exlondoner

At a cursory reading this seems to refer to a couple of fjords.

Haven’t we been here before?

I think quite a number of the crew are probably missing their own young children so are delighted to see your toddler.

She’s home now.

I got the paper one last week - see, I remember - and an email yesterday. I have no idea of the significance of that.

It was a while ago now, thankfully. I imagine the plan was to stop the medical staff being unnecessarily troubled at a busy time, much as GP’s receptionists do. But it does depend on the gobetween having an acceptable standard of English.

We were not in our cabin, but several decks away in a quarantine cabin, and the only number I had was the Purser’s. In any case the butler, who actually did everything he could for us, was not allowed near us. He bought our meals down to the end of the corridor and left it there for someone in the appropriate regalia to deliver. The QG restaurant did usually ring up to see what we needed, bless them. The concern was not so much that we were poorly, as that my husband’s age was something of a worry, but we eventually decided the antivirals were more trouble than they were worth, as it would mean stopping other medication. Anyway, he felt well enough to drive home, luckily. We were in quarantine for the last three days of the trip, and I can’t honestly remember if we were checked on every day.

Well, we were both quarantined at the time, and not especially well, so my opportunities for expressing discontent were somewhat limited. The good thing is that things were vastly better this year, and the concierge was as usual lovely. Mind you it would have been better still not to have had the tedious disease.

It may be too small, but it looks a bit like a railway roundhouse.

You certainly deserve to be 5000.

That is what I would have hoped, but on QM2 in 2022, they wouldn’t let me communicate directly with either of those excellent people. I spent a lot of time explaining my needs to people with inadequate English, such as the fact that I wanted to speak to the Medical Centre to discuss whether my husband should have the anti-Covid drug, something that was not only none of their business but the person from the Purser’s failed to understand anyway. When I was finally allowed to communicate with the Medical Centre, I had a most helpful conversation with a doctor. I don’t think that behaviour is really inexcusable. Sorry. On the other hand, I have had many pleasant interactions with the Purser people.

Well, my Covid experience was deeply inefficient, I’m afraid. Actually completely different from my experience this year, where I could speak both to my butler and to the lovely concierge. It saved an awful lot of repetition.

But my point is, when you disembark, you have clearly entrusted your luggage to Cunard. But, when you embark, it is rather different. They don’t touch the luggage until it is onboard the ship. Unless of course it doesn’t get there, when they’ve had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

They were pretty obnoxious when I had Covid last year on QM2, and they insisted that all communications with, say, the QG or the Medical Centre, went through them. Compared with the Grills Concierges, who are probably part of the same team, they come a long way second. And actually I should have thought smiling should be part of the job, however unpleasant some (just a few) of the passengers undoubtedly are.

I don’t think they are disinterested, which means neutral: often their self interest and lack of interest in the passenger is all too evident. On the other hand, sometimes they’re lovely.

Admittedly under a different legal system, but what if this horrid thing had happened when embarking at Southampton? There you hand your cases to port employees, who load it onto the ship. Presumably that is when it becomes Cunard’s responsibility, if they drop in down a stair well or something. But before that?

I should think the Egyptian Government is pretty keen on it staying open too.

I hope they’ll let her go a bit faster. She seems to be trudging up the Channel at present. I sincerely hope she needs some sort of certification. 🙂

Sorry, my comment was intended as ironic. But now I think about it, it was unclear what it was aimed at. I was implying both the idea that corporations may occasionally behave nefariously, and the idea that organisations are not good at keeping confidentiality where they should. So it was pretty stupid really.

Never heard or seen the abbreviation either. Anyway, don’t they call it something different now or have they reverted to the traditional name?

Surely you aren’t suggesting that such an enterprise might have things they would wish to keep hidden?

No stabilisers. 😀

I’ve been thinking about this at length, and it is probably normally right, but I would mention The Lady Vanishes and The Third Man as films that are better than the book, and In a Lonely Place, but the story there is radically changed.

She is following QV up the North Sea, not that far behind. Will she catch her up to say hello?

My father, who wasn’t an actual Cockney, but did grow up in inner London, in the pleasingly called World’s End, a working class area of Chelsea, genuinely used to talk like that.