Black and White Ball

Monday 1st December

Being the first night in a strange room, I kept waking up. Because I’d taken a sleeping tablet, I was able to go back to sleep again. I finally surfaced at 11am and decided it was time to get up. I wanted to get to the dining room before breakfast closed at 11:30. I made it by 11:28, only to find that QM2 does not have the banana bread that I savour as part of my shipboard breakfast routine. The two people at the serving station looked at me blankly when I asked about it. Later I was chatting with one of the supervisors and he told me I should ask one of the men in suits in future and they’d get it for me. I wonder if it’s only available for Grills guests on this ship. I asked for it on most days and enjoyed the special service of having it fetched specially for me. 

I watched the 12:15 dance lesson – a waltz. The teaching couple did more talking than dancing. The dance floor was absolutely packed with cruisers, and hardly room to move. The waltz steps were all in a box shape, going nowhere around the floor, but I guess it was all there was space for. He did a lot of what I would call ‘lead and follow’ instructions. One very handy tip from the female teacher to the ladies was not to worry too much about the beat of the music. If your partner is a beginner and can’t keep to the beat, follow him rather than the music. Good! That’s my handy excuse for never listening for the beat.

Next was lunch with Jenny and Judith. The buffet area on QM2 is confusing and you have to walk around a lot of nooks and crannies to find seats. It can be difficult at peak times.

Jenny managed to change rooms during the day. Her original Inside cabin was right over G23, the disco, so on the first night she had loud music playing beneath her! After several phone calls to complain, a staff member went to turn off the recorded music. No one was in there. That room was known to the staff, as one of them had slept there herself for a few nights. She said that sometimes music can go on until 5am! Jenny was happy with her room on the next floor. Judith would have liked to move too, as she could feel quite a lot of vibration in her room. As you walked along the corridor you could feel it in your feet, starting just past my room and continuing for about 5 cabins. It seemed worse inside Judith's room. Unfortunately there were no more spare rooms.

Judith and I met up for afternoon tea in the Queen’s Room. I turned up at 3:10 (for a 3:30 start) and found there was quite a queue already. We managed to find a seat and were later joined by two strangers. As they came from Wales, as did Judith, there was a lot of talk about Welsh places. That was a situation where I stressed being Australian (in a broad accent) rather than being one of the English oppressors. As part of the cutbacks (with all the cheap fares that are on offer, there have to be cutbacks somewhere), ships serve squirty cream instead of clotted cream with the scones. It’s not the same! On other cruises I stopped having scones with afternoon tea as it doesn’t taste worthwhile. For this trip I packed my own tubs of clotted cream. I even picked up a little jar of blackcurrant jam from the breakfast buffet so I could have my scones exactly as I wanted them. It felt like luxury.

It was the evening of the Black and White Ball, so at dinner all the ladies were dressed in variations of black and white. Dinner was a bit of an ordeal. I have never sat at a dinner table that was so quiet. Hardly anyone said a thing. I was weary (too much dancing the night before) but managed to get a couple of short-lived conversations started around the table. It was a relief to leave!

The dancing started at 8:30 but the Hosts were not due to arrive until 9:45. I sat there with Vi and a couple of men from our dinner table and again it was silent. Normally Vi and I laugh and chat together but we could not do that with the men there. I managed three dances before the ball officially started but did not really feel like dancing. I was tired from doing too much the day before. When the band started up I felt as though the trumpet was going right through my head. I chose to give up and go back to my room at about 9:30.