LETTER #1 - NORTH ATLANTIC

Standing next to me in the men’s loo, a gentleman asks: Is today Tuesday?” There was a kind of wry amusement in his question, my own amusement that we had bee on board the Queen Mary Two since only last night. The sense of time will attenuate as the week goes on. But for now, everything is new, brilliant, eye-catching and seductive. It all makes the time seem to stand almost still.

Enough poetic wool-gathering. We have been on this remarkably calm and serene ocean for almost two fays. Today there is a breeze and a long ocean swell has developed a swell that this superb piece of marine engineering has conquered – so far. She is living up to all the advance billing about the engineering that reduces (but doesn’t eliminate) any sense of pitch and roll. Only a delicate swing. I worried that Shirley would find it uncomfortable, given her distaste for travel by water, Not at all.

I had hoped that I could, as in past “letters” deliver some kind o observations about the “who” and “what” of my fellow travellers. The first surprise was that the passengers, whom I had expected to belong to my own geriatric class, included hundreds of young people, young families, singles and seekers and even at least one aging but still predatory unmarried women from Arizona.

We have just come from a lecture (to a packed theatre) by famed British journalist and independent M.P. Martin Bell. He is the elder statesman among British TV journalists and he took us on a trip through the world’s past as he reported it – Bosnia, Yemen, Darfur – and points in between. He has been q witness to history. He served most recently with UNICEF. His “take” on war, is predictable and he sometimes seems more interested in amusing than enlightening his audience. But he is good at it.

Before that an unexpected breakfast treat: a conversation with Hugh Petter. He does “lecture recitals” and is one of many celebrity attractions we meet every day. I heard him yesterday in a recital with commentary. His commentaries were amusing, but then I love anything to do with music. He playing was not up to the same standard. He was, to put it simply – sloppy – missing notes, “faking” passages he couldn’t or wouldn’t handle. He trudged along through Beethoven and a very flawed “Pathetique” sonata. Then some Schubert and a musical massacre of Grieg’s Wedding at Troldhaugen. I’m exaggerating. He plays better than I do.

I saw him at breakfast and asked if I could join him. What do I say now? Your playing was slipshod? What followed was about two hours of my favourite conversation with musicians about music. We ranged from Bach thr9ough Beethoven. He is encyclopedic about chamber music and hummed parts of Schubert and Beethoven. We got into very special themes, like the repetitive theme that Sibelius used in his – I think – seventh symphony. We had a grand time chewing through Dvorak and Debussy, through the great \artists like Horowitz and Rubenstein, with a detour for Martha Argerich. I was in a state of bliss and I forgot totally about his playing.

I had hoped to be able to observe some common quality about people who tackle a sea passage and how they compare with the gluttonous “cruise” patron s who gorge themselves at very opport7unity on a 24 hour smorgasbord then troop off collectively to the next port of call where they infest the streets and jam the stores. (That is a completely unqualified observation. I have never r taken a cruise (except for two river cruises, and have only the reports of friends to base my comments on.)
I worried that the table assigned to us in the huge Britannia Room would be with an overweight couple of hard-right Republican s from somewhere in the Midwest. Instead we struck gild. A real estate man from San Francisco, twice divorced and on his way to a family wedding in Cortona. An undisguised liberal. A German couple who seem on the one hand to be concerned about how the Right has taken over managing the American economy, while at the same time bemoaning the fact that hard-working Germans are being asked to bail out a Greece, a county of lazy ne’er-do-wells. For spice we were joined by a couple of English women, one a doctoral candidate in motion picture arts, the other a ballet teacher – both with wide ranging and humourous points of view. In all, a fortuitous assembly for us. There was only one bump in the road – lunch today with a couple from London Ontario I “picked up” on the way into the dining room. She was Scottish and didn’t seem to have an “off” switch on her mouth.

I promised I wouldn’t spend a lot of time talking food. If you’
If you've cruised you know all about it. The Britannia Room food was superb, the service impeccable. I remember a few items: a gently poached piece of Boston Cod, a tenderloin that was broiled with care, and a rack of lamb pink and perfect. However, I learned again, to my dismay that breakfast buffets are all the same: rubbery eggs, cold bacon, indigestible pancakes and not even close to laky croissants.

Briefly – a note about performances. There is nightly fare in a spacious theatre. The first was a knockout cabaret performance by the star of the Los Angeles production of “Les Miz” and last night a meaningless pastiche called “Viva Italia” – a pointless, but well performed string of Italianesque songs (sung in English) and danced to with vigour but not much else. No plot. No script. No meaning. A kind of mindless “Mama Mia.”

It is already Thursday morning, and I am finishing this off on the way to a better breakfast.