Domestic Violence

 There have been ugly rumours of violence on Tainui. These are without foundation. True, Maxine has been hideously scarred by an unfortunate sequence of nasty accidents – I repeat, accidents. Her bruised body looks like a Whistler Thames painting, but only she has been the artist.

I have been allowed camera access to only one of Maxine’s lesions. Unlike most of them, she has no idea where this one came from. Ever helpful Rosie has raised the possibility of Hodgkin’s Disease. Whatever. But let me make it quite clear that I was not the perpetrator, much as I might like to have been.

Her backflip into the Volgodonsk reservoir, her fall backwards into the scuppers, her leg scrape as she dived over the side into the Don – all of these are were independently witnessed. They have been well documented and the resultant injuries entirely self-inflicted.

I will say no more.