Ruling the waves

James Leith

THE first time I fell in love was on board The Windsor Castle, somewhere between Cape Town and Las Palmas. I was 13, she was 12 and we never spoke. I just gazed and ached. I have had a very romantic view of ocean liners ever since.

My wife is the worst sailor on earth — she gets seasick on the Embankment. So when Cunard invited her to give two talks on board the QEII in exchange for a five day cruise, during which she and a companion (me, I hoped) would have to pay for nothing but the booze, I tried to pretend I didn't mind one way or the other.

Greater love hath no woman — she accepted because she thought I'd love it. The plan of the ship showed accommodation ranging from the Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary suites (very high up on the signal deck — can be £.1,700 a night) to inside single cabins way down on deck five (lowest is seven) at about £263 a night.

On embarkation at Southampton we were given cabin number 8105. 'Deck eight? My God, that's below the keel!' Not, in fact, so. The cabin was on the sun deck (one from the top) and offered luxury we'd only dreamt of. There was a lifeboat right outside the window, too.

The first-class passengers are now called 'Grill Passengers' because the more expensive your cabin, the more superior your dining arrangements. All meals are included in the fare, and at embarkation you hand over a credit card, and everything else, including a daily amount for gratuities, gets added to your bill. I don't know about the others, because once I'd eaten in the Queen's Grill, nothing, but nothing, was going to persuade me to eat anywhere else. I can't think of a single land-based restaurant that could serve that extensive and well-executed a menu to that many people in that length of time with that level of service, in an environment that at any moment could, and did, tilt 30 degrees in any direction it chose.

We were due to sail at 6 p.m. At 8 p.m. the captain announced that it was 'a bit windy' and Southampton Water was 'a bit tricky', and we were going to sail the following morning. This decision — the first time a Southampton departure had been postponed for years — made the national news. It also meant that my wife's first lecture was delivered in the calm of the Channel rather than the hurly-burly of the Bay of Biscay, and was therefore more complete and less messy than we had anticipated.

Activities and facilities include ballroom dancing lessons from 9 a.m., and gentleman hosts to try them out on in the evening. No lady hostesses, sadly. There are seven kinds of entertainment and 14 leisure activities, but just about everyone seems to lounge about waiting for the next meal.

The best activity of all is passenger watching. This is especially true, as it can be combined with eating. We had been warned that the QEII in October would be awash with Bournemouth landladies. Some perhaps, but by no means all. At the next table was a Japanese lady of staggering hauteur, who looked like a 35-year-old Asian version of Edith Sitwell. She had a 16 in waist and ate with an enthusiasm

that would have made the late Lord Goodman wince. Her companion, a stocky lady capable of taking on Bruce Lee, we thought was her bodyguard, but when, in slightly rough weather, she disappeared, we concluded, as Noel Coward did of Queen Salote of Tonga's consort, that she was actually, if not her lunch, then possibly a between-meals snack.

Only a princess could have induced such an outbreak of bowing among the other Japanese passengers. They started about 30 yards off, and the nearer, the deeper. She upset the Bournemouth landladies by taking her rightful place at the front of the crowd at every tour stop. She just bowed (very slightly) and moved in. British queuing enthusiasts were appalled.

We missed the legendary passenger who takes one of the Grand Suites several times a year, and takes the other one for his wife. We also failed to meet another legend: the New York lady who concluded, after doing her sums, that it was cheaper to live on the QEH, which she does. . . deck four.

Locations are identified by staircase and deck. Staircase A is nearest the bow and passengers should be warned that the ship's amazing gyroscopic stabilisers and her deep keel induce the bow, in a sideways swell, to perform a regular vertical figure of eight. Try walking up and down this almost spiral staircase while it does so and you will understand why our daughter never received the email we set out to send from the computer centre, staircase A. deck two.

The ship's hospital is located at C6 — geddit? Apart from the nautical wit, it is also the most central and therefore least mobile location for those suffering from recurring lunch syndrome.

The higher you are, the more everything moves, and at 4.10 a.m. on Tuesday in the Bay of Biscay (Storm Force 10) we were woken by spray landing on top of the lifeboat outside our window, about 120 feet up. Exciting. I thought, and turned on the television to see what the bow camera was showing, but the captain was rationing excitement and had turned it off. I understood why when I discovered that a group of Scottish passengers, new to ocean liners, had spent the whole night fully dressed and wearing life-jackets.

The QEH is simply magnificent. Well over 30 years old, she was built to cross the North Atlantic in winter. On one occasion she sailed from New York to Southampton simultaneously with a spanking new, purpose-built cruise liner and they both ran into some fairly typical North Atlantic winter weather. By the time the modern gin-palace hove into the Western Approaches, decks awash with broken glass and injured punters, the QEH was 36 hours ahead, had refuelled, restocked, embarked another set of passengers and was on her way out.

This goes some way to explaining the huge number of passengers who are on board for the 20th time or more. Not everyone seems to be loaded, but from the Everso-Wozwes (It was ever so rough, but we wasn't on board that time, woz we, Trev?') to the delightful couple of Suffolk farmers who had retired to Dolphin Square, the ship was The Thing. They love her. And because they do, the crew seem to love them. The barman in the Chart Room bar has been with the ship for 32 years. The crew work five months on and one month off. It has to be love. Which, after all, is where I came in. The sea air doesn't half shrink your clothes, though.