Christmas Stars!

As another Christmas approaches with the speed of a Velociraptor on steroids, our minds inevitably turn to robins... no - sorry, haven’t got any of those. Snow? No, SOL on snow too. So no snowmen either then, I presume? Not as such. Mangers?  Nah, not much call for those I’m afraid. Stars? Ahh yes, now we do indeed have some of those. Thank goodness it was getting rather tiresome and not a little worrying.

In fact... and this is a fact, not BS, we have the best stars in the world. Period. Let me qualify that. You can see the stars better from our house than anywhere else on earth. Truly. It’s all jolly scientific but basically it is has to do with the elliptical angles of the earth and at Sea Level, from the Southern Caribbean (which is where we are) star gazing is about as good as it gets.  Ideally, if you are going to nitpick, you want to be located on the North East tip of a southern Caribbean island and there again we are yelling ‘Bingo’ loudly, as we are right on the North Eastern tip of the island. Again, and if you want to be really pedantic of course, if your island has mountains you need  those to be behind you. Tick! This is important because it means the winds don’t disturb the wind flow or your vision. Finally... oh for god’s sake what now... you need to be devoid of any light pollution. Double tick - it is as black as... well, black as the night around our house.

So there we are, you may think you’ve seen stars but not like you see them here, so there is another good excuse to come and see us. It looks like millions of stars shuffle onto the stage every night to take a bow and make us all lower our jaws rapidly and reverentially whisper ‘wow’ but disappointingly... sometimes scientists are such bloody killjoys... we can only see about 2,000 stars from any one location. Bugger! What is baffling when you see them jammed together cheek by jowl in the night sky, is that in reality they are on average twenty million, million miles apart... and that’s an awful lot of noughts! It also reminds us neatly of what a tiny speck we are, adrift in the Universe. 

As you are all busy, I will keep this mercifully short and just say that life goes on apace here. We are both more busy here than we were in England, which wasn’t quite the plan but there you go! If you want to make the gods laugh, tell them your plans. At least we still have time occasionally to dance under the stars which is magical. Did you know that at any one place on earth you can only see about 2,000 stars and... oh shut up!

So we wish you and yours a wonderful, joyous star-filled Christmas and a fabulous, rewarding New Year!

Shouting at the Night

Hello dear things. I hope all is well with you and yours and the endless, multi dipping recession isn’t bothering you too much out there in the ‘real world’. I think we’ll all die of boredom before it’s over. Well at least the Brits amongst you had the Jubilee... and now the Olympics and Wimbledon and all that malarkey are kicking off which will distract you. We don’t get that kind of excitement here but we do have our very own form of spectator sports...

I have just returned from my evening walk along the beach with Joe the wonder dog. The beach is getting on for two miles long and there were about 3 people at the other end and as usual nobody on our end... just me, Joe, oh yes and about 30 tiny (less than 3 inches long) leather back turtle hatchlings crossing our path. They struggled, bleary eyed, but fully formed from their subterranean, sandy nest and headed for the sea. Well most of them did, the ink on the genetic imprinting of a few of them had obviously faded as they deededly headed inland, in the totally wrong direction. I know you aren’t supposed to interfere with nature but bugger it, we all need a leg-up on occasion, so I turned them round and watched in awe as these tiny creatures began their great journey in life. They will travel thousands of miles and for many decades... before the females, by then a hefty 9 foot long will return to the exact same spot and lay her eggs. It was truly spell binding.

Having completed our amble up to the end of the beach we were returning, me paddling in the sea as usual, whilst Joe nosed around in the vegetation looking for crabs to kill. He sees it as his personal mission to decimate the crab population of the beach! However, I suddenly noticed him wondering over to me his tail wagging madly and there gently cradeled in his huge chops was an errant turtle. He placed it at my feet and it was completely unharmed, so I put it into the sea and watched as it slowly cleared the reef and headed out towards Sandy island.

Talking of Sandy island... good link eh... my lovely son George and his girlfriend Tuala came over for a few weeks and George had hatched a cunning plan. So we sailed / motored or whatever it is you do in a boat with an engine, over to the island... just a few minutes ride but too far to swim... and paddled ashore. This island never loses its power to render one speechless. My older British chums may well remember the old Bounty chocolate bar TV ads, where scantily clad nymphs ran through the palm trees, along the brilliant white sands and into the crystal clear water. Well that ad was shot on this wonderful deserted island. ‘A taste of Paradise’ is an apt description of the place as well as the natty tag line for the ads.

So in a carefully pre-planned move, whilst Kitty and I made ourselves scarce checking out the myriad of fish on the reef, George walked Tuala to the far end of the beach and adopting the age old protocol proposed to her and proffered a beautiful wishbone diamond ring. The boy has style. Happily she said yes, (been a bit embarrassing on the ride home if she’d said no) so the truly delightful Tuala will be joining the clan and they too will start their great journey in life together. 

We all went down to Prickly Bay Marina... lord knows why it is called that, as far as I can see it is totally devoid of prickles... anyway, George and Tuala joined Baracuda, the most popular rock band on the island, on stage and along with Nico the hugely charismatic lead singer and guitarist they performed not the three or four songs they’d planned but jammed for nearly two hours. A brilliant night. As  Eric Bibb sang about those special days you sometimes get in life... ‘Sometimes you get diamonds’. Literally in this case!

So we’ve been building again... adding to the front, back, side wherever of our house... my brother is convinced it is an illness I have... he may be right. I seem to have spent most of my adult life building and renovating houses... but I love it. Well it isn’t the easiest thing to do in Grenada but kitty has proven time and again to be a brilliant project manager so it is nearing completion. The new ensuite bedroom and study are useful but the ‘gallery’ ... as they call them here... on the front has transformed life in the Caribbean. A gallery is what we would call a balcony or veranda but just a bloody big one where you basically live. It has a proper roof but lattice sides and just railings to the front. It has a BBQ so we cook out there, a big dining table, sofas and coffee tables etc and so that is where we spend every day. It is a wonderful privilege to be able to just sit and watch the sunlight playing on the waves as they roll in over the reefs and spot the pelicans hunting for their supper. I used to think privilege was about big houses, silly cars and fancy restaurants... actually fancy restaurants are still a huge joy... but just watching nature from our glorified shack on the beach is to experience true privilege.

So work in Trinidad is still going on apace... our first TV show is in pre-production the second one has been green lit too but we are just sorting money on that one and then there are loads of ads to do too. So I do get very tired. I only tell you this to justify the idiotic behaviour on my part, in the tale which I am about to relate. One night around 11, some idiot tourist turtle spotters were wondering around the beach with huge torches, which of course just make the turtles turn tail and head back into the sea. You are supposed to use pencil torches not something that looks like it belongs in Stalag X1V. So not only were they shining their torches at the sea but they decided to examine our houses too with particular attention it seemed, being paid to our bedroom window. I was about to scream at them and cast serious doubt on their parentage when the lights went out and they disappeared into the blackness. So having carefully put my gimble mounted gaggling gun away again, we went back to sleep. I got up at around 4 to check the plumbing and looked out of the window and saw two bloody pencil torches actually in our garden. The bloody cheek of it! Then a couple more appeared nearer the beach but still in our garden. This was too much. Up went the window and some good old Anglo-Saxon expletives were hurled into the still night at top volume causing Kitty to rocket out of bed as if she’s had four thousand volts passed through her cute little derrier. To my utter amazement, rather than make a rapid tactical withdrawal, the bastards turned on more and more of the bloody torches. Then slowly the fug cleared from my tired mind... it is important to remember I was very tired... and I realised it was unlikely that there were 50 or more tourists in my garden at 4 am in the morning. I managed to beat Kitty to the punch which did a little to save my ignominy, when I told her they were just...yes you guessed it... fire flies! In my defence fire flies here are bloody huge and we have no light pollution so they really do light the place up... and did I mention... I was tired!

I am hoping that as the Caribbean continues to pour it’s calming balm over me, I will lose more and more of my deep rooted urban angst and next time I think there are 50 tourists in my garden I will simply exclaim “Ahh, there are 50 dudes in my garden with pencil torches. Cool!” Well we can all dream can’t we?