It started as a tweet ( a post on Twitter) from Carnival Cruise Lines: “You can view Sr Cruise Director, John Heald’s new blog post about his experience onboard Carnival Splendor here.”   OK, that sounded interesting, I suppose.    It turned out it wasn’t anything like what I expected.  The blog post starts out by recounting a dream of a naked woman named Megan and a bit later, Heald comments that “I didn’t realise how serious was this until something slapped me in the face as hard as the time I tried to grope Sally Poole’s breasts behind the bike shed at school.”  There are also references to flatulence and  “ruin[ing] a really good pair of underpants.”  As corporate damage control goes, this is a bit novel.

To be fair, John Heald’s blog has the following disclaimer: This is a personal weblog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own (and those of some of the commentators that I have included) and not those of Carnival Corporation & plc or Heidi. This blog has no official affiliation with Sugar free jelly beans.

The blog post about the engine room fire begins as follows:

Megan walked towards me, the soft glow of moonlight radiating off her naked bottom. Her eyes met mine and I knew that it wasn’t Brad or George or Johnny that she wanted……oh no……….I knew that it was me that her heart was beating for. I motioned her to come to me and she walked seductively towards me and soon her naked body was lying next to mine and she knew that she was about to have the best 3 minutes of rumpy pumpy she had ever had. Megan looked at me and then in the most sensuous of voices said……..”ALPHA TEAM, ALPHA TEAM ALPHA TEAM, DECK 0 ENGINE CONTROL ROOM.”

I awoke with a start and it took me a few moments to get rid of the thought of my idol’s bottom and realise what announcement I had just heard. It was 6:05 am and the officer on watch had just called for Alpha Team, the emergency code for our fire squad to go the engine control room. It was 6:05 am, this wasn’t a drill………..oh f**k!

The following is going to be my honest and open account of what happened. It will be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth because that is what I always write here and this particular blog thingy must be no different. And besides…….that is what our President and CEO Gerry Cahill told me to write when I met with him today and more about that later.  Just bear in mind that the times cited in this blog are all estimates as it has certainly been a long couple of days.

So, there I am. It’s 6:05 am and the bridge have just called for the fire squad and I knew what was about to happen next. And sure enough it did. I farted.

Next the other thing that I knew would happen next did as well, my phone rang and a slightly breathless voice said “John, come to the bridge immediately.”

So I jumped out of bed and decided that “immediately” probably wasn’t a good idea because a) I was in my underpants and b) I had been in the middle of a dream about Megan’s bottom….. if you know what I mean. Anyway, I threw on a T-shirt and a pair of sweat pants little knowing that I wouldn’t be separated from these clothes for the next 24 hours. I had gotten dressed and started my journey to the bridge in the space of maybe 2 minutes after the call had come and all the while my heart began to pound………this wasn’t a drill………….this was the real thing.

And so it goes.  Read the rest of the blog post here.