Wednesday 15th April 2009 – “Mary-Lou, Are You Ready?”

Newport still has its Folk Festival.  But it's not Bob Dylan now, it's son-of-Bob-Dylan.  Let's just hope he doesn't meet daughter-of-Joan-Baez and take to caterwauling duets.  I'm not aware I've ever heard Jakob Dylan singing.  In fact, until today, I hadn't heard of him at all.  But he featured at last year's festival, along with the sons of Bob Marley.  Children are clearly not rebelling the way they did in the 60's.

I found this out at the bar of the Brick Alley, Newport, where I am studying Sam Adams Boston Lager.  I am also studying the barmaid, who is clearly hopelessly attracted to me.  I ask her name several times, but it's too difficult to remember.  Ah, well, she'll just have to live without me.

The tannoy announces that the restaurant is ready for us.  I toddle off to the loo to finish of the processing of the Sam Adams.  While I'm doing that, a female voice asks me, clearly, if Mary-Lou is ready.  I panic: momentarily, I think I must be in the Ladies.  This, despite the fact that not only is there a row of urinals in front of me, I'm actually using one.  On my way to the table, I share this moment with the owner of the voice, the young lady maitre d' by the microphone.  She falls into paroxysms of mirth.  Women are putty in my hands tonight.

The waitress at the table eyes me nervously.  Her colleagues have clearly warned her of my powers.  But she has no need to worry: I demonstrate my disinterest by momentarily falling asleep.

I take a walk in the cold night air to help calm the women down, and meet a large group of midshipmen in their 'walking-out' uniforms (I asked them).  They are graduating in two days.  They practice their navigation skills getting me back to the restaurant.

Later that same night, back at the hotel, a group of fishermen teach me the ancient game of 'quarters', which is a bit like tiddly-winks, except for the drinking.  They also tell me a long, rambling joke of the same calibre as 'The Aristocrats', involving, among other things, a stolen wallet, a toll booth and a burst condom. 

 

It's no wonder we chaps are so attractive to women. 

Wednesday 15th April 2009 – An Old Lady Reveals a Racy Past

The Eastern Point of Long Island is rather like being on the Queen Mary again: the wind, the waves, the overwhelming sounds and smell; but most of all, the sense of peace.  Nobody here is in a hurry.  The man at the gate is unconcerned by the lack of booking.  And he advises against parking up and having a look around: "next boat's got some kinda trouble, she's gonna be late – I'd take this one".  So this one it was.

'This one' is a ship called the Cape Henlopen, which, it turns out, has been around.  It is a bit of an understatement to say she's seen a bit of action: on June 6^th 1944, she rolled up Omaha beach with 30 tanks on board; and then did the same on every Pacific Island John Wayne ever conquered; and still gainfully employed wallowing across the Sound full of cars and trucks.  One or two of the trucks are those enormous 18-wheelers more at home on the freeways.  Various plaques indicate that veterans still come by to remember their past and their comrades.  The Cape Henlopen, when she was young, was known simply as 'LST 510', a 'Landing Ship, Tanks'.  The '510' is probably some indicator of the enormous power of the United States, even back then.  Her survival, and new name and job are a compliment to her designers.

[If you look up the ships on the Cross-sound Ferries company web-site, you will find there is one fast passenger ferry, the Sea Jet, which is illustrated in her old livery, with a huge Union Jack painted down the side.  This is because she used to operate in Hawai.  Hawai has a Union Jack in the corner of its state flag, to commemorate Captain Cook.]

 

The old LST510, as I shall now always remember her, took us to New London, Connecticut.  From there, it was a short, but slow drive to Newport, Rhode Island. 

As I write this, on a Sunday morning, NPR (National Public Radio) is broadcasting a 'Folk' programme.  The current item is a recording of a live performance at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez what-can-only-be-described-as-'murdering' 'With God on Our Side'.  It's excruciating!  How did they get away with it?  We used to think it was wonderful.  Does Newport still have a 'Folk' festival?  If it does, are the performers any better?

Wednesday 15th April 2009 – To Rhode Island, by the Scenic Route

Way out  at the eastern end of Long Island, nearly a hundred miles from New York City, there is a small ferry service running from Orient Point to New London in Connecticut, across the Long Island Sound, skirting past the dreaded Plum Island.  The Expressway runs out most of the way, but by the end, it is a single-carriageway road, with the ocean visible on either side.  As a means of getting out of the Big Apple, it has much to recommend it.

The expressway has nothing much to offer.  In fact, the first thing I did on emerging from the Midtown Tunnel was to race off up the wrong ramp.  But no sooner had I done this, than one of New York's finest popped out of the ground to offer sound advice to get me back on track.  The boredom of the turnpike offered the opportunity to investigate that new wonder of automotive technology, the satellite radio.  This has the merit of not having to retune constantly as one moves from the range of one transmitter to the next.

The end of the expressway revealed a succession of shopping malls, and the opportunity for pee and coffee.  The coffee shop was full of High School students (that's a particular age group in American), equal numbers of boys and girls, sitting at separate tables, furiously ignoring each other.  I wanted some reassurance that I was still on the right road, so I took my atlas to the group of boys and asked them where I was.  A long discussion ensued, during which the girls made their escape.  The boys may never forgive me.

Beyond Riverhead, one is in wine country: lots of vineyards, lots of wineries, lots of invitations to taste.  This came as quite a surprise.  I'm not much of a one for wine, but I made a note to try to find out something about it. 

Then the wine country breaks up into little coves and sandy beaches.  The whole place seemed an ideal spot for wine-loving grandparents to take grandchildren for a wildlife holiday.  (It would have to be grandparents, it looked too expensive for parents).  It was rather reminiscent of the Ile de Re in western France.  I wished I had found out a place to stay.

 

But it was onward to the charms of the Cross-Sound Ferry at Orient Point.

Wednesday 15th April 2009 – A New York Breakfast

The hotel was on the lower west side of Manhattan, in an area known as Chelsea.  It is a hotbed of Irish bars. But there may be less than there were.  The beer has much improved in the twenty years since I was last here.  Once the CO₂ has been swizzled out of it, there are discernable hops and malt.  I think American palates must like the acrid taste of the gas (Or, perhaps like most people nowadays, they have not acquired a taste for hops and malt, but have acquired a taste for CO₂).  Of course the swizzling attracts much attention, even though I am now sufficiently practiced at it not to cover the neighbourhood in foam.  By the end of the evening, I am even more practiced.  The beer now comes in pints, or at least what Americans call a pint, which is much smaller (by about a fifth) than I am used to.  But it comes in 'nonic' glasses, which don't slip out of the hand when the swizzle-foam lubricates the sides. 

The hotel exhibits much faded glory.  It has been refurbished in a style I don't recognise, but must include in its title the word 'bizarre'.  The doors are metal, and have been given that patterned-turning finish which fifties sports car enthusiasts loved to see on their engines.  What it didn't include was double-glazing.  So the night was noisy.  I spent it with a demon gang of garbage men, collecting dumpsters (which is what Americans call those large commercial waste bins).  Morning investigation revealed that there was a large manhole cover in the middle of Eighth Avenue which was rocked noisily by large vehicles.  But the demon dustmen were better company in the night.

The rental car for the next part of the journey was waiting only a few blocks away, so there was time for that great indulgence of a New York stay, the Great American Breakfast.  Breakfast in a New York coffee shop is the most enduring of my memories of New York.  I always made a point, when going to start work in New York on a Monday morning, to arrive on the Saturday night, and give myself a whole Sunday to recover.  I remember a particular event on an early, perhaps even the first, visit.  I had settled down at the counter with a vast plate of breakfast when a young woman came in obviously selling newspapers.  She was quite irate when I asked her for one: she only had one; to my untutored eye, and, would venture to suggest, to any untutored eye, one copy of the New York Sunday Times looked like a holepaperboy's round.  Thereafter, these Sundays were spent in a leisurely consumption of breakfast and the Sunday Times.

            The coffee shop this time, opposite Penn Station, didn't run to a counter, but breakfast was just as good, and just as vast.  The waitresses still exhibited that curious mix of maternal solicitousness, and peremptory rudeness that is forever the hallmark of New York. 

There was no New York Times this time, but the government, perhaps a little guilty about the doings of its immigration service, laid on a special entertainment.  The coffee shop was just opposite the main New York Post Office, a vast Edwardian pile, occupying a whole block to itself.  And it was 'Tax Day'.  This is the day when all Americans have to submit their income tax return to the Government.  And the rule is that they must get it post-marked on Tax Day.  So the Post Office figures large in the ritual.  It stays open till midnight, and the New York one had a whole row of mobile post offices parked outside.  Of course, anyone wanting to demonstrate on anything remotely connected to tax, knows the main post office is the place to be.  And every television station knows this is where the oddball stories of the day are going to be.  So we had a circus.

 

Then it was into the car, straight along 34^th Street, through the Midtown Tunnel and out onto the Long Island Expressway: with another New York Breakfast to remember.

Tuesday 14th April 2009 – Goodbye QM2, Hello World

If you're going to have a big adventure, it's best not to rush into it.  The QM2 must be just about the best way in the world to approach an American adventure slowly.  A week of 25-hour days with no escape; an ocean to contemplate; dressing up for dinner in good company; regular exercise; and a bit of boozing.  It lulled me, it definitely lulled me.

Then I had to meet the Department of Homeland Security.  The nice young lady at the American Embassy in London had told me it would be the DHS at the port of entry who decided how long I could stay.  She said I had to have my itinerary prepared, clear evidence of how long my big adventure would take.   This I did: in spades; but to no avail.  If the system is as it was explained to me, it is simply not possible to do what I want.  Except by rolling with the punches.

The DHS officer had a Spanish name; and, of course, a gun.  But it could have been government anywhere: "naw, mate, six mumfs, port policy, init."  And disinterested in any variation, or any reason for any variation.  "You can apply to extend it.  Go to 26 Federal Plaza."  26 Federal Plaza made me take most of my clothes off and pushed me through a x-ray machine.  They poured my emergency flask of whisky down the drain.  Then they gave me the extension application form and told me I had to send it with a cheque for $300 dollars.  That's not to buy an extension, of course, that's to get the application processed.

So either I do it in their timescale, or I find a way round their rules.  It's just how you have to deal with government, isn't it?  There can never be a meeting of minds:  there is no mind to meet.  I vowed I would be positive about all the people I met, but already I have an exception.  And not just the people I met: the whole class of people they represent.

Tomorrow I must start to formulate plan B.  I'll show them!  Tonight, a few beers and some jazz: pretend I'm still on the Mary.

Easter Monday, April 13th 2009 – Tea for Two

41°13'N, 63°07'W, 2500 miles gone, 500 to go.

 

My exotic Spanish dance instructor has inspired me to new heights: I have been visiting the Tea Dance.  I had thought, dimly, when I thought about it at all, that the Tea Dance was an arcane device invented by the Woolwich Borough Council to give old ladies something to do in the afternoon other than feed their cats.  How wrong I was.  Cunard have elevated it to a pinnacle of commercial success.  There are a whole phalanx of gentlemen hosts on board, to see to the needs of the even larger phalanx of single ladies poised, cat-like at the edge of the dance floor.  When I said 'needs', I hope nothing tawdry flitted through your mind: these are elegant, stylish, well-dressed needs; the ladies, and, indeed the gentlemen, have spent considerable time and effort scrubbing-up for the occasion.

I, needless to say, am not elegible to participate in the needs-satisfaction department, since even a week of packing has not provided me with any outfit suitable for this occasion.  The props department of the Ealing Comedies would have readily provided me with an RAF blazer and a pencil moustache, but that would have stood out like a sore thumb among the faded elegance here.  (Curiously, there was, in fact, a sore thumb present on the occasion of my visit.  One of the gentlemen ushers was perambulating the floor with an injured thumb propped up in front of him.  And it stuck out: in both senses of the word).  It is clear that a proper dress code is operating.

Non-combatants are tolerated, but they are required to bring their own partners.  They don't have to follow the dress code.  They don't even have to be able to dance very well.  But they have to stay out of the shipping lanes during combat.  It looks a little like the radar screen you can see on the cross-channel ferries, with little dots negotiating passage here and there, and large blobs cruising elegantly through their midst.  Perhaps, more topically, it's like watching the Masters golf and finding they've allowed weekend players on the course at the same time. 

I had just settled into watching a bit of golf in the afternoon when it went off the air.  Golf is so restful to watch.  The sports channels have now reappeared, so I guess the satellites aren't visible mid-Atlantic.  Tea Dancing is a suitable substitute.  One can enjoy the effortless economy of the good players, while keeping an eye on the strategic outcome.  There is a bit of competition going on.  The gentlemen are looking for points to be awarded by the ladies.  The ladies appear to take their judging role very seriously.  Points are awarded in the form of smiles, laughs and sometimes even squeezes.  The gentlemen all notice.  The ultimate accolade is a wistful reluctance to admit a dance is over.   The gentlemen handle this situation very well.

On first viewing this event, I thought it was simply exploitation of the single women, but further observation, and a little participant polling, now leads me to the view that it may be nearer to the opposite.

Ah, life's rich tapestry!

Easter Sunday, April 12th 2009 – German Gas

 

41°30'N, 49°05'W, 2000 miles gone, 1000 to go.

 

There is a pub on board.  It is, as you would expect from Cunard, very civilised.  In fact, it's so civilised, smoking is permitted.  It is surprising how quickly we forgot the charms of a smoke-filled atmosphere.  I suspect there are people who do this trip regularly just for the joy of an old-fashioned pub.  Since we are gathered for the purpose of drinking beer and staring at the mesmerising ocean foaming past just outside the window ( the pub is down at low-level) it would be quite uncivilised to send them outside to smoke, although it might add considerably to the entertainment.  I manage a few enlightening discussions about lung cancer, and the excruciatingly painful death it usually causes.  The smokers don't seem to want to stay long.  One German pair were really quite unfriendly, and refused to tell me the German for 'lung cancer'.  They moved to another table in a huff, delivering a long stream of German at me as they departed, of which I could only follow the general gist.  I like to do my bit to cement international relations.

The pub only sells pasteurised, frozen, carbonated beer.  So the atmosphere is helped further by traditional pub farting and burping.  If we don't get to New York soon, I may float away in a bubble of Carbon Dioxide.  (Is Carbon Dioxide lighter than air?  Nobody warned me in school chemistry that one day I would be writing about this and too mean to pay the exorbitant internet access rates obtaining on the QM2.  Problem is: I can't remember whether carbon is lighter than oxygen, or vice-versa.  I seem to remember that one is 14 and the other is 16.  I guess if carbon is 14, CO₂  will be lighter than air.  No, wait a minute, isn't there a lot of nitrogen involved in this question as well?  I will just have to ask the Germans next time I see them.).  In the mean time, I buy my beer with a spare glass and a swizzle stick.  Decanting half and swizzling vigorously has the desired effect.  Actually, the need for two glasses only became apparent during an early experiment, which resulted in covering the table and a considerable area of carpet in beer.  The staff, who obviously like to take part in chemistry experiments, insisted on doing the clearing up.  The general conclusion was that there was far too much carbon dioxide in the beer, although some held to the ridiculous conclusion that there was far too much beer in me.

 

I retired to the Winter Garden to read and snore.  They were having a cocktail party for the "World Cruisers".  Some passengers have been on the ship for months: probably heavy smokers.  I notice a waiter restacking all the plates.  Why would he risk touching all the crockery (public health is a big issue on ocean liners).  Then I notice the curious way he is doing it, and work out he's putting all the crests in the same position.  Class will always outrank health.  Anyway, he's wearing latex gloves.

 

My jive lesson was everything I expected of it.  I was provided with a sparrow-sized partner, so I was able to perform my part of the figures without any noticeable resistance.  Our Spanish instructors showed us some of the basics, made us feel quite good, than, as usual, soared away to perfection at the end.  They did an exhibition in the ballroom after dinner.  I don't know if this was as good, because the young lady was wearing practically no clothes, so I didn't get to see their feet: or, indeed, him.