July 7th

At Sea

The thing about blogging about a crossing is that except the first and last days, every day is a sea day. This could get boring!

I was worried about the position of my cabin as it is between a crew area and the lifts. I though it would be noisy. Maybe it will be, but I slept like a log and never heard anything.

I also thought it would be claustrophobic not having a window, but so far I’m not missing the window at all.

Today’s Programme showed a very busy schedule – there are several parts of the day when I would like to be in 2, if not 3 places at the same time. It’s actually quite frustrating.

I started off going to the spa lecture on “Ayurveda, What’s your Dosha?” Apparently I would find out what Dosha I am, and how to balance it. I have no idea of what a Dosha is, but, who knows, mine may be out of whack and in need of realignment. Enquiring minds need to know. Well I think the speaker’s Dosha may also be off kilter as he never showed, nor did anyone else. It later occurred to me that I might very well have been in the wrong place. Could happen.

To avoid having to go through immigration in Southampton, there is a British Immigration officer on board, so we can do our clearance on the ship. Still concerned about my Dosha I thought I could balance myself and do the immigration thing.

I showed the officer my passport and explained to him that I would be leaving the UK on the same day that I arrived in Southampton. He couldn’t understand why someone would just take a ship from the US to the UK, only to return to the US the same day as you get to the UK. He clearly had never done a crossing before, so I tried to explain the whole QM2 crossing thing to him, and get him all educated.

Some people just don’t want education is all that I could say about how that conversation went.

Still feeling unbalanced I went to the Cunard Insights lecture. John MacLean talked on “A Space Journey – Exploring the Solar System”. He was very funny and it was an excellent talk. He also seems to feel that Pluto should not have been demoted to a dwarf planet. Apparently there were no planet experts on the committee that decided it. Yet again an example of people relying on isolated facts rather than seeing the whole picture. I liked his outlook on the universe, and was feeling much more balanced after his talk, and the concern about my Dosha was diminishing. Who would have known that while many planets are named after mythological characters, the word earth is derived from an Anglo Saxon word?

The next talk was on climate change, by the apparently well-known celebrity, the Right Honorable The Lord Lawson, otherwise known as Nigel, Lord Lawson of Blaby and “as taking a leading part in the successful campaign for Britain to leave the EU”. I am sure it was a wonderful and very important presentation, but my book and the Commodore Club were calling, and I abandoned the concept of education for the morning.

At his noon announcement Captain Wells let us know that we were sailing through George’s Bank – named after the saint rather than the monarch. We are on the Great Circle Track, and to the north of us is the gulf of Maine. This is a semi-enclosed sea, with a very productive eco system. The Bay of Fundy is part of it, with its highest tidal variations on the planet. We tried to see it once on QM2, but the winds were to high for us to get into the port. He then announced the results of the World Cup soccer quarterfinal game – England won. Yay!

I had lunch in the Carinthia Lounge again. This is becoming a new favorite place. The once creepy and empty feeling space really is so much improved. I found it hard to find a seat for my lunch, and ended up sitting with a very interesting lady who is an author.

Then it was time to head to G32 for the Guest Choir rehearsal. Nicole and Victor, two of the singers, are the coaches, and were fun to work with. The first song we rehearsed was “There’s no business like show business” and they encouraged us to channel our inner Ethel Merman, which might have been a challenge for some of the men there. The other song was “Do re mi”. I found it very easy to channel my inner Julie Andrews. I had always wanted to be her when I grew up, although alas there really were no similarities between the two of us. Anyway, I sang my heart out, trying desperately hard to sound just like her, to the distress of those around me. OK, so I won’t try that again.

In the afternoon I went to hear General Nick Haley talk on his war stories. Not exactly my cup of tea, but the audience seemed to enjoy it, and again it was very educational. Maybe the reason I had so much trouble with it is that it was scheduled at the same time as afternoon tea, and I had had a huge inner struggle about whether I should gain knowledge or calories. I opted for knowledge. I am not sure I will make the same mistake again. I also missed out on afternoon trivia.

I had been having tremendous difficulty trying to add a page for this crossing to my blog. The internet speed has been awfully slow, and it kept on timing out before I could achieve my goal. I decided to pay a visit to Adam in the IT department to see if he could solve this problem. Despite a valiant effort he could not, and advised me to try again once we were back on dry land. I was feeling quite disappointed, but as I was about to leave, my friend Deidre from last year’s voyage on Queen Victoria arrived with her own computer issues. It was wonderful to see her, and we planned to meet up later.

I have noticed that there seem to be more children than usual on this voyage. They are well behaved for the most part, but some seem to be constantly yelling and running up and down the corridors, or riding up and down in the lifts. Mind you, I am guilty of riding up and down in the outside scenic lift, so I shouldn’t complain. There also seem to be more mobility scooters than usual – so with the scooters, children, and house keeping trolleys, navigating the corridors has become a major challenge. But I am up for the challenge.

Tonight was the first formal night – the theme was the Cunard Ball, so I wore my black dress, and red and gold stole, trying to be in keeping with the funnel and Cunard colors. Although there were certainly many people in very casual dress around the ship, I did not see them in the Commodore Club, dining room, or Queens Room.

Deidre and I met up for drinks in the Commodore Club. It was great to catch up with her news. It was also great that as well as the nuts and olives we were offered canapés. I was feeling quite hungry.

After drinks we went to the Queens Room for the Welcome on Board party. Again, instead of receiving an individual invitation, information about the party was in the Daily Programme.

We waited in line to shake hands with the Captain and chatted to him briefly – Deidre has known him for a long time, and I needed to alert him that I would be asking him to sign my logbook again. Cordelia, the social hostess, let us sit in the area reserved for passengers with mobility issues (which was actually almost empty surprisingly enough, so we weren’t taking chairs away from those who needed them), so at least we had seats from where we could watch the activities and drink sparkling wine.

Captain Wells gave an amusing speech as always, and updated us on the passenger nationalities. Although it feels like the ship is full of Americans, we are again in the minority. The Brits outnumber us by far again. Maybe we are just noisier. There are also 7 dogs and 1 cat on board for the crossing.

We walked into the dining room and I showed Deidre my table. It is situated on the lowest level of deck 3, about as far aft as you can go. From the table you can look down on the hosted table on deck 2. We decided to check out who was going to be sitting with the captain tonight; as yet again I had not been invited. We saw Cordelia remove one of the place settings. A golden opportunity if ever there was one. Deidre headed down stairs instantly and pointed out that it would not look right to have an empty place at the captain’s table, and offered to solve the problem by taking the empty spot. What a thoughtful person!

That’s her looking as elegant as ever in a floral white dress and pink gloves.

Dinner was excellent – escargot, surf and turf, and chocolate soufflé. I do like formal night menus.

After dinner Mary Ann, Linda, and Suzanne from my table decided to go and watch the dancing at the ball. We could not persuade our gentleman table companions, Hugh and Gordon, to join us alas.

We found a great table for people watching, and were just settling in when we were all approached by the gentleman hosts, and whisked off to dance with them.

Now I can dance very adequately to ABBA music, but as much as I love dancing, I am hopeless at ballroom dancing. I spent the evening dancing with several of the hosts, all of whom tried very hard to teach me, but even the simplest of waltzes had me stumbling all over the place. Anyway I had the best time, and could have danced all night, but I fear the hosts had met their match with trying to dance with me. I’m not sure they will try again.

Deidre joined us after her fancy dinner, and danced the night away too. I really missed not having Brian there with me, and resolved that I will drag him to ballroom dancing lessons when I get home.

Being the Cunard Ball, they had a Cunard quiz, and we won. The only question we got wrong was that Cunard ships are launched with wine rather than champagne. I need to research the history behind that. It just seems wrong. I am quite sure SOME Cunard ships have been launched with champagne. Anyway, our prize was a bottle of Pol Acker, so we grabbed some glasses and flattened it.

It had been another perfect day on board Queen Mary 2.