The Begining

I was born at a very early age...............When I was a small child in England a few years after the second world war, television came about. The first pictures that I saw were of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth 2. If my memory serves me well It was June? 1953. I was seven years old. I also remember that every child in England received a gift of Cadbury's chocolates in a tin box. After the first day of course the chocolate had been devoured but the box with it's silver paper liner retained the chocolate aroma which fed my imagination if not my appetite for several weeks. The box eventually became the receptacle for my pencils and pens. In those days our school desks had ink wells and we took our books to school in Gas Mask bags left over from the war.

During 1959-1960 BBC television produced TV a show called "Whickers"s World" with host Allen Whicker. The bespectacled Whicker--a former journalist and reporter for television's Tonight programme has probed and dissected the often secretive and unobserved private worlds of the rich and famous, rooting out the most implausible and sometimes ridiculous characters after gaining admittance to the places where they conduct their leisure hours. One of the shows featured a lady of idependant means who lived on the Cunard Queen Mary taking a world cruise. The BBC has announced that there will be a new show produced in 2008. The four-part series, Alan Whicker's Journey of a Lifetime, due this autumn, will mix Whicker's memories, reflections and archive footage from 30 years of the hugely popular Whicker's World. He is now 85 years old.

At the age of 14 I decide this would be the life for me. Living on a cruise ship sailing around the world! Well it took me a little while.............and, you can't always get what you want!...You get what you need?

By the time I was able to participate the Queen Mary is in a block of cement in Long Beach, The QE2 will soon be in a block of cement in Dubai. I have been cruising since 1976 and have had always wanted to travel on board one of the Cunard vessels. I did have the opportunity to travel a few years ago on the Q.E 2 in a suite which gave one the "privilege" of dining in the Queens Grill. During the trip we came through some rough seas. We knew something was up when the cabin steward came into our suite and placed everything on the floor of the cabin. It was rough enough to blow out the windows on the "Two Deck" which is the second deck level to the top of the ship . When we met with Commodore Warwick he told us it was "Nothing." We did not understand "this is not a cruise, it is a crossing and the QE2 always gets through."
Even after this experience which required me to be taken to the doctor on board for a "Mal De Mer" shot, I still wanted to "do" the "World Cruise" and being British, specifically with Cunard.
This blog will be the "story" of this epic!

I will be posting from my trip hopefully on a daily basis if the ship's internet system allows?