The original plan had been that I would go home, leaving Jane on the ship. I would collect the post, check the house was OK and then meet up with Andy and Jane Houghton who were joining us for the cruise. The intention was that we would go down to the ship in the taxi together.
But my right knee meant a change of plan and Martin took Andy and Jane to the ship in the taxi and I went to the Nuffield Hospital. About a week before, I had emailed Mr Nick Hancock, the orthopaedic surgeon who I had seen 2 years ago. Luckily he had a Tuesday afternoon list, and it was arranged that I would have an X-ray at 1.00pm and then see him at 2.00pm.
Everything worked like clockwork. Brian Kelly kindly collected me and took me to the hospital. The X-ray was done quickly and Nick Hancock arrived early. To get me through the next 3 weeks, he decided to give me a cortisone injection in the knee in the hope that that would give me some relief. And it has.
Long term it probably means a new knee, but we will worry about that after our return.
Brian was a star and picked me up from the Nuffield and took me back to the ship and Andy and Jane and Max and Anne Wassell had found Jane and had organised her. She had been on her own for 6 hours, but had survived as I knew she would!
We first met the Houghtons and the Wassells on a Black Sea cruise 2 years ago on the Queen Victoria and we all seemed to gel, so are sharing Table 314 in the Britannia Restaurant.
Mike and Joanna Harrison, great friends of my sister Liz and her husband Tim, are also aboard and I bumped into them on Wednesday.