Last night was rather eventful. We started the evening, by throwing £10 into the sea. OK, I didn’t literally chuck ten pounds overboard, but I may as well have. I visited the casino. They had one of those machines you find at seaside resorts, where you chuck a two pence piece in, hoping that more coins will fall down, after they’re pushed down. Except in this case, it wasn’t coppers I was feeding into the machine, it was silver coins, worth 10p each. I spent £10 on tokens and won nothing. Well, a few tokens were pushed down for us, but these were soon returned, until we were left with nothing. I had the last laugh, though. I didn’t put all the tokens in – a few left the casino with me, as a rather expensive souvenir.

We decided to call it a night and go back to our cabin, where we ordered some drinks – we really went to town – Claire drank a can of orange and I had half a glass of Magners. We rented a film through the telly. Some Disney movie about a couple of bear cubs. It was rubbish, although did help make me feel more tired, letting me get to sleep quickly.

Not really eventful or traumatic so far, is it. The drama started when we went to bed. We mustn’t have been asleep longer than 20 minutes, when the entire ship was awoken by an alarm in all cabins. The captains voice boomed out, into our room. Due to being Dazed, confused and getting increasingly scared, I don’t fully recall the message, but it was something about an emergency and a fire, with instructions for staff to investigate in one of the lower decks.

This was it. I was all prepared to get out of bed, put on a life jacket and some warm clothing; and prepare to abandon ship. I’ve seen Titanic, and don’t want to be left aboard while P&O staff are playing Nearer My God To Thee on the violins! I basically shat the bed. I needn’t have. A few minutes later, a second announcement told us that everything was OK and one of the washing machines had just smell a bit smokey. Needless to say, it took us both a while to calm down and get back to sleep.

We awoke, having had no more alarms of ice bergs or pirates, and headed down to breakfast. Due to it being a sea day and the fact we had a disturbed night, we got up a little later than normal. It looked like every other passenger had the same idea – we really struggled to find anywhere to sit. When we did find a table and ate our breakfast, we couldn’t properly return to our cabin, as it was yet to receive its daily clean. For what seemed like hours, we wandered the ship, looking in every single shop, before coming back to our room, only to find it still hadn’t been touched! Claire said it was because we left so late for breakfast. I do feel for the cabin staff, it can’t be a pleasant job, cleaning up after thousands of dirty people, which is why I don’t feel annoyed at them for the delay. In the end, we gave up and sat out on our balcony anyway, although I’m prepared to get up and move out, when our room is eventually done.

Hopefully our room will be done soon, so we can enjoy the rest of our day, without any more stress – or burning washing machines!