Monday, April 5th

Another scorcher of a day was on the cards as we took our mile long walk before breakfast this morning. After a leisurely feast of orange juice, poached eggs, mushrooms, bacon, beans and toast (washed down with a cup of earl grey tea), we went to the destinations lecture in the ballroom. Given by Dr Peter Crimes, it was interesting to learn about the actual proximity of the pyramids to the city of Cairo - I'd always had an image in my mind of the pyramids being in the middle of the desert and nothing but sand all around. We would soon find out differently, but at least now we were prepared!

Had a bite to eat in the Lido cafe at lunch-time, then sat on the deck for a while, reading and enjoying the sunshine with a temperature of 30 degrees and a lovely cooling breeze. Yesterday, as we'd walked through the Preview bar at some point in the afternoon,  there were a group of passengers in there singing. It dawned on me, after reading through the "Today" bulletin, that this was the Saga Ruby passenger choir. Missing my weekly rehearsals with Hull Musical Society back home, I decided to take the plunge this afternoon and joined in half way through the rehearsal. I sat next to a woman called Gillian who let me share her music for the rehearsal. I got chatting to the musical director afterwards who at first assumed I was a member of the crew on board. Her name was Jacky March and she'd joined the cruise at Mumbai like us - but most of the other choir members had been singing together since January when the cruise began. They'd already done 3 or 4 concerts (with a different musical director) and there was a plan to perform one more towards the end of the tour. I was really pleased to be able to take part in this, since I was already missing a couple of concerts with my local society in Hull. Everyone was really welcoming and I thoroughly enjoyed my first rehearsal with them.

After the rehearsal I joined Keith back in the cabin and read another book until dinner time. Keith was trying to learn some of his lines for the play we will be doing in June. I helped him a bit by testing him on the ones he'd learned already. At the dinner table tonight, as we all told each other what we'd been doing during the day, I found out that Geoff is also a singer in the Dalston Male Voice Choir in Cumbria. They perform quite regularly and have even made a couple of CDs. I tried to persuade him to come along to the passenger choir, but he doesn't want to! One of the pieces we are singing in the choir is "Joshua Fit de Battle of Jericho" which I had been rehearsing at home, but a slightly different version. I have been allocated a couple of second soprano notes in that piece, along with one of the other altos, a woman named Joy. We are planning to sing approximately 10 pieces in total at our concert - today I only sang 3 of them, so I'm looking forward to getting the rest of the music tomorrow in my own folder!