REPORT 46 SEPTEMBER 2006
Portugal, Spain and Italy in successive days does make one start sounding like Anita Eckberg . . .
Some people come over very superior when I mention being a guest speaker on the QE2. They tend to make patronizing remarks about bingo and zimmer frames but although I don’t suppose I would holiday with Cunard if it weren’t for being asked to do talks on board I enjoy the experience. The ship is part of history and has felt special to me ever since I saw her sail into New York for the first time in 1969; you don’t have to play bingo - or bridge or go to the dance shows or fox trot. You can just amble round the deck and read a book. But the food and drinks are good, you visit interesting places in painless circumstances and a number of the people are fascinating. I hope I’ve never been ageist but I’ve always enjoyed talking to older people simply because they’ve nearly always got interesting experiences to relate. Besides, being able to speak to an audience for forty five minutes or so, without notes, is an interesting challenge.
We were driven to Southampton docks on the last Tuesday in August - the 29th - picking up some copies of Death and the D’Urbervilles which were unsold after the last voyage. I had to buy them back from Ocean Books. The economics are a touch depressing. I bought them back at a discount of fifty per cent. They’ll now go on sale at the full price and the total commission is 40%. I can’t be bothered to do the sums but it doesn’t seem a lot for me. I’m also taking on a dozen or so early Bognors because Back-in-Print who do them couldn’t negotiate a mutually acceptable deal with Ocean Books.
It’s wonderfully painless checking on to the ship compared with the nightmare of doing the same thing with an aeroplane. There is security, of course there is, but it’s all incomparably less painful. Your bags are taken off and miraculously transported to the usual very nice stateroom on One Deck and when you get on board you yourself are taken to the room by a smiling stewardess. Fruit and half a bottle of sparkling wine in a bucket. All very civilized.
We have a table for two in the Queen’s Grill which seems to be more crowded than when we first went across the Atlantic with Ruth and Sheridan Morley in 1998 but David and Denis, the two Maitre Ds are still there and we have ordered steak tartare which Denis will prepare at our table on Friday night. It’s a piece of pure theatre.
I am first up on the first day at sea. Michael Freedland has to wait till Saturday. I like this because it means you have a small piece and picture in the daily newspaper and as the result of the performance and the television you have a whole lot of instant friends. The TV is a bit of a shock. They record your performance on video and play it back throughout the rest of the day on Channel 17. The worst thing is that as you are changing in to dinner jacket in your cabin, your wife idly turns on the set and you find yourself saying, "Who is that old bore? Why is he talking so indistinctly? He doesn’t know half as much as he’s trying to make out. Why didn’t he brush his hair properly? Oh God, it’s me."
It seemed to go OK. One person said it was difficult to hear at the back because I turned my head from side to side and went 'off-mike'. He was the only one who mentioned this but of course the laws dictate that it is always the criticism, however minor, that you remember and the praise, however lavish, that you ignore. The ballroom can wire you up with a lapel mike which means you can turn and gesticulate or even walk around. The theatre has a fixed mike.I could pick it up and hold it but I don’t like that as I like to have my hands free... Later that day one man came up and said I was so wonderful that he had gone back to his cabin and watched me four whole times more . Penny’s reaction was, naturally, "Why doesn’t he get a life?" Mine was to forget him and keep worrying about the man who said he had trouble hearing.
I took some questions of which there were several but much more gratifying is the way people keep coming up to you all round the ship and imparting little confidences. I spoke about royalty and in return had one man who was a railway policeman responsible at one point for guarding the royal train - he had a very good anecdote about exploding undergrowth near Newton Abbot; a woman who got an MVO and worked for Farrers, the royal lawyers; another who remembered standing in the Mall during the Coronation and being given a cape by a guardsman when it started to rain. A Bognor fan bought Bognors, a couple bought Village Cricket for their son-in-law who was in the village final at Lord’s last year. Pauline Johnston, Brian’s widow and her son Ian, were in the audience. And several Denis Compton fans. So it was all very gratifying. Apart from the man who couldn’t hear. "There’s always one deaf one," said Carmen in the bookshop. Reassuringly.
After a day at sea we docked early in the morning at Lisbon. The following day was Malaga. Then a sea day with a talk by Michael Freedland. Then Palermo. Then a sea day with me doing cricket. Inevitably there is an element of "If it’s Thursday it must be Malaga...No hang on a minute, isn’t that Parma. But I thought we were supposed to do Gibraltar next? No, that’s on the way back." Besides which Portugal, Spain and Italy in successive days does make one start sounding like Anita Eckberg and speaking no-known-language but a sort of Portuspanglitaliano. Even worse when one barely has kitchen versions of any of them.
It was hot everywhere and we sweated up hundreds of steps in Lisbon to the Castle before going back down to a state of the art warehouse part-owned by John Malkevitch for a very good lunch of gazpacho and an arroz with prawn and fish done in a capo something Portuguese mini-casserole (me) and cold asparagus soup and cod poached in black olive oil on a bed of eggy potatoes (Penny). The following day after the wonderful Picasso Museum in Malaga we found a very trad old-fashioned restaurant where we had salcichon and sea-bass baked in salt (me) and stuffed peppers and hake with a tomato and clam sauce (Penny). In Palermo this morning we found an agreeable terrace outside a restaurant where we had risotto con sepia en sui tinto and fish from the window (me) and mixed antipasto and red mullet - also from the window (Penny). Meals loom large but they are wonderful opportunities for people-gazing and reminders, especially in Spain, that other people have a tradition of lunch which we have lost if we ever really enjoyed it. In Malaga it was lovely to see two elderly friends sharing a bottle of white and a plate of Serrano as if they were playing chess together and a family with two little girls and groups and ladies-who-lunch. All taking time and enjoying themselves and each other and a far far cry from lunch at the desk if one has time even for that.
Before leaving I picked up messages on my mobile and was delighted to hear from Sarah Duncan that my friend Andrew was back in England and suddenly making progress after a dreadful time in intensive care in France. He was runover by his own car when the hand-brake failed. He has still lost his front teeth and broken ribs and both shoulders so there is a lot still to do but they are talking about physiotherapy and recovery not about the next twenty four hours being crucial. I phoned Sarah and she sounded quite chirpy and said Andrew would like a visit when I’m next in London which could be soon. I also phoned my mother in Wiltshire from the Funnel Deck as we pulled out of Palermo Harbour. The marvels of modern science.
It was Sunday in Palermo so the churches were open but not much else. On Monday I did a drone as we rounded the heel of Italy and started to run up the Adriatic. Cricket. Good crowd. I spoke to the nice American i/c sound and he said that I was fine, in fact better than most from his own point of view because my voice remained constant and didn’t shift from whisper to shout and back like - apparently - many. No need to worry, he said. I had a good house, plenty of questions, sold quite a few books but Penny overheard some woman, who she said I wouldn’t want in the house, say that her husband didn’t enjoy the talk and found me ‘patronising’. Ah well. Maybe I shouldn’t have worn an MCC tie and dropped names like Denis Compton. On the other hand I feel some punters want a spot of name-dropping.
Trieste was wonderful. We parked right opposite the hotel we’d stayed in one cold foggy January a few years ago - I wrote a commissioned piece for the Mail which they then mysteriously rejected though the Independent on Sunday partly rescued us by taking a piece about our train trip across Europe after Ryanair cancelled the return flight on account of bad weather. There was a band - one of those slouching quasi-Naval outfits that plays oompah music that manages to sound both melancholy and jolly at the same time. We took a number 36 bus out to the Miramare Palace on a promontory five kilometers out. Maximilian, the ill-fated brother of Franz Joseph who was shot as Emperor of Mexico lived there. He should have stayed on planting trees and studying botany. The Duke of Aosta who the British locked up in Nairobi where he commanded German East Africa during World War Two also lived there. His photos, supercilious, cold, uniformed , are all over the place. He does not look nice and was a famous fighter ace and aerial acrobat.
After a wander round we found a garden restaurant and ate clams and calamari before bussing back and sitting about in the grand Osbert Lancaster style town square. Then there was a band, even better than the first and spectacular fireworks as well as a display by fireboats. Many people bussed over to Venice but Trieste tried harder.
Next day was Dubrovnik where we moored outside and visited by tender. It was spectacularly beautiful and we tramped round the ramparts sweating profusely and admiring fabulous views of pantiled roofs, belfries, domes and azure Adriatic. Alas ground level was swamped in tour groups, worst of all the aggressive American gay couples with spiked hair, muscular exposed tattooed torsoes and disconcertingly cooing voices. They had come off a special cruise ship and while some of my best friends are homosexual, these people were oddly repellent. We found a smart restaurant which used to be the Naval Club - cf Macau - where we were surrounded by rich neighbours off the ship until joined by a party of American gays. So, mixed feelings. Every prospect pleased except for man who was overwhelmingly vile. Not made any better, of course, by the hundreds of us disgorged by the QE2 moored majestically and disdainfully out to sea.
So next a day at sea, passing through the Straits of Messina around noon and making a detour to look at Stromboli. Both were rather spectacular. It was fun to retrace our wake through the straits especially as we had originally come through at night. At first we thought Stromboli was dormant but as we rounded her we realized that there was in fact white smoke pouring out of holes near the top. And so to the Queen’s Grill, the Chartroom and the now agonizing choice of whether to order a dry martini, caviar or smoked salmon. This is what the QE2 reduces you to.
Next stop was Cagliari where on a previous visit we had staggered sweatily to the top of the hill and visited a rather dull cathedral. This time we just ambled around window-shopping and people-watching before a Negroni on the waterfront and a lunch in a friendly slow-food-friendly restaurant called the Buonagusta. Plain steak or scallop with baked veg as a main course and an amazing antipasto di mare to start with - baby eels (?) in batter, bottarga, marinated anchovies, octopus and an extraordinary local rustic bread like huge poppadum drizzled with olive oil. Then Penny took forever to post three postcards in a typically Sardinian post office and so back to the ship and our first drizzly rain of the voyage.
Next a day at sea en route to Gibraltar who are celebrating their national day while we’re there. Meanwhile my final drone. This was crime at two. "Ah the graveyard spot" said one elderly passenger as he shuffled round deck. It went fine with good questions and an enthusiastic encomium from Warren the assistant cruise director saying that I was a QE2 favourite/regular and would be back again before long! The Old Cliftonian MCC member gave me a thumbs-up later in the restaurant so I suppose it was OK.
Gibraltar was a pleasant surprise. We went to morning service in the King’s Chapel and had a chat with the brand new padre who had just arrived from Dartmouth. Small congregation, Thine be the Glory, too much happy-clappy, but affecting memorial tablets to young men who had passed away in pestilential epidemics of one sort or another. Outside the whole place en fete and everyone but everyone dressed in matching Gilbraltar colours of scarlet and white. In Casement Square Michael Ancram MP - of all people - spoke and got a rapturous welcome that he would never receive back home. We found an Andalucian restaurant in a newish Marina development - Casa Pepe - and had an amazing grilled fillet steak which the proprietor said was from Ireland. Best beef in the world. Then stopped off at the Royal Gibraltar Yacht Club for just the one and a meeting with a family called Amossi or something. Staunch Gibraltarian Brits with a patriarch who had been educated at Ampleforth and sons who’d been at the Oratory. They remembered Adrian Snow with affection. It was amazingly hot. Rang Wiltshire from deck. We’ve been invited for drinks tomorrow night in the wardroom.
Back on the real world on dry land people have been sending e-mails which I’m now able to access through the miracles of wi-fi. Wine Society News, confusion from Penny’s old school reunion people in Adelaide, encouragement from the Master of St. John’s College at Sydney University, Ian Rankin’s piece (excellent) finally in thus completing a full-house at the Folio Society. Tony Blair seems to be finally finished as Prime Minister, England have won a one-day cricket match against Pakistan, the Taliban are killing British soldiers in Afghanistan. Iraq becomes bloodier by the hour, and we worry over menus and sun-screen on the ocean wave.
I’ve read Hunter Davies’ new memoir - with a couple of I think enthusiastic mentions of self, a Henning Mankell novel, Nigel Slater’s Toast and a rather good autobiography by Jancis Robinson the wine writer. Has it been worthwhile? Would I do it again? Yes to both despite misgivings. The most interesting thing is that for two weeks you become a sort of celebrity - publicized in the daily paper, televised, listened to by apparently enthusiastic audiences, button-holed by complete strangers, recognized wherever you go. For a fortnight you’re a sort of mini-Jeremy Paxman. But then you get off the ship and go home and return to blissful anonymity once more!
Not to mention bank managers and rejection letters. So life goes on.
Tim Heald
