perfect drink as you can get plastered with it and not feel a thing the morning after!


This was proven time and time again by my good self, not least when we went into the next room for a tasting of their produce, to be greeted with 36 bottles of rum, with a 'help yourself' order from the proprietor! Well my record was 9 glasses of the good stuff, each one a different bottle, be it liqueur, straight rum, cream rum, you name it, most of us drank it! That left us happy enough to go back to the boat, have something to eat and collapse on the deck with a good book while we watched the sun go down.


Now, the entertainment on board ship is, as I have explained before, pretty first class, and tonight was no different, in fact as slightly better! Fresh from that BBC1 show 'The One and Only', it was Tony Lewis as Robbie Williams. He was superb, he carried him off perfectly and even had the same brand of humour as him, even down to the Take That jokes and innappropriate fondling of female audience members!


After that, I had a wander down to see the other comedian, Bill Woodland, who might have suffered a bit from the previous comedian being so damn funny, because he was good, but nowhere near as good as the big, burly aussie guy who was on the night before.


All that paled into insignificance after hours, because I was about to be........a RECORD BREAKER!


There were a few 'house' singers that played at various times during the evening, between the bigger performances on the main stages, or while they were going on, just so everyone had a pretty good choice of where to go in the evening, and one of them was a chap called Dan James, who thought alot of himself but was generally pretty good, apart from over-cheesing some songs. Anyway at about 11.15 he started his little set of songs in the Village Square, which spanned 3 decks. I wandered past there on my way back to my room at about half past and there were quite a few people just sitting around, drinking coffee, while all the staff closed up the bars and coffee shops and he was just singing away, taking requests. Now, the usual thing that happens is that the artist judges when to get off, because, as you would expect, people get a bit tired and go to bed after hearing a few songs, but tonight was different.


Its got to about midnight, his usual time for heading off stage, and there were still quite a few people there, sitting around with their drinks, talking and generally singing along to the songs, so Dan started to do his 'ok, last couple of songs now, guys', meaning 'ok you can go to bed now guys!', but no one was having any of it, and the place was filling up a bit more, so he played on, giving us a few party numbers just to tire us out, like you do with kiddies if you want a peaceful night in! But we were having none of is, we carried on dancing and singing along, so at 12.45, the place was buzzing, the bars had reopened and were doing a roaring trade and even the staff, on their way back to their cabins were there, enjoying the show.


He did his whole repertoire, songs from luther vandross and dusty springfield to the killers and coldplay, and even broke the law (apparrently), by singing a couple of elvis songs, which were great!


So by this time he'd already said thanks for staying round, but now he was starting to say 'this is one of the longest sets I've ever done', which made the, now tipsy, crowd want to stay for longer, so we did......






....1am came and went......








....1.30 came and went..... which meant that it was officially the longest set anyone has ever done on an Ocean Village liner........



.......and as both boats go worldwide, ITS A NEW WORLD RECORD, BABY!!


This was greeted by cheers by the assembled masses, which now included 4 members of the bridge, including the captain at one point, then boo's as we were told by Dan that he was knackered and had to be up early so did his last song (it just had to be New York, New York!).


All in all a blummin good night, although I was shattered by the next morning!


Ooooh, isn't he the fella from?


There are many advantages to working in the city centre, theres the endless supply of places to get drunk at lunchtime, endless sandwich places to choose from, not to mention people-watching in the mailbox, but one of the best things, and something that has been highlighted on these pages on more than one occasion, is the fact that you see so many A-ZZ list celebrities wherever you go. Now, most of the time, I don't really know who they are, because they were dead body number 3 on Midsomer Murders 4 years ago, or were once part of a dreadful boy band before the drugs kicked in, and so I couldn't tell you the name as google hasn't developed technology that scans your memorised images and performs a search from that (they are SOOOO behind the times!), but as this one really annoyed me, I shall pass the annoyance onto you, my loyal readers!

Coming out of work on Monday I saw a chap who was either in the X-Failure, Soapstar Superstar, the Joseph thing or even possibly Fame Academy! I've looked at all the finalists from all the series of the above and can't for the life of me work out where he is from. I am fairly sure he isn't one of the X-fatulence people, because its a dreadful show that I refuse to watch on the grounds that its ITV and therefore its tat, and on the basis that if he had been implanted into my brain from a newspaper article at the time, he would be in the final however-many on the live bit, so thats out of the window, as I've trawled through the forgettables on their website.

So, that leaves me with the Joseph thing, Soapstar Superstar and Fame Academy, now same thing applies with these two, in that I know who the live studio people are (and I'm fairly sure I've seen him sing on TV), which means that he was one of the people who didn't make it onto the live studio bit, which then makes it dawn on you that there were about 5,000 applicants for the Joseph thing and about the same amount on all the Fame Academy things, most of whom had a TV camera shoved in their face at one time, and probably all of whom I saw..............I am therefore stumped!

So, if you know of a half-cast guy with a strong jawline, permanent stubble and a really good voice who may or may not have been on the Joseph thing, Soapstar Superstar or Fame Academy, then please let me know in my shoutbox!