Bay of Islands to Rarotonga

Well, things have settled in to the routine of many, many days at sea. Wake up around ten, yawn, get up trying not to wake roommate, go down to the crew mess and make coffee (which I’m running out of), go online and deal with any emails, do some arranging before the midday rehearsal, arrange again in the afternoon, do whatever gigs we have in the evening, work out between them, and chat with the lads in the evening. My days are very uneventful at sea.
Although today *was* slightly interesting in that we crossed the international date line. This means that for us, there were two December fives (I’m writing on the latter). Caught some of us off-guard as some of us had duties on the sixth. Lots of jocular comments about Groundhog Day and so forth.

But for me, the big news is that yesterday, I finished Regent’s Christmas show. Ten Christmas songs. Slightly depressing actually. I’m never at my best on Christmas... like a bear with a sore head to use the vernacular. I miss the family too much. But this will hopefully be my last at sea.
But, at least, I’m free to start on some other stuff. I owe some work to Meera Thompson and am halfway through a show for Hal Fraser (the first of two actually). Getting time to work on my own stuff is the problem actually. Work on Standard Shift and work on the Scoreworks website has stalled while I get the arranging work out of the way. Is it always like this?

Back at home, the Rudd government is forming, which I’m quite pleased about. Over the past eleven years, Howard has consistently made Australia a cautious, small country, not at all like the racy one of the Keating years. The early nineties were an exhilarating time for Australian politics. We were forward-looking, had a concept of the big picture, and well on our way to becoming a republic. I’m hoping Rudd can make it exciting again.