34. Two things I miss

1. Australian cafe lattes. I miss these quite a lot – the texture and the taste and the feeling of drinking from a glass. I miss Lucia’s and the Art Gallery cafe and Pranzo.

2. Keys to Music.  I don’t listen religiously, but I always enjoy driving home from the market and seeing what Graham’s talking about today. Saturday mornings on BBC3 – when we’re driving to and from our farmers’ market – is the most annoying programme ever: an announcer compares about 20 performances of a work and makes grave, pretentious pronouncements about What is Good and What is Not. We always end up switching it off after a minute or two and spending the rest of the trip doing rude imitations. I miss Classic FM. It’s more intelligent and more fun.

My favourite Tube ad of the moment – to change the subject – is a tourism ad for Denmark. It has a picture of a young woman with blonde curly hair in a white bathrobe holding a thick slice of an orange over each ear. The caption reads, ‘Discover your inner Dane!’ I am yet to work this one out but it provides me with much entertainment. I also like our jar of Italian honey, which we acquired somewhere on our travels, and which says on the label that it is ‘perfect with cheese’.

33. Nous menons une vie assez mouvementé

I’m sitting at my desk – my desk! I’ve only had it for a week – looking at the sky, which is changing every few seconds; it’s a blustery early spring day – and admiring the streetlights, which are bouncing around in the breeze. I’ve never noticed streetlights bouncing before.

Of course, I’m admiring all this because I haven’t been looking at my computer screen and the introduction of the chapter I’m writing on L’Enfant et les sortilèges. Actually, I’ve finally managed to pull together a semblance of a first draft – and there are some nice things in it – but I think I need a deep breath before I can dive back in and pull it into a real shape.

Fortunately, there are plenty of other things that I can be distracted by. For example, we acquired a sofabed yesterday. This came after the adventure of desk-buying last week – we were actually looking for the sofabed but this was a lovely bonus, since I’ve been shifting my computer between the bed, the kitchen table and Roy’s desk for the past few months. Now I have a beautiful old, leather-covered desk – at least, you can’t see the leather cover beneath the pile of books, but I know it’s there.

My parents are coming to stay in a week, and until yesterday we had nothing for them to sleep on… so I spent a stressful week on eBay (good distraction from chapter writing), in which I lost one sofa with 8 seconds to spare, then managed to acquire another for £9. Roy arrived home after a night in Cardiff as the bidding on the second sofa was 3 minutes away from closing, and the internet had just come back to life after dropping out for a few minutes. Presumably there’s a more efficient way to cope with the last seconds of bidding than continually clicking the ‘refresh’ button? I don’t know. Anyway, I did say hello to Roy once we’d won this thing.

So yesterday we had the adventure of moving a very substantial piece of furniture from one side of London (Uxbridge) to the other. In the end we hired a van; Roy felt very big and manly driving this around the M25 (first the ute on Bonaire, then the van – before I know it he’ll be bouncing around London in a four-wheel drive). So we got our sofabed home and up the stairs (this was fun), only to discover it was twenty cm longer than the seller had assured us… so some living room rearrangement will take place over the next few days. At least we now have a sofa that three people can sit on – and we can have people come to stay and sleep comfortably (sorry Josh)! So… come and visit us…

PS: Line discovered today in Roy’s carefully checked third proofs:

Jean-Michel Nextoux, Garbiel Fauré, A musical lifé

32. A philosophical proposition

‘Sign not in use’

- Sign on M6 motorway

31. Daffodils

So we spent Friday morning swimming at the beautiful Bridgetown (Barbados) beach… Friday afternoon at Bridgetown airport… Friday night on a plane… and Saturday morning at the Wimbledon Farmers’ Market. That was a strange kind of transition.

We were EXTREMELY glad to get off the ship and home, having spent the last week meditating on reviving the pirate’s plank  (‘the bar is right through here, Madame…’) -  and that’s all I’m going to say about that, for diplomatic reasons…

Our final concert was distinguished principally by my burning rather badly three fingers of my right hand an hour before we had to  play, on the metal trays covering and steam emanating from the food in the Officers’ Mess. So we did some hasty rearranging of programmes, so that I played only duets at the beginning and end (and no solos in between, as we’d planned), and was able to go on, play then go off and spend the time before playing again with my hand in a glass of iced water obtained from confused bar staff (the fact that not a single accessible tap on the ship will give really cold water did not help matters – all the bathroom taps run warm!). After the concerts, still in some considerable pain, I addressed myself to the medical centre in the hope of obtaining some salve or burn dressing, but was given instead two panadol – I turned down an offer of codeine – and a two-page OHS incident report form to fill in. This, as you can imagine, was great fun.

And so, all things considered, we are extremely glad to be back in London (this sentiment may surprise some of you) – not least because spring is in the air. It is amazing how much even a grungy suburb can be transformed by daffodils. They’re everywhere, lining the roadsides, in gardens and planters, masses of them in every open space, even along industrial roads and on the built-up sides of bridges, and they’re spectacularly beautiful. There are buds and blossoms on all the trees, and the air no longer has that raw chill, but a freshness and mildness. I know we’ve been absent for most of the winter, but even coming straight from the Caribbean it still feels miraculous to see this. We did some gardening on Sunday and I only had to wear one jumper!

It may well turn cold again, but we’ve had four days of sunshine and temperatures in the low-mid teens now, and it has been just delightful.

So we’re catching up with ourselves here this week. We bought me a working desk yesterday, which I have already managed to cover completely with books, articles and teacups; I am writing at it now, looking out the window over London rooftops – at least I would be looking at them  if it wasn’t dark.

Here’s a couple more from my lizard collection (from St Vincent and Tortola)…

and an unregretful farewell to the Caribbean…

30. In the jungle

We made a friend in Dominica. She adopted us as we were staggering up an extremely steep hill in the Roseau Botanic Gardens, and accompanied us very happily for the next hour or so, leaving our side only to chase the occasional lizard. She was very happy with this situation and we enjoyed her company. Then as we were descending the hill towards the town (and wondering what would happen when she tried to hop in the tender back to the ship with us), we saw three other dogs barking very aggressively outside their house. So our friend assessed the situation, turned and pottered sensibly back up the hill again… and a woman in a neighbouring shack emerged, chucked a few pebbles at the unpleasant dogs and yelled a bit, and they retreated contritely.

But we had a lovely wander – it’s a stunning island, all mountains and jungle. Apparently when Columbus was asked to describe Dominica upon his return to Spain, he said nothing but took a piece of paper from his desk, scrunched it up and dropped it on the floor. That’s actually a very good description!

There was fruit everywhere – we passed banana trees growing by the roadside, avocados, mangos, coconuts, papaya, lots of other unidentifiable but very colourful things, plus all sorts of amazing flowers and vines and trees and bushes.

And this is what the deck looks like in the middle of a hot afternoon. There are a lot of people with very peculiar coloured skin wandering around right now.

And here’s another for our lizard collection. It fell out of a tree and landed at our feet just like this.

29. Deux Parigots à Marigot

Yesterday we went to France. At least, we went to the little island (37 square miles) that is called at one end Sint Maarten and at the other Saint Martin; that was divided in half by a bunch of French and Dutch sailors in the 17th century and has remained peacefully half-French and half-Dutch ever since. The Dutch side is in fact more American than anything else – we didn’t see any signs in Dutch and didn’t hear it spoken (except by a few tourists from the Holland-America Line cruise ship that was also in port). The French side is, however, France. The official signs (road rules, beginning and ends of towns etc) are all in precisely the same style as the signs everywhere else in mainland France; the street signs are like Parisian street signs, they use the euro and, as in every single other French town or village I have ever visited, in the main town of Marigot there is a rue du Général de Gaulle and a rue de la République. It was funny to see La Poste, gendarmes wearing the same uniforms as in France, the office of Foncia (the agency that manages our apartment building in Paris), French handwriting on the chalkboard menus…

Thanks to the cultural integrity and stubborn independence of the French, St Martin is also the only place we’ve visited here that felt like it had a real life and a real culture of its own, that wasn’t entirely and slavishly devoted to tourism. Not purely French culture either, but a very attractive integration of French and Caribbean. Indeed, the Caribbean culture seemed perhaps more in evidence there, more real and less of a touristy creation than that of other independent islands we visited. It’s foolish to try to draw these sorts of conclusions on such a brief visit of course, but that’s what we felt nevertheless! Anyway, St Martin is also clearly wealthier than most places in this region, and has by far the best infrastructure (ie, footpaths without gaping holes in them). Obviously France is not managing particularly well with some of her dependencies at the moment, but there remain certain advantages in having a large, wealthy and well-organised nation taking responsibility for a small island not particularly rich in resources. And since it also means one can speak French, eat crêpes and get receipts wishing you ‘Bonne journée’, I’m all for it.

And so we had a happy morning in Marigot, buying spices from the market (cinnamon bark – which comes practically in logs – and vanilla beans, plus a beautiful mortar and pestle for Paris… and this morning, in St Lucia, we bought fresh nutmeg and star anise), drinking good coffee, enjoying a rather nice tarte aux poires then a crêpe for lunch, chatting away in French with the locals and feeling generally contented. We’ve not had a particularly enjoyable last few days on the ship and so it was particularly delightful to remove ourselves entirely from the English language and culture – or lack thereof – for a few hours!

A postscript from Tortola – I meant to say that the Botanic Garden also featured the most interestingly named trees I’ve ever come across. I don’t remember them all, but highlights included the Shaving Brush Tree (beautiful big pink flowers that did indeed look and feel like shaving brushes), the Lucky Nut, the Sausage Fruit Tree (yes, they looked like that too) and – best of all – the Pig’s Turd Tree (I’ve not seen that many pig’s turds so I’m not quite sure about this one).

28. Tortola

From Tortola, in the British Virgin Islands, just a couple of photos from a walk in the Botanic Gardens… where we were accompanied by two chooks and a clutch of chickens.

And encountered other interesting creatures too…

27. Music appreciation

Sitting at dinner with a couple from Sussex. ‘There wasn’t much on last night, was there?’ [Roy and I exchange glances, since we’d given two rather nice concerts last night...]

‘Oh, you’re the classical musicians? We like classical music! We might come and hear you one night… if there’s nothing else on…’

They were talking about a visit to the Grand Hotel at Eastborne. ‘Well’, Roy said, ‘if you come along to our concerts you’ll hear a piece Debussy composed when he was staying at the Grand Hotel in 1904!’ [Blank look] ‘There was a pianist at the Grand Hotel when we visited – he played all the time we were eating! All the time… while we were eating, he played, lovely it was, he played while we ate…’

The ship is still on ‘Hygiene level red’, following an outbreak of Norovirus, so everywhere you look surfaces are being sprayed with antibacterial spray, and the smiling chaps with the hand sanitizer lurk at every corner. A lovely story – two days ago, when we were at Catalina Island (an entirely silly place, just off the coast of the Dominican Republic – one beach, with gates and fences all around, into which everyone was herded for the day; Roy and I decided we couldn’t think of any worse way to spend the day than to lie in rows of deckchairs crammed as close as theatre seats and swim in a tiny roped off area with three thousand other people. So we went back to the ship and looked longingly across the water at the Dominican Republic and all the interesting things we could have been doing there)…. anyway, a couple of the other entertainers went diving off the end of this beach, and had a lovely time; they managed to escape the crowd a little and enjoyed the beautiful clear water. And the first thing they encountered when they climbed out again? A smiling man with the hand sanitizer (all those dirty fish?).

Anyway, we’ve not got sick yet so I supposed all the sanitizing must be working!

Today we’re in St John’s, Antigua. They’re having elections, Caribbean style: cars driving around hung with the candidates’ colours, blaring out political speeches and – even better – campaign songs set to calypso/steel band music (with words like ‘This land’s gonna change, oh yeah, it’s time to right the wrongs, oh yeah, and we’ll cut personal income tax…’).

We had a nice long walk around the town, which is scrappy but colourful and friendly. Tiny weatherboard houses (lots of them are boxes just 3 or 4m square), painted all different colours, lush vegetation along the paths, chooks and goats wandering around, and the occasional large land-crab (they’re scavengers; in order to eat one, we were told, you have to catch it and feed it on fruit for a few days… then you drop it in boiling water). We also wandered past Saturday morning school orchestra practise – steel drum orchestra – and had an extremely nice lunch by the harbour. There are two other cruise ships in today, so the population of the (small) island has increased by 8000… but on our walk we managed not to see any of them – until we arrived at a small, windswept beach and found a whole bunch lying on deckchairs, trying to swim in very lively waves and pretending they were enjoying it.

People leaned out of their car windows to say ‘Welcome to Antigua’.

And there was a great sign on one of the main streets:

Do Not Relieve Your Self Indiscriminately

(accompanied by stick-figure sign drawing of man peeing next to a lady who seems to be hunching her shoulders in outraged astonishment)

26. We stop for iguanas

Yesterday we were in Bonaire, in the Dutch Antilles, where the official language is Dutch, half the signs are in Spanish, and everybody speaks English and Papiamento, which is the local dialect. So, altogether an interesting spot. It’s a small island sitting on a coral reef – all the waters around it are classed as marine park, and it’s one of the most famous diving spots in the world. It’s so different from St Vincent – much drier, scrubbier and generally very low and flat, not lush at all – but remarkable. We decided to be adventurous and hire a car for the day to go to explore the national park at the northern end of the island, which is renowned for its amazing birdlife – not least the pink flamingos – we thought it was too good a chance to miss! Then we discovered that the roads in the park are so rough that you have to have a ute or a jeep to get around… so we hired a ute. Roy was very proud of himself, with his ute and akubra… though I think he hasn’t got the man-with-ute pose quite right yet.

And we had the most extraordinary day. It’s Lost World-like… incredibly ancient seeming and remote, and full of strange and prehistoric looking creatures. The most common plant is the cactus – I’ve never seen cactus forests before!

We saw lots of flamingos – the real, amazing pink ones…

…and had to stop twice for iguanas crossing the road…

…But Roy liked the wild donkeys best…

We had pulled over to look at another lizard crossing the road – this time a sort of chameleon one

(this was another of them, later in the day…)

…and we looked back and saw a donkey trotting towards us (very rapidly) – he didn’t slacken his pace at all as he approached the tray of the ute, then slowed down, dithered along the side and trotted off down the road ahead of us.

There is a donkey sanctuary on Bonaire too, but we didn’t get to visit that. Oh, and we saw heaps of wild goats too. Goat stew is a favourite dish in Bonaire!

And we saw so many amazing birds – seabirds, wading birds, more flamingos, bright green parrots, bright yellow ones and a beautiful one that was bright peachy-orange and black. And butterflies, red and green and orange and yellow and blue. And all in this quite extraordinary landscape – salt lakes and cacti, hills and the most beautiful sea I’ve ever seen – blue-green, because of the coral, and astonishingly clear – we could stand on cliffs several metres above the water and watch fish swimming ten or fifteen metres out. (The pelicans sitting around were watching them too…)

We had lunch at the far end of the park, in a tiny harbour which was built and run by slaves in the 19^th century; now one of the old buildings is a very nice little restaurant, serving vaguely Dutch-Indonesian-Caribbean food – felt strange to be eating such nice food in this remote little spot, looking through the open doorway of this old white stone building at this amazingly beautiful sea.

So that was our adventure! (It felt adventurous, too…)

25. Anybody need a book title?

Isn’t that wonderful?

Greetings everyone from… well, somewhere between Barbados and the Dutch Antilles, from the MV Ventura. It was the first formal night tonight, so we made sure we turned up in time for the free champagne – the gala reception where everyone swans around the atrium and the captain turns up and gives a welcoming speech. As always, we (well, I) enjoyed stickybeaking at everyone’s formal outfits (why do so many women wear dresses they really shouldn’t??). We flew to Barbados on Friday, arriving late in the evening, and had the day there before sailing out late Saturday evening. We woke up very early on Saturday (because of the 4 hours time difference), so by 9am we were swimming on a truly gorgeous Caribbean beach. Just as enjoyable was watching everybody else swimming – lots of families, lots of kids learning to swim.

Oh, and Roy made a friend (or two…)

Yesterday we were in Kingstown, St Vincent (as in St Vincent and the Grenadines) – a small and surprisingly poor island (most people seem to live in tiny, falling-down shacks) with a lot of fascinating history; they’re particularly proud of their Botanic Garden, which is the oldest in the Western hemisphere (and who knows where the Western hemisphere begins and ends? I certainly don’t), founded in 1765. It’s located up a rather steep hill, like everything in Kingstown, and as we were trudging up we met a very friendly chap coming down who announced that he was the caretaker of the gardens, that he was just going to unlock them and would show us up there. So he walked us the last ten minutes up the hill, giving detailed descriptions of every plant we passed (and there were a lot) – St Vincent is particularly lush (it’s volcanic) and grows lots of spices and fruits – as well as most of the world’s supply of arrowroot, apparently. He told us a lot about the medicinal properties of everything – all these things are still so much part of common knowledge, eating cassia pods to relieve stomach pains, boiling lime leaves in milk for young children with colds… dropping nutmegs into rum punch at parties to get high… Then when we got almost to the gate of the gardens, this chap handed us over to another man who turned up, saying that he’d give us the official tour, so we could give them both tips. We suggested that we’d rather wander around by ourselves, so we gave them some money and got away – and at the gates of the gardens were mobbed by a whole bunch of other men trying to offer us tours, all waving ‘official’ guide badges. So I’m not sure whether the keys around our “guide’s” belt really were to open the gardens, as he claimed, and I’m not sure if I believe that he lives next door to the prime minister (who does indeed live in the Gardens) in his curator’s hut… but at least we learned something. It was quite funny, really. And I saw a hummingbird in the gardens of the Anglican church. This church, incidentally, features a rather magnificent stained-glass window, very pre-Raphaelite with a crimson angel at its centre. It was intended for St Paul’s Cathedral, but Queen Victoria refused to have it, since angels, as everybody knows, are white, not red. So it ended up in St Vincent. Because it was Sunday morning all the shops were shut and everybody was in one or other of the many churches – the whole town was quiet except for the singing spilling enthusiastically out of every door – beautifully sung hymns from the Anglicans, excessive-sounding gospel from the Evangelicals and (I’m sorry to say) appalling Christian pop from the Catholics. We walked up another hill and could hear these floating past by turns, mixed with barking dogs, bleating goats and an astonishing number of roosters. The goats were grazing in the churchyard and chasing each other over the graves, which we thought was a little irreverent, especially on a Sunday… More soon but I’m falling asleep, since my body hasn’t quite yet worked out that it’s 9pm and not 1am…