‘A taste of paradise’

Sometimes the enormity of what we are undertaking hits us in the face like a wall. Well technically I suppose walls never hit us, we hit them but, you get the idea. When I look back on this odyssey and indeed look ahead at what we still have to achieve, it seems like the human equivalent of 'The Grand National' with an endless succession of seemingly insurmountable (or at least daunting) obstacles placed before us.

It started 5 years ago after we had fallen in love with the island and decided we would try to buy some land. Well that’s not too difficult but, we wanted beach and that is very difficult indeed. Eventually after an exhaustive (and to us unwitting) vetting process by the great and the good of Grenada, which we seemingly passed... a strip of beach was magically offered to us. “Been in the Kent family for generations you know. Yes, yes they said you could have some!” Not just any beach but ‘one of the ten best undiscovered beaches’ in the Caribbean according to ‘Rough Guide’. Obstacle number one overcome.

But then we had to have geological surveys done and marine surveys and then apply for our Alien land holding licence to be granted to see if we would be allowed to buy it, as we were not Grenadian nationals. The license was eventually granted but the finger nails had long since disappeared... but when it came through it was another great obstacle neatly circumnavigated. Although I did take exception to being referred to as an Alien, I mean I know I’m no oil painting but, that seemed a bit steep.

Then came the saga of planning permission and you can’t get planning permission without having detailed architectural plans so you have to enter ‘Architects straight’ a long and deadly part of the race course inhabited by arrogant, condescending tossers. Three architects later we finally get one who is happy to turn our designs into a full architects’ plan. The first architect told us we couldn’t have two identical bedrooms in the Beach Houses and one had to be a master bedroom and the other a secondary bedroom. This apparently is a known law of the Universe and he was not going to be party to building a “communist house”...I kid you not! He claimed he would be defrocked for producing a house with two identical bedrooms and the other architects would all laugh at him down at the ‘A club’ and break his pencils.

The second one had an interesting client service approach which consisted of never responding to the client irrespective of how many times the tedious little sods tried calling, emailing, cajoling, threatening or crying. A tip for any of you thinking of adopting this approach in your business, whilst it does have initial advantages in that you get paid for doing nothing, client retention does eventually suffer. After 2 years we at last had a plan and 18 months after submitting it to the planners we had full and final approval to build! Hurrah!

This has been followed by an endless succession of further hurdles to be jumped. The most recent of which was an old law which for the last 25 years had been roundly ignored by one and all but suddenly became active again six months ago for no apparent reason. This law prohibits the importing of any wooden furniture into Grenada. Now as a big part of the look and feel we are trying to achieve for Moonfish Beach Houses is to have beautiful Lombok furniture imported from Bali, this was a potential disaster. Of course they rejected our licence out of hand. We visited the shipping agent who said, with a doubtful look on his face, that we could try to appeal to the customs department and explain that we couldn’t get what we wanted within the Caribbean...which we genuinely couldn’t. It might work!

On the day, after a sleepless, worry filled weekend, the shipping agent suggested politely that I might like to sit on the harbour wall and what the fishing boats whilst Kitty went in with him to plead our case. He thought the rather forthright approach he noticed I adopted on occasion, may prove counter -productive under the circumstances. Fair point, well made! Amazingly Kitty won the day and 40 minutes later the license was granted for the princely sum of EC$5 and another obstacle was flattened under hoof.

But then in the midst of all this...plus choosing tiles and roof colours and taps and shower heads and doors and fans and palm trees and sea grape trees etc etc we sometimes find time to sit on the floor of our half built veranda and look out at the islands that lie immediately in front of our beach. One particularly breathtaking island is called Sandy Island (‘nil point’ for originality there then) which for many years was used as the location for the ‘Taste of Paradise’ Bounty Bar TV ads.

If you remember, the ads consisted of scantily clad girls and sun tanned hunks with improbable muscles frolicking on a beautiful, palm fringed beach with aqua green waves ceaselessly breaking on the reef beyond. Nothing wildly inventive in that of course, indeed I suspect the only vaguely creative thought that passed through the addled brains of the creatives was ‘Let’s get a load of skinny birds and piss around on a desert island for ten days.’

“You’re a bloody genius Tarquin, did I ever tell you that? Lunch?”

Yet oddly, I find the fact that this island was chosen rather reassuring amidst all our turmoil. It means a clever ad agency (well clever...ish) sent the script to a clever director who sent a clever location man to search the world and make a short list of the most beautiful islands he could find. The list was eventually taken to a clever client who after great deliberation, choose our very own little Sandy island as the most perfect representation of Paradise that he or his customers could ever imagine.

So whilst we may not actually live in paradise at least we get to look at it everyday and surely that is worth all the hurdles we’ve already got through, round or over.... and all the ones we still have to face. Yesterday, to celebrate I bought my first Bounty Bar in years. Marvellous! A real taste of paradise!