Another update from your foreign correspondent in Grenada! Well, with a lot of people shutting up their boats for the hurricane season and heading home, life in Grenada has got even quieter. . . but conversely has become a bit busier for us.
Our friends Karen and Mike have gone back to the UK for a couple of months and Mike, a yacht broker who also does guardinage, asked Neil if he would hold the fort while they are away. As well as looking after three boats; airing them out, checking the bilges and making sure everything is tied down and secure, he has also helped with listing other yachts for sale. He’s thoroughly enjoying rushing around between rain showers to take photos and meeting the owners to fill out all the paperwork, perhaps a new career for him one day!
Norman, another friend who manages the open mike night at Nimrods Rum Shop, has left for Canada and asked Neil and I, together with Suni and Martin, to keep the show going while he is away. We are having a fine old time! It takes about an hour to set up all the equipment and do sound checks then we kick off about 6:30. Each week new faces come along as well as the “usual crowd”; some are musicians who haven’t been to Nimrods for a while and others drop in to see what’s going on. Every week is a different combination of magic and madness and Neil is really enjoying managing the sound desk and making them sound as good as he can.
I had a great birthday back in early July, in fact we celebrated for several days. We spent my birthday up at Jenny’s Farm; a gorgeous home set up a long winding track in the cool, verdant, forested hills in St. David. Jenny made us a lovely lunch of stuffed peppers and a seafood paella which we ate sitting in the garden overlooking a spectacular view from the mountains to the sea.
The next day we drove to the La Sagesse Hotel in the southeast corner of the island for a couple of days of self indulgence. Although the building looks like an old plantation house it was actually built in the sixties by Lord Brownlow, a cousin of Queen Elizabeth II. During the short lived revolution in Grenada in 1979 the property was taken over by the community and turned into a military base. It has since been restored as a hotel and the thick walls and high ceilinged rooms of the manor house were our sanctuary. We walked and swam, Neil tried to teach me to body surf (hilarious) and we enjoyed some lovely food and a special treat – hot showers!
About a month ago I started working as a volunteer at the GSPCA animal shelter in St. Georges. My duties include taking the dogs for walks in the beautiful botanical gardens next door to the shelter which I really enjoy, washing the puppies and and “socializing” the dogs. Bathing the tiny, wriggling puppies is a joy but some of the bigger dogs are pretty boisterous, it takes two of us to bathe them and we all get completely soaked. Socializing simply means getting in the pens with the dogs and stroking, patting and playing with them; it sounds like fun except I usually emerge shredded by their sharp claws and teeth.
Neil enrolled in an art course for four weeks taught by a local artist Ricardo Francois on the dock at Whisper Cove Marina. He learnt some new techniques and enjoyed painting with acrylics for the first time, but the most interesting aspect Ricardo taught him was the mental approach: to paint well you need to clear your mind of negative thought to allow your creativity space to bloom.
So we fill our days with busyness while we wait out the hurricane season. We still have not had any significant storms yet this year but things are getting more active in the central Atlantic. Tropical waves born off the coast of Africa breed tropical depressions which gather energy as the ocean waters warm up. NOAA predict two possible storms to arrive in the Caribbean in the next week but the projected tracks pass north of us. Long may it last!
Ciao for now
Suzy and Neil