QM2

Queen Mary 2: a destination in itself? 20th September:

While we treated the Queen Mary 2 as a means to cross the Atlantic from New York to Southampton, many of our fellow passengers treated it as a destination in itself, and what a destination. It was one that celebrated excess in most of its guises, but particularly the epicurean. It was possible, should you be that way inclined, to eat yourself 24/7, to euphoria and oblivion, providing that is you were willing to obey the dress code and which requires formal attire, meaning a dinner suit for men, ball gowns for women. After 6pm jeans, shorts and t-shirts are prohibited in public areas, infra-dig. Presumably, you starved if you forgot your bow tie or Chanel bag! This is the passengers’ part in upholding White Star Service—and which the QM2 and the other members of the Cunard family of liners which, it was stressed, are not the inferior species of cruise ships—exemplify.

For seven days we have been players in Queen Mary 2’s theatre of luxury, bit players, perhaps even extras. The scenery was art deco, the costume formal and the action, when not set in restaurants, took place in the Royal Court Theatre (with apologies to the one in Sloan Square) where the Julliard Jazz Quartet gave masterly concerts and the Illuminations where, as part of the liner’s enrichment programme, we attended a brilliant series of lectures (would that we had heard more of them) on American politics presented by Nigel Bowles (Oxford University) and another series by Thom Gorst on the last one hundred fifty years of modern architecture, and which upset the forty three Australians on-board because he failed to include the Opera House from his list of the twenty most significant buildings. Number one—by popular voter applause—was New York’s Grand Central Station!

Eating then was not the most pleasurable thing on our transatlantic trip. It was the intellectual not the gustatory stimulation that proved the more rewarding for us. However we both agree what we most enjoyed was the voyage itself (especially as the Atlantic proved more pacific than our Pacific crossing), sitting out on the beautiful wide decks and watching the ocean in all its myriad nuances. And what would be a voyage without the thrill of departure and arrival. We left the United States from Brooklyn terminal, past the Statue of Liberty late on a drizzly Sunday night and arrived in Southampton Water early enough on the following Sunday to see a clear starlit sky make way for a dawn welcome to the United Kingdom.