by Chris Harris
Day 4 of a week aboard Cunard’s Queen Anne, sailing from Southampton to Norway and back. This is not a cruise review so much as a diary of what actually happens when you put 3,000 passengers on a floating hotel, give them unlimited food and, in our case, a drinks package. The good, the bad, the ridiculous and why, despite everything, I’d probably do it all again.
Another good night’s sleep. Very rare for me. Then up to the Wellness Café for a quick breakfast before disembarking in Oslo. We launched quick sticks into the scrambled eggs before they got cold, to no avail; they already were. Naively, we had pinned our hopes on yesterday’s failure to keep them warm as a one-off, but clearly this is an institutionalised tradition. Back to the Trough from tomorrow.
Oslo looked wonderful. My favourite view from the ship was the mountain behind it with a gigantic ski slope that was built, I believe, for the 1952 Winter Olympics.
After much faffing, we managed to get onto one of the hop-on hop-off buses around the city. I say we; as usual, I was the casual observer of such organisational matters, something Eloise always trumps me at, and as a modern man I am happy for her to lead! The bus ‘manager’ was a cocky sod who berated us for something to do with the tickets, which they had fouled up, but blamed on us anyway. Pompous prick.
King Harald had just died, which meant the tour was slightly disrupted and couldn’t stop at the Royal Palace. The gardens were rammed with people and flowers. That, to me, was a plus and saved a thirty-minute bore. For me, hop on, hop off. That’s it. You hop on, then an hour and a half later you hop off exactly where you started. Periods of inactivity, naff off!
What can you say about Oslo? It’s a very lovely city. It doesn’t have the extraordinary buildings of London, Paris or Rome, but it is beautifully kept and organised, with some wonderful modern architecture. The bus even took us a little way out into the countryside, which was a nice touch because you got a sense of what surrounds the city.
As usual, I couldn’t help myself and got lost in all the boring details of the guide. Apparently, Norway’s magnificent musical legacy is based on A-ha, a band who did one album of catchy pop tunes in the 80s. He didn’t half talk some crap. Talking of which, the most poignant part for me was a memorial: eight metal chairs on a patch of grass marking the time when, as the guide put it, to the shame of the Danes, they tried to ‘curry favour’ with the Germans by giving them seven hundred Jews to slaughter. They might try and make up for it by cleaning the bird shit off them.
Back on the ship, I had a long walk around the deck, which was practically empty, doing some dictation as I went, before heading up to the Trough. Here, despite the virtuous start at the Wellness Café, I let myself go a little with two smoked salmon bagels, a roll and a cheese roll, which filled me in roughly equal measure with food, guilt and calories.
I therefore walked another two miles around the deck before retiring to the cabin for some writing. Eloise was off having a massage.
At 4.30 we went down to the Golden Lion, where there was a trivia quiz. I never enter these because I’m hopeless at them. I simply don’t retain trivia. It was quite good fun watching other people demonstrate that they do, but it gave me the idea for a short story, The Quizzicals, which I wrote two days later.
Then it was back up on deck for more alcohol before going, seeking a hot meal, to the Italian restaurant. This was one of the restaurants you had to pay extra for and was tucked away from everywhere else. Once again, the presentation and service were exemplary. The food was somewhat average. However, our waiter appeared to rig the system so that the three glasses of wine we should actually have paid for somehow found their way onto our drinks package. Presumably, he didn’t like Cunard very much.
Afterwards, we went downstairs to see a performing vocal/dance troupe called London, who had bigged themselves up beforehand to sing songs about London. They banged out some Fleetwood Mac covers whilst prancing energetically around the stage. It was a bizarre thing to watch: these incredibly high-energy people leaping around in front of perhaps 250 people, many of whom looked as though they could hardly move. They were piss-poor, but probably about what you would expect on a cruise like this. And let’s just say the main female vocalist didn’t merely struggle to hit the high notes of Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks. She got nowhere near them, resorting to a sort of quasi-grunt whenever one approached, presumably in the hope that nobody would notice.
‘You can go your own way….’ They sung, so we promptly did, and left within ten minutes. At one point the London connection was explained; apparently Fleetwood Mac, and Elton John, whose song they then ruined, came from London. Slightly spuriously named London theme band, methinks. Back up to the Commodore Club for gin and whiskies, then the inevitable final journey through the Trough to pick up the obligatory pudding before heading downstairs. And so another day ended. The fine intentions established over breakfast at the Wellness Café had been well and truly put to bed by the time we crashed out after Oslo.
