Monday, January 8, was the Queen’s birthday – Queen Mary 2, that is.  She’s 20:

I had had the bright idea to call the people who needed the canes to come to my desk where we could look at them at Boot’s the Chemist’s web site.  There would be one in Southampton.  I had to find some way to drive a bit of traffic to the desk.  It worked too, as there are different lengths, handles, tips and even features.  One sees all that when one goes to a web site.   

My handicapped passenger’s problem is sorting out, too.  The World Cruise (WC – tee hee) Concierge did get Spa appointments for showers, for her, and I assume the commode, too because I heard no more about it.  It’s not ideal but it will work. 

I discovered the “World Cruise Lounge” for breakfast in the afternoon.  It’s brilliant, a nice selection of tea food, and a bunch of little tables looking out the bow of the ship, on Deck 11.  There’s a concierge, Gunay, and a steward, whose name I must get.  He’s awfully nice.  It’s quiet and very pleasant.  People talk to each other. 

The ship matched me up with a very lively bunch at dinner.  Joe and Kathy are Brits, who worked in healthcare in the US, and Sally is a psychologist.  She and her friend Carmella were fun, as was Mark, who was also brilliant.  At least he was reading a very esoteric book.  The entertainment was Chanteuse, a couple of Broadway singers doing Diva music but not really divas.

The next day, January 9, I found out I had another disabled guest.  Her power chair is the all-terrain vehicle of power chairs.  It is called a Ranger Discovery.  It will go over gravel and moguls, hill and dale.  It packs up to the size of a suitcase and weighs fifty pounds, battery included.  She was very proud of it and not fazed when I told her I had seen a power chair keel over near the Deck 11 elevators yesterday.  I guess hers won’t and I sure don’t want to be there if it ever does.  She’s an interesting, strong person and knows what she wants and needs.  Unfortunately, it isn’t dinner.  She’s so allergic to onions that she can’t even sit at a table where people are eating anything with an onion in it, which is just about everything in most restaurants.  With all of that, she’s really positive.  She and her husband live in a 564 sq.ft. Manhattan apartment.  She doesn’t know what to do with all the space in their stateroom.  Gotta love her.

In the end there were just three of us for dinner, but it was super.  I’m loving Cunard.  The lecture program is very rich and, while I don’t have much time to appreciate it, I do like the people it attracts – a ton of academics.  They’re quick and witty and sort of leave me in the dust, but I can hold my own in the wine department and that’s  a big topic.  This one is a retiring Math professor at Harvard.  I did some math myself and woke up realizing that he was likely studying math at Harvard when Tom Lehrer was teaching it.  We had a very lively discussion about wine.   We are going to work together to have some wine events, maybe even a progressive wine tour.  Have to find out if we have enough winos. I skipped the show, as I had seen both performers before, and it was a good wait until 10:15PM.

Another sea day on January 10.  I love them because I can get work done. I am now meeting three people at 9:30 am tomorrow in Southampton, one to get his Aussie ETA, and two for canes.  The ETA app should be able to find him, when we find WiFi, so all will be well, but we’ll be together, just in case. 

I landed an interesting table at dinner.  Heather and Richard were a British couple, Bruce an American professional musician and choir director, and a young couple, who were the seriously interesting part.  I had sat behind him in the show on formal night.  He’s young, between 25 and 40, I’d say.  His hair has dyed sections up the middle, blue on the right, magenta on the left.  They met nicely in a Mohawk a good 5 inches high.  The lower half of his head was almost shaved, but in swirls.  That was on formal night.  Tonight, the Mohawk was just combed over, leaving only the color expressing his individuality.  For all of that, he’s an entrepreneur, has multiple companies, sources his labor in India, sell his services in the US and Europe.  He maintains he just started getting good job offers, when he adopted the piercings and flamboyant hair-do.  His wife(?) has no tattoos or piercings, has long hair, worn simply and looks like the paleontologist that she is.  One of them, or both if they’re brother and sister, has a grandmother in England, who is 98, still going strong, and has two PhDs.  She might still be consulting part-time.  On top of all the accomplishments, that kept coming out in the conversation, that was the icing on the cake.  Too bad they were getting off in Southampton, I would have liked to have pursued.

There was a production show that night – Broadway Rocks, so I stayed up for it.