Well dears, our third Christmas in Grenada has passed and we reach the two and half year mark in our odd little odyssey. Time perhaps for another end of year school report… oh what dreaded things they were, at least in my case. Hopefully this one won’t fill you with quite so much dread!
Geography: As each month passes we grow more in love with the island and our little corner of it in particular. It is beginning to feel like home. As the horror of building these houses starts to fade a little, (isn’t the human brain a wonderful tool?) we view it increasingly as a scene of happy memories and new traditions rather than a living nightmare. Each morning we wake up and take in the spectacular view of the islands in front of us floating on the equally spectacular and unfeasibly green sea… and remind ourselves to never grow complacent but appreciate it anew each day. What a privilege.
Mark: 9.9/10. Comment: ‘Well done you dear’ as my dear old mum used to say. Keep the awe!
Woodwork: We have realized that our huge efforts to create spacious, chic, interiors in our guest houses, carefully chosing fabrics and importing the furniture from Bali, etc, etc was a waste of bloody time! Lovely though they are, we’ve noticed that our guests seem to spend almost no time in there at all! They sit out on their balconies all day, go out for a swim or a meal and go to bed. We should have just built the balconies and ignored the rest! However, they are (of course) doing the sensible thing. Life in the Caribbean is all about living outdoors. Coming from a cold climate we are hard-wired to try and keep the weather out, in the Tropics you invite it in and give it a big hug.
So, if you can’t beat them, join them – since our little Boat House only has a tiny balcony we are now going to build a 20 x 20’ covered balcony on the front of it. We will put in our rattan sofas and chairs, a large dining table and a couple of steamer chairs to the fore to take in the view. Move the BBQ upstairs, hang up the hammocks and basically we will live outside too! Perfect! Oh - well not quite - we need to come in for the loo!
Mark: 6/10 Comment: good initiative but shame it was 2 years late in coming! ‘Outside living’ is not that hard a concept to grasp surely!
Economics: Our dear friends who email us here at the front…for which many thanks… share a recurring theme of grimininity! No I know there is no such word, I made it up but it such fun to say… go on try it. Grimininity! Not easy to master but worth the effort once you’ve got it! (You can ‘ooze with grimininity’ by the way if something is full of grimness).
Anyway things do indeed seem to be grim and gray and the economic gloom seems to be dragging everyone down. I guess we don’t notice it so much here as we have nothing much to spend money on anyway. We don’t have fancy clothes shops… well any clothes shops if truth be told, or the need for fancy watches or cars or cinemas or anything you can splurge your money on, so I guess what you don’t see or need you don’t miss. So there are some advantages to such a pared-down life.
Of course I do have three jobs which helps keep the wolf from the door and we do have gentle but steady stream of charming guests who are amongst the minority who obviously aren’t feeling the pinch. Gawd bless ‘em. Long may it last as we do have a few horrendous costs for living here, like insuring three houses right on the ocean front… oh it makes your eyes water!
Mark: 7/10. Comment: Grimininity is not eternal!
Biology: There is a wonderful concept they talk about here…’The doctor you can’t see’. They don’t mean it in the UK sense of the ‘Doctor you can’t see because the queues are so bloody long’ they mean the ‘Doctor you can’t see is keeping you well’. In other words…. the clean air, the purifying sea minerals, the fresh food, the excess of fruit and the lack of stress is the ‘Doctor you can’t see’. Well the last one doesn’t count in my case as I am working my nuts off but the rest do apply and I have to say (oh please don’t let this be a curse which will come back and bite me in the arse) but I have never felt better! There said it. My funeral will be held on Wednesday the 7th of…
Mark: 9/10 Comment. Long may it last and the 18lbs weight loss deserves some merit even though it wasn’t done intentionally.
Art: A very disappointing year. In fact a very poor performance since joining the school, two and a half years ago. One of the main things we were both going to do was paint… a lot. I painted one commission of a yacht and have done precisely nothing since, except flick bits of wet blotting paper at Spacky Williams who sits in the front row….creep.
Mark: 1/10. Comment: Maybe he’s a late bloomer and will paint in his later years…or he’s just a lazy tosser who uses his 3 jobs as an excuse!
Sport: Consists of walking Joe along the beach so he can catch crabs which he now digs up with a skill level akin to a truffling pig. As the sand is quiet soft, you sink in a bit and if you walk in the sea it adds a bit of resistance and when the sun is up it is almost like exercise… honest!
However, courtesy of good chum James - he of the many yachts - we do sail quite a bit, including on Christmas day when the weather was glorious, clear blue skies but a really good breeze so we belted along the coast with yours truly at the helm, over reaching like mad just because it was fun and James hanging on for dear life at the bow filming it all with his brilliant little Go Pro camera. And yes sailing is a bloody sport so it counts. If Table Tennis and Curling are sports, so is sailing!
Mark: 6/10 Comment. Could try a real sport!
Sociology: We are settling down It is odd living somewhere when you are one of a tiny minority… even when the majority are very welcoming and kind on the whole. It is trickier than one might imagine to up-sticks and move to the other side of the world but we are now getting used to it and finding our place here and becoming part of the landscape. Everyone seems to know Kitty… wherever we drive up here in the north people, from little school children (who are so cute in their school uniforms Kitty threatens to abduct them and pop them in her handbag) to old ladies to ridiculously buff young men (I must ask her about them) shout “ Miss Kitty, Miss Kitty” as we pass by. You have to wave at everyone here… it’s the law.
When the boys first came here we passed by a guy on the road on the first morning and he smiled and waved and shouted and we waved back. “Who was that?” asked George. “No idea” I replied. “Well why did he wave at us then? asked Charlie. I think I said that ‘they just do’ but I guess the better answer is that they do it because we share the same planet so why not!
Mark: 8/10. Comment: Much improved. We’re getting there.
Headmaster’s Comment:
Well my dear old things, before I stretch this awful analogy to the point where it is reminiscent of frayed, old knicker elastic… let me end by saying I hope you had a joyous Christmas and we wish you a fabulous, happy and above all healthy 2012. We are here, you’re there so come and join us when you can for a day, a week or a lifetime…well you can’t stay in our house for a lifetime, you’ll have to get your own but you can be a neighbour!
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