St Edmundsbury Cathedral

On a whim over breakfast, I suggested that we go for an outing.  The choices were the coast or Bury St Edmunds, and I was pleased that Z opted for the latter.  I used to collect cathedrals.  Failing memory and neglect mean that I can’t name them all, but I can recall a few favourites – Winchester, Salisbury, especially Chichester – and now I can add this one.

It’s quite austere as cathedrals go.  Its main nave dates from 1503, so probably the cathedral as we see it was born too late to be too much of a victim of the Reformation depravation.  The relatively low-key flashy bits are mostly later add-ons; though my sole source of historical information, a little brochure handed to me by a charming greeter, of whom later, is confusing to say the least.  The showpiece stained glass Susanna window, for example, is dated around 1480, so must have been recycled from somewhere.  And it’s called St Edmundsbury, which makes one wonder which came first, the saint or the town?  I’ll have to look it up.*

The man who welcomed us proved to have Yagnub origins, to have been slightly acquainted with the Sage, and to have a few bits of Lowestoft china which he might want to sell at some time.  Z was quite moved by this reminder of the power of coincidence, I think.

Next time we go there, we will take a picture of a commemorative wall plaque that manages to write the history, from tragic to happy, of several generations of a local eighteenth century family; find out more about the project (comparable in scale to the Fishguard Last Invasion tapestry) that resulted in hundreds of uniquely embroidered kneelers on the pews, one for each and every parish in the diocese and well beyond, as far as we could make out; and walk in the cloisters.

Afterwards, we wandered out and around the town, admiring how graciously ancient buildings have mostly managed to absorb modern commercial functions, and unsuccessfully looking for non-chain-outlet food, before we took off and found a well-concealed but deservedly popular lunch venue at a vineyard just off the A143.

*Or await a clarifying comment from one of my many readers…

Caravan shutdown

If it’s 1797 and you’re going to invade Great Britain from France, obviously north Pembrokeshire is the go-to place, isn’t it?  Good rail links Goodwick to London, regular Sealine ferries to Ireland, nice local beaches…  but you probably didn’t allow for Jemima.

The tapestry (more properly, as Z pointed out, an embroidery) commemorating this bizarre bit of forgotten history (about which you can read more here), immaculately displayed and curated in Fishguard library, allowed us to dispose of a wet, windy Friday.  We proceeded up the coast to Newport (how many Newports are there in the UK, I wonder?) and an acceptable lunch at the Golden Lion, after which we drove back over the misty, drizzly Presilli hills and caravan life took over.

The Presilli hills are locally referred to, in English, as the Presilli mountains.  This is a deliberate mistranslation of ‘mynneth’, which sounds a bit like ‘mountain’ but in Welsh means something rather less.  (I am making this up, but don’t let that stop you believing it.)  Welsh is an intriguing language, which we’ve resolved to learn more of.  (* look up the Welsh for ‘resolve’*)  Sometimes it just looks like bad English spelling (ambiwlans, parc busnes) but then veers off into French (eglwys). 

Back at the caravan, we hunkered down and enjoyed a decent-weathered Saturday, including a walk across the westward Wiseman’s Bridge beach where the geology is, once you notice it, quite fascinating.  I’d spent many early years not noticing that what was now rockpools and striations had once been a massive promontory – huge and high worn down to sea level cracks and sand over many millions of years.  We don’t leave that much of a trace, do we?

The caravan is shut down.  Draining the plumbing was much easier once Joseph had taught me how to do it properly.  Z has made it cleaner than it’s been for years.

I didn’t cut the grass. No rabbits did either.

Ray's Story

Z had taken the kids to the beach, but I’d opted to stay in the caravan.  After an hour or so, and having exhausted the entertainment potential of the newspaper, I dipped in to the small selection of books, leaflets and so on that reside in my bookrack there.  There’s a first aid manual, several quick’n’easy cookbooks, guides to walks and places to visit, and a few snatches of genuine local Pembrokeshire history.  It was one of those that captured me.

It’s a book of black and white picture postcards of Narberth, from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.  Old pictures are, of course, always good to look at; but what caught my eye was the foreword, which heaped lavish praise and thanks on Miss Ray Davies, without whom the enterprise would never have happened. 

I knew her quite well, and I just wanted to set down what I can about a rather intriguing character.

Rachel, only ever known as Ray, was born in 1916 and died in 2003.  She never married.  It was rumoured that this was because her heart had been broken, just after the war, by a scoundrel in Belgium, where as a WREN she’d been posted for unknown reasons following service at Bletchley Park on the Enigma code-breaking project. (She was probably one of the Bombe girls, but I haven’t been able to verify that.)  I’ve seen a picture of her, in uniform, from around that time, and can only say that the Belgian heartbreaker must have been crazy.

By the time I met Ray, her focus had both narrowed and broadened.  It had narrowed to a compulsion to sort, identify and catalogue.  The broadening was in the range of material she did this to.  It started, probably, with stamps – she worked for Stanley Gibbons in the thirties – then expanded to archaeological samples, coins, Victorian fans, local history…  After she died we found dozens of exercise books filled with quite indecipherable lists of stuff, which of course we had no choice but to throw away.  Nobody would have cared.  The stamps and fans were sold, not for much.

What started me on this, though, was the local history obsession.  She became, I think, an infuriatingly avid supporter of the Narberth Wilson Museum (which has since closed down and then reopened; it won some ‘best museum’ award a few years ago, and we really should try and visit it next time we’re there.)  She put a few backs up during this late phase of her life, but the important things are that it kept her going, and that her efforts, however misdirected by her oncoming dementia, did get recognised in the foreword to that rather splendid book of old postcards.

Blog minus 1

It's a bit less than nine years since I wrote this record of a much-relished holiday, which prompted my brother to remark "you should write a blog."  I researched how to do that, and started to do so.  This is where my recently neglected blog habit started.



Holiday in Bequia, February 2008

Thursday 14^th
Reading
Completed packing, shopped, made dinner (chicken and lentil curry).  Dick and Val arrived about 7.30.  Got drunk and fell over on patio after ‘the last cigarette’.

Friday 15^th
En voyage; arrival at Barbados; St Lawrence Gap; the Whistling Frog Café

Up 6 a.m.  D drove us to Gatwick and negotiated parking.  Flight very smooth and shorter than expected.  Excel’s idea of in-flight entertainment (not that I was bothered) seemed a bit weird, as pretty well nobody would’ve been able to see the miniscule TV screens.  Arrived Barbados 3.30 p.m. local.

I was first to the immigration queue, which stretched out almost to the runway.  D&V, having been seated amidships in the plane and therefore nearly last off, took a while to catch up.  Inside the building, a zig-zag snake queue, which took more than an hour to negotiate.  Three flights had arrived at about the same time – several hundred people striving, good-naturedly, towards sixteen or so hardpressed officials.  When we finally got through, we found that our luggage had taken even longer to get to the belt.  Imagine our surprise!

Taxi to the Dover Beach Hotel at St Lawrence Gap, to be greeted by charming staff and shown to our very pleasant rooms.  We swam in the rough sea (high winds, D a bit worried about this unexpected aspect), then wandered out to the main Gap drag in search of food and entertainment – ended up at the Whistling Frog Café for dinner.  Apparently, Barbados is populated with frogs, which whistle.  I definitely heard whistles, but didn’t see a single frog.

 Saturday 16^th

Dover Beach; Oistins fish night; karaoke

Breakfast at the hotel bar.  Just after we’d ordered, the bar was invaded by a horde of English teenage sporty girls from some posh school, on some kind of sporty activity holiday.  We were loudly informed that Gemma had been sick, but then that ‘I’ve cleaned up the vomit’.

To my relief, we spent the day lounging around the hotel pool and strolling up and down the Gap strip (which proved to be pretty dreary).  We decided to taxi to the Oistins fish night event – major tourist attraction/trap – overpriced food and 30 mins of local worthies speechifying and Christian entertainment – then back to the Dover Beach for their karaoke night (featuring a different bunch of teenage sporty girls, and some loud Americans).  I will say no more about this – we’ve all been there.  (The karaoke I mean, not the girls …)

Sunday 17^th

Transit; first impressions of Bequia; Gingerbread; Farine

 We negotiate the complex check-in procedure for the flight to Bequia, which turns out to be via Mustique, with pick-ups and drop-offs en route, which almost resulted in my suitcase winging its way back to Barbados.  This is a 20-seater two-engined prop plane, two pilots visible up front, 8,000 feet up (1,000 for the Mustique-Bequia leg), bucking around in the steady breeze.  Mustique airport looks like a par three golf hole in tarmac.  Jolly Mustique holidaymakers with self-consciously beautiful girls and sulky iPod boys come and go.  Landing at Bequia James F Mitchell airport is like aiming at another par three, through trees and cliffs, on the pillion of a bucking motorbike.

Once my case has been salvaged, Curtis, our taxi driver (who we will learn to know and love) greets us and takes us to Gingerbread.  On the way D&V are having local knowledge conversations with Curtis, but I’m just seeing concrete roads, flashes of turquoise sea, glimpses of colonial or shanty buildings; feeling steep ups and downs and vicious speed humps; breathing the warm sea air and odd spice smells: all from the back of this bright yellow Challenger pick-up truck, bench seats each side, which is a Bequia taxi.

Gingerbread is gorgeous.  I feel at home at once.  Easy to wander out around the town, down to a little local beach (Plantation House) for a swim, along to Frangipani for rum punches then back to Gingerbread for dinner and Farine.  They’re a local group – guitar, banjo, bongos, and a varying number of singers – who do a unique take on everything from gospel to skiffle via Motown, Marley and the Beach Boys.  We get pissed and close the bar.

This is my first experience of the mosquito net – essential in these parts I’m told.  It hangs from the ceiling, a huge swathe of muslin which you drape over your bed, tuck in, then crawl under and sleep in your private indoor insect-free tent.  Certainly I wasn’t disturbed by mozzies that night.  But nothing is perfect.  They will get to you sooner or later.  Fortunately, my skin is fairly mosquito-proof (years of conditioning in Italy, maybe), and Bequia mozzies are indolent and rather impotent.  I got bitten a dozen or so times over the stay, but none endured or itched intolerably.

There is a notice in my bathroom which reads, in full:  ‘Flushing toilet.  Do not let the handle spin around.  Press back until down then let it come back up.  Management is working to solve this problem.’

Monday 18^th

Port Elizabeth; Princess Margaret Beach; the Green Boley; Captain Mac’s

We walk into town, where I fail to change money, due to huge queues in the RBTT bank (Royal Bank of Trinidad and Tobago, I learn from Google).

Then we try to walk across the headland to our nearest ‘proper’ beach, the Princess Margaret or Tony Gibbons.  I haven’t researched either of these labels, but I’m inclined to D’s theory: originally, it was probably called ‘Middle Beach’ or somesuch; Princess Margaret went for a swim there one day, slumming it from Mustique; the locals weren’t having that, decided the beach needed an authentic indigenous name – and just then good old Tony walks into the bar.

Whatever, the headland path turns out to have been blocked off by a cavalier housebuilding project.  We were warned of this by a guy cleaning the Plantation House beach and by an American fellow-tourist, but went to have a look anyway – sure enough, a block wall and industrial barbed wire make this public right of way totally impassable.   All the locals act appalled, but nobody seems to know what to do about it.  Even the water-taxi drivers (who stand to benefit) feel that it’s wrong, and probably illegal – yet this construction has obviously been allowed to go ahead, unchallenged to the point of irreversibility.  It’s my first intimation, or reminder (Tobago), of the sinuous workings of Caribbean local politics.

So we get a water taxi.

I am not going to repeatedly describe the experience of lounging on a Caribbean beach for a day – so pay attention: I am only going to say this once!

Find a place with available shade and pitch camp.  Spread your towel and lie/sit on it; read your book, shifting your posture according to discomfort levels, which may be caused by sand, sun intrusion, muscular strain, buried hard objects, or ants.  Go for a swim.  Snooze.  Repeat as necessary until lunchtime.  Have lunch at local hostelry.  Return to camp and repeat above, until it’s time to leave.

Henceforth, this delightful process will be identified by the phrase ‘lounge on beach’.

Lunch, on this occasion, was at ‘Jack’s Bar’, a slick new venue.  Food good (although I still want my tomato remoulade – having looked it up, what I was given no way conforms to that description!).  The place seems unfinished – concrete floors and pillars – and so a bit impersonal.

Rum punches at the Green Boley, ten paces down the Belmont Walkway from Gingerbread.  They’re a tad more rummish than Frangipani’s.  Can’t find out what a Boley is, never mind a green one – but the bar is basic, relaxed, a place you could sit and lime all evening.  We view the sunset, then head off to Captain Mac’s, a new place opposite the fruit market.  Apart from a bunch of American teenagers, we’re the only customers.  We ask for the wine list: two bottles are brought to the table for our selection.  We choose the Chilean Sunrise Merlot, which is to be our staple diet.  Food and service are good; just a bit sad about the ambience, the less than ideal location, the optimistic desperation of the enterprise.  Nice map of the world though, filling an entire wall of the inside, unused, room.

Tuesday 19^th

Friendship Bay; Moskito; dinner at home

The wind (external not self) gets up at 6 a.m. and howls through the shutters and the plants outside the window.  I see I haven’t described my room properly.  It’s big, about 5 metres square, unglazed but shuttered windows on three sides; bed in the middle, nets hanging from the ceiling over big wall hooks, a kitchenette and a bathroom off the fourth wall; big balcony through sliding shuttered doors to the front.  I now have a key to my safe.

Breakfast with D&V (purchased yesterday – fruit, eggs and tomatoes).

We take our first big walk across the island to Friendship Bay.  The ups are a bit challenging, but I’m gratified by how well I manage.  Beach a bit of a letdown, rather narrow and ant-infested.  Good lunch though at Moskito café – excellent well-endowed burgers, and V’s seafood pasta looked good.

Lounged on beach.

Dinner at home uncovered a few issues, mainly that we couldn’t work out how to light the oven – which is a concern when you’re cooking chicken legs.  As luck would have it, Pat Mitchell had decided to install, experimentally, a microwave in D&V’s apartment, and V rose heroically to the occasion.  But we resolved that eating in probably isn’t a high priority option – especially as it seems that raw materials in the shops cost far more than the prepared, cooked and served equivalents in the restaurants.  The starter was a feta cheese salad, at about sixteen guineas an ounce – at any rate, far more than we’d paid for the same thing at Jack’s Bar.  How can this be?  Caribbean economics becomes more and more mysterious. 

Wednesday 20^th

Lower Bay; Da Reef; Devil’s Table

After breakfast, split between fruit at D&V’s and banana bread at Gingerbread café, we walked across to Lower Bay – the best beach.  Far fewer ants.

Lounged on beach.

Lunch at Da Reef, a big canteen-like bar/restaurant right on the beach.  I had conch (pron. ‘conk’) curry.  This is the animal which inhabits those huge shells you see at beach-side venues everywhere, and which can with practice be blown, like a trumpet, to announce, for example, the arrival of the day’s fish catch at the market in Port Elizabeth.

We’ve discovered a great non-alcoholic refresher, lime squash.  Freshly squeezed lime juice, sugar syrup, a dash of Angostura, over loads of ice, made up with tap water – brilliant!  You could add white rum or vodka for a long cocktail … try this at home, when the summertime comes.

Excellent dinner (though not very Caribbean in character) at Devil’s Table, apparently named after a nearby reef.  It’s their ‘reggae night’: a semi-live, semi-backing tape on-stage performance, which worked – I’d have danced had the opportunity arisen –  because of a young, lively crowd, all fired up to watch the total eclipse of the moon.  This duly came about; would perhaps have been more interesting if it hadn’t!  The moon gradually disappears from one side, then gradually reappears – a bit like the London Eye in reverse.  I expressed the view, to a local, that it was being eaten by a dragon, but was told ‘no, man, it’s a shark’. 

Thursday 21^st

Friendship Rose to Tobago Cays; Frangipani BBQ

Up at the crack to join the much-anticipated boat trip.  Strong winds and torrential rain overnight caused some apprehension, but there was no risk of cancellation merely for a bit of weather.

So we embark and set off, with about forty others, mostly Americans, and five crew, under the command of Captain Lewis, who has been running this ship since she was the St Vincent ferry back in the seventies.  Departure is delayed by engine trouble, and in fact we have to return for repairs; but once we get going properly, and clear Admiralty Bay, full sail is set and we are soon scudding along through wine-dark seas past island after island, bucking and crashing through the waves.

We reach the Cays about 11.30, and are ferried to the reef for snorkelling.  The undersea views are breathtaking; but that’s perhaps not the best choice of words.  The sea was choppy enough for me to ship several mouthfuls of seawater through my snorkel, often when I’d just breathed out and so had no air in my lungs to blow through like you’re supposed to do; and the leg action, with fins, is more arduous than I remember from when I was sixteen.  I’m glad I did it, but not convinced that this particular recreation is quite for me any more.

Back on the boat, we are served a good lunch, with unlimited rum punch and wine, then set off for the homeward leg, through a massive blow and drenching squalls – shipping dense spray and occasional green water, plus rain – soaked to the skin several times – boat keeling at twenty degrees – exhilarating!

After regaining dry land (which refuses to stay still for hours), we freshen up and go to the Frangipani barbeque, which is fine except that we’re too knackered to do it justice.  We’re seated at the back of the restaurant, away from the band, along with several of our fellow voyagers – and, as D&V discover to their amazement, a delightful young couple called Cherie and Dylan, from Toronto, whom they’d met in Carriacou five years ago.  Arrange to dine with them Monday.

I’m lulled to sleep, under my gauze tent, by the gentle swaying motion still retained by my body’s memory, sea-legs so thrillingly acquired aboard the lovely Friendship Rose.

Friday 22^nd

Fort Hamilton; Tony Gibbons beach; Tommy Cantina

Despite good intentions to sleep in, we’re up and running by 8.00.  ‘Full breakfast’, which is bacon and eggs, as opposed to ‘English breakfast’, which is that plus sausage, beans, tomatoes, etc etc, at Porthole café, Mrs Taylor’s tight ship.  She and her staff of daughters or nieces are highly organised, but make us feel comfortable and relaxed, the best customer care yet!

We walk up through the town to Fort Hamilton, built by the British in 1760 to defend Bequia from American privateers or French pirates.  The views are great, and we stroll back down, past ineluctable shacks and enterprises, painted in vibrant colours or allowed to rot down to sad greys – some with religiously challenging rasta slogans carefully etched on their facades, others with failed fading bar names.  Now, I am pleased that I didn’t photograph these relics, or record their names.  I am glad that I didn’t demean them in that way.Lunch at D&V’s, using up the solid gold Feta cheese.  Then water taxi to Princess Margaret, lounge on beach, return, rum punches (RPs) at the Green Boley (GB).  An intense meeting of, we think, the Easter Regatta Committee is taking place inside.

Dinner at Tommy Cantina’s – O.K. depending on how far you’re into Mexican.  I ordered a ‘lime daiquiri’ as an aperitif, which turned out to be a rather odd kind of rum and lime sorbet, to be sucked through a straw as it melted – hardly a drink at all, more like a dessert.

Saturday 23^rd

Spring and Industry; Mrs Taylor’s

Buffet breakfast at Frangipani, then walk across the island to Spring then Industry Bay, which is trying to reinvent itself as ‘Crescent’.  Presumably they think ‘Industry’ has adverse connotations (invokes dark Victorian satanic mills, whereas I suspect it was actually named for the sturdy Victorian virtue; ‘Crescent’ is of course free of any such negative associations, or any other sort for that matter).  The beaches, especially Spring, look at first sight like a lost opportunity, but then you think, just how many idyllic tourist beaches can this island, and its fragile economy and ecology, sustain?  Certainly, Industry/Crescent’s café  will have to do better – hugely overpriced and inadequate in quality and service.

At 6 p.m., D&V bumped into Cherie and Dylan at Gingerbread; we all repaired to GB to find they’d run out of RP (we’d drunk them dry), so to Frangipani instead.  Then dinner at Mrs Taylor’s ‘Porthole’ – food very good, but the ambience (irritatingly loud TV) and service not quite up to the price.  Shame, because just a little bit more effort could make this into a star turn (see Fernando’s later).

Sunday 24^th

Lower Bay; Can’t Remember the Name; Gingerbread; Farine

Walk across to Lower Bay.  My legs are getting good at this by now: once you have seen your destination, the journey does become a bit easier!

Lunch at ‘Can’t Remember the Name’, a newly built venue – very nice building, roof made of natural untreated timbers, a good, friendly, professional service, we all had ‘fish and chips’ – not quite as we know them back in Blighty, but then, that’s not what we came for is it?

Dinner at the Gingerbread restaurant, curries.  Farine were playing again – what a joyful, inspirational experience this group is!  The Gingerbread waitress, Arlene, did a couple of numbers with the band, then went back to work.  Next thing, she’s washing up behind the counter whilst performing ‘Stand By Me’ with the band, exactly parallel to Aretha’s take on ‘Respect’ in The Blues Brothers – this woman is precisely conscious of what she’s up to, and, as I told her later, is an unmistakeable star.

I attract the attention of Farine’s guitarist, who forces me to play his guitar for about 45 embarrassing seconds.  I try to decline: ‘no man, I’m too pissed’; he responds ‘yeh, so’m I’; I say ‘yeah man but, you got pissed whilst playing, while I got pissed then got asked to play – there’s a difference!’  He acknowledges this distinction, but makes me do it anyway. 

Monday 25^th

Hope Bay; Fernando’s Hideaway

Heavy rain overnight.  Strenuous walk over Mount Pleasant to Hope Bay – hard work, but there was cloud cover most of the way.  Very humid though.

Hope Bay is a totally deserted east-facing cove with a derelict shelter, self-seeding coconut palms and biggish surf, in which we swam.  Then back up a rough overgrown track, a bit hard to find at first, not helped by well-meaning pink ribbon waymarks which unfortunately had, some of them, been fixed to moveable objects.

Rotis for lunch at Mrs Taylor’s, then lounged around on the balcony.  We walked into town to change money and try, unsuccessfully, to find a ‘live-slow@bequia.calm’ T shirt for me – how can they have failed to re-use such a great slogan?

Cherie and Dylan join us for drinks at D&V’s, then Curtis taxis us across to Fernando’s Hideaway, now I think just called Nando’s, an excellent local-style family run outdoor restaurant, with good fish, stewed eggplant (aubergine) etc. – great meal and lots of good conversation.

Tuesday 26^th

Breakfast with ‘Son’; Princess Margaret’s beach; Jack’s Bar; Moonhole; Moskito

Breakfast at Frangipani, very nice fruit platters.  We chat at some length with Sir James (‘Son’) Mitchell, ex-prime minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines and Caribbean world statesman, now owner of Frangipani (and probably half the island), ex-husband of Pat who runs Gingerbread – very interesting.  He isn’t too forthcoming about the famous footpath blocking – a vested interest in there perhaps?  D has bought his autobiography, for which Sir J gladly supplies a dedication.

Water taxi to Princess M’s; lunch at Jack’s Bar, better than last time.  The feta salad costs significantly less than it did when we made the identical thing at home – how can this be?  There’s obviously more to the local economy than meets the eye.  Sorry, I’m repeating myself.

When we arrive at the beach, Friendship Rose is moored offshore and the place is heaving with people.  After a couple of hours, at least forty are ferried back to the boat, which then apparently returns to Port Elizabeth.  Strange, we think.

In the afternoon we visit Moonhole, at the far end of the island beyond the airport.  It’s a complex of nineteen weird and wonderful houses, built from and totally integrated into the local landscape – no straight lines.  It was initiated in, I think, the sixties by an eccentric American called Tom Johnston, and now run by his son Jim and lovely English wife Sheena.  The houses are mostly privately owned, and passed on by inheritance, the managing company having first refusal should anyone want to sell.  So there are a few owned by Jim and Sheena, and rented out.  But they make most of their money, I guess, from guided tours like this one.  Fascinating and great fun.

Curtis taxi to Moskito at Friendship Bay for dinner – very disappointing, at least for me.  My fish was overcooked to inedible, service was rushed, wine vastly overpriced.  Aspirant corporatism at its worst.

Curtis actually seems stressed out – wife ill in hospital in Trinidad; can’t meet demand for his services on his own, but terrified of losing business; drafted in his son to help, but unsure he can trust him to deliver, etc…  Just how ‘laid back, live slow’ is this place in actuality?   Jim Johnston, as laid back as they come, explained how, in the rental homes at Moonhole, all you have to do is make your decisions: the full-time staff do everything else.  In the best restaurants, the staff work their butts off to get it right whilst presenting as ‘laid back’.  V thinks we’re seeing the early signs of a new ‘laid back Bequia’ corporate product range.  The Americans we’ve overheard and talked to certainly think that’s what they’re buying. 

Wednesday 27^th

Quiet day; Mac’s Pizzeria; Devil’s Table

Breakfast at Frangipani.  Good pizza for lunch.  D&V went on a snorkelling trip to Moonhole; I lounged, took photos, read, snoozed.

Quiet (!) dinner at Devil’s Table: nothing like the atmosphere of last week, perhaps due to lack of lunar influences – no hordes of nubile teenage dancing girls, just middle-aged Yanks who really shouldn’t.  Lovely steak though.

Thursday 28^th

Lower Bay; Can’t Remember; Fernando’s

Last day!

We attempt breakfast at Frangipani, but are met with stony-faced opposition (‘all these tables are booked!’) then ignored for five minutes – so we decamp to Gingerbread.  No fruit (how do they manage that?), but otherwise OK.

We walk over to Lower Bay, now confirmed as the very best beach.  There’s a huge cruise liner called ‘Wind Surf’ anchored out to sea, not the first one we’ve noticed, but thankfully its population haven’t made it to Lower.  We lunch at Can’t Remember – their burgers aren’t as good as Moskito’s!

Another nice dinner at Fernando’s, back to Frangipani for a beer, and so to bed.

Friday 29^th

Homeward bound

We pack, pay, and bid a sorry farewell to sweet Bequia.

We by-pass the immigration queue at Barbados, as transit passengers.  Flight to Gatwick O.K., but the seats are incredibly uncomfortable – don’t they test these things?

Luggage doesn’t get lost, though it takes hours to find its way to the reclaim; car delivered by an enthused boy racer; back to Reading, cup of tea – and I’m back where I started.

Notes

Taxis

There are three kinds of taxi on Bequia:

·         Minibus.  We didn’t use these, but they’re standard people-carriers, with mostly edifying names like ‘Don’t Give Up’, ‘Justice’, ‘Faith’ etc painted across the front in graffiti-style lettering.

·         Pick-up truck.  This is Curtis’s style of taxi – a truck with bench seats ranged along each side.  Apart from the taxi firm’s ID, they don’t seem to have names.

·         Water taxi.  Obviously, these are not strictly ‘on’, but are boats with outboards, which hang around the jetties or tout for trade up and down the beaches.  They have racy names like ‘Humble Afrikan’, ‘Sweat’, and our favourite ‘Phat Shag’.

Birds

The following types of bird were observed:

·         Bequia Blackbird.  Shaped more like a starling than its English cousin.  Supposedly says ‘Bequia sweet sweet’, though to me it sounds more like ‘Bequia cheap cheap’, which isn’t entirely true.  They’re everywhere, but mostly hang around restaurant terraces.

·         Brown Boobie.  Four foot wing span diver, seen everywhere around the coast.  They hunt constantly, not hovering like raptors but cruising and plunging on the off chance – but rarely seem to catch anything.

·         Frigate Bird (aka Man o’ War).  Magnificent huge sea hunter, up to eight feet span.  They can’t actually dive, not having water-resistant feathers, so have to snatch prey from the sea surface (or from brown boobies).

·         A tiny yellow and black finch who frequents balconies.

·         Humming Bird.  Surprisingly few spotted, as there are allegedly about 29 varieties.

·         A black heron, seen elegantly winging across the bay one evening.

·         Pigeons.

Music

Quite a conservative scene, with the shining exception of Farine (named apparently after a kind of cassava-based porridge).  Bequia musicians don’t seem to have got over Bob Marley yet – seventies style reggae predominates.  A guy called Elvis plays steel drum at the Frangi once a week, to a pre-recorded backing track.  He’s actually very good, jazzy when he lets himself cut loose, but mostly feels he has to do tourist-pleasers.  Quite a lot of country & western, which seems incongruous.  Very little Soca or other more adventurous forms.

Shopping

We concluded that most locals take the ferry to St Vincent to shop – certainly they don’t get their clothes here!  The fruit & veg market is vibrant and well-stocked, though the sales technique can be a bit off-putting – reminded me of the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul.  A notice on the back wall reminds vendors not to apply this kind of ‘in your face’ selling approach; but one or two of them seem to have missed the word ‘not’.  Clothing is almost exclusively tourist crap – there is some good stuff, but you have to hunt it out.  Prices, as noted, seem on the high side.

 

 

 

 

Numb and Number

The relationship between me and mathematics has been like that between a stalker and their victim – aware of each other, but hoping never to meet face to face.  (In this simile, which will not be pursued further, maths is the stalker.)  The concept of the stuff fascinates me, but I don’t understand a bit* of it.

I’ve just almost finished a marvellous book which massively reinforces the fascination, and even, possibly, an itsy smidgeon of the understanding.  (Well, it couldn’t reduce it, could it?)  It’s called ‘The Information’, by James Gleick (Fourth Estate, 2011), and is basically a history of, well, information – its nature, how it is (or isn’t) communicated (from African talking drums to quantum computing) and, most importantly, how mathematics and information are essentially the same thing.

That’s all I’m going to say about this book, except that once or twice (all right, 150ish times), after surf-navigating a particularly turbulent stretch, my neurons and synapses (they’re in there!) felt distinctly numb.

Just a couple of snippets that particularly grabbed me:

A guy called G. G. Berry, with Bertrand Russell, cheekily constructed the Berry paradox, which goes something like this.  Q: Is it possible to name the least integer not nameable in fewer than nineteen syllables?  A: Yes: you’ve just done that.  But ‘the least integer not nameable in fewer than nineteen syllables’ actually contains eighteen syllables.  So the least integer not nameable in fewer than nineteen syllables has just been named in fewer than nineteen syllables.

That was obviously a philosophers’ in-joke, but ‘interesting’ and ‘uninteresting’ numbers are more, um, interesting.  An ‘interesting’ number, in the jargon, boils down to being one that can be expressed by an algorithm.  Hence  ‘5’ is ‘the third prime number’, ‘121’ is ‘11^2’.   The really interesting ones come when the algorithm is shorter than the number, thus facilitating data compression with all its essential benefits for information exchange.  But the really really interesting numbers are the ‘uninteresting’ ones, because they are random.  There’s no algorithm from which you can derive the number.  ‘Random’ numbers are a building block of modern internet security.  But the really really really interesting question is: how do you know they’re random?  Couldn’t it be that you just haven’t found the algorithm yet?  Vast resources at NSA and GCHQ are being devoted to cracking that one.

And finally, a quote: “What might not be gathered some day in the twenty-first century from a record of the correspondence of an entire people?”  Andrew Wynter, ‘The Electric Telegraph’, 1845.

Sorry, that’s three snippets.  Three is more than a couple.  Like I said, numbers and me, duh.

 

*Carefully chosen word.

A New England?

Most gratifying to see Cameron, Gove, Shapps, Hague and co taking such a statesmanlike approach to these constitutional issues.  “How can we use this to screw Labour at the next election and secure our own jobs, whilst not upsetting the money-cart?”  Thomas Jefferson would be proud of them!

‘English votes on English laws’.  Well, leave aside for a moment the fact that, according to Will Hutton in yesterday’s Observer, citing the McKay commission, a) there has been a total of just two-and-a-half years since 1919 when House of Commons arithmetic would have made any difference to any vote, and b) the question would hardly ever arise in practice anyway – there is remarkably little actual solely ‘English’ legislation.

Leave that aside.  The obviously false assumption is that ‘England’ in any way equates or is comparable to Scotland (or Wales, or Northern Ireland).  Quite apart from differences of landmass and population, none of these political constructs is in any way homogeneous.  (The referendum voting breakdown clearly proves this for Scotland; and I know neighbouring villages in Wales that’d be separate countries if they could.)  Least of all ‘England’.

No, England needs breaking down before any of this stuff makes any sense.  I haven’t worked out the details yet – can I safely leave that to Mr Hague? – but to kick off the negotiations I suggest revisiting the ancient Kingdoms of the Anglian Heptarchy.  In case you’d forgotten, these were, in about 700 AD: Mercia; Northumbria; East Anglia; Wessex; Essex; Sussex; and Kent.   There’ll be some mergers, demergers and acquisitions along the way, no doubt; but it’s a start point.

P.S. Sorry, I’ve temporarily reinstated the dreaded WV, in the hope of seeing off a particularly persistent idiotic Chinese spamhead.   I’ll take it off again after a few more posts.

History of the Universe, Part III: Towards Civilisation

Now that you’ve learnt how to think (see Part II), here’s how to become civilised:

Hunt and gather until you’ve used it all up.

Move somewhere else and repeat.  Invent nomadism.

Notice that when a seed drops from a plant, sometimes it sprouts.  Invent agriculture.

Invent tools, and pay people to make them for you.  Gather together and invent towns.

When other towns grow too close, merge with them, share skills and resources, and invent nations.

When other nations grow too close, subdue them.  Invent war.

Conquer enough other nations to form a civilisation. 

Believe that your civilisation will last forever.  Wait.

Fail.

‘Fail again.  Fail better.’

 

 

History of the Universe, Part II: Thinking about it

Right, this shouldn’t take long.  Because you can’t think about the absence of thought, can you; so how can you think about its origin?  And of you can’t trace its beginning, how can you map its history?  It’s like the old Irish joke: “You shouldn’t really be starting from here.”

Stanley Kubrick had an answer: a big black monolith suddenly appears amongst a bunch of hitherto thoughtless hominids; its mere presence triggers Thought – and we jump-cut 2,000,000 years.  It’s a masterly bit of myth-creation, but it begs the question.   Whoever put the monolith there must have thought about it first.

I think of thought (ha!) as boiling down to two words: ‘why’ and ‘if’.  ‘Why’ looks to the past, trying to explain, ‘if’ to the future, trying to predict: the important thing is that to be thinking, you have to be able to do it with your eyes shut.

So, the history of thought?   Well, from Kubrick’s apeman’s realisation that if he used that bone in that particular way, then this consequence would ensue; through the discovery by the likes of Socrates that you could think about the abstract as well as the particular; all the way to the boundless scope of artistic imagination and the consciousness-expanding potential of digital technology – there’s certainly been a lot of it.  (And I haven’t even mentioned ‘Deal or No Deal’.).

But I’m not sure thought itself has really changed that much.  It’s broadened its range of subject matter, obviously; but has it expanded its basic toolkit?  Has it deepened?  Did we become better thinkers over the millennia, as we civilised ourselves?

History of the Universe, Part I: Myths of Creation

Myth predates history, never mind science: all Myths are equally valid.  So I may as well make up my own:

God, or somebody like him, was playing around with numbers, but had only come up with Zero and Infinity.  They were both big numbers, in their different ways, but God needed Time to make them interesting.  So he invented One.  (We call it ‘Singularity’, which is just a posh word for the same thing.)

One, Zero and Infinity’s relationship proved to be unsustainable.  One won, and exploded with joy.  (Whether God had planned it that way is now anyone’s guess.  Or indeed, whether it was in fact joy, or rage: I lean towards joy.)  One thing is certain, though – Time was born at that moment, and the Universe began.

You know the rest.  Zero and Infinity were relegated to the sidelines, not to reappear for a very long time.  One (the Singularity) and its offspring (two, three, five, eight, thirteen, elementary particles, atoms, molecules, gas clouds, galaxies, stars, planets) just got on with it, for nearly fourteen billion years, until the next big invention (which may or may not have been God’s idea too) came along – Thought.

The next entry in this series will cover the history of Thought.  

News From 2020

It’s hard to credit that, back in 2013, scarcely anyone managed to predict what now looks like the inexorable course of events which led to our current interesting times.  As an early adapter of Googapple’s ‘iToldUso’ app, I’m sending this summary back to an obscure blog.

In 2014, the Scots voted narrowly to secede from the hitherto United Kingdom, and to apply for new-country membership of the European Union, which was rapidly granted by a filing clerk in Brussels with too much time and an antique rubber stamp on his hands.  A mischievous condition was that they had either to join the Euro or create their own currency.  Naturally, the new Scottish government under President Ferguson chose the latter, and the Scottish Poond was born.  In a far-reaching compromise, it was agreed that it would be tied at parity to the Pound.

There was much debate as to the name for the remainder of the old United Kingdom.  ‘The United’ was rejected as divisive, especially given the Scottish president’s background, and an acronym from ‘Kingdom, England, Wales, And Northern iReland’ was deemed provocative.  Eventually, after a joint campaign by the Sun, the Mirror and the Telegraph, it was decided simply to call it ‘England’.

It all went quiet then, until in 2017 the Lawson government led England to victory in the referendum to leave the EU.  (Cameron having been forced to resign after his abject failure to renegotiate the shape of bananas and policemen’s helmets.)  The details are not yet clear, or even emerging, but it seems that the Poond has to stay tied to the Pound, which in turn may be tied to the Dollar, or maybe the Rouble.  Or the Renminbi.  Or something.  Meanwhile the Euro might, subject to a Europe-wide referendum, be split into two – the Neuro and the Seuro – leaving the European Central Bank isolated on the periphery. 

We shall see.  The planned referenda on Welsh, Cornish and East Anglian independence could prove to be influential.  Interesting times.  Unfortunately I have just been informed that the pilot of the iToldUso app has been cancelled due to lack of interest.

Very good year?

From yesterday's Observer, page 21:

'[Robert Owen] married Caroline Dale in 1799 and had seven children.  In the same year, he bought the New Lanark cotton mill ...'

Those Industrial Revolution philanthropists sure knew about hard work.

History? Ancient, innit.

“So, how are you getting on with ‘Wolf Hall’?” I asked someone who’d just come back from a fortnight in Mauritius.  She twisted her mouth.

“It’s quite hard, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said.  “It takes a while to suss out that when she says ‘he’, usually it means ‘Thomas Cromwell’, whom she’s cast as a first person narrator speaking in the third person, and doing so in the historic present tense …  But once you get past that – ”

“Oh no, that wasn’t a problem.  That’s not what I meant,” she said.  “It’s just that I don’t know anything about ancient history.”

“But, you do know about Henry the Eighth, and his wives and the Pope and stuff.”

“Not really,” she replied.  “I kind of ducked all that.”

You probably think I’m conversing with a teenager.  Not at all: this is a highly intelligent, educated and mostly well-informed person eight years younger than me.   I was intrigued by this gap, and would have pursued it further, but dinner was on the table and I had to gulp down the rest of my gin.  We never got back to the subject.

But when I got home I started to think about it.  My first thought was “does it matter?”, and my immediate answer was “yes!”  Unless you have at least some understanding of what was going on in and after the Reformation, you won’t understand a lot of what’s going on today.  Because today’s norms are born of yesterday’s controversies, and to hold a view about, for example, whether it matters who is our next-but-one monarch (if that bothers you) or whether prisoners should be allowed to vote, you need to know how we got to where we are.

On the other hand, I then reflected, I got through more than half my life without any iota of such understanding.  Although I scraped a History O level, that was really no more than a demonstration of my powers of memory.  Thus although I knew (roughly) the names of Henry VIII’s wives, in order, I had no idea why he had to have six, and certainly not how this eventually led to the Civil War, or for that matter the First World War.  History, when I was taught it in the fifties, was almost entirely about the ‘who’, ‘what’ and ‘when’ of the past; hardly if at all about the ‘why’ and ‘how’. 

As it happens, the path of my life meandered to a point, maybe twenty years ago, where I was suddenly prompted to take an interest.  Needing something to read (in the loo, since you ask), I came across a series of Pelican histories of England, and grabbed one at random.   I remember very clearly the key thought: “Ah, so that’s why William the Conqueror needed to invade us!”  I’ve never looked back.  (Don’t set me any exam papers though.)

So I don’t in any way blame my friend for not knowing what Henry VIII was about.  She received the same rubbish education I did, but never got steered into that particular later-life diversion.  I think (although I don’t know for sure) that today’s teaching of History might be a little bit more educative (in the sense of thought-provoking); but ask me again in five years’ time, when it’s been dragged back to the fifties.