CAT | Bahamas
26
A lovely #livingthedream piccie for my poor neglected Bahamas blog
4 Comments | Posted by Rosalyn in Bahamas, Island Living, Travel Journal
Well – it’s neglected because I’m writing the book. Yes, the actual book. So blogging is taking a bit of a back seat. Still there will be lots to post and for now a picture. The fishermen in Governor’s Harbour land their catch just before sunset. You mosey along, choose a fish, haggle over the price and then they get out a machete, scale, gut and fillet it for you. I once purchased a whole shark for $20 (Bahamians don’t care for shark). Nassau Grouper is excellent as is my favourite: Hog Fish (like sea bass). Enjoy x
Buying fish for supper - Eleuthera style
4
Politicians, promises and newspapers Bahamian style
0 Comments | Posted by Rosalyn in Bahamas, Bahamas News
Nassau: 2001
At least there is always the beach
So what else has been happening? Well, we have just witnessed the most interesting election in this small country’s history. A fiercely fought election campaign resulted in a landslide victory for the opposition, the PLP (Progressive Liberal party – don’t be misled by the name, it is a left wing, ‘party of the people’ which had ruled for 25 straight years until two terms ago when mounting corruption made the people turn against it). Rather like New Labour it has used its time out of power to renew itself and done a cracking job at winning around the young and popular vote. Consequently the old Government was really caught napping and went from thirty odd seats to seven. Perhaps the London PR agency the PLP employed (don’t know who yet) also had something to do with it?
I went to one of the rallies, which has to be on a theatrical par with any large-scale event I’ve ever been to. Imagine a hot evening and about 10,000 loud and brightly attired Bahamians, in high spirits, drinking gin out of coconut shells and eating anything that could be battered and fried whilst dancing to very loud rap music. Booming music blasted out for a gaudy stage and every so often a wave of rash promises would come from some candidate or other who would then sling a load of mud at the opposition (libel seems a rarely used legal device).
It was a blast.
21
1st week on the remote farm continues – London life no more
2 Comments | Posted by Rosalyn in Bahamas, Island Living, Memoir, Travel Journal
Now it is cool at 7.15pm.
I’ve been for my beach walk with the dogs. I’m slurping a huge ripe mango as I walk down the beach (I am now covered in mango stains on my top and shorts). I can’t believe it is so utterly fantastic here. I feel too lucky and can’t start to tell people how amazing it is.
I felt quite the recluse when I went into town earlier, I can’t decide if I’m just rediscovering my true self or that really I am a recluse at heart. Weird thoughts as I ran a top London PR company and had an 8 bedroom house, nanny,driver etc. And now, after slipping down the ‘no status’ slippery pole in Nassau (i.e. I went to dinner parties where no one asked me what I do/did/think/thought and the men talked and the women share choc cake recipes - help me! Betty Crocker?) I start to put my ‘former life’ more and more into some contex. (more…)
12
Amazing 360 deg photos of Eleuthera
3 Comments | Posted by Rosalyn in Bahamas, Island Living
Thanks a million to Perry Joseph for reading and loving my blog and also for sending two of his beautiful photos taken in Eleuthera – Lighthouse Beach and Double Bay. I will try to get more for future blogs as they are stunning.
Double Bay Eleuthera, Bahamas
Bannerman Lighthouse in South Eleuthera
20
A glimpse at a hurricane moving in….
0 Comments | Posted by Rosalyn in Bahamas, Island Living
Not every day is sunnny in the Bahamas...Tippies before the hurricane
Well here is an old entry I had totally forgotten about. I was asked to plant a tree at a local school (clearly they couldn’t get anyone else so choose me!)
March 13 VIP tree planting at H O Nash school.
An indolent and yawning Sherry S gave me jumbled directions on the phone and said I’d be billed as a “corporately minded citizen”.
After driving around guided by her rough notes and the compass on my Ford Explorer I finally arrived at the school to find thousands of kids drifting around, all very casual and chaotic as so much of the Bahamas is (can’t actually detect any order or sense of anyone in control).
A radio broadcast was in full swing and Sherry was rushing around shouting to the kids to: “Go get the daddies, it’s daddies day we need to speak to daddies, now where that daddie I had lined up gone?”
I was met by Principle as I was putting on my make up in the car. Great. Then introduced randomly to several more suited and booted people with no sense of who anyone was or why they should be there. Introduced to Rev? (never did catch his name) – a man of about 5ft 4 ins, white shirt and clean attire but no dog collar or bible. Very remiss for Nassau. Leading me to severl huge metal pots on a makeshift stove top, he asked if I would like breakfast as they had boiled pigs feet and soused chicken with Johnny cake – I declined.
The tree (a sort of spindly bush) was right across a dirty expanse of gravel and dried mud in a corner by a fence. It was leaning badly in a hole which had old tin cans and debris in it. I was carrying a cardboard sign with its name written in felt tip (didn’t catch it but something botanical for good measure). Then without seeing who from, an enormous shovel was thrust into my hands and I was frogmarched across the playground by the radio broadcast team and an entourage of parents, preachers, teachers, councillors and kids. I reached the random hole, staggering with the shovel, in the heat in my increasingly damp best cotton trouser suit and shiny full make up. And still only 9am in the morning!
The broadcast began (we had all shaken hands so that was the end of the formalities), Rev shortman blessed the tree (live on air, what magic at drivetime), Sherry said some words (and froze and forgot all the names etc) as I huffed and puffed with the big shovel and threw in some dirt and debris around the twig. Then a parent – another small man of about 5.3 with silver hair, a moustache, white hat and striped golf shirt with badge proclaiming ‘Proud to be a parent at HO Nash’ grabbed the shovel, the Principle jumped in and snap. There was the shot for the newspaper photographers. I was told my words were wonderful and invited for lunch. I left.
Is this what the Queen has to do? As I drove away I saw two wizened old ladies walking with umbrellas in the sun and listened to a news story in which the police spokesman described the man at the centre of a double murder and suicide as someone: ‘who lack conflict resolution skills’. You don’t say.
Couldn’t wait to get back into my Island uniform of tatty denim shorts and halter neck top at home. This heat is stepping everything up a beat. The tree frogs are getting really noisy now and there are clouds of moths as big as bats. A raccoon has taken to throwing bananas from my neighbour’s tree – another hazard along with the falling coconuts (one of which fell down whilst I was unloading the Explorer and dented the open boot door – luckily not my head!).
What a Bahamian journey this is proving to be!
Back in my 'island unifom' of halter neck and shorts
9
It’s six months into Bahamas living
0 Comments | Posted by Rosalyn in Bahamas, Travel Journal
Sunset in the Bahamas
Nassau 2001……..
So here we are, six months in already. Finally felt at home last weekend when over the bank holiday weekend it rained non stop for five days. There must be a special Bank Holiday weather curse, which works throughout the world. Difference here is that it is still humid and in the mid 80s (which means in a clever, adjusted, sort of way it is really about 99 degs), and I am constantly getting caught out without a brolly or so much as a piece of paper to hold over my head so impersonate a drowned rat on an almost daily basis.
As I start to type this I am watching the golf course being bulldozed. It now resembles a sort of desert oasis. There is sand and soil everywhere, much of it in large dune-like piles and the one remaining lake in the centre of the course has had all the palm trees deposited around its edges to keep them alive before they are moved back into place. No prizes for guessing how it has affected the mosquitoes. The noisy frogs are also pretty unsettled. The constant sound of diggers has followed hot on the heels of the disruption caused by the building of our new conservatory and the major renovations on the entire block we live in. Not very conducive to writing a best seller I must say. So….we are moving at the end of June to a fab five-bedroom house that is literally on the sea. I kid you not. When you look out of the lounge and back bedroom windows all you see is turquoise sea, it is like being on a boat. When the sea is rough it splashes up onto the patio and hits the lounge windows and leaves behind a film of salt when it dries. Needless to say it will be horrendous in a hurricane which is why our rent agreement has a clause that the landlord has six hours in which to board up the entire house once a hurricane warning is issued and we get to move out to a hotel (they do special hurricane rates here and evidently it is quite a laugh being hauled up in a Key Largo sort of way for days in the howling wind and rain). No doubt a later letter….. (more…)
