D&N

Introducing Coco-Canel, a Chocolate Oriental. Arrived from Bordeaux last night. She has her own room but as Ursel was taking her mid morning nap in the sun, I closed the windows to balcony and let Coco have a sniff around. She hasn't met her new Mummy yet as she left for her cold experience yesterday morning. Canel is an old French spelling of Cannelle (cinnamon) and coco fits her colouring as well. It continues our "el" ending theme, and the hyphenated name ties in with her supermodel status.

BA did their best to lower expectations with a series of alarmist emails prior to my wife making her annual trip to see friends and family in Scotland. In the event both flights involved were bang on schedule.

For 1920s think Great Gatsby rather than Peaky Blinders. I've not seen either of these films/tv series but I can imagine both based on the trailers that were shown for them. Mr Google gives clear images too. In The States you probably weren't subjected to the trailers so try an internet search. Ideally ladies glam up for a gala night and gents wear tux etc as in gala guidelines. If you want to be one of the 10% that follows the theme wear a beaded dress of anything between above knee to floor sweeping length and make sure men wear a tux suitable shirt and black or white tie. My wife wore a heavily beaded dark blue mother of the bride ankle length dress last time, with a craft headdress from a specialist on eBay. She now has a green and a red below knee fringed and a cerise almost floor length to choose from as well and a black elastic head piece that will go with any of them. But if she was keen to wear something else that night the theme wouldn't stop her. But; please, please!!! No guns; No Trilby hats! 🤣

We wouldn't buy jewellery anywhere other than Hatton Garden. I imagine there may be similar places to be found around the world, but not generally where you find lots of tourists. Sorry I mean real jewellery. We do buy really cheap stuff online.

I installed an app called "Photo Compressor" on Android. I think it's in the App Store as well. I used it to batch reduce photo sizes to post here and other social media from QM2. With Starlink that might not be necessary, although my current camera sometimes takes jpg snaps up to 18MB! It also offers crop and rotate functions in batch. I think there are some ads in it but I didn't find that intrusive.

In that case I suggest he hires or buys the cheapest he can. Or wear a dark suit, white shirt and bow tie. Longer term a better option is to "un-shrink" the tux, but it's unlikely that could be achieved in a sustainable manner in the time you have before sailing. It might offer all sorts of other benefits.

We would regard following Gala Wear guidelines much more important than themes. We do follow the themes but more from a colour and dress style point of view. Although one night last time we intentionally dressed for Masquerade theme (our profile pic, sans masks) on a Roaring 20s night, which Cunard decided to have two of. We didn't want to waste our 1€ SHEIN Masquerade Masks! Probably a Scottish thing. Probably the main thing to remember is that even though Cunard don't make this clear; On the Masquerade theme the intention is that folk might wear elegant venetian ball style masks, not funny halloween masks. For Roaring 20s flapper style dresses are fine for ladies. Gents are best to follow the standard gala guidelines. Most "gentlemen" attending a ball in the 1920s would not have been wearing a trilby or carrying a fake (or real) handgun.

Re eBay, Bought an Ivory Tux at £60 and Black for £30. Both new with labels. Plus £50 total between them in delivery and import shipping from UK to France. Black was perfect for immediate use. Ivory was dusty as if it had been in a stock room. I unpacked on QM2 and left the Ivory out with a note for stewardess for it to be cleaned. Returned clean the following evening, fee $7. Pockets were still a bit damp but I didn't plan to wear it that night and it had plenty of time to air. Both of those adverts are still on eBay.co.uk in different sizes. I also bought made to measure from "Hockerty.com". It's nice but I prefer the two from eBay. I had perfectly good M&S dinner suits, but as my wife lost more than 30% of her weight and many dress sizes I followed same regime with larger portion sizes and couldn't help dropping from 42" chest to 38". I tried shrinking the old ivory tux but while partly successful it still looked too big. I spent a bit more time on the new Ivory. It came with cream plastic buttons. I transferred all the satin covered buttons from the old tux to make it look a bit more upmarket.

Relatives took a holiday there last year. They didn't think it was a very interesting place.

Many ports are trying to reduce cruise ship calls. Local news sites here often have articles on the subject. Marseille are concerned about pollution. Monaco don't want big mass market ships. They want to target ships carrying fewer passengers of high net worth that will spend fortunes in their high end boutiques. The article was very clear that they didn't want thousands of folk arriving and only buying a few pizzas and ice cream. Cannes is a tender port but again there are moans about thousands of folk coming ashore and not spending enough. Nice can only accommodate smaller ships but the residents of the port area are regularly complaining about the soot on their balconies from the ferries that call there serving the Corsica routes. They only dock for about half an hour. We're quite happy where we are, but if I had an apartment at the port in Nice I'd regard all the ship calls as a big attraction to living there.

There was a thread with a discussion about markings on QM2's spare propeller blades on this forum. I searched a bit at the time and found several articles on blade corrosion due to seawater bubbles forming on the blades in use. I didn't find any direct link between those articles and the markings but it appears that propeller blades may need replacement at fairly unpredictable times depending on various factors. The corrosion may result in excess vibration.

Thanks for all those comments. I wouldn't want anyone to think we are without feelings. Carmel was the 10th cat we've lost since early 1991. I got the first two as kittens in 1976. My wife first met them in 1986. We buried them and another six (2 we had as kittens and 4 adult rescues) before we left Scotland. Our apartment here has shared gardens so the vet needs to arrange cremation. We miss every one of them and their individual characters. But we're realistic enough to appreciate that they have a limited lifespan. We would never be without cats, my family always had them when I was growing up. Hazel's heart clot last year was the only one that took us by surprise. For the others including Carmel, we knew it was coming and it was a case of deciding when was the best time in terms of balancing quality of life with possible pain and discomfort. Moving forward; we have found a new companion for Ursel. The challenge is how and when we can organise transport from nearly 500 miles away! I think Ursel will appreciate her. She seemed to like her "Auntie" Carmel but would have preferred that she would have rolled about the floor with her. Carmel hadn't been fit for that sort of activity for a while. At present it looks like we need to wait nearly three weeks until I can bring her back on a flight. For now Ursel insists that we play fetch and retrieve with her (like a dog, a first for any cat we've had) and provide a lap to sleep on as required.

They mainly use Ligier electric vehicles here for post. I haven't seen the 4 wheelers around here for a while. it's mostly these trikes. La Poste's parcel folk usually have electric Renault Kangoos.

Sadly we had Carmel euthanised yesterday morning. She'd suffered various respiratory problems from end of July on top of her long term treatment for heart and kidney condition. She stopped eating last week and her vet thinks her kidneys failed. Her last photo taken Friday evening. She seemed reasonably happy for Ursel to have most of her bed.

On June 5th 2022 we were in a starboard cabin. QM2 turns round before berthing. I took my first photo of the statue at 3:55am in darkness. The one taken at 6am was somewhat better. I've since realised that the sensors in both the phone and zoom camera I had with me are too small to get decent images in low light. There was also quite a bit of vibration with the bow thrusters being used to manoeuvre.

Hardly ever separated.

With embedded photos!! I should add that I'm looking for a suitable wardrobe/outfit planning app. Haven't found one that is better than Excel or Outlook Calendar yet.

I have to admit to being ill mannered from time to time. I have very little hair and for much of the year I need to protect my bald head from sunburn. We often walk to the shops and I need both hands to deal with the trolley and scanning items. It's more practical to keep my hat on.

No, she'll take 14 outfits for evenings and wear each on the evening planned. She'll also have 12 day time/lunch outfits, which she might be slightly more flexible with. She'll probably take something slightly more casual for Lobster Mac and Cheese at The Red Hook Lobster Pound.

I carried out internet searches many months ago on what gentlemen might have worn to balls and gala evenings in the 1920s. It would appear that attire was much the same then as now. That would be a dinner suit (tux). They would have been unlikely to wear a double breasted pin-striped suit & Fedora. That appears to be a fancy dress interpretation taken from what gangsters are reputed to have worn in the same era. My wife has picked the 14 outfits she likes best for the 14 nights for our next trip. They might change of course as the next one is a while away. They will range from gowns to mini cocktail dresses. The gowns are never floor sweeping though as they need to be short enough for her to dance safely in 3" heels. We will have masquerade masks but they are mainly for some of the photographs.

We had 14 nights in a Club cabin on QM2 in June 2022. Going by online photos there is no real difference from Britannia Balcony cabins. Currently those on deck 13 have a better bathroom with shower screen rather than curtain. we don't know if that will change next month during the dry docking. We liked the BC port side restaurant. We were happy having the same table for all meals whenever we chose to eat (within opening hours), We used the "A La Carte" menu when nothing enthused us on the regular Britannia menu. The restaurant and cabin locations suited us for our onboard activities. We mainly use Chart Room, Queens Room, G32, Pavilion Pool and Gym. We'll be in the same cabin next time.

The roar of jets taking off was what I missed most here during lockdowns. I was happy not to have the rasping exhausts from cars and motor bikes, but jet roar is a low level sound and told me that we were still in contact with the rest of the world. I'm more than happy to hear them at any time of day or night!

No! Not until breakfast. Just kid on your an old Cunard cruiser with real stamina!

OP wrote "get off the ship in the UK and drive to France". I would hope that means a one way rental or a car with driver. Assuming the regs do allow such a routing between USA and France they should have means of showing disembarkation at Southampton about 3 hours prior to checking in for Eurotunnel, and clearing all formalities at Folkestone. I'll try and read them if I get a chance.

@j404dzb I've not read the uk gov advice recently. We brought our cats to France before the Brexit vote. But from a practical point of view would suggest you all the documentation to prove that you have made a single trip, albeit multi-modal. Perhaps daily pictures of you and your dog during the trip. The photos will have a digital time stamp to back up your documentation. Back in 2016 the folk who checked us at Eurotunnel Folkestone were more interested in whether we had paid for two cats and weren't sneaking any more through than paid for. They weren't interested in their pet passports.