LETTER #2 THE QUEEN GETS CLOSER

Letter #2 – THE QUEEN GETS CLOSER
Friday August 26 and with three days to go I finally met what I had dreaded, an American with “attitude.” Sitting at a table next to us, a gangly man in his 60’s is wearing a Viet Nam Veteran peaked cap complete with the gold braid. The cap is an invitation to others of like age and mind to join him. One does. He’s a man in his 80s who trumps Viet Nam with his stories about WW2 landings in Okinawa.

The response from the Viet Nam vet was something like: “We dropped two nucular (sic) bombs on them and ten years later they were running high speed trains. I was there on R&R (from Viet Nam) and they were better off than most Americans.”

But what really got me cranked up was earlier in our conversation when he declared that “all politicians are corrupt and on the take. Name me one who isn’t. My own congressman from Arizona admitted as such.” So, instead of meeting an Ugly American, I met an Angry one. Really, not so much “angry” as completely disillusioned,
to the point that he believed American s were being “taken for a ride by
politicians.” In spite of his condemnation of politicians, he seemed to be thriving.
I didn’t dare get into things like health care or economics – I’d have had an earful of stuff like: “Too much government.”

He even declared that our old enemies made better cars than “we” did and that all American cars were not worth the money.

It was not long Ago that one of my blogs was all about how negativity has tarnished all politicians. How were have so degraded them that we are losing faith in the entire institution of politics. We do have it in Canada, but nothing like the disaffection and alienation Americans – while still believing they live in the greatest country on earth - have to endure.

I would have to be that this man votes about as far Right as you can get. Everything about him was cynicism mixed with patriotism. But what came through for me was that he had been anaesthetized by events and instead of trying to change things, simply wants no more to do with it. But I’m betting that if there were a national emergency – he’d be back volunteering, just as he had volunteered to go to Viet Nam.

It was an eye-opener. For the past couple of days my connections seem to have been to nothing but middle class Brits and their families and their eternal need to find other middle class Brits to talk to. A couple we sat next to yesterday chatted with us briefly until another couple arrived and they could talk about Blighty to each other. Do I sound cynical?

The crossing has become rather humdrum. What there is to see we have seen. What there is to do is more of the same. Last night we were treated to a show in the big theatre.
A man named Bob Arno, billed as the world’s only legal pickpocket, treated us to a hilarious evening as he literally undressed several passengers while relieving them of credit cards, watches and wallets.
Now I am sitting next to the door to the balcony. To my right the sun “glisters” (thank y0ou John Keats) off an endless ocean. Shirley is wrapped up in a book. I too have a book, appropriately “Atlantic” by one of my favourites – Simon Winchester. I have to quote him because he writes in an evocative way I can only dream off. He is still a youth and is taking his first ocean voyage – the Empress of Britain from Liverpool to Montréal.
The ship is off Newfoundland when suddenly it stops. An RCAF plane appears and drops, via parachute, a package containing a drug needed by a suddenly sick elderly woman. The engines start up and they resume the passage. Winchester writes: “There was something uncanny about the sudden silence, the emptiness, the realization of the enormous depths below us and the limitless heights above, the universal grayness of the scene, the very evident and potentially terrifying power of the rough seas and the wind, and thru fact that despite our puny human powerlessness and insignificance, invisible radio beams and Morse code signals had summoned readily offered help from far away.”
I am humbled by Winchester knowing that the best I can come up with is the clichéd “trackless ocean” which spreads itself around us.

Finally, for those who have cruised and expect groaning tables of continuous food, this transatlantic trip doesn’t have it. I am still trying to get a decent breakfast. Yesterday we tried the Britannia Room for breakfast. It started well with two small puffy triangles of French toast but quickly went downhill with corned beef hash that was so salty it would have killed anyone with high blood pressure. When I complained, I was told that it came from a can from their supplier. I told them to speak to their supplier. I didn’t get into kitchen orthodoxy which preaches that no decent chef allows food to be taken from the kitchen unless he has tasted it. Shame on Cunard for that one.

We had even tried an alternative to the wonderful dinner in the Britannia and headed for “The Carvery.” It consisted to a typical buffet “bain marie” with an assortment of pre-cooked meat dishes. The only “carved” meat was desperately overcooked pork tenderloin accompanied by soggy roast potatoes. Tonight we return to the safe haven of the Britannia.

This afternoon we’ll do a movie in the “Illuminations” room.

If these words are a bit hard to follow blame the slight rolling of the ship. Nothing is perfect – but we’re close. The slight roll and my having to concentrate on a moving computer screen is have an unwanted effect.