Farwell America! How were ya?

Margaret on our balcony with the binoculars and drinking Champagne.

. . . well it was great; 16 great years. We had our ups and our downs and now we are in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean I can sit and contemplate the situation.

I know I will miss my friends there and two of them in particular whom I would meet once a week just to talk; I will miss those conversations as those two fellas really knew me and I got to know them so we could second guess each other with just the right amount of ball breaking, fun and seriousness. It will be hard to replace such relationships and I don't suppose I ever will.

I think the secret at the basis of those relationships was that we were from different countries.

There are many reasons why we are going back; if our children had have come over to live in the USA we would have stayed because the standard of living is definitely higher but I think it's about time I changed my work and pursued work in Britain.

In Los Angeles we were in a 'company town' – a place run by the film business; in our building of about 55 apartments we could have made a movie; there were enough actors to cast it, there were cinematographers, sound men, producers, directors, film score composers, grips, make-up and various other crew members.

At the auctioneers, where my wife worked, the porters, as they are called at other auction houses in London for example, are called 'the crew.' So the vernacular overflows into the general populous.

So all this goes through my head as I relax on deck; I have described the train journey, which was a long train journey by anybody's standards, and I have often wondered about the other train journeys of the world and I thought before the first train pulled out of the station that I would be sightseeing through the windows watching wonderful and weird sights whizzing passed in to my past (to push a spelling point: discuss) but that is not the idea; you do see things whizzing passed – although not that fast as these are not high speed trains – but the idea is to meet people. I talk for a living, and as a hobby it seems, but by the time I reached New York I was as dry as a bone.

The other people on the train were there to meet other people too; they were talkers and listeners and it was a pleasure to meet the people in America that I didn't know existed; maybe they are the unknown America? I met very few – in fact I have to say I met no Republicans. All of the intelligent people I spoke to supported Obama so let me tell Los Angeles and New York – there are others out there; Obama has a lot of support.

The work situation in the UK is going to be as hard as it is in the USA; but being an actor is always hard. It has never been easy in fact there was talk amongst my relatives that the only reason I became an actor was to take advantage of the 'resting' periods. I don't know if they use that expression or ever have in America but it was always the opening line when anybody found out I was an actor – 'resting are you?'

I did loads of films in Los Angeles; a lot of them never saw the light of day. They were small independent films, I would get paid so there was never a problem, but I cared about what I did. I know some people just take the money and run and don't care if they never see the movie again – well I don't.

The main thing I did lately in LA on movies was voice work; this would mean replacing a line in a movie that was not recorded properly. I have done loads of people. That voice you hear from some of the stars is not always them – it's me. I did Jason Statham, Sean Connery, some fella in Spider Woman, Alistair Sim and lots of others. The other voice work I did was general looping. This would be a voice for the extras; when the main protagonists walked through a hallway, for example, they might pass a couple sitting having dinner – I would be one the people in the 'loop group' who would put a little bit of chat there and if it was a period film with bows and arrows etc we would make the noise of the breath going out of the body as an arrow entered it – urgh!!

Very good money and residuals but like commercials not the work I necessarily want to do.

I am writing this on board The Queen Mary 2 on Saturday July 9^th at almost 2:00 pm ship's time which is almost half way across the Atlantic; if you look on a map we are about level with the bottom point on Greenland but many millions of miles south heading in a north east direction at 20 knots which is about as slow as you travel in a car on the side streets.

We have done 1426 miles from New York and have about 1810 miles to go to Southampton; 2:00pm ship's time is 9:00 am Los Angeles time and 5:00 pm London time today; we put put time pieces forward one hour each day apart from the fist and last day.

We have plenty to do; we dress for dinner most nights with dinner jackets (tuxedos) and bow ties and yesterday, for example, I went to lecture on the Enigma Machine by one of the boffs at the Bletchley code breaking centre Frank Carter who is a code breaking expert and historian and I've just been to his second lecture now. I also went to a classical guitar recital and last night after dinner we listened to a big band.