exlondoner

I don’t think Cunard runs any saunas in Baden Baden, though.

And off Oxford Street in London.

Even with something as minor as a different type of ice cream, I think it is a good idea to ask the meal before, as someone would have to go down to the bowels of the ship to find it. Were you able to do this?

I can see that is better than losing money in the casino, but only very marginally.

Can you explain why that is significant?

I have heard she was at her worst with bridge, but nice to babies. Either way, it is not good to have treated the crew as if they were her servants.

But then you would miss lunch in the Grills, which usually finishes at 2.30.

And a matching sugar bowl. What sophistication!

What about check in? In May, as QG (and diamond, if it matters) I started queueing at about 12.30, as instructed, and was not terribly pleased to see the person in front of me, who was not QG, had a check in time of about 2.30. Whatever priority they may have had, that seems wrong.

No, that was the invention of television, a word which, as you know, is half Greek, half Latin, and therefore presaged the end of civilisation, according to the then editor of the Guardian.

Are the masses not allowed uplifting experiences?

So you were able to check in and board before Grills?

Here in Bournemouth, people generally make some sort of effort to hide behind bits of towel while changing, but a bare top would go unremarked.

Yes, me too. I’ve no idea why, particularly if we are in mid ocean, but it is always the start to the day.

Hmmm, I know you have manifold talents, but I think they possibly lie elsewhere.

I believe that is Aida.

Couldn’t cope with an inside cabin as I’m far too claustrophobic. Anyway, I like to be able to look out if I wake in the night.

I would not choose to be up at such a dreadful time. It was just that it is light so early that it is very difficult to go back to sleep at the moment.

When my husband was a very young man, ballroom dancing was the sort of dancing people did, and in his case how he met girls, I think. It seems to have taken place on very crowded dance floors, with people who were not expert dancers, but just sort of knew what to do. How did they manage? I occasionally watch the ballroom dancing, so I have some idea how that goes. What about the other sort of dancing which takes place to pop music I dislike? Do people crash into each other doing that? Is there a code of conduct?

That alien QG is what I have tended to feel on the few, ?2?, occasions I have lunched in the Verandah. Never in QG.

Did you omit a not? Are you familiar with Meteora in Greece, where the monks accessed their rocky pinnacles hauled up in baskets? That would do for those in balcony cabins, at least.

Clearly also the designers are believed to endow the lifts with mind reading powers. It is much easier (if a little claustrophobic for the incumbent) to get a wheel chair in a lift if people come out to let it manoeuvre, then squash back in around it, wouldn’t you say.

Yes, I encountered that a few times - most strange. Then there was the lady who told me, apparently seriously, that on QA alone were the lifts invariably at the opposite level of the ship to the one where she was waiting, as if it were a planned design fault in QA just to spite her.

And there are those benches in the way, which you probably can’t hurdle, but might trip over.

According to the DP, the Lido (I know it is called something different) on QA stopped at 12.30 am.