Marie's Story.

Marie Muggleton’s Story

We started our trip at 3am when we got up. I had not slept very well that night. We had packed up the night before so all we had to do was have coffee before we started. Our friend picked us up at 3.45am and we made our way over to Christchurch Abbeydale. We arrived at 4am and just sat in the car, talking. Then taxi’s started to turn up and we all got together. The bus turned up a bit lit. On the way, we called in at Membury Services.

We arrived at Heathrow before 7am. I felt so rushed there, where there many people. The group helped me through as I went through the checks. We had breakfast at Heathrow and John took a picture of the aircraft there. The airport staff asked me where I wished to sit and I said by the window. I enjoyed my first ever air flight. We departed from Heathrow at 10.20am and arrived at Helsinki at 3.20pm (Helsinki time – 2 hours in front of BST). We had to wait for our connecting flight so we all put our bags in a pile and stayed together. I was cold. Helsinki was flat and very impersonal although it was clean and tidy. We stayed in Helsinki airport until 8pm, when we boarded the plane to Mumbai. John and I were right at the back of the plane. I was still cold although the staff did provide a blanket and pillow. This was an 8-hour trip. All I wanted to do was sleep and I believe we dozed until about 3am when the staff came round with hot towels, which woke us up. We had curry for breakfast and arrived at Mumbai at 6.10am.

Friday 3rd – Transferred from Mumbai International to Internal airport by coach at 9.40am. Our internal flight from Mumbai arrived in Chennai at 11.25am, a flight time of 1hour 45 minutes. At this airport, there were people to meet us – they gave us quite a welcome. We made our way to the coaches, which took us to a beach resort at Mahabalapuram. We all went to rest after lunch and then dinner was served later. The hotel was beautiful and we all had a good night’s sleep.

Saturday 4th – After breakfast we went sightseeing around Mahabalapuram. We went to a place where there are stone carvings to a great King in India. It was very hot outside the coach and there were stalls that sold coconuts and vegetables. We were told not to buy from the beggars and vendors there. Even when you said no, these people would not let you go. I made my way back to the coach where it was cool and I felt safe. After lunch at one of the temple sites, we went to the Marina Tower Hotel in Chennai. In the evening (5pm) we went to the rehearsal at St Georges School. We sat on the stage and were plagued with flies. We seemed to be waiting ages before the rehearsal began. Our seats were on the back row. All the other choirs rehearsed before we got the chance. We were able to practise some of our songs before we left at 9.30pm to return to our hotel and bed.

Sunday 5th – had breakfast about 7 am and left for church around 7.30am. At approximately 8.30am, we sang 2 songs at a church service attended by 5000 Tamil people. The church staff gave us refreshments in the Church Office – this office is home to 70 pastors. We then went to another service, an English one. It was so free and it was just wonderful to just sing and not worry about your voice. We had lunch and afternoon tea at the hotel and left the hotel to go to the concert at 4.45pm. We assembled at the Venue at 5pm. The One World One Voice programme started about 6pm. The expected audience was 6,000 and in fact there were well over that number and it was quite wonderful. We sang at the end of the programme. They made a great fuss of us. We all had dinner in a separate area to the audience. We were all tired.

Monday 6th – we went shopping to a silk shop. We wanted to get to a big market but could not get the coach near so we went to the Silk shop. The shop was on 3 floors and it was beautiful. I was so confused by the different colours and so many things, scarves, dresses and tops. There was so much and so many people talking at the same time. We did a practice at St Andrews. There seemed to be a problem with the sound system but it did go right on the night. There was a wall surrounding the grounds in which we sang and people looked over the wall and stayed and listened to us singing. We were fed again before we went back to the hotel.

Tuesday 7th – We were woken at 6am, as we were to leave for Bangalore by coach to the train station. The train left at 7.15am and arrived at Bangalore at 1.15pm.

Wednesday 8th – Free day. We went to St Marks Cathedral for a small service for the choir followed by a rehearsal of Jailbreak. As we rehearsed, people came in and listened. Then we broke up and some went back to the hotel and some went shopping, trying to get a CD player. We met again later in the day for the main performance of Jailbreak. The cathedral was full and people were stood outside listening.

Thursday 9th – in the morning we went to Bishop Cotton School for girls to sing to them. They sang to us first and then we sang to them. The girls were so well behaved and they did enjoy us singing. We were given lunch and then we went shopping in Bangalore. I thought we would be going in a group but the group broke up so we went on our own. I bought a top costing about £5 but did not have a lot of money. We walked so far but John was hot and worried about the sun. We met Frank who told us about a wall we could sit on where we sheltered under the trees until the coach came. We returned to the girls school, where we were given tea before we made our way to the airport to get our 8pm flight to Mumbai. We arrived at Mumbai only to find the departure lounge was closed so we had to wait in a waiting area until about 5am. We left Mumbai at 8.15am and arrived in Helsinki at 1.45pm. We then left Helsinki at 4pm and arrived in Heathrow at 5.10pm. We finally arrived back in Gloucester at approximately 9pm.