Do Not Adjust Your Sex

I think it's safe to say that among the attributes with which modern cruise ship companies are hoping that passengers will associate their corporate presence, "unsettling" ranks fairly low.

Well, that's as may be, but nonetheless, this was very often the presence that greeted us when we would happen to turn on the TV as we sailed across the Carib Sea (the set seemed to be preset to start always at the on-board information channel):  the ship's officer deputed to provide the day's announcements - dining hours, weather, excursion details, all the minutiae of a day's travel - in French.  Which was flawless, as far as I could tell, if at times betrayed by a sharp lapse in something that to my ear sounded suspiciously like Liverpudlian.

Even so, giving the benefit of the doubt, I imagined the childhood - young Jean-Yves or Louis-Bertrand, carefree in the streets of Marseilles, dreaming of the future and little knowing it would mean reminding the small Francophone subset of the 3,000 passengers on the good ship Buffet Heaven that all sunglasses are 30% off today on in the glamorous Lido Shops on Deck Five.

It bothered me for a while, while we were changing clothes or otherwise passing through the cabin, en route, say, from the spa to the sunset bar, just why there seemed to be something awfully familiar about our televisual Gallic pal.  It's only in the last day or two it struck me just why that face rang such a chord:

Eerie, isn't it?