The first ball of the season brings with it a low running sense of anticipation. This is probably because we start off with a basic theme, a classic black and silver. The only reason I say the anticipation is dulled is because of the effort it takes sometimes to become Cinderella. Cinderella may have toiled all day among the ashes, but she didn’t do so in a week’s worth of high seas!
While the week has gone extremely well, and we’re all more than happy with the path this Voyage is taking, we’re all a little tired. Never-the-less, it is Cinderella time, and part of our ship-board duty is to play princess once in a while. So I shrugged out of my day uniform and slithered into my classic black floor length evening gown. As usual the hair takes the longest, my hair is so fine that getting it to do anything but sit there loose ‘looking like it doesn’t care’, requires a great deal of effort, a lot of hairspray and multiple struggles with a very hot curling iron. But still, I manage to turn myself into a relatively presentable picture.
Earlier in the evening while the sounds of the Unexpected Boys (if you haven’t heard of them, look them up, they’re several degrees of awesome), entertained the guests we were cloistered backstage fighting with a very noisy helium machine and several dozen star-shaped black and silver foil balloons. Once again it has been proven that pairing a tired event staff team with anything involving helium is bound to make for some amusement. So is trying to find space to store about a hundred inflated balloons in a teeny tiny backstage area!
It occurs to me on nights like this just how unusual my job is. I’m required to go from your normal daytime worker to something resembling a glamour-girl in the space of an hour, and never do any of us think of blinking an eye. It’s simply part of the job.
This is the second of thirteen formal nights and the first of ten theme nights. The next one after this will be Kimono night, which I am slightly nervous about, because while I have a Kimono (thanks to my mother who loaned it to me!), I have no idea how to wear one! We’ll see how that turns out. Then of course there’s Prom Night, which I am only vaguely nervous about due to the height of the shoes that are required by the length of my dress (Silv, if you’re reading this, these would be the shoes you once provided so much assistance with my getting out of the last time I attempted to wear them). All in all, tonight’s black and silver is a much simpler affair.
As always , the band will play, the room will sparkle and for the duration of a few hours, work will feel like a fairytale..
And then this Cinderella will go home to a hot bath, a cup of tea, and hopefully an early night…