Day 4 – Wednesday 1 May 2019
“You’re determined to wake me up, aren’t you?”, said a a cold disembodied voice.
So dawned the First of May in this bit of the Atlantic at 0550 ship’s time. Clocks were retarded yet again last night and we are now at GMT – 2, or three hours behind those of you in the UK. Or rather, the ship is on that time; our body clocks are still in Melbury. Having been told to “stop fiddling and make the tea” and ejected from bed, I swept back the curtains to reveal a lead-grey sea, a sky the colour of soggy blotting paper, and a salt-sprayed balcony. The wind howled, the woodwork creaked, and I was reminded of doing Workup, or Operational Sea Training to give it its proper name, in HMS CASSANDRA off Portland. I cannot imagine why that island on the Dorset coast features so often in my nightmares and memories. At 0620 ship’s time we were approaching the Grand Banks of Newfoundland at 44deg 58.1N, 30deg 46.2W. Wind Force 7 from SSW, 15C, sea Moderate, course 253, speed 22.5 knots. We crossed the Maxwell Fracture Zone yesterday, a huge undersea mountain range that is part of the Mid Atlantic Ridge stretching from Africa to Iceland, with mountain peaks that make up the Azores and Iceland itself. The depth of water shallows to a mere 1,000 metres on the ridge before plunging back to nearly two miles deep on the other side. No ‘hands to bathe’ here, then, and if we do go down then our son will never inherit my iPad.
The Dover Sole was declared excellent by the memsahib last night and we had a very good chat with our American neighbours at dinner. I asked the inevitable question, and the grimace in reply suggested that Donald Trump had not, perhaps, been their first choice in the US presidential elections. The topic of cruise lines came up and they, like several of our friends, favoured Celebrity or Regent Seven Seas above Cunard. It would be nice to try these alternatives (all crowd-funding contributions welcome) and we continue to participate in the National Lottery on an ad hoc basis; but, of course, the selection of an optimal cruise line is very much “horses for courses” and most companies are very particular about who they will allow on their ships, being quite fussy about allowing misanthropic grumpy old men onboard.
We watched an Irish comedian in the theatre after dinner last night and he was surprisingly good (we are not normally ones for stand-up comedians). Inspired, we followed this up with an improving harp recital in the Grills Lounge by a talented young Hungarian who explained the history of the harp as she went along. Not much sense of humour though, and some of the pieces were a bit heavy-going for me, though Jane liked them. It is important that one tries these things, lest one be regarded as a philistine.
We spent most of the forenoon today looking for a cosy spot to sit and read while the crew practised an emergency drill, eventually settling in the Grills Lounge. It is another example of the difference between this voyage and the Australian trip, alluded to earlier, that as no one is sunbathing then they must be inside. Our first chosen lecture of the day, about Jack the Ripper, exemplified this: we were hard-put to get a seat because the cinema was packed from the previous lecture. At least we managed to get a good seat for the afternoon play, Much Ado About Nothing, performed by RADA in the theatre. It was an avant-garde production involving just six players, set after WW2, and incorporating dancing to Glen Miller. Anything avant-garde rarely meets with my approval, but in this instance it wasn’t too bad: the minuscule cast did a good job fulfilling double roles and acted well, though the dance routines added nothing to the production and seemed totally superfluous.
The weather has been all over the place today. It started with wind Force 7 and a Moderate sea, passed through Light Airs and a Slight sea, and is currently (at tea time) back to Force 7 again, from the south, with white horses on a Moderate blue sea. We went for a bracing walk round the upper deck (three times round equals about 1 mile) and were blasted by wind and salt spray the whole way. However, the sun was shining and it was 15C, so it wasn’t all bad.
We have been invited to an ‘Exclusive Gala Cocktail Party for Gold, Platinum and Diamond Badge Holders’ tonight with the Captain. We shall certainly attend (anything for a free drink), but we are not fooled by the term ‘exclusive’. We have learned from previous experience that all those badge holders usually comprise a significant hunk of the passengers borne, and the line-up queue usually snakes along several corridors. Ho hum. We have more hopes for our free wine-tasting session (Platinum members) on Saturday and the private Senior Officers’ Party (Platinum Members) on Friday: I hope to ask the Chief Engineer about lubricating oil and that Viking cruise ship disaster off Norway.
Day 5 – Thursday 2 May
We slept well last night, though that did not stop us from waking at 0630. We did not retard our watches last night, but I understand the practice will continue tonight. Logic dictates that if you are to lose five hours in time zones in six days then the process will be about one hour a night. We had decided to have breakfast in our cabin this morning, just for a change, and maybe that is why subconsciously we woke when we did.
Throwing back the curtains revealed a cloudy sky with the occasional patch of blue, a grey sea flecked with catspaws, and a bit of a swell. Position at 0700 ship’s time was 42deg 37.5N, 41deg 58.8W, course 254, speed 21, wind Force 4. We are about 400 miles east of where TITANIC sank and Newfoundland is just starting to appear to the north west on the digital chart that shows our position (you didn’t really believe that I was working out our daily position with a sextant and chronometer did you?). We are about 600 miles south east of Cape Race. It was a bit of a rough night last night, with wind reaching Force 8 – Full Gale – white horses on the sea, and creaking woodwork. Jane in her high heels was hanging on to me like a drowning woman as we attended the cocktail party but, as I have reported before, the movement was not really too bad – perhaps three degrees. But, then, I don’t wear high heels (except on High Days and Jane’s birthday).
So to that ’exclusive’ cocktail party for Gold, Platinum and Diamond Club members. As predicted, when we arrived outside the Queen’s Ballroom on 2 Deck at D – 15 a substantial queue had already formed, each couple jealously guarding their position and glaring at interlopers appearing from tributary access routes and trying to muscle in. Matrons in bell tents and comfortable, but hideous, sandals mixed with willowy beauties in black cocktail dresses and stilettos; the flat vowels of Yorkshire merged with loud Texan drawls and guttural Deutsch. The men were largely uniform in appearance if you didn’t count the dirty black shoes that appeared to have been worn in the stokehold, and the inevitable badges. Jane and I had a game to see who would spot the first badge, and I won. Gold Badges, Platinum, RNLI Bronze Lifesaving, Blood Donor, Boy Scout Cookery….some men appeared to have them all…pinned in columns to the lapels of their dinner jackets. I don’t know who once said that all men never grow up, but it was probably a woman and she was right. I, of course, am the exception that proves the rule to this little homily, for I have now sold my Meccano set and have removed my Platinum Badge from my sweater.
Under starter’s orders…and they’re off. At 1945 the ballroom doors were flung open and there was an immediate Gadarene Swine movement as the hot sweaty column surged forward. Watch those Germans pushing in… a rogue wheelchair from the left… deflect that sly elbow from the big American woman…but then we were through and shaking the Captain’s hand. He was a very amiable man, slightly brown, about my height – seemed OK, but no time to chat. Where’s the champagne? I gazed around looking for someone to talk to…and was promptly astonished. Just about everyone was sitting down at tables, with hardly anyone on the dance floor doing the cocktail party thing. What is it with these people? How on earth can you mix with, and talk to, a wide range of people if you are sitting down? I have, of course, come across this phenomenon before in a wide range of social settings, so I shouldn’t have been astonished. I have never been able to explain it properly. I cannot say if it is just a British thing; I cannot say if it is an age thing confined to the over 50s, though that is possible; I cannot say if it is a social class thing; I cannot say if it is a size of venue thing, for I have seen it at parties in people’s living rooms. The only theory I can put forward is that a large number of folk lack self confidence in a social setting, so they just sit down with their existing friends. The concepts of circulating, curiosity and making polite conversation are foreign to them. Why come to the ship’s cocktail party? Well, the single glass of champagne is free and they can tell their friends that they met the Captain, I suppose. Of course, they might all just be old and tired and want to take the weight off their poor bunion-afflicted feet as – in this case – the ship corkscrews in the Atlantic swell.
We met a very nice Canadian chap, who was also a Count in Sicily, and who was returning from the world cruise undertaken in VICTORIA. He was branching into authorship and gave me his card for the future. Through him we met a pleasant American widow from Florida (twenty cruise scalps on her belt), also a VICTORIAN. North Americans are so friendly and easy to talk to – I’ll swear they would tell you their life story while standing at a bus stop. Unlike my fellow countrymen who, unlike the Good Samaritan, try to pass by on the other side and begrudge even offering you a ‘Good Morning’ before breakfast. I always embarrass them by booming out this greeting with a beaming smile as we pass, and some actually jump as they force out a reply. Jane always hisses at me for this, especially when I mutter sotto voce afterwards in true Basil Fawlty fashion,
“There. Didn’t hurt did it?”
“He might have had a bad night, Horatio”
“He only had to say good morning, dear. It’s not the Gettysburg Address”.
But I digress.
We did not get much further with our new acquaintances for there were then speeches by the Captain and others and, before we knew it, we had to scuttle off for a late dinner. The plan had been to move on to a show, but Jane’s feet gave out (all that standing and bracing in high heels, some sort of plantar whatsit ) and so we had to limp home to our cabin. Should have sat down at the cocktail party with those other old people.
And so to today, with the first serial being ‘Superpowers and Spies’ by the terrorist expert. We learned long ago that you have to get into a venue early if you want a seat for a popular lecture or show, so we were in the theatre by D – 30 after gulping down two hot chocolates in the lift on the way there (took 20 minutes to make them in the Commodore Lounge and cost us $10, Jane not happy). The early arrival gives ample opportunity, not only to bag the best seats, but also to people-watch and grumble: my favourite pastime after boating. We had the usual contenders: the Frozen Statue (in the main entrance this time), the Tubby Trundler on the stairs (rate of descent 5”/minute), the Fidget (three seat moves in 20 seconds). One bloke decided to get from one side of the theatre to the other by crossing the stage, watched by an incredulous audience (a new one on me), and this invoked a booming announcement asking people not to cross the stage unless invited (translation, “We’re talking to you, bozo”), which brought him up with a round turn and put a stopper on any of that rogue behaviour. Think he was an American – no wimpy retiring Brit would have had the neck to do it.
We had heard much of the talk by the lecturer before (I refer the Honourable Reader to the Australian Blog I wrote two years earlier), but it had been updated to include the Skipol attempted murder and its aftermath, so it was still very well done and informative.
By golly, I had forgotten just how long this ship is. Our cabin is fairly far forward on the starboard side, perhaps three quarters of the way along the superstructure on 10 Deck. We are between Staircase/lift shaft ‘A’ (under the bridge) and Staircase/lift shaft ‘B’. To get to our restaurant in the Princess Grill on 7 Deck we have to walk aft along our corridor all the way to Staircase/lift shaft ‘D’ (below the after funnels) (230 paces), performing a continuous sine wave on the carpet in the process as we bounce off the bulkheads, then down three decks (54 steps). I know all this because I have just counted them. The corridor goes on forever. And that is just the bit in the superstructure: there is obviously more of the ship stuck out for’ard and aft. As Jane says, we don’t need to go on a treadmill or do circuits of the Promenade Deck: we burn calories just trying to get from A to B.
The plan had been to skip lunches or, at best, to have something light – perhaps nibble on a water biscuit or take a little clear soup – this to inhibit my expanding waistline and to keep Jane at her enviable Size 8. This has not worked, as skipping lunch has usually meant us tucking into sandwiches, muffins or afternoon tea as fill-ins. So we have returned to lunch in the Grill, but only having one course. Today Jane had bread rolls and cock-a-leekie soup (which she later defined as consommé with bits of chicken tossed in and the leeks tossed out) and I had braised oxtails on chive mash, which was superb. I gazed out at a fairly angry-looking sea: deep troughs, white horses, sunlit areas of gunmetal blue sea interspaced with vicious squalls. Through the stern windows of the restaurant I could see the Grill Terrace taffrail rising and falling as we pitched, juddering, into the Atlantic swell. We really have had quite a range of weather so far, and I don’t see Kate and Leonardo standing on the prow in this lot. We are currently back to Force 7 (Near Gale) from the NW, though the sea temperature has risen to 17C and the air temperature dropped to 9C. Maybe it is those icebergs (this is the worst time of the year for them and we are on a southerly track to avoid them accordingly). Sea state is recorded as ‘Moderate’ though I reckon it is close to ‘Rough’. We spent most of the afternoon in our cabin, Jane to count the rivets in the deckhead as I to write this. She lost count very early on – never knew anyone who could clock up the zeds like my wife.
Is this the real thing? Is it just fantasy? We are off to see Bohemian Rhapsody this early evening before dinner. Jane has seen it before, but wants to see it again; I was not allowed to accompany her the first time for reasons not stated, but would now like to see it to prove that I am cool and not square.
Do you know, I think I will send this off now as another instalment in the happy saga of Janet and John Go to America. I feel like being daring, and it should hit those of you in the UK just before 1900 as you are sitting down to your pre-dinner glass of sherry or gin and tonic.
More later, after we have been caught in the landslide (see, I even know the words).
"A Very Vintage Chap..." 