THE QE2 - "On Cruising Alone at 12 Feet per Gallon"

QE2 is an apt abbreviation. One learns even before boarding that queuing is a necessity for this form of travel, and with as many as 1800 fellow travelers, it is obvious that the queues are long, albeit finite. Fortunately, the English, who operate the QE2, are not only the queue's originators, but its only remaining practitioners. Waterloo station is easily found by any cabbie in London, but what train to take to Southampton is not clear even to the natives. Having been promised a train every 30 minutes, I approached the appropriate platform gate, baggage and ticket in hand, only to be told that I wanted an express train at another platform. So I went there, only to be told that I really wanted the "boat train," which departs from the platform I had tried originally. So I queued behind the appropriate sign, per its written instructions, and discovered from fellow queuers that I could check my luggage straight through to my cabin. So I did that and found from the baggage handlers that the train would indeed accommodate us all, so I stopped for a snack before rejoining the queue. About that time a barely intelligible voice announced that I should join a queue behind a sign marked "A," which I did, only to learn that several hundred other would-be passengers had already queued alongside the track. But I stayed put, knowing that I was playing by English rules, even if my American compatriots were not. Then came the final insult! As we struggled to the train, we were instructed to pick up a cup of coffee and a packaged lunch: a couple of dry sandwiches, an apple, and it hardly mattered what else. Evidently this was our reward for the unexplained 5½-hour delay that deprived us of both a decent meal and a daylight view of the Southern England coast as we departed. The only saving experience was the brass band provided by the Salvation Army, which serenaded us as we finally pulled away from the dock. This was a warning, unheeded by me at the time, that we were embarking on a transatlantic crossing, not a luxury cruise. The food was certainly good, by English standards particularly, and the service adequate, if a bit too relaxed and familiar. The best procedure, which I instituted at the outset by ordering caviar and the oldest available champagne at the very first meal, was simply to ask for what I wanted. The best part of the crossing to me, and I was rather unpopular with those who endured seasickness because of it, was the unusually rough weather we experienced the first half of the voyage. To walk the pitching, rolling, and perhaps even yawing, deck, with wind and occasional spray in the face was to relive, although in comparative luxury, what my immigrant ancestors experienced a century before. And since many of them joined the Salvation Army in their new homeland, they may also have left England's shores to the accompaniment of a brass band. It was a transatlantic crossing, at least until we berthed in New York. Then it was more queues, the worst being that for a taxi, which required about 90 minutes for me. As John Cook, a senior pilot on the Concorde who accompanied us on our voyage to talk about that superb machine, put it: "There are two ways to cross the Atlantic; which you prefer depends on whether you want to spend 3¼ hours or 5 days." W. Vance Johnson 14 Sep 85