Day 12 – Thursday 9 May

I woke at the more conventional time of 0650 and threw back the curtains to reveal a calm blue sea, sunshine, and white fluffy clouds.  You wouldn’t think we were on the same ocean as two days ago.  Our position at 0715 was 45deg 51N, 36deg 36W or very roughly 700 miles E by S of Newfoundland.  Sea state is moderate, wind Force 6 from NW.  12C. We altered course yesterday onto our Great Circle course of 068 that will take us to Bishop Rock off Lands End. Speed is 24 knots to make up for lost time in the storm, and our revised ETA in Southampton is now 0700 on Sunday.  I trust you will all be there on the jetty to welcome the old sea dogs returning from the New World.  We bring Tobacco and Potatoes and Pocahontas; you will love them.

That reminds me of the story of a chap I relieved a few years ago who, in HMS TRACKER, met a very nice shady lady from Uruguay with whom he shared many cultural interests and learned discussions during a port visit to Montevideo.  Taking the view, like many sailors, that the first turn of the screw cancels all debts and romances, he waved her a tearful goodbye as the ship sailed – only to find her waiting for him on the jetty in Portsmouth, weeks later when the ship arrived back in UK, standing about fifteen feet away from his wife who was doing the same thing.  I cannot recall how he got out of that one, but there is a moral to the tale.

Well the Neil Armstrong film last night, taken after an early dinner (roast rib of beef – excellent, thank you) was so slow that we ejected at about the Gemini stage.  This left us, earlier in the evening than planned, at a loose end.  We drifted through the shops and boutiques, Jane bought a bangle and I was refused a Dinky Toy model of the QM2 cast in metal. Eventually, by an aimless route, we found ourselves in the Grills Lounge, which was totally deserted owing to most people being at the cocktail party or dinner.  How about a post prandial cocktail?  So I had a ‘Midnight in the Atlantic’ (Jack Daniels, coffee liqueur, creme de cacao, creme de menthe, double cream.), which was delicious and a big improvement on the weird drink served in the elephant a few days ago.  Jane had a Margarita and declared it equally good, though quite potent.  Sadly, it was a bit too cold in the lounge for Jane in her evening dress (navy tulle with beading, over a cream underlay that makes it look as if she has no clothes on underneath, as you ask).   So we could not stay for a second drink and, perforce, retired to our cabin to warm up.  A quiet night then, but we took great pleasure in just reading our books and falling asleep after a tiring day.

Readers of my blog covering the Great Australia Adventure may recall the continual theme of The Cardigan, worn by Jane even on the equator to counteract the cold air conditioning.  The ship is warmer this time, particularly in the restaurant where a little off-the-shoulder number is more the de rigueur for Jane in the evening.  The arctic temperature in the lounge last night was unusual.

Wow.  Today is more like it: blue sea, calm, bearable wind on the port quarter, warm:  real ‘Signing On’ weather.  I stood on the balcony, leaning on the salt encrusted rail, and took it all in.  This was how it used to be, and how we remembered it.  We may be able to sit out on the balcony later today and take a little sun.  Jane even proposes a walk around the upper deck this afternoon after we have listened to Purple Haze in the Pavilion bar on 12 Deck, while sipping a lunchtime snifter.  Purple Haze is one of the ship’s pop groups – or is that ‘bands’ –  that Jane has discovered, and I am to listen to them as part of her programme for me of CPD (Continuous Pop Development).

As part of that programme, we attended Lecture 2 of Roger McGuinn of The Byrd’s this morning.  Waiting for the performance to begin, I was delighted to identify yet another stereotype from the old days, Semaphore Sally (“Yoo Hoo!  Doreen! Over here! Oh Fred, she hasn’t seen us!  Yoo Hoo!”).  Plus ça change.   

Hey! Roger McGuinn was great!  I have undergone an epiphany.  This was music of the 60s.  Flower power.  Dylan. Free love…. 

“…McGuinn and MacGuire, just agettin’ higher, in LA, you know where that’s at.  And no one’s gettin’ fat, ‘cept Mamma Cass”.  

That McGuinn.  That Byrds.  Wow.  The music was wonderful.  He described the development of the group and how many of the songs were Bob Dylan’s, rearranged by McGuinn.  I was really taken with the whole thing, and boogied round the deck when it was all over.  Total transportation in time.  Cool baby.

We had only visited the Pavilion Pool, up on 12 Deck, fleetingly last trip. It is a glass-walled and glass-ceilinged area with a small swimming pool and two jacuzzis, sun loungers, and a bar. The ceiling retracts in hot weather. It is mainly frequented by the Really Old People who are trying to get warm or to get a last suntan before they die, so not quite my kind of place – yet. Anyway, we perched on bar stools and quaffed a Pimm’s and a G+T while listening to Purple Haze and people-watched. Honestly, the things people will wear (or not wear) on holiday: one matron, who should have known better, with a tattoo on her breast; another largish lady who put me off chicken drumsticks for life; a jacuzzi filled with bathing belles from an English saucy postcard. It is not recorded what their views were of that grey little balding man, wiggling his bottom on the bar stool to the beat of the band – quite right too, we don’t want to encourage any of that sort of waspish behaviour.

By the way, vis à vis ladies with a fuller figure, recent medical research has – in fact – proved that women with a comfortable build live longer.  Longer, that is, than the men who remark on their figure.

The band was good – mainly jazz, which isn’t my forte – but with a good beat.  See how I am getting into the groove now.  We led the feeble applause.  Jane said that there must be nothing worse than to play and receive no applause.  I said that that’s what the orchestra on the TITANIC probably said too, then…

Another hour on the clocks at noon – now at GMT -1.

A small lunch, then to Sir Samuel’s (the chocolate and ice cream bar) where Jane wanted a chocolate sundae.  It was so big that we had to share it.  Suitably replete, we waddled to the Library then on to the Commodore Club, under the bridge, to have a quiet read.  This decision was flawed because a loud raucous crowd was receiving practical lessons in cocktails at the bar.  I was grumbling about the racket, but Jane pointed out that it was, after all, a bar not a library.  I was suitably chastened, but we moved on nevertheless – this time to the external Grills Terrace down aft.  There, believe it or not, we lay on sun loungers soaking up the rays.  I left Jane there while I went for my afternoon lecture on US foreign policy, feeling suitably smug and erudite.

Day 13 – Friday 10 May

Blue sky, a calm sea, occasional light cloud.  Ironic that the weather should improve just as we are nearly home.  Position at 0820 ship’s time was 48deg 30N, 23deg 50W or very roughly 500 miles WSW of Ireland. Course 078, speed 23 knots.  Wind Force 3 from NW, sea Slight.  The writing is on the wall.

All the public areas of the ship, lobbies, passageways and stairways, are decorated – if that is the right word – with murals, photographs and information about Cunard’s history. These are a rich source of information and are as interesting and entertaining as the lectures, shows and passengers. I came across one today that put today’s US Immigration into context. Masters of ships arriving in the USA at the beginning of the 20th century had to certify that their passengers were not idiots, insane, paupers, suffering from a loathsome or contagious disease, convicted of a felony or other offence involving moral turpitude, prostitutes, polygamists or anarchists. Passengers rejected by US Immigration incurred a fine on the shipping line, so there was an incentive to filter out potential rejects before leaving Europe. Those seeking passage with Cunard were quarantined for several days before boarding, examined by a doctor, given an antiseptic bath, vaccinated, and their clothes and luggage were fumigated by steam (ruining some items in the process). First and Second class passengers were checked out by quarantine officers as the ship approached the Hudson and, if passed, allowed simply to disembark at the pier; only Third class passengers had to undergo the three to five hour ordeal of examination on Ellis Island – the ‘Island of Tears’ – before acceptance or rejection. Typically, 98% of immigrants were accepted. Of the unfortunate 2%, some were directed to Ellis Island’s detention hospital or were deported on the next ship retuning to Europe. No one could say those earlier US presidents were soft on immigration.

The food has been very good this trip; better than on the World Voyage where the menu often promised much, but sometimes did not quite deliver.  The steaks, in particular, have been superb.  We have also found the entertainment to be better.  Readers of my last QM2 blogs may recall my references to the Bad Band and the Dodgy Dancers.  That has not been the case this time, and the band and groups have been good – not that we have attended all the shows, but we have listened in to some performances.

We loafed today: no lectures, no events except the Senior Officers’ Cocktail Party of which more later.  We just sat in the sunshine on our balcony or on the Grills Terrace and read.  I tell a lie, Jane did a bit of dhobying in the laundrette as she refuses to send anything to the laundry except shirts and trousers.  This is traditionally my role in the Shacklepin household, but I take the view that we are on holiday and I did budget for using the ship’s laundry.  Still, Jane won’t have it and insists on doing our smalls in the laundrette, which is free (including detergent).  Of course, there is quite a high demand for the laundrettes, despite there being almost one on every passenger deck, so you have to time your arrival carefully – something that Jane has become quite adept at.  I think she has a bit of a gossip in there at the same time as she comes back with all manner of useful information as well as someone else’s sock.  We did find an enormous nightdress in our load the other day and we have no idea how it got in there.  It was as big as a frigate’s mainsail (I may exaggerate slightly here) and bright blue.

As I may have mentioned before, there is no shortage of bars or quiet sitting areas where one can go onboard.  I am currently sitting in the Commodore Club, which faces forward and is just under the bridge.  There is also the Chart Room (nice decor), the Golden Lion Pub (NQOCD), the Champagne Bar (usually empty), Sir Samuel’s (chocolate, ice cream and fat people), Pavilion Pool (old people), Carinthia [sic] Lounge (where the ragged people go), Queen’s Ballroom (huge and often empty), G32 Night Club (night owls) and the small exclusive Grills Lounge (Princess and Queen’s Grill passengers only – not that anyone checks).  Large parts of the upper deck and terraces are also served by waiters as you lounge on the wooden steamer chairs, as found on the TITANIC.  For just sitting, there is the Library, the passages either side of the Royal Court Theatre and Illuminations Cinema, and the two-deck atrium.  There always seems to be something going on somewhere in addition to the formal lectures and cinema: vegetable carving, dance lessons, bridge lessons, LGBTQ, needlework and knitting, solo travellers, trivia quiz, table tennis, Alcoholics Anonymous, Freemasons, Veterans, police officers, pub quiz….You can never claim to be bored or short of friends.  We were going to go to the party for the friends of Dorothy until we found out what it meant.

We did the Senior Officers’ Cocktail Party, Round Two just before lunch  – yes, same as last week.  The sitting-down thing cannot be unique to the British as we encountered the same phenomenon this time despite a strong US presence among the passengers; and as the latter tend to be quite outgoing, we can eliminate the lack of self confidence.  So we are left with old people who don’t like standing…I still find it odd.  We, again,  had a nice chat to one of the junior admin officers, but left – this time – before couples started dancing around us.  Still no Engineer Officers or, indeed, any Deck Officers, which was a shame as I wanted to talk to one about diesel engines and to the other about using bulldog clips rather than splices in wire rope.  Hey ho.

And another hour on the clock- now at GMT.  We are getting closer.

Well we have done a quick audit and we still have about $230 of our allowance to spend in the next 24 hours, or lose it.  We have started with a bottle of Cunard gin and Jane is eying up some perfume, but we are still short on ideas.  Model ships, and wrist watches the size of a submarine depth gauge have been excluded from the potential list by my mistress (peace be upon her), so maybe we should look at clothes…or more gin.  I would ask for your ideas or, indeed, your requests but by the time you read this it will be too late.  [post blog note – we bought a waterproof jacket for Jane and a belt for me, overspending very slightly]

The last Black Tie event tonight, theme ‘Roaring 20s’, and we spent some of our excess cash on yet more cocktails, a Bellini and a Honeysuckle Daiquiri.  ‘Surf and turf‘ for dinner as the sun set on the Atlantic, then we felt we should go along and do a little dancing.  No, we didn’t do the Charleston.  We did do the odd jig, though the competition was strong, if not a little scary.  Watching was more fun, as many people had dressed up for the evening.  I was particularly impressed by King Farouk, 5’ 4”, complete with fez, dancing with the tall young blonde who was wearing a pair of orange pyjamas.   The family with a toddler appeared at 2150 – I told you they followed me around – and we trotted off shortly after.  All those cocktails, you understand.

Day 14 – Last Day – Saturday 11 May

Our penultimate day dawned with a blue sky, slight cloud, and a calm sea.  My body clock has still not adjusted properly and I overslept after initially waking at 0200.  Jane made the tea, a real treat.

Position at 0700 ship’s time was 49deg 35N, 11deg 11W, or approximately 200 miles due west of Lands End.  We are in what I would call the Western Approaches, but the modern world now seems to call the Celtic Sea.  Nearly there.  Course 088, speed 23 knots.  Wind Force 3 from NE, sea slight, 13C.  We have just crossed the Porcupine Abyssal Plain, the beginning of the continental shelf, so named after HMS PORCUPINE, the ship that charted it.

It is Packing Day, a day neither we nor any other person returning from holiday relishes.  Where did all this stuff come from?  I think Jane’s New York fridge magnet will be the thing that breaks the camel’s back.  Or possible mine.   Anyway, we have had the instructions for disembarking.  We will be alongside at 0700 and have to vacate our cabin by 0830.  We are delighted to learn that, as Platinum Badge holders, we get to sit and wait in the Verandah Restaurant, a venue so exclusive that we have never been there before – you have to pay $39 each extra for meals there (so why would you?). As Princess Grill passengers we disembark early, at 0850, so we hope to be on the road by 0945 or so.  Luggage collection is, in my view, the achilles heel of cruise travel for, unlike the airline practice, there is no rotating carousel from which to grab your luggage; instead there is just an enormous aircraft hangar with the bags lined up in heaps according to cabin deck.  It is all a bit of a free-for-all like a Harrods sale.  Last time we were lucky and found our bags straight away, let us hope our luck holds.

We attended a final ‘lecture’ in the form of a Q&A session with Roger McGuinn of The Byrds  the last fading attempt by Jane to make me musically aware. He came across as a really nice bloke – it was coming up to his 40th wedding anniversary and his wife was onboard with him.  Quite a feat for a celebrity.  Some of the questions at the Q &A were either fawning or technical, but most brought out his character well.  He is still active in the musical world and is currently trying to revive interest n traditional music, contributing to a free download site co-sponsored by the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.  I know of at least two readers who may be aware of it.

A repeat of that privileged wine tasting this afternoon (Platinum and above only, no riff raff though the doorman didn’t seem to be aware of that last requirement).  The wines this time were Argentinian, which may be of interest to some of my readership.  We had two whites and two reds of which the best were a Pinot Gris – Santa Florentina [I think] for the white, and a delicious Malbec, Keiken [I think] – it means ‘Wild Goose’.  Must see if the Wine Society has any in stock.

The ship is sailing onward to Zeebrugge for Bruges after Southampton, then St Peter Port in Guernsey before returning to Southampton and hence to New York again.  We wish we had noticed that in the itinerary, as we would have stayed on for the short trip, though I suppose you can’t postpone the inevitable.  Home beckons, and Jane is already talking about visiting Lidl and is detailing me off to cut the lawn.  Ah, back to normal.

Beautiful afternoon, with sunny weather and a calm sea as we steamed past Lands End.  Typical on the last day, but that’s the Atlantic for you.  Cocktails with our new, fleeting, friends from America this evening, then a last dinner.  It has been great despite the overall weather.

So, summary of our trip to the New World?  Different from the Australian trip, most notably because of the weather – no slamming of balcony doors, no sunbathing, no horrible sights on the sun loungers, no romantic walks along the boat deck, and every lecture packed.  But the passengers have not changed: late for shows and inconsiderately climbing over those who managed to make it on time; indecisive; sartorially challenged; the halt; the lame; the eccentric; the rich; the poor; the sweet; the sour.  In other words, the human race compressed into a tin bath on the ocean.  They remain both fascinating and frustrating; I could have given some of them a Jonah’s Lift at times, but we have also met some absolutely lovely people too,  including old acquaintances from the crew.  Paradoxically, I shall miss The Fidget, The Sentry, The Frozen Statue, Fanning Fiona, Semaphore Sally and Rodney Rucksack – who or what else can I moan about?  We still love the ship, the layout, the programme, the food and the crew.  New York was fascinating despite the rain but, as we always knew, we would really need about five days to appreciate it properly.  I understand that hotels, food and drink are about 1.5 x London prices (food courts excluded) so an extended visit could be challenging.  At present the plan is to win the lottery, travel over by QM2, take in New York and visit friends in America, then travel back by QM2 four weeks later.  No difficulty there then – Jane is saving her £2 coins already.

Another cruise?  Never say never again; we’ll let you know.  See you soon.

Day 9 – Monday 7 May

Another grey day.  Position at 0700 ship’s time was 40deg 27.4N, 68deg 36W – roughly 100 Nm south east of Cape Cod.  Rain. Wind Force 8 from NE, Full Gale. Course 084, speed 21 knots.  Sea state ‘Moderate/Rough’.  There was a bit of a chop on, and it was getting worse.  As the day progressed, the weather escalated to Storm Force 10, with a nasty dark grey sea, white horses, and deep troughs of 4 – 5 metres    This was more like the Atlantic that I had encountered before.  The upper deck was closed off and spray from the pounding bow was lashing our balcony even at 10 Deck level.  The ship was still coping very well, though there was some slamming and juddering as we punched through the waves.  We were feeling fine, but already the motion was getting a bit wearing.  Sick bags were placed tactfully in lobbies, and the older people were shuffling slowly along, hanging on to the grab rails in corridors for support.

This was a quiet day in terms of activity.  We did attend a good lecture by a professor who has three degrees from Harvard.  It was the first of three lectures entitled ‘Global Threats in the 21st Century’: a series about where we are politically and globally, and how we got here.  The ‘we’ referred, of course,  to the USA but the points could readily be read across to the Western world that includes the UK.  He took us through the aftermath of WW2 and the start of the Cold War, which led to the formation of the US Department of Defense and the CIA as well as other significant changes in the organisation of US government.  It was useful to recall those quite frightening times, when we used phrases like ‘better dead than Red’ and the threat was very real.  He moved on through Vietnam, the Russians in Afghanistan, and the fall of the Iron Curtain and he left us to ponder on the US policy of – essentially – being the world’s policeman, with a moral obligation not only to keep the peace but also to impose its style of democracy.  A lot of food for thought there, and Lecture 2 will be most interesting.  Jane found it a bit too much like a university lecture and may give the rest a miss, but I enjoyed it.

We have just heard that the Duchess of Sussex has had her baby at last, a boy, name to be decided.  That will give the Press in the USA and UK something to work itself into a frenzy over instead of Donald Trump and Brexit. Wonder if they will call him Donald?

We were processed through UK Immigration this morning – a very clever procedure in which the officers are embarked in New York and we are all ‘done’ gradually during the passage.  We have come across this approach before, when we were going to Australia from Mauritius, and to the UK from Lisbon, and it is very sensible.  A pity US Immigration does not do the same thing – it would save a lot of time and angst.  Not often we are more efficient than the USA.

Today is Crossover Day: the day when the graph of our projected onboard allowance spend, based on a pro rate expenditure over 14 days, crossed the shallower gradient of our actual spend.  In other words we can start spending a bit more freely from now on, as the allowance we were given was quite generous (pans out at $86/day on average).  We celebrated with a cocktail each before lunch, Jane having a ‘As Cool as a Cucumber’ (Gin, Sour Apple Schnapps, fresh cucumber, sugar syrup, freshly squeezes lime juice) and I a Mojito.  I thought a Ginger Cosmo or a Dark ‘n’ Stormy might have been more appropriate for the memsahib but, wisely, I held my tongue.  Daringly, Jane bought a QM2 fridge magnet under the new free-spending regime.

Our new sailing companions are mainly Americans, as one would expect sailing from New York.  It is fascinating to listen in on the conversations and to revel in the different accents and drawls.  Very polite people and much more outgoing and forthright than we retiring British.   And we have some famous US personalities onboard: I am certain that I heard Ethel Merman sitting behind us in the Grill, which is a surprise to me as I thought she was dead.  A mixed bag in the sartorial stakes for lunch: one man turned up wearing a grubby white Tee shirt as if  he had just left the washing up in the galley for a break with the passengers.  I wasn’t too sure about the man with the lumberjack shirt hanging outside his jeans either.  Dear oh dear, what has happened to my Princess Grill?  Quite a few LGBT couples, just as there were on the way over – they have a thriving social get-together every evening in the Commodore Club at 1700.  Lamb curry for lunch, very nice.

We had a long chat with our old waitress from the Australian trip, a girl from Romania.  Her normal station was in Queen’s Grill, but this afternoon she was on duty for five hours at the entrance to the Kings Court canteen, dispensing hand cleanser to everyone entering.  What an awful and boring job.  She was not too enamoured by the clientele in Queens Grill (one click above us in Princess Grill) as she found them demanding and arrogant – something that didn’t surprise me.  I think she welcomed the opportunity to break the monotony by chatting to people she knew.

We spent the afternoon relaxing after yesterday’s punishing day as the other lectures were not particularly appealing.  We were going to attend the classical concert featuring a guitar player, but he had become separated from his guitar so they substituted a string trio instead.  The latter would normally have been a fine replacement, but they were a bit out of tune, even to my untrained and unsophisticated ear, so we baled out of the theatre, along with several others.

Black Tie evening and the welcoming cocktail party this evening, but we gave the latter a miss as the queuing and bun fight were getting a bit dreary, not to mention the difficulty in standing as we corkscrewed around.  We introduced ourselves to our new dining room neighbours, he a retiree of the USAF, both heading to Kent for a holiday.  He had served in the UK on loan to the RAF and they regularly visit the UK now.  He had served in the USAF equivalent of the RAF Regiment, which guards airfields.  Now these two were Republicans and voted for DT, more because they disliked and distrusted Clinton than for liking the man, about whom they had no illusions.  It is educational to be able to take a disinterested view of other peoples’ politics and hear both points of view.  As I gazed around my fellow dinner guests I was struck by how elegant and attractive the American women looked: beautifully coiffured hair, carefully applied makeup, expensive clothes.  Jane, in her emerald green satin evening dress that matches her eyes looked fabulous, of course, as she always does.  I did not see if Mr Grubby Tee Shirt had scrubbed up well, but the other men had made an effort and matched their wives in elegance, restoring my faith in my fellow Grill passengers.  Some, including our neighbour, wore medals on their Dinner Jackets.

Day 10 – Tuesday 8 May 2019

Crikey, what a night.  Storm Force 10, sea state ‘Very Rough’.  We slept badly owing to the roaring of the wind outside and the ship’s motion.  I dreamt that I was on a ship at sea and woke to find that that was, indeed, the case.  Our position at 0745 was 41deg 22N, 58deg 17W or roughly 250 Nm south east of Nova Scotia. Course 082, speed 17 knots, 12C, overcast and rain.  Thankfully, the weather moderated a little during the day and the clouds cleared, revealing a dark blue-grey sea, still swollen, but looking just a bit less angry.

En passant  to the Grill for breakfast I noticed a man going into the Kings Court canteen dressed in dirty trainers, black socks, with white hairy legs, shorts and a Tee shirt, the whole ensemble topped by a straw pork pie hat. Dear oh dear oh dear – do we really want to go Britannia class in future?

I skipped lectures in the forenoon and settled myself in the Commodore Club, up for’ard under the bridge, there better to gaze at the white-flecked sea and write to you good people.  Jane attended a lecture by Roger Mcguinn, previously of The Byrds, a talk entitled ‘Mr Tambourine Man’.  I did not particularly want to hear about the Salvation Army, so I gave it a miss and had a cappuccino instead.  Jane said afterwards that he was very good and that the talk described his varied career, which apparently was in pop music, not a quasi-military Christian charity.

The clocks were advanced at noon today, a different approach to doing it overnight and, in my opinion, better.  We are now at GMT – 3, or four hours behind those of you in the UK.  2,300 Nm to go.  We had great plans for the afternoon but, um, we both fell asleep after lunch missing my lecture and Jane’s seminar on choosing lipstick.  Oh dear, geriatric decline already; it must be contagious.  I woke up in a different world, at tea time, with a blue sky and a fairly calm sea.  I tried going on the upper deck for a breath of fresh air, but the higher decks are still closed off because of the wind.  We are not out of the wood yet.

Fortunately, I managed to catch up on our professor’s second lecture on ‘Global Threats in the 21st Century’ on the television.  The point he was making in Lecture Two was that not only had recent  US military intervention throughout the world not worked, but it had also generated resentment to the USA among Muslims and had fed the seeds of terrorist activity.  He suggested that the policy of going it alone, without UN or allied support, was also unwise and non productive. Finally, he postulated that an imposed democratic solution on a failed or failing state might not necessarily be the best solution – sometimes it might be better to have a competent or ‘benevolent’ dictator; far better to create the conditions that encourage a democracy from within, than impose one from outside.  It was interesting to note that Singapore is not a democracy, yet it is a successful and prosperous state, comfortable in itself.  These were quite controversial thoughts – he cited as examples Gaddafi’s Libya being grudgingly better than the anarchic country that exists today (ie we should not have intervened), and the failure of democracy in Iraq after the West’s intervention.  I thought he had some good points.

On the way to dinner, in the lift, we met a slightly harassed-looking couple who were between courses in their meal.  They were on their way to the kennels to put their dog to bed for the night.  I offer no comment.

Cocktails tonight in the Chart Room before dinner.  Jane had a Cuba Libra with Appleton rum in tribute to her Caribbean roots.  I could not decide what to have, so Jane suggested I have an ‘Eye of the Storm’, a bizarre concoction of madeira, Mount Gay rum, pineapple juice and passion fruit juice, served on crushed ice with an orange twist in an elephant,  and drunk through a straw.  It was like nothing on earth and I am only too relieved that no one else I knew was there to see it.  I am not too sure how I made it to dinner, especially as I helped Jane with her rum and coke too.  And so to bed.

Day 11 – Wednesday 8 May

We actually slept in a bit today…woke at 0500 and dozed until 0800, when Jane suggested we skip breakfast.  We are shifting around a bit again after a steady night, though the sea looked OK.  Position at 0800 ship’s time was 42deg 21N, 47deg 5W.  We are roughly 350 miles SE of Newfoundland at the southern end of the Grand Banks.  Wind Force 4 from N, sea Moderate, course 083, speed 22 knots.  Air temperature is 4C (yes, four) and sea temperature is 3C (it did rise later).  Jane is already predicting an awful summer, of plants withering in the greenhouse, seeds rotting in the ground and blossoms destroyed by wind; all her efforts wasted.  She is missing her garden, bless her.  Amazing how meteorologists can predict the forthcoming summer weather from the conditions in the North Atlantic.

We decided to do breakfast after all, but it was delayed so that Jane could see The Baby on Sky TV.  What is is about women and babies?   They all look ugly to me.  Even I was no great shakes in the early days before I blossomed into the handsome frog that you see today.   Tummy rumbling, and the couple appear holding a bundle of white blankets.  Is that it?  Can’t see a thing!  Good grief.  Mad dash aft and down three decks to just make breakfast at 0915.  In transit, we passed a woman who responded to my cheerful ‘Good Morning’ and smile with a face that would curdle milk.  Judging by her companions, who responded more conventionally and pleasantly, she was an American so I cannot blame my fellow countrymen for unfriendliness this time.  Fact is, I suppose, we are all the same fundamentally: some happy, some sad, some sweet, some sour.

Our first serial of the day was a ‘Virtual Tour of the Bridge’, presented by the Captain in the Royal Court Theatre.  We knew this would be very popular, so we were there at D – 30 accordingly.  This was probably the best lecture of the cruise.  The Captain proved to be a fluent and humorous speaker and he covered the training of officers, bridge operations, the philosophy and psychology of exercising command as well as navigation and the QM2 bridge controls.  Amazingly, he started out as a British Airways pilot, but was made redundant in the 1990s and changed career to become a mariner, starting at the very bottom as a Cadet.  He trained at South Tyneside College in my old home town of South Shields – the same college where my father obtained his Master’s Foreign-Going Ticket and, from the Captain’s description of the oral examination, the process did not appear to have changed in broad terms.  I remember my father being tested on how to beach a ship, morse code and semaphore, but these are no longer on the curriculum.  I noted also that the old colloquial term ‘Ticket’ has been replaced by ‘Licence’.  Masters and ship’s officers also have to be trained as paramedics and in rudimentary surgical skills, as only ships that carry more than a certain number of passengers have to carry doctors; for the vast majority of merchant ships the Master or 1st or 2nd Mate is the doctor, performing operations (nowadays under radio guidance) on the saloon table.   The Captain described how, as a Mate in a container ship, he had to perform a procedure to solve a blockage of urine in a member of the crew, without radio assistance, and using Page 59 of The Ship Captain’s Medical Guide and a large bucket.  This chimed with many of my father’s salty stories – he was a dab hand with the sailcloth needle and the skills read across nicely to suturing.  I will not go into the technical detail of the bridge controls and propulsion, as I covered that in an earlier blog after my ‘behind the scenes’ tour, but the concept of Command Resource Management (CRM) will be familiar to at least two of my readership.  Navigation is by GPS using, primarily, US Department of Defense satellites, but with Russian defence satellites as a back up, and the old fashioned navigation as a final backup, as either (or both) GPS could be turned off in time of tension.  There are two Officers of the Watch (OOW) at any one time, one senior officer and one Third Officer, working a 1in 3 watch system on traditional nautical 4-hour watches (First, 2000 – midnight; Middle, Midnight – 0400; Morning, 0400 – 0800; Forenoon, 0800 – 1200;  Afternoon 1200 – 1600; Dogwatches, 1600 – 1800 – 2000).  It seems that, in Cunard, the Dogwatches are taken as one 4-hour watch, rather than the traditional two 2-hour watches that give watch-keepers a different watch each day.  So it looks like the unfortunate OOWs who have the Middle get stuck with it every night.    I remember those heady days, or rather nights, and am delighted now to promptly forget them again.  Overall, a really good talk, and fascinating.

The clocks were advanced again at eight bells in the Forenoon Watch (noon – do keep up), so we are now at GMT – 2, or three hours behind those of you in the UK.

After lunch we finally managed to get outside.  The wind had dropped, the temperature had risen to ‘bearable’ and we took a good stroll around the higher decks, 12 and above.  We even managed to walk round The Lookout, above the bridge on 14 Deck, where we had first seen the Statue of Liberty in the rain.  It was comparatively benign now (though we still wore coats) and the whole area was virtually deserted as most people seem to prefer 7 Deck, the Promenade Deck. In passing, I noticed people exercising their dogs in the cordoned-off area outside the kennels, aft on 12 Deck, and was horrified to see that the white teak deck was soiled by dog mess.  No one, it seemed, had the gumption to pick up their own dog’s mess and presumably they expected the crew to do it.  Yuk, and what a waste of a good teak deck.

Jane was going to attend a seminar on powdering her nose or some such similar procedure but, in the end, decided to read a book instead.  That is the nice thing about being on holiday – the world is our oyster.

Early supper tonight so that we can watch the film, First Man,  about Neil Armstrong.  Then more cocktails to help solve that underspend.  As I write it is 1710 ship’s time, so I will send this off now, as has become my convention.

Archie Harrison – I ask you…

Day 8 – Sunday 6 May 2019. New York City, United States of America

New York, New York: the self-proclaimed capital of the world, the most highly populated city in the USA with a population 8.4 million, spectacular sights, excellent museums, Broadway shows, cosmopolitan inhabitants, the city of literature, film and TV.  And we are ‘doing’ it in seven hours.  Ho hum.  Let’s get started.

We awoke at 0400 (just in time for the Morning Watch, I thought ruefully), the better to see the Verrazano Bridge, which joins Staten Island to the mainland, as we passed under it with just a few metres to spare. I threw open the curtains and stepped out onto the balcony.  It was as black as your hat.  It was foggy.  It was cold. And it was teaming down with rain.  Nothing was in sight except a clanging red navigation buoy, beating out an eclectic tune like a bell ringer seeking plague victims.  I retired to the warmth of the cabin and avoided Jane’s eye: best not be in the firing line when Jane vented her spleen about the weather, and this time it was not even British weather.  We watched the bridge pass overhead from the comfort of our cabin and started to dress for the next highlight, the Statue of Liberty, due in about half an hour.  This we would not be able to observe from our cabin.  Suitably wrapped up, we ascended to The Lookout, an open gallery located on 13 Deck immediately above the ship’s bridge.  We had some difficulty in opening the exterior door – Jane had not had her shredded wheat for breakfast yet – but eventually forced our way out into an atmosphere of what can best be described as the inside of a dishwasher: it was dark, the wind buffeted us from all directions, and the pelting rain drenched us.  We moved rapidly into the lee of the clear windscreen, located at head height, and could just make out through the speckled glass, in the distance, a pale green lit-up  Statue of Liberty.  This was not the welcome to New York that we had envisaged.  Then Jane had a brilliant idea.  We went back inside, entered the adjacent lift, and descended eleven decks to the passageways that surround the theatre and cinema, where we usually play Scrabble or chess. There, entirely on our own and through huge picture windows almost on the waterline, we saluted the Statue of Liberty as we steamed past.

We were alongside the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal at 0630 (yep, still raining) and took an early breakfast.  We were required to muster for our excursion in the Royal Court Theatre at 0730, though I noted that there would be a delay in disembarking because of a problem with the ship’s winches and securing us alongside.  I winced at the reference to, “we will soon be tied up”: it was always hammered into me that shoes are tied up, ships are secured.  Standards, standards.  But maybe that is just warships.  And so, at 0730, to the theatre where we were given stickers to wear, ‘Coral 6’ – ‘coral’ referring to the colour, which translates as ‘pink’.  We gathered in a sort of corral of seats at the back of the theatre and eyed up our fellow tourists, like you eye up fellow patients in a doctor’s waiting room.  A mixed bag: possibly two pukka sahib PLUs, an English family of three including a long-haired boy of about 12 (why is that child not at school?), a male couple, a collection from Liverpool…We had booked a ‘smaller group’ excursion, paying extra in order to enhance the experience.  Clearly, Cunard’s definition of ‘small group’ did not match ours: we expected no more than 12, but there were 24 people sitting in our little area.  Hrrrmph.

Eventually our number was called and we crossed the brow into the terminal building and the US immigration process.  Enough has been said about this torture in the open literature already, so I will not add to it (I dare say UK immigration is just as bad for foreigners).  Suffice it to say that we stood in a long zig-zagging line for an hour in a very noisy aircraft hangar containing fork lift trucks and luggage, and I did not make a smart remark to the immigration officer, who proved to be perfectly pleasant.  Our bus, when we finally emerged from the terminal building, was a small furniture van.  Or, at least, that is what it looked like to British eyes.  It was gleaming black, had a long bonnet like a lorry, and had blacked out windows.  Inside it was modern and very nice, but packed solid.  Two seats at the front were reserved for the disabled so we squeezed into the last two seats on the long row of seats at the very back.  Hrrrmph Mark 2.  Fortunately, it appeared we were the last to join so we were offered the reserved seats in the front, which we accepted with alacrity. This was unfortunate for another couple, who then appeared, late,  and got our old seats in the back.  And so to New York.

Well, of course, we could not possibly take in the whole of New York City, which comprises five boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island, Bronx and Queens with only the Bronx on the mainland, the rest being islands.  Our tour was of Manhattan, which most people identify as the main or significant part of New York: the bit that holds all the well-known places such as Times Square, Broadway, Wall Street, Greenwich Village, Kojak and so on.  Our tour guide was Irving, a wiry middle-aged New Yorker with a forthright and slightly abrasive manner that immediately guaranteed him Jane’s enmity.  He was clearly a tourist guide who fundamentally disliked tourists, like a man allergic to bees imprisoned in an apiary.  I did not find him too bad, but it was true that he was not terribly approachable, had no sense of humour, and had assertive leadership skills that were a bit scary in someone meant to be hosting us.  On the plus side, he was very effective at guiding the bus driver around the hazards of the New York Cycle Marathon, and gave a good spiel about the various locations we visited.

We drove through the Battery Tunnel that joins Brooklyn to Manhattan and took in Tribeca (derivation, Triangle-Below-Canal-Street) and  Hell’s Kitchen.  We stopped for a stroll through Strawberry Fields (part of Central Park dedicated to John Lennon) and were given the opportunity to photograph a hallowed mosaic called Imagine; Jane photographed the nearby plants instead, while I observed, incredulously, a dog that was wearing a raincoat and defecating in the park.  On to Upper West Side, Trump Tower (where we stopped to pass water) and the Rockefeller Centre.  At the last of these we rode the lift to the top of the tower (68 floors in 43 seconds) and promptly rode the lift down again; the summit was shrouded in cloud.  Jane also indulged herself with a large Ben and Jerry’s ice cream as we toured the shopping centre in the basement, so that was her satisfied for the day.   Jane likes ice cream almost as much as she likes botanical gardens and penguins.  We then moved on to Grand Central Station for lunch (as you do) and it proved to be a remarkable experience.

The decline of rail travel in the USA in the 50s, 60s and 70s led naturally into the decline of the infrastructure that goes with it, and Grand Central Station was inevitably part of that neglect.  The station reached a point of disrepair where developers were eyeing it up for demolition, to be replaced by yet another tower block.  Fortunately, a conservation group sprang up and was successful not only in getting the building ‘landmarked’ (the US equivalent of the UK ‘listed’), but also in raising funds to restore the building to its former glory.  The result was magnificent.  We entered an amazing subterranean world of sandstone arches on various levels, connected by broad sweeping ramps and staircases, with arches inscribed with legends such as ‘Tracks 30 – 60’.    For some reason I started humming Chattanooga Choo Choo in my head.   Although trains still run from the station (regional trains to the north, and the subway), much of the building is now dedicated to retail.  The central hall was still used for its original purpose and was huge, imposing and inspiring.  Our guide then took us, via a system of descending ramps, to an even lower level where we were to be left for an hour to obtain our lunch.   We were quite hungry and I was looking forward to some typical American cuisine (whatever that is) taken in genteel surroundings.  As we descended, the noise level seems to rise and we entered a heaving ants nest of humanity, a cacophony of noise and smells and movement.  It was The Food Court.

Readers of this journal will recall my aversion to Food Courts as a source of culinary satisfaction, after my experience in Melbourne. This was worse. Far worse. There were food outlets everywhere, each selling fast food of just about every different type of world cuisine, and each with big queues waiting to be served. Clumps of tables and chairs were clustered here and there, all packed solid. We wandered around like two lost strays, completely out of our element, and looking for a quiet little café selling, perhaps, an Eccles cake or a scone with a pot of tea. Strangely, there were no establishments doing that and we couldn’t even find a seat and table where we could have a drink of American coffee. Without any disrespect to the American people in general, or New Yorkers in particular, it was absolutely awful. I would no more have considered eating in that bear pit than I would have considered sleeping in an iron foundry. So, by mutual consent, we ascended to the higher levels in search of a higher alternative. I announced that I was happy to skip lunch, but Jane wanted a bottle of water, which we found easily. We moved on to explore some of the shops, bought some sleeping pills that you only seem to be able buy in the USA, then I found a hot dog stand. What can be more American than that? We had a really good chat with the vendor, who had spent two years in the UK playing for the Wasps rugby team, then I bought a ‘New Yorker’ and ate it while leaning against a wall. Hot dogs with all the trimmings are not the easiest of things to eat and I soon had mustard, ketchup and sauerkraut all over my hands, and this mysteriously managed to transfer itself onto my face, hair, sweater and Barbour jacket. Fortunately, mummy had some tissues with which to wipe me down, tutting in the process. At least she didn’t moisten her handkerchief first with saliva, like my real mother used to do.

After lunch we were back on the bus and took in Broadway, Times Square and Wall Street, then on to the 9/11 Memorial, which was a very moving experience.  Imagine, if you will, a large square hole in the ground, a square with side length of about seventy yards.  Now think of a wide rampart or wall around this square at waist height, with a sloping top that faces outwards.   Now think of looking over the rampart, into the hole, and seeing a waterfall on all four sides, falling about thirty or forty feet to a pool which has, in turn, another square hole in the middle into which the water disappears.  Well, there were two of these square holes, side by side,  one for each of the Twin Towers that had been destroyed and located on the same footprints as the towers.  Around the top of the surrounding ramparts were the names of every victim of 9/11 in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania, all inscribed in metal.  Each square, or hole, was one acre in area and the two were set into a tree-lined plaza.  To one side, Tower No 1, a 104 storey office block soared and disappeared into the clouds.  On another side a subway station and subterranean shopping centre were contained in a futuristic building with a roof like the wings of a dove.  This was called the Oculus (Greek for ‘the eye’ apparently) and it was immaculate inside.  The only tree to survive the 9/11 disaster, a pear tree, still stands as ‘The Survivor Tree’.  The whole thing, the memorial, the Oculus, the Tree, had been very well done and we were deeply moved by the former.

Back into the furniture van for the final leg before returning to the ship, a drive through Downtown and Greenwich Village.  Now this was nothing like the rest of Manhattan.  It was obviously older, with narrower bumpier streets, and lower buildings with those external fire escapes like you see in films.  Even the streets had names, as opposed to numbers.  Greenwich Village was a bit shabbier, a bit more dirty, and had a bit more graffiti and litter than Midtown and Uptown, but I thought it also had a bit more character: its older buildings, its varied small shops and cafés.  It would have been worth exploring on foot.  But it was 1600, and we had to be back onboard by 1630, so back through the Battery Tunnel to Brooklyn, goodbye to Irving, and back into the terminal building  It also stopped raining at that point.  The only sour memory of New York was Jane receiving an unpleasant harangue from the Port Authority security guard for not removing two nickels from her jacket pocket before passing through the metal detector and thus setting off the alarm; he then turned his ire on the rest of the party and ordered us, basically, to sort ourselves out before defiling his machine.  What a rude man and the only unpleasant New Yorker we met in the entire trip.

So, summary of a seven hour tour of the biggest US city in just a few terse sentences.  The first thing that struck us was how nice it was to see trees everywhere in such a very urban environment; it added much to the good impression. The city was very busy, despite it being a very wet Sunday, and there was much honking of car horns.  The roads, in very long fairly dark canyons between city blocks, actually reminded us of Sydney though, I suppose, it ought to be the other way round.  I liked the logical numbering of the streets and avenues.  We loved Central Park.  We even liked Trump Tower with its opulence and peaceful adjacent courtyard (nice lavatories too).  The Rockefeller Centre was all right, but not brilliant; the underground shopping area dark and unappealing.  Grand Central Station was very impressive and even the Food Court left a lasting impression.  The 9/11 Memorial was sombre, beautifully designed and deeply moving.  Greenwich Village, though shabby chic, had style.  We were confused by prices showing only the cost before tax and by quarters with what looked like a ‘1’ on them that we thought meant ‘1 dollar’ (Jane was quickly disabused of this belief).  Dislikes?  None except for the rude Port Authority Security man.  Of course, next time we will stay for at least a week and walk around Manhattan.  Graffiti, 5% (and that only in Greenwich Village and Brooklyn); dog turds, 1 (and that only outside the terminal building); litter, 1%; dossers and tramps, NIL; skateboarders, NIL; friendliness, 99.999%. 

We sailed at about 1730, escorted by a very slick-looking NYPD launch with a flashing blue light.  I also noted that there was a NYPD police officer on the bridge, kitted out with body armour and an assault rifle, which was both reassuring and scary at the same time.  We opened our second bottle of bubbly, retained in the fridge for the occasion, and toasted New York from our balcony.   By the time we came in we were frozen stiff, squiffy, and zonked out: we had been awake for fourteen hours.  A hot shower, an early supper of fillet steak, and we were tucked up in bed by 2030 and unconscious by 2045.  It was all like a dream.

Day 6 – Friday 3 May 2019

Well, here we are on Day 6, about 300 miles due south of Newfoundland and on a westerly course for the final leg.  Position at 0710 ship’s time was 41deg N, 52deg 41W; speed 19 knots, course 266, air temperature 8C, overcast, sea Moderate, wind Force 6 from NNW.  No wonder it feels cold – that air is blasting in from Greenland and Newfoundland.  Mrs Shacklepin has wound up the heating to maximum.  I dare not suggest that walk on the upper deck.

We are gearing up for the Senior Officers’ cocktail party at 1115 today, which brings the dilemma of what to wear (see how the genuine concerns of life have fallen from my shoulders already).  The rig for the event is stated as ‘smart casual’, but one never knows what that means these days: tie or no tie? Jacket or no jacket?  Increasingly, it seems, trousers or no trousers?  It was much easier in days gone by, particularly when I was still serving, when you always wore a tie and jacket with civilian rig (except at tea after sports, when a cravat was permitted); a suit always for cocktail parties and dinner.  It all sounds a bit Noel Coward now, but you knew where you stood.  And if you wore plain clothes onboard as a precursor to going ashore, you always stood to attention and ‘excused your rig’ to the senior officer present in the wardroom in uniform (who might be junior to you).  This was a polite formality, and the request was never refused, except occasionally at Dartmouth when you might well be sent away by the Duty Sub Lieutenant and told to go away and come back dressed like an officer.  I digress, yet again, but it does exemplify my point.  I think, maybe, the blazer with Britannia Association tie, the white slacks, and the brown casual shoes. Or maybe the Guernsey seaman’s sweater, the poplin shirt, the cream slacks and the deck shoes?  I realise you will be dying to know the final decision, so I will let you know later.  What’s that?  Jane?  Oh, she would look good even if she wore a bin bag.  I think she is wearing cream slacks, pumps, and some sort of flowery top.  I did raise an eyebrow at the pumps, suggesting that high heels would be a better sartorial choice, but received such a ferocious look in reply that I beat a hasty retreat onto the freezing balcony, where I knew she would not follow.

The final lecture by our terrorist expert was about reporting terrorist attacks, using Britain’s 7/7 attack as the prime example.  Very sobering and, as ever, well presented.  

And so to that Senior Officers’ Cocktail Party during the late forenoon.  This time, to avoid any queues, we turned up about five minutes later than the appointed time and just sailed in.  Surprise, surprise most people were sitting down again and there must move been only half a dozen small groups, at most, standing and chatting on the dance floor.  Each had a ship’s officer and most of those were very junior.  The Captain was there, and I think so was the Chief Purser or whatever they call him these days, but that was the limit of Senior Officers.  We didn’t mind, we had a nice chat to one of the junior officers, an Events Manager, and another good conversation with an American couple from Cleveland, Ohio, he a retired banker with literally hundreds of trips in QM2 under his belt.  Like the other events, the wine was not exactly flowing (one glass of champagne) and nor was the food (one, yes one, canapé).  We moved on when the booze dried up and a couple started to dance around us.  Maybe it was a hint; heaven knows.  It wasn’t a bad ‘do’ – certainly better than the earlier cocktail party – but a pity I didn’t get to ask the Chief Engineer about that lub oil.

Ah yes, in case you have been wondering, I compromised on my dress by wearing the blazer, the cream slacks, the brown casual shoes and an open-necked checked poplin shirt with button-down collar.  Knew you would be interested.

A single course for lunch again and I had Pork Escalope Milanese, and Jane the Confit of Duck with Gnocchi.   I felt we should get some exercise in the afternoon and proposed the Promenade Deck.  However, Jane took one look at the bundled-up figures out there struggling against the wind and immediately rejected the proposal out of hand.  So instead, we launched on a repeat of the exercise undertaken in the previous voyage: a circumnavigation of the ship internally.  We started on 12 Deck, right at the top, and walked a complete circuit inside on every deck, down the stairs to each level, and finishing on the lowest passenger deck, which is 4 Deck.  The journey took us exactly an hour, making an estimated distance – based on the Standard Shacklepin Marching Pace – of about three miles.  On one deck there was a suitcase outside someone’s cabin and we thought that someone was being a bit previous for New York disembarkation until I read a note pinned to the top,
“THE LATE JOHN SMITH” (not the real name)
It dawned on us that it must be the luggage of one of the patients flown off at the beginning of the voyage.  How very sad that he didn’t make it.

We had a good look at such lower cabins as were open for cleaning and were pleasantly surprised with how nice they looked.  Most had balconies, even the cheaper ones in the lower hull.  So no cabins in the Forepeak, Stokehold or Steerage after all.  The only ones I would have avoided were the internal ones (without natural light) and the ones in the vicinity of the funnel, which suffered badly from noise and vibration.  And here is an interesting revelation that has led us to a conclusion that I am sure will shock you when I describe it later: on our internal travels along the lower bowels of the passenger deck, whom should we meet but our banker friend from Cleveland, Ohio.  I dare say we would have met our Count from Canada down there too.  So the way these people manage to do so many cruises with Cunard, and clock up Platinum and Diamond Membership, is by travelling Britannia (ie ‘ordinary’) class.  I subsequently looked up the cost of a typical voyage by the different types of cabin ‘class’ and came up with this conclusion: we could do three trips in Britannia class for the cost of one in Princess Grill.  If we compromised slightly we could afford to cruise again within our standard annual holiday budget.   Compromise would just involve a slightly smaller cabin, eating at a fixed time in the Britannia Restaurant, putting a clothes peg on my nose, and foregoing the exclusive Grills Lounge.  All other facilities are common, and all perks (the free internet, the champagne, the cocktail parties, the wine tasting etc) come from Platinum Membership, not Grill. So there you are.  You may have been saying that yourselves for some time, no doubt, and the penny has taken a long tortuous route, but it has finally dropped for us.  So, yes, you could hear from us again on yet another cruise.  Jane is already looking at the brochure for 2022.  Of course, I will be unable to criticise fellow Britannia dining guests in such an eventuality.

Mid afternoon we attended the penultimate lecture by our retired coroner.  I did not mention earlier that he was a man of many talents, having originally trained as a dentist before then deciding to change over to be doctor and to specialise as a gynaecologist.  Apparently he was in the labour ward when one woman recognised him as having been the man who had taken out her wisdom tooth a month before.  He was stitching up a second woman after labour at the time, when the first woman burst out,
“Blimey!  He’s a dentist you know”
Apparently he only just managed to get his head clear before his patient’s legs smacked together.  Anyway, he moved on from gynaecology to being a coroner (a varied career to say the least) and has only just retired.  His talk today was about Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man.  What a heart-breaking tale!  I had not seen the film starring John Hurt, so I was not fully familiar with the story.  Although barely intelligible, Merrick was a very sensitive and intelligent man, with beautiful handwriting and modelling skills despite his enormous right hand and other deformities. Under the patronage of the surgeon Sir Frederick Treves, he was finally looked after in The London Hospital by charitable donations and well cared for towards the end of his life, but he died trying to sleep like an ordinary person and, hence, by asphyxia caused by his deformity.  There is still debate today as to what his affliction was, and our lecturer did not agree with the current view that Merrick suffered from Proteus Syndrome, a genetic disease.  His diagnosis was that Merrick suffered from neurofibromatosis. 

We watched the latest Rowan Atkinson Johnny English Strikes Again film in the early evening – he was hilarious and back on form – then changed into evening rig for the Masquerade Ball.  I went masquerading as a nice person.  ‘Surf ‘n Turf’ for dinner, with fillet steak, was excellent; the food this trip has been better than the Australian trip, we think.

Well, the weather has finally calmed down.  The creaking and groaning has stopped (from the ship, not from me), the sea state is slight, and the wind has dropped.  Clocks retarded again tonight to GMT – 3 ie four hours behind those of you in the UK.

Day 7 – Saturday 4 May

And what did we see?  We saw the sea.  White sky, grey sea, fog, almost flat calm.  At 0815 ship’s time we were at 40deg 43N, 65deg 6W or roughly 150 miles due south of Nova Scotia.  Speed 23 knots, course 270, wind Force 3 from SE, 14C.  We awoke at 0600, as has become all too normal, but had slept well and Jane declared herself content as she sipped her early morning tea, despite the bleak vista outside the windows.  This was good news, as every morning I wake up worrying that her tummy is playing up again.  She does still get the odd reoccurrence, but the frequency has reduced significantly.

Breakfast at 0830 and feeling ravenous after being awake since 0600.  In a weak moment and out of curiosity I ordered the ‘All American’, which apparently comprised eggs, corned beef hash, streaky bacon, link sausage and other things to give my heart valves something to chew on.  Fortunately, perhaps, the waiter messed up the order and I received a reduced English breakfast instead.  I still struggled through it: ‘eyes bigger than belly’, as my mother used to say.  Much laughter and loud conversation from the six-seater table near us comprising mixed American and British – most distracting.  Don’t they know that breakfast is a non-sociable meal and should be taken quietly?  Even Jane started talking to me as I read The Spectator on-line; the woman is taking this happiness too far.  I smiled welcomingly and pretended to pay attention, but was dropped in it when she tested me on what she had just said.  Fortunately, I can claim ‘turbine ear’, a hearing affliction that affects some Marine Engineers, even if I don’t have it; it has saved my bacon more than once.

Our first serial of the day was our retired coroner’s final lecture, this time on crime fiction and pathology as used in books and TV.  It was, as ever, fascinating as he had been an adviser to Silent Witness, Whitechapel, Ripper Street and other shows, and he confirmed that many of the scenes were uncannily authentic.  

Our second lecture was about Rasputin.  Although known as ‘The Mad Monk’, Rasputin had no religious training or rank, yet managed to ingratiate himself with the Tsarina of Russia by force of personality and a fortuitous ability to comfort her with regard to her haemophiliac son.  He also had a good line with ladies of court by persuading them that they needed to commit sin before they could seek redemption, helpfully providing the sin.  Despite being a Siberian peasant, filthy and reportedly stinking like a goat, he established a large following with ladies and was hero-worshipped by the Tsarina.  Naturally, he was detested by the male nobility.  His influence on Russian affairs became stronger when the Tsar went off to the front to lead the fight against Germany in WW1 and the Tsarina was effectively running the country.  Rasputin persuaded the Tsarina, and hence the Tsar, to sack several senior figures and a plot was soon hatched to kill him.  Led by a wealthy prince, who had been Rasputin’s lover (the man was AC/DC), the plot involved poisoning, shooting and disposal in the river.  That should do the trick.  The poison was not, in the end, administered because the poisoner chickened out, so Rasputin was shot in the chest and declared dead.  From which horizontal position he duly resurrected himself and had to be shot, again, in the head.  The corpse was thrown into the icy river in St Petersburg (then called Petrograd) and not found for three days.  All the (noble) conspirators were fêted by polite society, but the Tsar had them exiled to far away estates in Siberia from which they eventually emigrated to the west.  Of course, the Romanov dynasty fell shortly after that and the family itself was assassinated towards the end of WW1.

The Illuminations Cinema continues to generate its own entertainment in the course of these lectures and I am delighted to add yet another irritation to my list of misfits.  This one I have dubbed Fanning Fiona, sitting several seats to my right.  Her title originates from the manner in which she waved a piece of paper in front of her face for the whole of the last lecture.  A variant of The Sentry, perhaps, and – you would think – a minor human failing.  But you try putting up with that out of the corner of your eye for an hour.  I tried shutting my right eye, but then couldn’t see properly from my left.  I put up my hand as a blinker, which worked, but then her sister,  Fanning Fanny,  started up two rows in front and on my left.  Both have been added to The List, which is growing so fast that I will have to start a new page shortly.  No, the cinema was not too hot.

As I write at lunchtime the sea remains calm, but we are in dense fog, with the foghorn discharging its mournful blast every two minutes.  The Captain reports that we have covered 3,015 nautical miles since leaving Southampton and have about 300 miles to go.  We will pick up the New York pilot during the early hours of tomorrow morning, when our transatlantic voyage will officially end.  We expect to pass the Statue of Liberty at about 0530 and be alongside by 0630.

Lunch was Philadelphia Steak Quesadilla, which was chunks of steak with peppers and stuff in a sort of wrap, dressed with sour cream – something I have never had before, and very nice.  Jane had Portobello Mushroom Enchilada, which she declared full of flavour and beans, but missing the enchilada bit.  Very picky, my wife.

Well, the exclusive wine tasting for Platinum and Diamond Badge holders wasn’t too bad.  It was held in the upper part of the Britannia Restaurant at 1400 and we tasted two white and two red South African wines, moving round the restaurant to different pouring areas and being given a talk by a sommelier at each one.  The best was a Cabernet Sauvignon, Whole Berry.  The attendees were a mixed bag.  I was particularly struck by the large old American wearing jeans, a denim shirt, and a baseball hat with the inscription ‘USS ENTERPRISE NCC-1701’; I can only assume that he had beamed down for the experience.  If the subscript had read ‘CVN-65’ I would have cut him a bit of slack as a US Navy veteran who had served in the nuclear powered aircraft carrier of that name.  However, the NCC-1701 condemned him as a Trekkie, doubly damned for wearing a hat indoors and when ladies were present.  Oh, and his wife was a know-it-all wine buff who corrected Jane’s description of the taste of the wine, so that casts them both out into the outer darkness.  We spent the rest of the afternoon playing chess (I won) and Scrabble (don’t ask).

It is 1745 ship’s time and the dense fog and mournful foghorn are still with us.  I think that now is a convenient time to send this off, so that I can start with a clean sheet of paper, so to speak, for a short blog on New York after tomorrow’s visit.  The weather forecast is 14C and rain, and a full scale cycle race is taking place all over the city all day, but I am sure it will be adventurous and fun.  Must remember not to crack any jokes at US Immigration.

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).

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”

Day 1 – Sunday 28 April 2019

Aha!  I bet that surprised you.  We’re back.  Here we are again on QUEEN MARY 2, this time heading for New York and back on a two week round trip, that takes in seven hours of the Big Apple on an intensive excursion.  I know: not long enough to appreciate that huge city, but it was all we could afford as the alternative would have been two weeks’ stay before QM2 returned.  No, we would not travel back by air.

Amazingly (in a pessimistic world in which everything that can go wrong usually seems to) we travelled down to Southampton without a hitch.  We drove straight up to the terminal, off-loaded the luggage that was whisked away immediately by a porter, handed the car keys to the valet, and swept into the terminal building.  I did not have my cashmere overcoat hung carelessly around my shoulders, but the sentiment was there.

 “Princess Grill?  Of course, sir, check in here.  You are priority boarding”.  
We immediately joined a very short queue for the check in desks, watched by a large audience who were waiting, seated and sullen, for checking in for accommodation in the Fore Peak, the Stokehold or Steerage. Our boarding cards were different enough for the check in staff to comment on them and we scrutinised them accordingly.  Of course, that was it: Platinum Club members, because of the many days clocked up previously.  Gosh.  There is only Diamond Membership and God above this.  Thank heavens I am unmoved by these trivia, that’s what I say, or it would go to my head.  We were through airport-type security without delay and, in the drop of a marlin spike, we were onboard.

Dear reader, I struggle to describe the feeling of being back onboard QM2.  Perhaps putting on a well-worn pair of comfortable (but monogrammed calf leather) slippers sums it up.  It was absolutely fabulous to gaze around at the familiar decor, the bulkheads, the layout again. It was like coming home.  Brushing politely aside the guidance of the welcoming staff in their red uniforms and pillbox hats, we immediately dived down a familiar obscure route and headed straight for our cabin, number 10021 on the starboard side of 10 Deck.  And there it was: larger than our last cabin (we thought), brightly lit, immaculate, and decorated with two bottles of bubbly in an ice bucket.  As if to say “Welcome”, our iPads and iPhones automatically logged into the ship’s WiFi system after doing some handshaking of their own. Ah, this is it.

After the last voyage we reckoned that we could not afford any more cruises and, indeed, that was the prudent course.  But with a bit of shuffling around the assets, selling the shares in RTZ, ICI and Virgin (I wish), remortgaging the house (that’s an idea!), creative accounting and putting Jane back to scrubbing steps and taking in laundry, we somehow have managed to do it.  We were, as you know, slightly disappointed by QUEEN VICTORIA and the Dogger Bank, but QM2 has become very special after our epic voyage to Australia and back, and I have to say our return has not disappointed.

First stop, after cracking the bubbly and tucking in to the chocolates, was lunch in Princess Grill on 7 Deck.  To my further amazement, we were ushered to a special table right next to a window overlooking the Promenade Deck, there for us to watch – in due course – the healthier passengers taking their exercise as they march round the deck and they – in due course – to watch us demi gods eating our food and demonstrating how to use knives and forks properly.  For the moment, in Southampton, our view comprised a rusty bucket dredger and a concrete multi-storey carpark, but never mind.  I lunched on Broccoli and Stilton soup followed by Breaded Plaice, new potatoes and spinach; Jane had the healthy option of Baked Salmon and Coconut Rice (without the coconut, she said).  What was particularly nice was to mention to the staff our previous waiters and waitresses, and to discover that many were still onboard – we made a bee-line to find them after lunch and they actually remembered us very well.  Astonishing, and very heart-warming, that they should recognise and remember Olive Oil and Popeye after so long.

I would like to say that we spent the afternoon touring the ship and examining the scuppers, stays, davits, radar aerials and halyards, but the fact is that [a] we were already very familiar with the ship, [b] Jane refused to go outside without a thick coat, scarf, sheepskin boots and [c] there was half a bottle of bubbly still on ice in the cabin.  So we repaired to the latter, there to imbibe and unpack, not in that order. And, outside our cabin as we returned, we found two little purses containing those hallowed emblems of privilege, affluence and staying-power, our Platinum Badges.  I immediately pinned mine to my oiled Guernsey seaman’s sweater (as issued to all Naval Cadets circa 1969), and was promptly ordered to remove it again by the memsahib. ”Get that off.  Don’t be ridiculous”.  She can be so cruel sometimes.  She wouldn’t let me keep that miniature submarine from the cornflakes packet either.

I was bracing myself for the all-important safety brief at 1630 and wondering if Jane would bag, yet again, the un-oil-stained lifejacket as she did in Singapore.  However, the briefing (and sailing) was postponed owing to the non arrival of some passengers.  Very poor.  I would have sailed without them.  It was ingrained in me at Dartmouth: The Ship Sails On Time.  Be There Or It Is An Aggravated Offence Of Absence Without Leave.  These civilians, honestly.  They will be saying next that the dog ate their e-ticket. 

Speaking of which, QM2 is one of the few (might be the only) cruise ships that takes dogs, though – thankfully – they are kept in onboard kennels.  One of them was making a heck of a racket in the terminal building, reinforcing Shacklepin’s Theorem that there is simply no escape from dogs and children.  I haven’t seen any of the latter yet, but they’ll be there somewhere – trust me – they’ll be lurking in a lifeboat or ballast tank or wherever.  They follow me around you know.  It’s a conspiracy.  Oh, I have just seen five of them, including a toddler as I write (I am finally at the safety briefing, postponed yet again to 1715) – excellent to have one’s forebodings verified.

We finally sailed at 1800, which was in daylight: a rare treat for us.  A mild sun shone as we steamed down Southampton Water and round the Isle of Wight.  We, for our part, took an early dinner of Steak Au Poivre washed down by an Argentine Malbec, both of which were excellent.  Portsmouth was on the port beam as we tucked into this feast and it gave me much pleasure to watch it as we passed by.  We watched a film, Can You Ever Forgive Me after dinner, which was the reason for our early meal.  Let us just say that it was beautifully acted and was so interesting that I fell asleep.  Afterwards, we retired to bed early, utterly shattered.  Clocks retarded one hour tonight despite being just south of Portland Bill at about 2200BST.

Day 2 Monday 29 April

Dong… ding… dong…”This is the Captain speaking.  This is not an alarm, I repeat this is not an alarm.  The time is 2.40 in the morning….”.  

So began the 29th April.   For a moment I thought I was twelve years old again and staying at Butlin’s holiday camp in Filey:  “This is Radio Butlin calling all First Sitting Campers.  The time is 7 o’clock and breakfast is now being served…”.  No, it was the QM2 and it was in the middle of the night.  It turns out that some poor soul was seriously ill and was going to have to be evacuated by helicopter.  We were steaming towards Falmouth for the rendezvous and we had been woken up to tell us not to go on our balconies or take flash photography of the helicopter when it arrived.  Curiously, we were not told not to go onto the helicopter deck itself, but I suppose that was axiomatic.  I looked out of the window but there was nothing in sight except the loom of a lighthouse; I returned to the grumbling Mrs Shacklepin and tried to get back to sleep.  Just like turning in after the Middle Watch, it took me ages.  Vaguely I heard the beat of rotors, but then finally drifted off into a twilight world.  It is, of course, ironic that if we had not been woken up and told about it virtually everyone would have remained ignorant of the event; now, some fool would have been bound to go out there and take a picture.  But the Captain did have to formally warn us.  No doubt we will be meeting him at one of the cocktail parties scheduled.

The real day dawned on an overcast sky with a little haze, wind Force 3 from NW, sea Slight, speed 23 knots, course 254, temperature 12C at noon.  We were pitching gently in the Western Approaches and had just cleared Bishop Rock and the Scilly Isles.  Breakfast in the Princess Grill was interrupted by yet another announcement from the Captain:  another CASEVAC, and please clear the upper deck and balconies. These people are dropping like flies and we have only just cleared the English Channel.  We caught a quick glimpse of the HMCG helicopter over the bacon and coffee, then that was gone – hope the patient is OK.

Two lectures in the forenoon, one on Ruses and Deceptions in WW2 and the other on the History of Coroners and Forensic Science.  Both were good, but the last was the most interesting.  Apparently the concept of inquests and coroners in England  started about the time of William the Conqueror, when serious penalties were imposed on a village if a dead Norman was found (nothing for an Anglo Saxon).  Consequently there was an incentive to hide bodies found overnight, dispose of them at sea, or dump them in the next village before day dawned.  This was not entirely satisfactory, so a system was derived and refined in the 12th century at the time of Richard I.  It did not start out terribly accurately because it used a system of old crones to count the bodies found daily and record their causes of death; there was a certain amount of double accounting as well as somewhat speculative and ill informed causes of death recorded.  Eventually, the system of juries came in and they were required to view the actual body before coming to a verdict.  Inquests and post mortems were often held in pubs, which must have done wonders for the steak and kidney pie on offer for the pub lunch.  It was only in the 19th century that it was decreed that coroners must be doctors or lawyers, and later still when inquests were banned from being held in licensed premises.  The Chinese had been conducting forensic investigations as long ago as 200 BC but, of course, it came much later to the Western world.  It was interesting, as well, to be reminded that fingerprinting only came in in the 1890s, and DNA in 1986.

The cinema was packed for these lectures, which was impressive, though the cynical Jane pointed out that this was probably because there was no one sunbathing.  People at these events never cease to amaze me.  They trundle in, late, then just stand there in the middle of the aisle, frozen, like a robot that has suffered a power cut.  A variation of this is the bloke (and it usually is a bloke) who does the frozen statue act right in front of the projector, so we get the shadow of half his head on the screen – yet he never seems to cotton on that it is he who his spoiling the presentation.  We met another example of irritation personified this morning, and that is what I shall call The Sentry.  This was a woman who came in late, could not get a seat, so walked right down to the bottom of the cinema to where the emergency exit was.  She then spent the entire hour pacing to and fro across the exit lobby: three paces this way, three paces back.  Even when someone vacated their seat later, she stayed where she was on sentry duty.  This may sound trivial, but her constant pacing back and forth in the corner of one’s eye was quite distracting.  I have added her name to The List.

A general early impression of one’s fellow passengers is, perhaps due.  These people are slightly different, again, from the clientele on the Australian trip and the Hamburg trip.  They are mostly, how shall I put it, ‘of a certain age’, but perhaps with not quite so many of the halt and the lame as on the Australian trip:  slightly fewer wheelchairs, though plenty of walking sticks.    For obvious reasons there are quite a few more Americans, some returning from a tour of Europe but also some doing the round trip, like us, but in reverse (I think about 450 of those).  Overall, I would say the mix is much more international.  Reassuringly, some behaviour remains common from the previous trips – I refer especially to the men who wear baseball hats indoors (is it raining?) and those carrying full rucksacks around the ship (what on earth do they keep in there?).  We met a nice American couple in the check-in queue, both from St Louis, he a navy veteran (said so on his hat) but we have not seen them since.  Of course, they might have baled out and gone Celebrity after meeting us.  The rich tapestry of cultures makes for entertaining people watching though, of course, what appears eccentric to our eyes is almost certainly normal to theirs.  I was particularly impressed by the lady who came in to dinner last night wearing a broad brimmed Spanish hat and cape, and hence looked like a label from a bottle of Sandeman’s port.  More of this scurrilous gossip later, though I have been banned from comment on a large range of social groups by my sponsor, who intends to edit the script before dispatch this time.

We skipped lunch and took a couple of turns round the deck in the afternoon (after a little snooze in our cabin).  This blew away many of the cobwebs and nearly took Jane as well.  Amazingly, a hearty soul was swimming in one of the outdoor pools.  We weakened mid afternoon, and took afternoon tea in the Grills Lounge.  Most satisfactory and almost guilt-free in the absence of lunch.  We finished the afternoon with a game of Scrabble in the games area, low down in the ship adjacent to the theatre, with the sea rolling by just a few feet away outside the large picture window.

I reckon the sea state deteriorated as the day progressed and certainly the Captain confirmed that we we diverting south slightly, on a rhumb line, to avoid some dirty weather.  The highest deck was out of bounds owing to the wind, which had increased to Force 6 by late evening, with catspaws forming on the sea.  Jane commented on a few green faces, but I reckon the ship is still pretty steady, with a little motion, but no serious rolling or pitching.

Black and White Ball tonight and we have ordered lobster, in advance, from the à la carte menu.  Jane has threatened dancing after dinner, so best I hit the wine.  Perhaps a little dry  Riesling?  Clocks are retarded yet again tonight, bringing the time to GMT – 1.  

Day 3 – Tuesday 30 April

The day dawned with high cloud, sunny intervals, sea moderate, 11C, wind Force 5 from W.  Course 254, speed 21 knots.  Position at 0700: 41deg 27.3 N, 18deg 22.1 W.  We were lurching.  I am hard-put to describe it better.  QM2 does not have the slow roll of most ships, but rather moves a few degrees, then stops jerkily and moves back.  I put it down to the stabilisers in action.  It felt like a bit of a rough night, with creaking woodwork and the howl of wind, but this was not reflected by the sea, which had lost its catspaws and appeared relatively calm, though there was some swell.  It calmed down significantly later.  We woke early because of the daily retarding clock and even Jane could not squeeze any more zeds out of the bunk.

Last night went well, though quietly.  The lobster was a nice treat but not brilliant, and we had a good chat with our neighbours, who were from Tampa.  There was a USN Captain in uniform with lots of medals at dinner and I wondered briefly if I should have brought my own Mess Undress for black tie nights.  But no, I  am getting far too long in the tooth for wearing uniform now; I would look like something out of Dad’s Army.  Besides, I have no medals: 33 years of selfless sacrifice and privation, which I seldom mention, without earning a single one.  We did go down to the ballroom, but the four couples on the dance floor were far too professional for us (the smooth flowing movement, the female head thrown back and looking sideways in pure rapture).  One man was dressed in a white dinner jacket, but wore a pork pie hat, which I thought a trifle eccentric.  No way were we parading our clumsy footwork in front of an audience down there.  So we strolled to the atrium to do a little people watching.  To our surprise, there was hardly anyone there – I would guess that most people were in the theatre, where some woman was belting out a song with great gusto.  In fact pretty much all there was in the atrium area was an older man wearing a polo shirt, jeans, sand shoes and no socks, and a younger man, about 30, wearing calf-length builders boots with reinforced toe cap, jeans, thick sweater, no shirt, and a beanie hat.  Has the world gone mad?  Were they left over after the last refit?  The older bloke looked somewhat introspective as he sat there and I suspect he may have been seasick.  The younger man, however, just had attitude.  He was blowed if he was going to change for the evening or keep to the restricted public areas, which begs the question – raised so many times before – then why come on QM2?  I am sure he could have worked his passage on a Panamanian tramp steamer for no fee at all.

We took a leisurely breakfast as our first serial was not until 1100.  The sky cleared and it actually looked quite sunny out there.  The prison exercise yard that is the Promenade Deck was back in evidence and it was heartening to see those incredibly keen people battling against the wind.  One girl passed wearing full anorak, climbing kit and an enormous rucksack that the Royal Marines call a Bergen, which I thought was taking things to extremes, but Jane pointed out that she was probably carrying it in order to practise for that climb up the Rockies.  We tried walking round the deck ourselves later and it was annoying, after two years, to find that the great masses continue to walk counter clockwise round the deck when we want to walk clockwise.  Why weren’t they told?  It would have saved them from having to jink left and right to get out of our way.

Our first serial was a lecturer on the subject of terrorism, similar to the one we had received on passage to Australia.  It was a good lecture, but still a bit depressing.  Lunchtime found us in the Grills Lounge (no riffraff) drinking pre lunch cocktails: a Bellini and a Mojito. I think Jane’s tummy recovery has gone to her head – I for my part would have had a sensible glass of tepid water, but felt I should keep her company.  We toured the Kings Court – the self service canteen – after a light lunch, in search of an elusive waitress from the first voyage and I wondered, yet again, why on Earth you would eat there instead of being served in the grand splendour of the Britannia Restaurant.  Jane could not resist helping herself to an ice cream cone and I could not resist gawping at a bloke in full Scottish rig, kilt, sporran, the lot, standing at the self-service buffet.  Bet he wasn’t a Scot.  The rich tapestry of life, as I said earlier.  We were going to ‘do’ the planetarium after lunch, and procured tickets accordingly, but we found that the queue to get in (even with tickets) stretched forever and there was still 15 minutes to go.  Stuff that for a game of soldiers; even Jane wasn’t prepared to wait.  So on to the next serial, a talk on the History of Impressionism and introducing Sheree Valentine Daines in the art gallery.  Who says I am uncultured?  We liked the artist’s work, but didn’t have £50,000 to spare.  The free prosecco was good though, and the blue sea rolling past the large round windows in the gallery provided a perfect backdrop to the event.

The final lecture of the day was about Atom Bombs and the end of WW2 and it examined the reasons and effectiveness of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombers.  A cheerful topic, but worth examining.  The lecturer gave a good summary of the atomic bomb development and put forward some very even-handed arguments.  In summary, though, he explained that the USA intended to blockade Japan into surrender and not invade it; the effect of the atomic bombs left the maniacal Japanese leadership completely unmoved; and that it was the USSR’s decision to break its five-year non-aggression pact with Japan and invade Japanese-held Manchuria that tipped the balance in favour of surrender – and that only after Emperor Hirohito’s direct intervention.  Personally, I followed the arguments, which were compelling, but I still think the Japanese had it coming: a controversial view, but an honest one.

A relatively quiet night tonight, with nothing planned, ordinary smart evening rig, and Dover Sole for Jane.  A convenient time, perhaps, to fire this off before it gets too unwieldy.  As I conclude today, it is just after 1700 local time, the sea is blue and calm, the sun is shining, and we are sipping tea from our Wedgwood cups.  Things could be a lot worse.  More soon.