Now it was me, curled up on the back seat of an old taxi, drifting in and out of awareness as the driver travelled with infinite care down the bumpy tracks to the port.


It was 1.00 am, but the port lights were on and a small boat was waiting, and so was a small crowd of onlookers - it was all in a evening’s entertainment and Greeks have none of the reticence of the British when it comes to illness or, indeed, any form of privacy. The captain had to be paid €200, then I was lifted on to the back of the boat, followed by the GP who gave me an anti nausea injection in my bottom while the crowd sighed in sympathy.


...I was still in the teeshirt I’d arrived in and sufficiently relieved to put on the red satin nightdress, fit for a 1960’s honeymoon, which a friend eventually delivered.


...A day or so later, driven half mad with vomiting and pain I was having fantasies about pulling myself to the sea shore and throwing myself into the cool water and ending it all.

...I was so traumatised – by continual pain and fear - that I couldn’t speak for two days but in fact with the right drugs, properly administered, it was only a week later that I left hospital, with dressings on the huge black blisters on my legs.