Life on the Queen Mary 2 - and did Fed Ex lose my guitar?

I'm all at sea for this post; literally.. We are half way across the Atlantic on the Queen Mary 2 and it is truly the only way to fly.

It was a pain in the arse getting to Brooklyn to get the ship but since then all has been easy and slow cruising across on the same route the Titanic took only in reverse.

I would like to do this again as it's all so relaxing; maybe the next time I'll take the train across America to New York; we have excellent food, service and facilities and compared to a first class flight there is no comparison.

I saw the people getting on to the flight from Los Angeles on Sunday and, of course, the first class passengers got onto the plane first. One man stood at the front for a long time before the passengers were called; I presume he wanted to be on the plane first and we could all see him waiting there and we could see what kind of fella he was and we knew how lucky he was to be the first one on.

There was a piece of red carpet maybe about one yard by two yards which had a boundary rope across it and he and his fellow first class people duly stood behind it waiting for the magic word to go; as soon as it did the first class people showed their tickets to the United Airlines person and they were let passed the boundary rope and into the red carpet and they were away.
Then the United representative put the boundary rope back up so that the rest of us – the hoy-poloi – could get on the plane via the regular blue airport carpet.

But getting back to the Queen Mary 2: we have everything here from a casino to dog kennels from a theatre with a big show to a pianist/singer in a pub and in various places there are little bits of entertainment – there was a woman playing a harp in one place and a string quartet playing a classical version of the Billy Joel song Piano Man.

Of course we're off to Southampton as I am due to do my show at the Edinburgh Festival – A Bit of Irish – did I mention it before?

As we are sailing I have very little knowledge of what is going on in the world and what is going on with my guitar – didn't I tell you about that?

Well at the risk of boring my friends and relations, who have heard all about it, I will tell you:
I sing a song in my show about a building labourer with a sick note who tries to tell his boss why he can't come in to work; it seems he tried to move some bricks with a barrel from the 14th floor of a building and when he untied the rope the barrel fell like lead and he went up on the pulley rope and kept going up and down????

Well a similar tale may be in the offing; it just needs somebody to write the song.

United Airlines told me they wanted $200 just to ship my guitar to Brooklyn. So I went to Federal Express – FedEx - and asked them if I could send the guitar to one of their offices in Brooklyn and pick it up when they landed. Yes, they said, so I bought a big box and took it into their Los Angeles office for shipment.

They told me which address in Brooklyn to send it to and it cost me $51; I followed the progress of the guitar on the Internet and last Thursday it reached its Brooklyn destination. When I checked, the Internet told me that delivery had been refused and the box was being 'Returned to Sender.' The guitar had been sent to Maspeth in Queens - no I'd never heard of Maspeth either - so I called FedEx and they eventually put me through to that office where I spoke to a very nice woman who said that the particular FedEx office it had been sent to didn't accept things to be picked up; now they tell me, I thought. But she said all would be well if I picked it up from her office in Maspeth, Queens upon my arrival in New York.

I looked on the map and the journey from JFK Airport would mean taking two trains (the J train, the L train) and a number 59 bus; it would take an hour.

Would it be better to take a taxi to Maspeth, I thought, and back to the airport and then off to the Queen Mary, or would I take the one cab and be in it for maybe two hours and in any case should I leave my wife at JFK with the rest of the luggage; I slept on it. Next day I looked on the Internet and saw that the Guitar had been sent to New Jersey on its way back to Los Angeles.

I called the very nice woman at the Fed Ex Maspeth office, and she hadn't got a clue what happened. She said she had finished work the night before and when she came in to work again the next day the box had gone and was on its way to Phoenix Arizona but she said “we can stop it in Phoenix and get it back here to Maspeth by next week.”

“What day next week?” I asked and she said “Thursday.”

I'm supposed to be at sea on Thursday on the Queen Mary 2 so I asked them to send the guitar to my daughter's house in Suffolk as soon as it reaches Phoenix; they said they could do that but I seem to think I might be playing the air guitar in my show in Edinburgh!!

By the way Fed-Ex are charging me for the shipment to Suffolk; I had to agree to it but I will try and get a refund.

Whatever happens I won't know till the ship docks in Southampton on July 26th.