So, where was I... ah yes, in the West Indies.

We stayed in a adults/couples only hotel well out of the main tourist drags which was very pleasant and although I wouldn't normally be fussed about other children around it did make for blissful peace. The best beach by far was Halfmoon Bay, a perfect combination of turquoise waters, silver sands, splashy white horses and hardly anyone else sharing it.

Every picture tells a story so here are a few of mine.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jojopixie/sets/72157604091858139/

I would like to go to the Caribbean again but perhaps a different island, once you've been round it all there isn't a lot else to look at. However, it isn't the cheapest holiday in the world so we may not get to do it again. There's sun, sea, sand and the other stuff in other locations as well...

The middle of February is like a thousand suns ago. Which approximates, I suppose, to about 3 years - give or take a few months - and it feels like it too.

That was way back in the winter time and before I went to the West Indies. I am trying to remember the kaleidoscope of things that have been going on since then but the colours and patterns are spinning so fast it giving me dinner-deja-vu. It was a very nice dinner actually, coronation chicken, one of my faves, but that doesn't mean I want to re-experience it.

At the start of March (when it was coming in like a lion in fact - the 1st) I got on an aeroplane and travelled across the Atlantic to the Land of Sea and Sun. Although I shall soon be half of 90 I have never travelled by aeroplane all by myself before so this was quite a milestone, another first. I was very nervous and very excited, both, and at the same time! And because it was a longer flight than I have been on before I also had another first in that I had to make use of the toilet facility. This is not such an exciting first time experience and as I fortunately didn't get into any difficulties there is not much of a story in that. More of borey, as my girlie likes to refer to many of my anecdotes. I personally can't see what is so boring about taking an interest in inspection covers but that is jumping up to present day far too quickly.

I was understandably then keyed up to quite a pitch when the aeroplane doors were opened and we filtered out into blazing sunshine and the tinkling strains of calypso drums. It was quite beautiful after a cold dull March morning in Merrie Englande. Hubby met me at the airport - he had been sailing around the Caribbean for a couple of weeks and appeared to have taken on a skin colour hitherto unknown, a kind of terracotta - I could have planted something in his head and put him on the patio.

The area around Antigua airport is wonderfully landscaped in rich tropical flora, an amazing array of fantastic strong colours and shapes and it lasts for about a mile or so - and then you hit the reality of the island....

Dusty, and extremely bumpy, roads rattled us around in a tin can of a taxi whose aircon mode of the day was open windows - presumably so that we could really take in the heady combination of dust and breeze, quite enough to make you sneeze.

I guess that first day captured the complete contrast that you find there. From the breathtaking beauty of the silver-sanded beaches against the azure blue skies to the ramshackle, falling-down huts that the islanders live in, surrounded by their chickens and goats, along litter-strewn roads.

I shall return but sleep calls, then work, and then a whole bunch of other stuff...

It's been a while.

I've been busy.

In honour of the return of the scribe a new look was needed. Somewhat plainer, the grass was beginning to bore me.

Well that's it for the moment, I don't want to rush into anything.

A local sussex trug-maker is struggling to keep afloat, trugs are not the height of fashion at the moment it seems - they are a pricey item though which might explain a lot. I have a small one that I keep in the utility room which I throw my gloves into at the end of a stint outdoors.

Contents of gardening trug the other day:
2 pairs crunchy, soil-ingrained gardening gloves
A pink pouch of pink garden twine (supporting breast cancer charity)
A selection of seed packets, some open and spilling seed
Length of wire
1 fish finger

“Ah, I was looking for that” - I swear he is going doolally since he retired. I guess though that it is easy enough to lose track of your fish fingers, you think you have them all in the box but they are itching to get out and in amongst the gardening paraphernalia.

It was in this same weekend that I observed a swan attempting to break into a car’s petrol tank. Some fool had parked it right by this delinquent, over-sized duck’s pond - but it isn’t the easiest thing in the world to wrench off a petrol cap with just a beak so the car-owner was in luck. Not so lucky were the passing motorists subjected a large amount of crevice on show from the road planer, almost visible puckering (not to mention extremely unattractive under-garment).

Another snatch of the mildly odd. Seated on a settee in a small bungalow I am conducting a conversation with a guy in the adjoining porch-ette while also carrying on a desultory conversation with his wife in the room off the other side of the hall-ette. He is sculpting a head for a Medusa, life size and very fine, though he isn’t doing the snakes, another chap will do that. She is collecting together bits of pattern and fabric and pins to arrange for constructing my to-be-ready-for-Easter waistcoat (for Morrising in). It is a tranquil moment of surrealism after the mundane and commonplace arena of work.

Although work does have its moments. We have a new manager. After many years of being led by a formidable lady we now have……….a bloke. And he is a man not a poor excuse for one. Athletic build, gregarious, and doesn’t know how shopping works – he is a breath of fresh masculine air. I have to laugh - every day - when a constant succession of women seem to find themselves drawn to his office, to say hello, pass the time of day, or simply ask….whatever. These women who went out of their way to avoid going near the office in the days of his predecessor are suddenly drawn in there like moths to a flame. My roomie and I listen to the tinkling bells of feminine flirtation and snigger; we are biding our time – besides I prefer to have the opposite sex flocking to MY door rather than the reverse. I suppose that could be why my office is ….quiet.

In the week that sees the wee island of Eigg with it’s small but not insignificant population at last able to experience the joy of a reliable electricity supply – something that on the mainland we take very much for granted – there is also the story of the Cannabis Ships.

Not a million miles from the small island of Eigg, is another even more remote and far less well-known island, which cannot be named for security purposes and it is here that the Cannabis Ships skulk. A brand new wind farm on the island generates an incredible amount of power which is then supplied to the National Grid but not maybe not all of it….

A small family have been diverting some of the electricity to power three hulking, skulking ships, moored close to the secluded inlet on the north side of the island. Seen from the outside the ships appear desolate and enshrouded, a pungent smell emanating from them. These are the Cannabis Ships. Deck upon deck of marijuana plants….

Not really of course, this was just a conversation I was having with a guy who has way too much imagination! But is quite an idea and I was thinking of maybe a film of the tale on the lines of Whiskey Galore. A vast ship load of Cannabis lands on a remote island, etc. etc. There’s definitely a part in it for Robbie Coltrane I think and I think Ewan MacGregor would make a very convincing hero….

You just need a little imagination!

21.00pm Sunday Evening

48 Hours Ago: Drinking coffee after the meal at our Christmas Do and wondering why I sat at that table
36 Hours Ago: Drinking coffee and trying to plan my day of cooking for hubby’s Retirement Do
24 Hours Ago: Desperately wondering how to stay awake for another hour until I could legitimately go to bed
18 Hours Ago: Dreaming
12 Hours Ago: Stuffing tomatoes
6 Hours Ago: Taking photos at hubby’s Retirement Do
3 Hours Ago: Downloading photos onto computer of hubby’s Retirement Do
2 Hours Ago: Eating Chinese Meal back at home with family
1 Hour Ago: Chatting with the family about our various weeks
Now: Chilling and listening to tunes
1 Hour from now: Reading before bedtime
2 Hours from now: Spark out - hopefully
3 Hours from now: Dreaming – about something nice preferably
6 Hours from now: Still asleep – though it might be time for a little indigestion and insomnia by then
12 Hours from now: Sitting at my desk at work wondering where the weekend went
18 Hours from now: Making a nice cup of tea to keep me going until home time
24 Hours from now: At rehearsal – thinking if I get any colder then bits will start falling off
36 Hours from now: Going through my in-tray
48 Hours from now: Dancing

Why is it that people always seem to think if you are off to Paris you must be going to have some kind of romantic breakaway? ‘How romantic’ and ‘Is it a second honeymoon?’ have both been wafted my way by people who knew I was off to Paris for a few days.

Well……..NO! Not all trips to Paris are romantic ones.

When I was nine years old my mother took me to Paris for five days – my father not being too keen on crossing water and my mother desperate for some kind of foreign travel experience. We were very much UK-holiday goers and it represented a wonderful and scary dip into the unknown, and largely unknowable. We went by hovercraft and train (my mother had - and still has - a horror of aeroplanes!) which made it seem a lot further away I suppose. It wasn’t a romantic trip although it was quite an adventure.

I have been to Paris several times since. I cannot honestly say that any of the other visits were of a romantic nature either – Paris doesn’t particularly speak to me of romance, well certainly not the soppy, sloppy, kissing-on-bridges type of romantic claptrap but I’m not that kind really. I have a far too short concentration span to sit gazing into someone’s eyes for more than a few seconds.

This trip was not a romantic getaway for hubby and me; it was a Paris taster for the girlie and a chance to catch up on some research for her Uni course which she starts in the autumn, History of Art. We left on Thursday morning on the Eurostar and returned last night on same. In the two days in between we covered a lot of ground – literally.

The girlie has a fear of undergrounds – any subterranean spaces really – so we had to walk – a lot! We did the Pompidou Centre, the Musee d’Orsay, the Eiffel Tower, a river boat trip, the Louvre, and Notre Dame. We beheld a lot of places in between as well. It was an incredible amount of culture to cram into a couple of days but so well worth it. The snow on the Eiffel Tower was a bit bizarre, as was the general reluctance to dispense with Christmas - Notre Dame still had a massive tree outside - but the art part was always impressive.

The Japanese tourists were an absolute hoot. They were all clustered round the Mona Lisa trying to snap each other posing by her with their cameras and phones. One guy couldn’t get near enough the real thing so he was taking a photo on his phone of the black and white photocopy of her picture near the door. They thronged round the statue of Venus, taking it in turns to stand proudly in front to have yet another picture taken. I told the girlie that they had to provide proof they had actually been in Paris.

One lady was just walking through the gallery screening the entire stroll onto her video camera and not actually looking at anything as she went. That seemed so very odd. But they had us in stitches more than a few times.

The last few hours of the trip however were a little less fast-paced. The girlie managed to fall down a few steps in the Louvre and sprain her ankle. She hobbled on valiantly but increasingly more painfully, until she simply could not carry on and we made a very slow and uncomfortable journey back to the hotel and thence to the station. Fortunately I did have a book to read as without it the last four and a half hours of enforced sitting around would have been a bit tedious – although I didn’t mind having a break from all the walking!