Blog 40. Four Weeks in and beginning to get restless now.

I first became aware of a problem when Jane gave a lee lurch and listed over to starboard, like a frigate over-pressed with sail caught in a squall.  Confirmation was received when she then heeled over to port after bouncing off the dressing table, and flopped onto the bed.  Clearly, she was either in a state of loll, had been hitting the cooking sherry, or was suffering from some form of vertigo.  The last diagnosis seemed most likely, Jane not being a vessel on the high seas and normally being frighteningly abstemious when it comes to alcohol these days.  

So began the day in the Shacklepin household two days ago, and I greeted it with a sense of dread and concern.  Could this be the start of CV19 for Jane?  Could it be something worse?  How would we know and what could we do?  Well, a check on her temperature and a revision of the symptoms of CV19 on the internet fortunately ruled out the The Virus, which was a considerable relief.  What, in fact, she had was labyrinthitis, a condition of the ear that causes severe dizziness and nausea.  I know this because she has had it three times before and I have had it twice.  The treatment is to take seasick pills (it’s true) and rest until the situation improves.  Jane hates it.  Not just the dizziness and nausea, but because she cannot abide being idle (or, indeed, anyone else being idle, but that is another topic).  She is more-or-less resting and convalescing as I write, but the incident flagged up a worrying aspect of the collateral damage caused by CV19: what do you do if you are ill with something else?  GP appointment bookings on line were stopped weeks ago and the GP phone lines were seemingly permanently engaged the last time we rang, even before the present quarantine. The last time we went to the surgery, two weeks ago, to collect a prescription the queue stretched half way around the car park.   I wonder how many people, worried about a pain in their chest or with other physical concerns, are just struggling on with their symptoms and adding to them the stress of worry and uncertainty.  These truly are difficult times.

On a lighter note, the Tottering Jane incident has had its challenging moments, for me if not for her, poor soul.  On Day One I virtually had to carry her to the lavatory and, worst job of all, I had to give her a bath and shower.  It was tough, very tough, but someone had to do it.  It is a shame that shore-side domestic lavatories do not have grab handles on the bulkhead, such as may be found in the heads of HM Ships, for – as I left her one morning – Jane could be observed swaying gently on the seat of ease, as if coxing a sailing cutter close hauled into a Force 3.  Like the true sailor’s wife she is, she held steady.  As I write, she is a little better and – you will be pleased to know – can manage slowly under her own steam.

KADUNK. KADUNK. KADUNK. So the THUMP, THUMP, THUMP of the music a few days ago has been superseded by the children next door playing on an artificial ramp in the driveway with their scooters. Bless their little hearts. The noise started last night at 1845 and was still KADUNKing 1½ hours later when the sun set. And here it is again this lunchtime, more of the same. “They’ll soon get bored with that”, said Jane. I wouldn’t bet on it. Actually, you will be surprised to know that I feel the greatest sympathy for the children as they must be bored stiff with this enforced confinement; it must be equally hard for the parents who are trying to keep their children occupied, or self-taught, while perhaps trying to work at home themselves. In the Great Scheme of Things the KADUNK, KADUNK, KADUNK is the last thing that I should be worried about. But I do wish it would go away. [Post blog note: it did stop. They got bored]

The children with the scooters, by the way, belong to our neighbours who were having their garden rebuilt and a hot tub installed all those weeks ago when life was normal.  The work was suspended at lockdown, but it will – no doubt – continue some day.  There was one point, during the aforementioned work, when I wondered whether the contractors were indulging in open cast mining or exploring an alternative way to emigrate to Australia, such was the quantity of soil being excavated and taken away.  Hot tubs.  Hmmm.  I wonder if they realise just how much they cost to run and I wonder how long the novelty will last.

I have just taken a break from writing to provide some attention and comfort to the invalid, holed up in the Garden Control Tower on the deck below.  A few weeks ago she expressed some disquiet with the time I was spending on the computer: not a concern for my tired old eyes, you understand, but rather, I suspect, a concern for the time I was spending away from her, unsupervised,  and doing non-productive tasks (ie a blog) rather than work that she could be directing (finishing the fence has been mentioned).  So I went down to make her a cup of tea, only to find that she had cleaned and polished the sink and was half way through the process of dusting the drawing room, such process being undertaken with a lurch and occasional stagger as if the house were meeting an Atlantic swell.  Yes, I did try giving her a direct order to sit down and rest; no, it didn’t work.  My wife simply cannot sit still for five minutes, sick or well.

You remember how I wrote ( Blog 36) that Jane’s garden hates me? Well here is proof positive. The invasion has started. Plants have infiltrated the house and are now forming a Fifth Column in the Garden Control Tower. It seems Jane invited them in. I tried to protest: to warn her that, like vampires, plants should never be invited to cross the threshold, but – no – she had to do it. Trays of Things are now scattered around the windowsills, blocking the correct operation and function of the window blinds and smearing dirt on the blinds themselves. Jane coos and talks to them, and trickles water on them every night to the neglect of her Master and Commander who is waiting to be fed. So far no thorns or barbs have appeared and I am uninjured. But I am not fooled: soon I will brush against a tray and knock the whole lot on the floor. And there will be hell to pay.

We have not had the evening briefing yet, but the prediction is that lockdown will be continued for another three weeks despite the UK deaths from CV19 having plateaued.  This is bad news for the economy and I do not envy the government in balancing ‘death by virus’ against ‘death by poverty in a poor economy’.  Nevertheless, I think the time has come to ease the restrictions if we are not to suffer the consequences for generations to come.  The method of coming out of it all will be an interesting challenge.  There may be difficulty in persuading the workforce to return to their jobs, the government having done such a good job of scaring the bejesus out of everyone.  Already, and predictably, I see that the Teachers’ Union is opposing the suggestion that – as a first step – children should go back to school.  At least an easing of restrictions is supported by the Press and this may help in persuading the workforce to act for the common good.  Those fickle creatures, the journalists: the same ones that criticised the government for delaying lockdown are now carping that it should be lifted.  The little tinkers.

By the way, I have broken up my previously combined blogs about Australia back into their original short form so that reading them can be done in bite-size chunks. I hope that makes things easier for the reader. I have also managed – with some difficulty as a new blogger – to arrange all the blogs in chronological order. These monumental tasks cost me a great deal in angst from the memsahib, who maintained tartly that it took me six hours and that no one read the blogs anyway. Perhaps not, but it was fun writing them.

And so to the farm across the road to buy some fresh milk.  Life could be a lot worse.

16 April 2020

Blog 39. Three (and a half) Weeks In

“Hell is other people”. So wrote Sartre in his play of 1943. Philosophy is not my forte, but If I were writing an update in 2020 I would write, “Hell is other people and their blasted noise”. Here we are in enforced lockdown in a beautifully warm and sunny Easter weekend, trying to enjoy the peace of an English garden, and all we get is THUMP, THUMP, THUMP of some hideous music from two doors away. Of course, this is not a phenomenon unique to lockdown; it often happens whenever there is a nice sunny day. The problem is living on an estate. I don’t mean an estate like Chatsworth or Woburn. I mean a modern housing estate with the nearest house just ten metres away. If we could afford to move, then we would, but I understand that neither Chatsworth nor Woburn are up for sale at the moment, and even the lesser estates cost more than the £300,000 that our lovely house might raise if we sold it. I have often wondered about buying one of those Victorian forts in the middle of the English Channel: it would suit me perfectly. Our palliative solution to the noise, in previous years, has been simply to load up the car and decamp to our boat in Devonshire. There we have the options of sailing off into wild blue yonder, cruising up river to a quiet spot and anchoring, or simply remaining alongside in the marina. Even the last has its drawbacks, because a high proportion of boat owners seem to take their dogs with them, and the dogs yap continually; but at least we can escape them. The boat option is, of course, not available to us at the moment, so it is on with the sound-deadening headphones and Beethoven, and hope they deaden it all out.

I think the dogs are more irritating than the music, because the barking where we live is incessant. All our neighbours, bar one, have dogs. One neighbour has five. When one starts to bark, the rest join in and it goes on forever. But by far the worst neighbours are next but one from us and we label them The Dog People. Their three dogs bark continually throughout the day (and here I am not exaggerating): if I empty stuff in our bins, then they bark; if I go into my garage, then they bark; if I walk down my drive, then they bark; and if the owners go out, then the dogs howl continuously. Their dogs bark more than the rest of the dogs in the area put together. It can be hell on earth. The dogs are kept in the back garden or conservatory all day, and mess on the artificial lawn, leaving little clumps of faeces for the three children to play with. Lovely.

If there is one profession that has not come out well from this pandemic, then it must surely be journalism.  With a few notable exceptions, our journalists have been appalling.  Their questions of politicians have been rambling, self-seeking, repetitive, negative, vacuous, carping or naïve.  And that is just the adjectives I can think of in a few seconds.   The reporters seem to take delight in finding a weakness in the government strategy, in the plans to fight the infection, in failures of logistics, or in statements made. They find a topic or perceived weakness and worry at it like a dog with a bone: it used to be Instigating Lockdown; then it was Testing; currently it is Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) or Masks.   There is nothing positive or supportive in their approach.  Questions that should or could be asked, that is questions that occur to ordinary folk, are not raised.  In my newspaper today there was one opinion stating that the government delayed lockdown too long, causing unnecessary loss of lives, and another opinion stating that we really should cancel this lockdown before the economy totally collapses, causing loss of lives as collateral damage.   I have cancelled my newspaper subscription.  Just as in the years following the Brexit referendum, I have stopped listening to or reading the news now; the daily brief by the government is quite sufficient and depressing enough, and I do trust it.  Journalists.  They will be the first up against the wall when my revolution comes. 

Now the Royal College of Nursing  (RCN) has come out and told nurses not to work if they haven’t got the correct PPE.  Oh, brilliant!  How helpful!  Let us all just lie down then, and do nothing shall we: don’t treat anyone, don’t move or cremate the bodies, don’t dish out pills, don’t enforce the law, don’t fight any fires, don’t generate electricity, don’t deliver food, don’t collect the rubbish and don’t rescue anyone….the list is endless.  The RCN does not seem to realise that we are all in a crisis together and that all the stops are being pulled out to get PPE to everyone who needs it.  There may still be shortages.  I do not underestimate the genuinely brave work our front line medical staff are doing and I recognise that we are asking them to put their lives on the line; indeed,  they have already suffered casualties in this battle.  But these are exceptional circumstances and they will just have to improvise and make do, just as medical staff have to do in field hospitals.  The medics are not the only people who have to risk there lives in the course of their jobs.   The RCN is becoming less of a Royal College and more of a Bolshie trade union, it seems to me.  As a first step we should take a way the prefix ‘Royal’ from the title.

Well, that seems to wrap it up for noisy neighbours, dogs, journalists and the RCN.  Any more for the firing squad?  Oh, is that your dog?  What a nice little chap.

Well, Jane is attending a coffee morning as I write this.  Such an assembly is difficult in the present circumstances, of course, but she and the other girls (I use the term loosely) among our Good Neighbours have overcome the problem by sitting on garden chairs and conversing across the ten metre gap that is our street.  They started this coven last week and I was amazed then that they could find something to talk about for nearly two hours.  Women have this astonishing ability to converse for long periods; men just say what is necessary, and stop.  On this occasion, Jane has baked cupcakes to accompany the coffee, though I am curious as to how they will be shared across the distance: fired by catapult or trebuchet perhaps.  I suppose, as they are hot from the oven, the cupcakes must be virus-free.  Come to think of it, I have not been offered any.  Men, naturally, are excluded from this loose and loquacious gathering.  I wonder if some busybody, who was not invited, will report the coven to the police.  There is, at the moment, a law against Enjoying Oneself.  

Does anyone else finds that it is the little things in life that generate the challenges to sanity?  I was downstairs this morning preparing the tea for the memsahib and, while it was mashing, I thought I would just check the coffee machine to make sure it didn’t need emptying.  We are real coffee addicts (we won’t touch Instant) and have one of those Nespresso pod machines that makes excellent coffee.  The discarded pods are collected in a hopper and emptied periodically into a recycling bag, which is later collected by Nespresso whenever new pods are delivered.  Sure enough, the hopper was full so I carried it and the drip tray through to the utility room to obtain a new recycling bag, and clean the hopper.  I rummaged in the cupboard for the proper bag, discarding various superfluous items that Jane had hidden in there (old jam jars, used polythene bags, vases, elastic bands, unidentifiable seeds…), but could not find the recycling bag.  However, my enthusiastic search dislodged a spare kitchen roll on top of the cupboard, and this fell on my head.  Calmly (because God has spoken to me before about losing my temper), I picked it up and gently put it back on top of the cupboard.  I closed the cupboard door.  This brought forth an avalanche of spare kitchen rolls, dusters, an old shoe box, a small picnic basket and an aerosol can of Pledge.   These landed on me, dropped in the sink, bounced on the work surface and rolled around the floor.  God, give me strength, but I smiled benignly (“You won’t get through to me!”) as I gathered it all up.  I spoke sternly to them all (if I can talk to a shed then I can certainly give a bunch of kitchen rolls a severe dressing down).  I advised them all that they were coming to within an inch of being kicked around the garden.  Every single one of them.  Well, that told them and, while they were suitably cowed,  I stuffed them all back firmly, decisively and with some force back onto the top of the cupboard.  This time they didn’t fall down.  Mind you, I did notice that the kitchen rolls had become a little flattened and bent in the restoring process, but I can always blame that on Jane’s packing at the supermarket.  I returned to the task in hand, that is to say, the absence of a recycling bag.  Nothing else for it but to dump the old coffee pods in the general waste – something I don’t like doing, but needs must.  So I picked up the hopper and drip tray, dumped the pods and, by some means or other, spilt the entire contents of the drip tray all over the utility room floor.  Cold coffee went everywhere: down the kitchen unit doors, up the walls, over the main door, up to the ceiling, and over me.  It is astonishing how far it went.  That Noel Coward dressing gown will never be the same, and the silk pyjamas will need special cleaning, though I did manage to save the cravat.   It took me quite some time to mop up the mess and clean the floor, the doors and the walls, but I was immensely proud of how calm I had remained throughout – those prayers for tolerance and patience, clearly, had not been wasted.  I returned the spotlessly clean and empty hopper to the Nespresso machine and there – lying on the floor next to the machine in the kitchen – was the empty recycling bag that I had been seeking.
“You took a long time”, said the memsahib after we had gone through the usual temperature and curtain ritual. “What have you been doing?  This tea tastes a bit stewed”

Just wait until she opens that cupboard door.

As I have mentioned before, the memsahib does not do sewing. Her talents (including the uncanny ability to know what I am thinking or when I am stepping on plants) are manifold, but – alas – sewing is not among them. I do my own sewing as necessary: a series of half hitches with button thread works for most things and a purse-string suture works well on holed socks (I have been out with a fair number of nurses). But the onset of this present enforced isolation has driven Jane to take out her sewing box (huge box, nothing in it except three bobbins of thread and two needles) and make an effort at shortening an evening dress and restitching the broken strap of her silk nightdress. This last repair was particularly necessary because the damaged nightdress gave her a sort of lop-sided Amazonian, Boudicca-like look, if you follow me, and I had already cast an amused eye at the result. Well, that evening dress has been hanging on a hook in the dressing room for three weeks now. Today it progressed to the drawing room, where is was draped over the sofa with the Iceni nightdress, Jane siting in the middle of it all with a needle and thread like a medieval maiden whiling away her time waiting for her knight to return from the Wars of the Roses. Curses and un-maidenlike words sprang forth from the room from time to time, and I tiptoed away to do the accounts and other manly tasks until all was done. After about two hours I popped downstairs to get a cup of coffee and glanced through the glass door of the drawing room. She was still sitting there, in the same pose, but playing Word with Friends on her iPhone; the needlework was untouched. I stood in the doorway and cleared my throat tentatively, raising my eyebrows.
“Finished?”
“No. I hate sewing”, was all she said.
It looks like those dresses are going to be there for some time. And now she says she doesn’t feel too good. No cough, no fever. Let’s hope that it is just general malaise.

As I surfed the channels on the television this morning, desperately looking for something worth watching while we sipped our tea (never yet been known to happen, but you never know), I sensed that Jane was a bit embarrassed about saying something.  Finally, she burst out,
“Would you mind awfully if we didn’t do anything today?”
I said nothing and looked uncomfortable.
“Is that all right?”, she asked, looking slightly concerned at my expression.
“Well”, I said, “that’s rather what I was planning to do anyway…”
And here we are.

12 April 2020

Blog 38. Three Weeks In

Well, as the title says, here we are three weeks in and still hanging on. And I am embarrassed to say that, frankly, for us, it hasn’t been that hard. There has been a certain freedom in having no commitments each day: nothing planned, no entertaining, no visits to Marks & Spencer, not spending money, and not even a need to get up. We haven’t gone down the route of the last one, I hasten to say: I have maintained a strict régime in the Shacklepin household, with Call the Hands still at 0700 and Turn To at 0800. Jane really joins into the spirit of this with gusto as she greets each day with a mumbled, “Wha’s the temp’ature…” and gropes for her first cup of energising Oolong, brought in by her doting husband, who moves on to thrust the curtains aside and declare the day officially open.

I say Turn To at 0800, but that only applies to me.  Jane just takes forever transforming herself from the closed sleepy little green shoot into the full-bloomed flower that enlivens each day.  I don’t know what on Earth she does up there for 45 minutes.   While she is doing Things, I am employed in cleaning out the fire grate, humping up the coal, emptying the chamber pots,  stoking the boiler, emptying the dishwasher, chlorinating the door handles, playing with the jigsaw, and making the coffee.  The red china coffee cups (note, ‘cups’ not ‘mugs’) are placed just so on the breakfast table in the Garden Control Tower, the handle of Jane’s cup turned just right for her hand, the stevia pill already in place.  We have a demarcation, you see: I do Drinks (and, by association, drink receptacles); Jane does Food.  We are still arguing about soup.

The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba heralds a complete changeover. I sit morosely with my coffee, doing the crossword while Jane prepares the fruit salad and other delectable titbits for breakfast (the food here is excellent). Breakfast, as I have stated previously, is not a sociable meal, but Jane still insists on talking to me. I think it is a deliberate counterattack for the 0700 wakening. Right on cue, as I write this, she has asked,
“Sorry, can I talk to you?”
Patient sigh…Stops typing.
“Yes dear”
“What are you writing?”
“My blog.  It’s all about you”
Eyes narrow.  “It had better not be…”
Nay, nay my dear. Perish the thought.

One morning, some years ago, I thought I would give her a break and prepare the fruit salad while she was beautifying herself.  How hard can it be?  This could be worth so many credit points.  Fruit, especially exotic fruit, is not really my thing, but I thought I was jolly well going to give it a go.  I chose a pinky round thing and hacked at it, but it had some sort of rock in the middle that made dissection difficult.  I tried an alternative yellow round item and had a go at that, but that had some sort of core.  Time passed by and slimy mush and juice oozed over the chopping board onto the work surface, then slid onto the floor.  This mysteriously distributed itself around the kitchen and onto my clothes.  I also seemed to have cut myself, and bloodstains added to the general impression of the Valentines Day Massacre.  There did not seem to be a lot of fruit in the bowls.  Suddenly, my concentration was disturbed by a voice at the door.
“What, in the name of God, are you doing?  Look at the mess! And that chopping board is for vegetables.  I chop onions on it!  Look, just sit down.  Give it here”
I retired, hurt, to my crossword.  The fruit salad, when it came, was – it is true – not quite up to standard.  It seemed to taste of onion, for one thing.  And as to the fruit I had been mutilating? I have no idea to this day.  Far easier just to stick to Drinks.

Mind you, Drinks can be hazardous too.  Yesterday I found that I had just cleaned all the door handles, keys, kettle, and paper money with Plymouth Gin instead of dilute bleach.  The bottles were very similar, you see, I having used an old gin bottle to hold a mixture of Milton and water as a potent virus killer.  It could have been worse: I could have mixed a Milton and tonic.  On the plus side, that £10 note in my wallet seemed very happy as I put it away to sleep it off.

Spring has come here in Melbury. We have had a succession of sunny days, with temperatures around 23C (73F) and it has been absolutely splendid. I have just seen Jane’s legs and painted toenails for the first time since 2019. We have continued to get out into the hinterland for walks and one benefit of lockdown has been that we have discovered more good walking routes available direct from home. We are probably the fittest we have been for years. Armed with our trusty vacuum flask and sandwiches we have pushed back the frontiers of Barsetshire and conquered new horizons. Not exactly Davy Crockett, you understand, but you get the gist. It is amazing what lovely countryside is available just half an hour from our doorstep, and we have revelled in it. One such expedition took place on Wednesday when we embarked on a circular walk starting at 1100. At 1730 we were still walking. A huge dusty field lay in front of us and we trudged on, one foot in front of the other, heads down, like Captain Scott and Oates desperately seeking Base Camp in Antarctica. The coffee and Christmas cake had been consumed long ago after a particularly arduous climb and Jane was muttering in an insubordinate manner (something about the walk not being supposed to be greater than six miles), but I soon quelled that mutinous behaviour. All those years in the navy were not wasted. Finally, we reached home and collapsed on the doorstep. I looked at my GPS. Eleven miles, not counting the hills, the brambles, the wild roses, the collapsed trees, the bogs and the streams. Jane looked at me with some disapprobation. I confess, we did hit the Pimms after we had had our showers and drunk a bucket of water each. It seemed only fair.

It is a curious thing, but despite the government warnings – and even threats – the social isolation is not being strictly adhered to.  Our walks occasionally take us on a nearby narrow lane sometimes used as a rat run to get to the motorway.  The last time we walked along it we counted 36 cars travelling down the short  lane in ten minutes, not counting ‘working’ vehicles such as tractors, Land Rovers or vans.  They could not all be people popping out to the shops to buy essential goods, especially not the single young men in BMWs and Audis.  Jane was furious (she, it was, who counted them).  I did point out that people sitting in their cars on their own were contaminating no one.  But she had a point: the general traffic around where we live, especially on our nearby bypass, is as heavy as ever throughout the day.  Where are they all going?  Is their journey necessary?  We could become busybodies if we are not careful.  Paradoxically, pedestrians are following the guidance religiously, sometimes literally falling over themselves to keep two metres away as they pass.  I wished one passer-by a cheerful  “Good Morning” the other day and he recoiled from me in horror, despite being about ten metres away.  We are allowed to speak. And good manners cost nothing.

The Thursday “clap for the NHS” at 2000 is now well established and it also gives us a chance to see our neighbours.  These things can be quite inspiring, and it was nice to do the clap thing for Boris too, earlier in the week.  I confess to being a bit self conscious doing the clapping at first.  Rather like the Sign of Peace in church, it is not an English thing to show emotion in public and it can feel artificial. The two-minute silence on Armistice Day is usually as far as we get.  There is a danger, though, of ostracising anyone who does not conform to the Thursday clap (‘through ignorance, through weakness, through our own deliberate fault…’) just as there is for condemning anyone not displaying that child’s rainbow picture in their window (I thought it was supporting the LGBTQ community; it turns out it means ‘we love the NHS’.  I really am behind on the curve).  I gather, though, that the clapping is very much appreciated by our medical staff, even though they do not always witness it, and that makes it all worthwhile.

“It’s awful that Carrie Symonds has caught the virus, especially as she’s pregnant”, said Jane last weekend as we munched our toast at breakfast.
“Yes”, I replied absently, “she won’t be singing ‘Nobody Does it Better’ for a while”
There was a silence.
“Come to think of it”, I continued, ”isn’t she getting on a bit to be pregnant?”
Jane looked at me as if I was being wilfully stupid.
“Who do you think I’m talking about?”
“Carrie Symonds.  Singer.  ‘You’re So Vain’. ‘The Right Thing To Do’ ”,  I replied proudly with a metaphorical flourish, displaying my progress in the CPD (Continuous Pop Development) programme that she had started with me last year.
“That’s Carly Simon, you idiot.  Carrie Symonds is Boris’ girlfriend and partner.  God, you’re hopeless”
Oh.  Yet again, while progressing along the Snakes and Ladders game of life, I had trodden on the snake and had slid back to square one in my wife’s estimation.  I do turn out a good wooden bowl on my lathe though, and make a mean gin and tonic.  Especially the sodium hypochlorite version.

Hey ho.  Must get on.  The coffee things need to be tidied away and Jane needs some advice on baking that cake.

9 April 2020

Blog 37. Two Weeks In

Week Two of Twelve is nearly over and things seem to have settled down a bit here now.  The supermarkets are quiet and almost normal (still no flour though).  Isolation continues, but that has been no hardship for us.  It is debatable whether a point of inflexion has yet been reached on the UK’s CV19 death curve, but I think it is close.  As Winston Churchill said, in another context, it is not the end, it is not even the beginning of the end, but it is [close to] the end of the beginning.  Keep washing those hands. On the plus side, I don’t know about you, but our house has never been cleaner, the pictures have never been more level, and the door hinges have never been better oiled.  It is lovely and quiet, with most people hibernating and no children playing in the street.  I am not sure how parents have achieved the latter: slipped them a double dose of Calpol perhaps, or just tied them up and gagged them.  

It has been heart-warming to observe the positive support that most of the public have given in this crisis.  Whether it is industry gearing up to produce equipment, retired doctors and nurses returning to the NHS, or simply people volunteering to help with community service the whole thing has been inspiring at a bleak time.  Local shops and farms have come into their own and I hope the support there will continue when all this is over.

On another positive note, I was surprised to read that, believe it or not, the number of deaths for England and Wales in 2020 to date (including CV19 deaths) is actually less than the five-year average for that same quarter.  Look it up on the ONS website if you don’t believe me.  That is not to say that the present situation is not serious, but it is something to think about and seems to support the current strategy of isolation.  In previous years at this time, typically about 11,000 people died in England and Wales each week; however, in previous years the government did not announce the death toll on a daily basis as they do now.

I sense minor cracks are beginning to form in the National resolve, instigated by the carping criticism of reporters, who never seem to be able to accept that there are some things a government simply cannot do (such as ‘magic up’ a supply of reliable test kits or PPE).  I don’t know why we bother with the expense of elected governments and science degrees when all we need is a coven of clever-Dicks armed with a degree in journalism and a smattering of buzzwords. The phrase, “a little learning is a dangerous thing” is very apt at the moment.  There was a very good interview on the TV recently in which a Professor of Epidemiology completely demolished one reporter’s half-baked and ill-informed statements politely and firmly.  I do not say that the government is doing a perfect job in handling this crisis, but I do think it is doing well in difficult and unprecedented circumstances and at least it is basing its strategy on the best scientific advice available rather than the dubious opinions of armchair experts.

It is a funny old thing: when China built that emergency hospital in a week (or whatever), all the commentators said how amazing it was and how damned clever those Chinese were.  When the British Army does it in nine days at the Excel arena in London there is little amazement and fewer compliments.  True, some comment has been made on the efficiency and “can do” spirit of the Armed Forces in contrast to the inefficiency and bureaucracy of civilians – though that last comparison is a little unfair as the Excel project (“Nightingale Hospital”) was, in fact a joint venture with the Department of Health and private industry.  It is, however, fair to say that the Armed Forces are pretty good in emergencies and in organisation (well, I would say that, wouldn’t I?).  I remember the reports from Iraq when the British Army was handing over administration of International Aid to Iraq to the Army’s counterparts in the newly-formed civil service Department of that name.  The soldiers’ comment on the civil servants was (and excuse the vulgarity – these rough soldiers), 
“They couldn’t pour piss from a boot with the instructions written on the underside”.  You cannot beat a member of the Services for coming up with a succinct summary of a situation.

You will be pleased to know that Jane and I are still living in peace and harmony, with every wakening a pleasure and every new action a revelation and learning experience.  I gave her an affectionate and proprietorial smack on her bottom the other day as she prepared to take her shower and she promptly clocked me one on my left ear.  I won’t be doing that again.  I have also started helping with the cooking and can claim to be a dab hand at chopping vegetables (I attended a Knife Skills Course in 2017, you know); sadly, and strangely, my offers of assistance have been declined lately, ever since I tidied up the cutlery drawer and suggested we re-order the pans according to size and function.  Reluctantly, I have been forced to avoid the kitchen altogether and, perforce, to watch episodes of Wheeler Dealers and Everybody Loves Raymond on the television (“…God, how many times have you seen this…?”).  At least it is not episodes of I Love Lucy.  Not yet, anyway.

Well, about that shed (I knew you’d be interested).  On Sunday I felt a burst of energy that was only slightly dispelled by the freezing cold wind outside.  Today I was jolly well going to tackle that shed, which did look a little neglected; but before any painting could start it had to be washed down to remove the dirt and green stains.  I reasoned that the stiff north easterly wind would dry the woodwork perfectly in time for Operation Paint on Monday.  If I was out with soap anyway, then I could also wash down my super-duper new car, it being still in the honeymoon phase of car ownership and I still being lovesick with this, my last car ever.  Honestly.

So I gave the car a good soaping and washed it off, dried it carefully, polished the windows and then left it to stand and drip dry.  I then turned my energies to Phase 2 of the day, that shed.  I gave the matter some thought.  While I could use a bucket of detergent and a sponge, that would need to be followed by hosing down and some sanding to remove the loose paint that was in evidence.  It then dawned on me that I could, in fact, combine all three operations if,  instead of the bucket, detergent, hose and sandpaper, I utilised the pressure washer that I had just used  for the car.  A quick spray with the soap, then a good all-round blast with the pressure nozzle would work a treat as combined abrasive and cleaner, leaving time for a warming cup of tea afterwards and the warm congratulations of my good wife who was preparing the Sunday lunch.

I rigged it all up and gave the shed a good dose of soogee.  Then I fitted the pressure nozzle and started with the blasting.  Spoiler alert: don’t do this at home.

The pressure washer certainly cleaned off the shed.  Alas, it also proved to be a little over-zealous.  Our shed is (was) a two-tone affair in the style of a beach hut.  Parallel horizontal stripes of cream and blue complement each other to give our garden that jaunty holiday air (or that is the aim).  Well, before the clean up the shed looked just a little shabby and neglected.  After the clean up it appeared to have developed architectural alopecia.  You see, it is very hard to stop when you use a pressure washer: you always want to clean a little bit more, like when you have peeling sunburn and want to pick off a bit more skin.  In fact this last analogy proved very apt, for it soon began to dawn on me that the process was removing not just the flaky paint, but also the good stuff as well.  Moreover, it became apparent that the fallout from the operation was becoming a problem in itself: a misty cloud was descending steadily, covering the garden, the garage wall, the fence, and me in dirt and tiny dry flakes of Cornflower and Elderflower paint.  I stopped and examined this devastation.  Shed, fine I suppose: the wood was still there.  But the debris?  I glanced surreptitiously at the glassed-in Garden Control Tower (aka the conservatory in normal households) where the Head Gardener was, by that time, alternately playing on her iPad and looking out for green shoots.  Had she noticed?  The wind blew mightily.  No problem, I thought, given a bit of time the paint flakes will be dispersed around the garden and blend in.  Cornflower on cornflower, Elderflower on elderflower.  Very poetic. She’ll never notice, given time.

Time to stow the gear away and slink back indoors nonchalantly.  But first, put the car away.  Oh my God.  The fallout had not confined itself to the garden.  It had swept over the fence and covered the nice clean new car in fine bits of old paint, like radioactive dust from Chernobyl.  I spent the next hour, between bouts of sobbing, dusting (yes dusting) the car delicately to get it all off.  The moral of this story?  Don’t use a pressure washer on wood without adult supervision.  The positive side?  Jane thought I had done a brilliant job on the shed, even if it did look a little piebald.  She hadn’t seen the garden yet.  Blow wind, blow.

Come Thursday and we were suffering from Shed Fatigue.  “Does What It Says on the Tin”, says the spiel on the tin of paint.  What it also says is that you have to apply three coats, each separated by at least four hours.  Two colours of three coats each with four hours between equals, let me think, oh yes – a long time.  Every breakfast this week we have looked out from the Garden Control Tower sipping our coffee and munching our toast and home-made marmalade, looking balefully at The Shed.  The Hated Shed.  We were onto the coats of Cornflower now and the coverage was quite satisfying: it showed up particularly well when it was flicked accidentally onto the cream (“Elderflower”) that had already been done up to Coat 2.  Jane was heard to opine that, next time, if there was a next time, we paint the shed just one colour; I said next time we just leave it as bare wood.  By about noon, things were going quite well and we had just about finished, except one gable end.  It was at that point that I accidentally kicked over the paint can.

It is a measure of how punch drunk (paint drunk?) the two of us were by this time that there was no screaming, no wailing, no rending of cloth: we just set the can upright and continued, using a stepping stone in the shingle path as an excellent palette.  I drew comfort from the fact that the spillage was onto expendable shingle and one stepping stone before I realised that someone (it would be invidious of me to name him) was leaving Cornflower Blue, size 7, boot prints over the solid paving slabs beside the shed door.  It will not come off, of course, not even with a pressure washer (I tried that after the last Shed Fest).  I suggested to Jane that one solution might be to make a feature of these Medium Oak, Elderflower and Cornflower paving slabs by painting them with floor paint,  “Paint them all blue, you mean?”, she enquired innocently.  “No dear, Sandstone”.  Hmmm.  Methinks she has not forgotten that napkin ring story.

Finally, we were finished for the day.  Two and a half coats done.  If that shed wants a third coat it can start whistling Dixie as far as I am concerned.  I am getting a bit worried that I have started talking to a shed and implying that it can whistle.  Must be the virus.  I stood Jane down, cleaned the brushes and stowed the paint cans so that Jane could start seeding out her pricklings or some such horticultural pastime (she had been glancing longingly over her shoulder at the garden all morning), but first we decided to repair indoors and change before having a nice cup of tea.  Jane suggested we do something naughty to celebrate the completion of the shed and duly followed through with two defrosted mince pies left over from Christmas.  They washed our tea down beautifully.

So, next time you visit our humble abode (God willing) you can play one of those games like we encourage children to play when looking in shop windows at carnival time: “ Spot the Oddity”.  Seek out the suntanned patio stones, the blue stepping stone, the multi-coloured shingle, the Giant’s Footprints.  Follow the trail of Medium Oak fence paint spots to find the Secret Garden.   And see if you can find that elusive, but ever present little rascal, Mr Bit. 

2 April 2020

Blog 36. One Week In

We have had yet another sunny and frustrating few days. Frustrating, of course, because we cannot leave home.  We went shopping to Lidl on Wednesday afternoon, the theory being that most people would be sitting in their gardens enjoying the sunshine.  We were right: there were only about six people in Lidl and we fulfilled our order quite well. The only thing we could not get was flour.  Perhaps things are improving.  There is a lot of speculation on how long lockdown must last, based on mathematical models and data drawn worldwide, but it is far too early to favour any one prediction.  Of course Boris, his Health Minister and the Chief Medical Officer all have the virus now, not to mention the Prince of Wales.  No discrimination here, but lots of irony.

Jane kept me busy last week.  Any thought of gentle days in isolation doing –  well – not much of anything was extinguished.  On Wednesday I was turned to spray painting the garden fence – an awful job that I have been putting off for over a year.  To be fair, Jane took on the worse job of masking off the upper trellis to prevent surplus spray hitting the drive or neighbours.  She does not have the standard redhead’s temper, but she really lost it this time: the wind blew the paper off, the tape stuck to itself or would not tear, and someone accidentally sprayed her with fence paint (Medium Oak in colour, as you ask). Then a union loosened on the spray gun and brown stain spilled all over the patio, necessitating a rapid deployment of the hose (which was not turned on at the main) and a pantomime worthy of the Marx Brothers.   So now we have a brown fence, a suntanned patio, and a freckled wife (who looks rather cute).  

Thursday was “wire up the pyracantha day”, involving the fitting of sturdy 3mm wire rope to ring bolts in our brick garden wall to hold up the aforementioned vicious shrub. A previous arrangement, using garden wire and ring bolts, came apart during strong winds this winter (the wind pulled the bolts out of the brick). I was dreading this job even more than the fence spraying. You see, as I have undoubtedly stated before, Jane’s garden hates me. Honestly, it really does. I pass through that garden, or even walk on the garden path, and it is like The Day of the Triffids out there. Roses snag me, hawthorn slashes me, pyracantha impales me, and the very earth coats me in filth. Even the benign plants get at me by passive innocence, because every time I step on a flower bed there is usually a crunch or a squelch from a squashed item of flora and a sharp reprimand from the Head Gardener. Given all that, you can imagine how climbing into a full flower bed next to a well-established pyracantha, armed with a power drill and several metres of wire went. I am scarred for life and we ran out of some fittings, but most of the job was done though I was shattered. Another three months of this and I will be very fit or totally exhausted. I understand that she wants us to paint the garden shed tomorrow. I have known Chief Boatswain’s Mates with less energy.

Returning to the present, we managed another good walk in the countryside and sunshine yesterday, strolling (as required) straight from home.   We met no one on the walk except a farmer in his tractor, who thanked us for walking round the edge of his field rather than pedantically taking the correct path that went straight across his crops.  The birds sang in the trees, the sun shone, and it was good to be alive.  We managed seven (felt more like seventeen) miles on the circular walk and oozed smugness on completion.  We did treat ourselves to a sensible cup of tea on return, closely followed – after the evening shower and change into Night Clothing – by a refreshing glass of rosé.  It was, after all, Friday and – hence – the start of the weekend when all self-imposed prohibition restrictions are lifted.

Thinking of the present crisis, it surprises me that, so far, we have not seen the return of those hallowed wartime phrases such as, “Don’t you know there’s a war on?”, “Closed for the Duration”, “Make Do and Mend” and “Put that light out”.  I already have a mug that says, “Keep Calm and Carry On”.  All would be applicable except, perhaps the penultimate one, though I’m sure we could fit that in somehow – if only to satisfy the climate change lobby.  Much to my surprise, Barsetshire police is enforcing the self-isolation rules quite rigidly:  road checks have been established and people in cars have been challenged as to their destinations; cars towing caravans have been turned back; people have been told that it is not acceptable to drive to a beauty spot and park their car in order to exercise in the countryside – they must exercise direct from home.  Actually, I think that that is over-zealous: it would be far safer and beneficial to walk on the Barsetshire fields (for example), where you would meet no one, than it would be to walk through the concrete streets of a town or city, but there you go.  Even the two metre rule could be challenged, for the virus does not jump through the air on its own.  The rule is only there in case someone coughs or sneezes without covering their mouth or nose, thus projecting the droplets onto people nearby.  Of course, no one knows that they are going to cough or sneeze as it is an involuntary reaction, so we have to take precautions accordingly – hence the two metres.  Mind you, I read today that MIT has calculated that two metres is insufficient if someone has a bout of sneezing or coughing, but I guess we will just have to live with that – even two metres is difficult in practical terms for getting around or queuing.

I think it is important to keep up a routine and standards in these peculiar circumstances lest we lose our dignity or, for that matter, a sense of what day it is.  I have read of some people who, given the absence of going out to work, have not even bothered to dress each day or (presumably) to wash.  We have kept up our daily routine, though I did have to point out to Jane that she had failed to return her napkin to its napkin ring after breakfast the other day, and had not squared off her place setting.  She was very grateful for my remarking on this neglect though I note today (at 1500) that the napkin remains un-stowed.  Hmmm, perhaps another approach is called for.

Today it has turned overcast and there is a cold northerly breeze blowing, so we feel no conscience about staying in and not venturing forth. I am sitting in our nice, brightly-lit conservatory looking at my nemesis, the garden, while Jane – who earlier was doing battle with the slugs and snails before the cold defeated her – is making ice cream before mutilating a butternut squash and cleaning prawns for supper. A semi-normal day then. Almost time for a shower, a change into Red Sea Rig and a glass of Hock…after all, the clocks go forward tonight so it is nearly 1800 in BST.

28 March 2020

Blog 35. Day 1 of Lockdown

Day Three since Self Isolation and Day One of Lockdown.  The Prime Minister moved on last night from, “Come on chaps, be sensible” to, “Well, I did warn you.  Now I’m jolly cross.  Stay in or be fined”.   As to fines, well, what the police should do to offenders is fine them one pack of toilet rolls.  We were going down to the boat this week but, of course, that is ruled out now as being non-essential.  

Difficulty with shopping for groceries continues to dominate, as – I dare say – it does with you, though it is not as bad here as in the cities (Our son, in Beaufortshire, says he can get nothing and the shelves are bare). Jane and I are not doing binge shopping, just doing what we have always done, but we went to Waitrose yesterday and found that there was no tinned food, no flour and no pasta. There are stacks of Corona beer though. Weird. At last, the supermarkets are limiting customers to three or four of each commodity. We cannot get any deliveries: all slots are booked up to the middle of April and the Ocado website said that we were 3,561 in a queue of 3,450 just to log on! Fortunately, being semi rural, we have a few local farm shops selling meat and vegetables and we get our milk direct from the farm across the road (though that had a queue on Sunday as the word has got out).

On a more cheerful note, we went for a long walk yesterday, way out in the countryside, starting at Much Deeping and passing through Clyst Magna, then Little Wallop before returning to Much Deeping.   It was absolutely gorgeous, God having decided – with supreme irony – to grace us with sunny weather all week.   We could see for miles, met only six people, three of whom were on horseback and all of whom kept two metres way.  As has become our practice, we took a flask of tea and sandwiches and took refreshment on a bench in the sunshine of the churchyard at Clyst Magna, just listening to the birds. 

It was a good walk up to that point and that, the tea, the sandwiches and the sunshine led to a false sense of security.  A hint of what was to come came from the fact that we had descended steeply into the village, ergo, we must – at some time – ascend again to get back to our starting point.   Our return, via the village of Little Wallop, involving a strong climb up an escarpment and a great deal of muddy rutted fields.  To add to this, our guidance notes for the walk (taken from a local magazine) became vague at this point, so that we lost the route.   I had to revert to my trusty Ordnance Survey map to get us back and some paths were not well marked, or were partially overgrown with brambles.  I was ‘mansplaining’ to Jane about the spacial skills that all men inherently have, and took the time to point out various landmarks to her on the map when she interrupted and asked, “Shouldn’t we be going that way in the direction of the footpath sign, not the other way”.  Oh.  So we had to climb back over a particularly difficult stile all over again and proceed in the correct direction.  I explained this away as an alternative route that we could take, if she really insisted, though the first route was more picturesque.  I’m not sure she was taken in.

I don’t know what it is with Jane. Her ability to step into the deepest muddy pools that could compete with the Everglades, and to make the task of climbing over stiles comparable with scaling Everest, never ceases to amaze me. I suppose the latter is because of her short legs. When we tottered back into the car park where we had left the car (4 ½ hours after setting out) we were both quite muddy, but she had the stuff almost up to her knees. Back home, we just stripped our walking gear off and threw it straight into the washing machine then lay on the bed in our underwear, drinking tea before taking our showers (on the bed, and not in the drawing room, because we did not want anyone looking in and thinking we were kinky). I confess that, when Jane suggested this slightly bizarre form of undress and repose in the bedroom, I did raise an eyebrow: it was not St Crispin’s Day or the Queen’s Birthday. I told her that I was a bit fagged out but, if she was up for that, then so was I. She very quickly put me right on her intentions, even before I could get a sock off. Women! So hard to read their signals.

We tune in daily to Boris’  daily press conferences/ briefings on CV19 at about 1715 daily and that was why we did not shower immediately (that and near exhaustion).  Of course, yesterday there was no briefing after all because he was chairing a Cabinet meeting – instead we got the broadcast to the nation, later, at 2030.  So at 1715 we sipped our tea and watched a programme on PBS America on the subject of The Black Death.  It really cheered us up.

I see that Mr Trump is thinking of ignoring the scientists’ advice and lifting their lockdown soon in order to aid the economy.  Well, it is a point of view I suppose and I think I follow his reasoning…but where will he put all the sick people and build the funeral pyres?  From what I have read, the USA is suffering the same shortfall in PPE and ventilators as us, which is worrying for the greatest nation on Earth.   I see that the USA has offered help to Iran and North Korea, only to be told “no” and that the USA started the virus.  Not even a “thank you”.   So it’s all their fault..

We are bored with the television already and have just cancelled our Netflix subscription, though we are trying to get up to date with watching “The Lost Kingdom” before the subscription actually ends on 27 March.  Books are keeping us going: I have just finished a book on the Plantagenets and have now started on the Romans.

Well I am trying to end on an optimistic note.  Apparently China is coming out of its purdah and folk are beginning to get around again (you must be relieved); the rate of cases/deaths in Italy is slowing at last, I understand.   If you take the number of deaths as a percentage of population (as opposed to the number of cases), then the percentage is actually quite small…though that is not much consolation if any of those deaths are of friends and dear ones.  We will come out of this.  Battered and bruised, perhaps but – I hope – all intact.

24 March 2020

Blog 34. Passage from New York

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.

Blog 33. Passage from New York

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…

Blog 32. New York in RMS QUEEN MARY 2

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.

Blog 31. Passage to New York

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.