Mrs A Gets Stabbed and Rock 'n' Roll Night

So we took our leave of our new-found US acquaintance and headed back to the haven that is our cabin.  Now, one thing I have omitted to tell you amidst all the other excitement of today is that Mrs A got stabbed on board.  Like me she thought you had to go to one of the big cities in the UK to achieve that milestone, but no, it’s apparently quite possible within the ultra-secure environment of a cruise ship.

She was minding her own business – or so she says – when she was passing one of the servery counters in the cafeteria and she felt a sharp pain in her foot and shouted: “Aaaaaah, I've been stabbed!”  Well, no, she didn’t actually shout out.  Being part of the backbone of Middle England she winced a little and whispered to me that she thought she’d been stabbed in the foot.  I feared she might have been drinking again and doing her usual bit of exaggerating when a North American young man who one would normally have counted among the good guys’ contingent started apologising profusely to say it was an accident.  That immediately made us both feel better because now it could only be manslaughter rather than cold-blooded murder.

WARNING!: FOR THOSE OF A NERVOUS DISPOSITION, YOU'RE ABOUT TO VIEW AN EXTRA LARGE IMAGE OF MRS A'S BLOODIED FOOT!

Mrs A duly started bleeding, but she remained standing.  I was having visions of her falling to the floor, gasping for breath, saying, as if on the flagship 'Victory' at the Battle of Trafalgar "Kiss me harder, Horatio" and promptly expiring, but she turned out to be a little shaken, not stirred and a modest-sized tissue seemed to cover the bleeding wound.  The young man in question agreed to behave more responsibly with his cutlery in future and we agreed not to press charges, fools that we were.  I mean we could have sued him to his very last cent and retired from the world of work for good.

Now, to last evening.  Last night turned out to be Rock ‘n’ Roll Night.  This wasn’t an event put on by the ship’s entertainment crew but by good old King Neptune.  We rocked and rolled all evening and I decided I perhaps couldn’t do all the courses on offer at dinner and we soon retreated to our bed which slewed and heaved as we went through the night.  I hardly dared to get up in the night for a comfort break but did eventually manage to get there and back in one piece.  Equilibrium was finally restored as we entered the large, scenic harbour at Cartagena and Colombia was in sight.