The Wellington was Impeccable – Day Five on the QM2

Tonight was the last of our formal dinners for the voyage.  The dilemma for me was which tie and vest, cummerbund or nothing.  Really, the choices I’m having to make these days are tortuous.

Anyway, I’m just not a fan of cummerbunds.  They slip down, they spin around.  Just a general pain.  However, I’d worn the vest at the last meal.  Do I really want to be seen in it again?  On the other hand, I really do like the maroon tie that the vest came with but I can’t really wear it with the black cummerbund.  The decisions are endless.

Now I had noticed that many men went without the vest or cummerbund.  Hmmmmm….Seems like a solution, but I’ve never heard that was acceptable.  Decided that since, while standing, the jacket is buttoned I should be able to get away with it and gave it a shot.

Things are not entirely as they seem.  If Melissa said that she was a onetime Miss Texas, you’d pretty much respond “OK”.  Would seem natural.  In fact her grandmother told he that she would in fact be Miss Texas.  However, turns out she was a bit of a rebel in the early ‘80s and actually had the sides of  her head shaved and had a flattop.  That being said, she was a member of the drill team.  Because as she said it, as a girl, you were either a member of the drill team, a cheerleader or a lesbian.

So one of the things I looked forward to most prior to the trip was having a cigar at Churchill’s.  Now, I hadn’t seen pictures of Churchill’s prior to the voyage, but assumed that it would be some type of old British cigar room.  Sadly, it turned out to be basically a rather small, glassed in humidor off the Commodore club.

So I could use that as the excuse for not going there, but the reality is that I got rather intimidated.  The room seems to be filled, which doesn’t take much, with a lot of older white gentlemen who probably actually know something about cigars.  I tried to peer pressure our tablemate John into joining me but no such luck.  Was he not into it or equally intimidated?

So last night, after retiring from the Commodore Club, I decided to wander the ship, which seemed like a fairly safe activity.  After all, all of the bars were closed.  Just to double check, I wandered aft on deck three, through the Queens Room to G32.  Given that they were vacuuming the Queens Room, I assumed that G32 was closed.  However, I decided to wander in and see what it looked like. 

Turned out that it was not only open, but that DJ Graham Cracker, was still at the turntables.  My bartender was from Romania, has been on the ship for four years and is married to someone else on the ship.

It turns out that because they are contracted as singles, that he’s not officially given a cabin with his wife.  However, they sort of trade around and they pretty much end up living together.

Well, tomorrow we’ll be packing our steamer trunks in anticipation of disembarkation early Monday morning.  Our little fantasy life is soon coming to it’s end.

Until then…