Saturday 18^th August 1615 At sea MV Blue Star Paros

Last night we had seafood. Alice had tiger prawns, I went for the jumbo “shrimp” which consisted of just the one prawn. I was curious. And yes, it WAS a huge specimen. Pity the flesh turned out to be tough, never mind.

Alice bought some Dior perfume and was delighted to find it was half the price of buying it on Taobao in China. I bought a box of 20 small cigars for the “bargain” price of 15.9 Euros!

In the room, Alice as always went to bed first while I stayed online. Later I noticed she hadn't drawn the curtains fully, meaning come dawn the room would be floodlit. I decided to pull them closed.

I am not entirely sure what happened next (and had it been due to drunkenness I suspect the outcome would have been far more favourable) but I was rather ill-advisedly still wearing socks. The room floor was polished wood. You can guess I am sure but what I think happened was one of my feet caught in the cloth chair cover. You can definitely guess the rest.

Straight down with a smack, once again bang on the ribs which not long ago took a beating (why can I not fall and at least cushion it by having my arm at my side instead of aloft a la Superman about to take off?) and it knocked me bandy.

Alice leapt out of bed like a scalded cat and came to help. I could hardly breathe and all I could say was “leave me, leave me”, I needed time to recover a little. It had crossed my mind fleetingly that I had returned to my Eden only to die there!

This morning of course I was in agony, breakfast for me at least was out of the question. I asked Alice to find a chemist and buy the strongest painkillers they had. She returned with medication and instructions on dosages. Diclofenac. I already take twice the amount they stipulated every day for arthritis so that was scant help. Much later she sourced Ibuprofen which, whilst not 100% effective, at least took the jagged edge off it.

It was enough to make my queasiness disappear and to try lunch before we left. Alice had Greek meatballs in tomato sauce with rice, I had stuffed squid. Alice's was lovely, mine had been cooked a tad too long, rendering it tough. But who cared?

And so we have bade adieu to Syros, next stop Athens proper within sight of the Acropolis. I really, really want to return to Syros for a week – soon!