Afternoon Tea

We went for tea and crumpets again. The lady in front of us was obviously part of an up-market care in the community project and so, like the experienced cruisers we are, we loitered by the dining room entrance and tagged on behind a couple who looked normal. The waiter led us to a table in the far corner and bingo! - there she was glaring imperiously over the cake stand. She was elderly, dripping in jewels and spoke like she had swallowed a plum tree. She was obviously old money. You can’t get like that in one generation, it needs a programme of inbreeding over several centuries.

Her son was ‘something in the city’ (corporate wanker?) and she made it clear from the beginning that there was no point in playing cruise ship poker. The only person that would have stood a chance was the captain and I would not have bet on him. She had opinions on everything. She didn’t like the look of the singer (too black?) and the magician was ‘one of those gypsy people’. The normal couple we had followed in were forensically examined. He was Greek (hmm) and his wife was German! The voice said ‘Splendid’ but the look said ‘you’ve started two world wars, don’t try anything on my table’.

She told us about her last world cruise. ‘You have to have a suite, I mean you have to have somewhere to live properly for three and a half months’ - ‘ The suites have good air conditioning but sometimes you have to leave the windows open and bugs and nasty things get in’ – ‘When we were off South African a monkey got in and frightened me’. On reflection I was surprised – I would have expected her to have mistaken it for room service and ordered another bottle of Bollinger.

Dave XX