Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Relieved that I had not been marooned, I spent the next week enjoying the cruise. The weather was fine on most days although a couple of mornings I awoke to the waves shooting above my porthole. When I told a couple of people about this, they asked if I had a balcony. Thank goodness I didn’t, I’d have been washed away. Not marooned but drowned.
I spent the cruise in a very relaxed manner. I strolled around the ship and found new places every day. My best find was a very sunny deck, a lower one than the one with the pool and blissfully with no loud music. I spent many happy hours in the sunshine reading Ben Pimlott’s excellent biography of Harold Wilson.
The politicians of those days were giants compared to today‘s.
I also slept a lot, possibly because the ship rocked like a vast and gentle cradle. One morning I went to the open hour cinema to see the film Barbie. I enjoyed it until the rocking of the cradle lulled me into a lovely snooze. I woke after the key point of the film so went to take part in a quiz instead.
I went to several quizzes and enjoyed them all. A very pleasant American couple asked if we could be a team, both were retired colonels and we enjoyed taking part so they invited me to join a larger team for the ongoing quiz competition.
The prize for the team who successfully endured the ten days of torture aka quiz, was a bottle of champagne. Judging by the fanatical passion of some of the teams you would have thought the prize was a vineyard in Champagne. I met some lovely people, all Americans and not fanatical and saw them outside of the constraints of the quiz.
Talking of champagne, the one thing I found disappointing on the cruise was the wine. Every glass I had was mediocre at best, some could not aspire to even that. My dad would have been 100 years old on the 6th November so I bought a bottle of wine and shared it with the table. I almost wished I hadn’t because it was so poor. If I’d been in France I’d have sent it back but I decided to grin and bear it. Judging by the looks on their faces, my fellow diners did as well but they were kind enough not to say.
Happy Birthday, Dad.
I went to an ice-dancing show which was charming, not to say downright dangerous on a moving ship. But I decided against the comedians who looked like they had escaped from an end of the pier show. Or possibly been sacked or run out of town.
I preferred the guitarist who played outside my favourite café. He was excellent. As were a small group who played a range of pop and rock with skill and enthusiasm. I was not, however, the only one who liked them. They had a bigger fan.
Some of you may remember Uri Geller who toured the TV stations in the 70s and 80swith his magic tricks, the he highlight of which was bending spoons by psychokineis. This evening, a passenger stood listening to the group close to where I was sitting. He was probably in his 80s, incredibly skinny and watched and danced to the band. And as he watched, he waved his hand over not a spoon but a fork. It bent up and down as if it was made of plasticine. His face was aglow with pleasure as he did so.
He was obviously known to several members of the crew so he may have been one of these:
Ben Gunn (see my previous post),
A passenger who lived on the ship,
A retired Cruise Captain with no home to go to,
Uri Geller himself although with a different body and face.
I’ll never know the truth of this man of mystery but I think there’s a story to be discovered here.
Talking of which, on the first three or four days of the cruise, I was greeted by a clap on the shoulder and a cheery hello by a man who thought I was a great buddy but who I had never seen before. And then I never saw him again. Perhaps he had been marooned on Gran Canaria.
So this was the Atlantic crossing part of my cruise, eating good food, drinking dreadful wine, taking part in quizzes, snoozing on deck, chatting to lots of happy and affable fellow cruisers and looking out over the endless ocean and returning to my cabin to find new sculptures made from towels by my cabin attendant John. They must take courses in it.
Just hanging around.
The elephant in the cabin.
We saw one small fishing boat – we were a day out of the Canaries and the same from the African coast so it must have sailed from one of these. I would have been happy to sail on it had it been on the Queen’s Park Boating pond in Chesterfield but would have needed to be bound and gagged to venture out on it so far from land.
And then, one day, like a sailor on one of Christopher Columbus’s ships, I saw a bird. We must be getting closer to America, I thought like a seasoned man of the seas. Sometime later, it may have been the next day even, I glimpsed an island on the horizon as the sun was setting. Someone told me it was one of the private islands of the Bahamas.
And then next day, I awoke in the small hours as we pulled into America. I was here.
As I mentioned in earlier posts, there had been some suspicion of my visa when I joined the ship and then there was the fact that I had not handed my passport in to be stamped. Would this jeopardise my entry to the United States? I had unpleasant memories of the immigration official at New York who barked commands and threats at people. I might be locked up.
Even more worrying, in 2003, on my only visit to America, I was given a parking ticket in Carmel-by-the-Sea in California. I tried my best to pay it, the only way was by phone, and every attempt failed. In the end, I left money with the car rental company to pay it for me. I never knew if they did. The problem was that Clint Eastwood had been Mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea. I’ve seen his films; he was a man who bore a grudge. Would he be waiting for me at Miami, cheroot in mouth, wearing a poncho, his fingers twitching for his gun?
But instead, I was greeted by a very pleasant young woman who directed me to an efficient immigration officer who did not bark at me but smilingly took my finger-prints (probably on Clint’s orders) and bade me a good day.
I was through the final hurdle. I caught a taxi and swept through the Miami streets to the hotel where my friends Mark and Jayne were waiting with the warmest of welcomes for me. I was so happy to be here.
Martin, there has to be food for a great novel on those ships.
Skeletons in every cupboard - imagine!