Went to Reception at 11am. Manager called Rowell came to my cabin to see the damage and then shouted at me so much, I threw him out of my cabin. When I said it was P&O that caused the damage, he said, it wasn’t, it was the Southampton Stevedores. Well, my contract is with P&O and I handed my luggage to them. If they outsourced the heavy lifting, that’s their problem, not mine. He then said that, even if it could be fixed, there was no time. I pointed out that I reported the problem and got ignored for the best part of 24 hours, so any shortage of time was hardly my fault either. After I went back to Reception and made a complaint about his behaviour, I was offered £25 in On Board Credit to compensate for the suitcase damage and the damaged top was completely forgotten. How is OBC any use?! They don’t sell suitcases on board! Agreed to meet the Customer Services Manager at 4pm to discuss properly.

Dad came with me. Phillip Holmes, CSM was quite pleasant. He agreed £15 for the ruined top and £25 for the case and said that Southampton would send me a cheque, but it might take a few weeks. He said he could not write one, no one on board can, and neither can he allocate OBC to be used on another ship (i.e. the cruise we are booked on for later in the year). So, we will wait. But at least now I have an answer, rather than the back and forth of yes it can be repaired, no it can’t nonsense we have had until now. Although, frankly, I am no clearer as to whether it can be repaired or not!

Then a nap and then packing – first helping Mum and Dad with lifting their cases once full, and then Dad came to supervise my packing (well, actually to give mum some peace to finish her library book before dinner!).

The sun shone today, so I did as much sitting on deck reading as I had time for. There were people proper sunbathing today. We must be getting close to the high that is giving the UK its heatwave. It was very pleasant on deck, with barely a breath of wind. A lovely way to end a very enjoyable cruise. I will add photos to all the recent entries when I get home – I’m not paying 20p a minute to upload jpegs, sorry!

And the winner of the Film with the Worst Sound Balance in Human History goes to… Belle. Good grief. I had to variously alter the volume from 27, to hear the whispered confidences, right down to 8, when the music completely drowned out the dialogue, so as not to get lynched by my neighbours. Thank goodness they were still awake/ slamming drawers/ packing, otherwise I could have been on the end of a right old talking to. A nice enough film, with plenty of heaving bosoms in tight but exquisite period dresses and dirty, impoverished, noisy souls to drive past whilst looking shocked. A bit like Les Mis but without the music. And much more earnest. With a strident anti-slavery message that was almost certainly lacking in the real life events on which it was so very loosely based.  The script was also clearly written by someone with absolutely no knowledge of the law and its maxims, because there were some lovely ones that could have been used, had the writer had the faintest idea what they were talking about. Shame, that.  Oh well, never mind. At least the boy got the girl and the girl got the boy, and the murderers lost their court case, so all’s well that ends well and all that.