CAT | Memoir
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…)
3
Potcakes, Potcats, Centipedes and no donkey
2 Comments | Posted by Rosalyn in Island Living, Memoir, Travel Journal
Tuesday July 27 ‘04
Slept until nine but woke in the night to heavy rain and high winds, which made the rattly doors bang. Good old mum rang; I was drinking from my favourite Skegness cup and telling her how I really want a donkey (we have 10 acres and a three mile long pink sand beach and ever since I went to Skegness as a kid and rode Donkeys I’ve wanted one. This was made stronger when I worked for the ‘Greek Animal Rescue’ society whilst at Lynne Franks and I heard about the poor donkeys that are thrown off of cliffs once the tourists leave. Cheaper than feeding them evidently. Horrid).
Just watching Tarpi wandering around the bush and chewing something. I forget that this toffee coloured small-domesticated animal that’s so keen to please is really a bush dog with a collar.
I watch as a beautiful black and white humming bird flittering in the bush in front of her. They love the Noni that is amazing as it smells so bad (Stink Apple). Tarpi is eating some kind of bush and Orange (the cat) is watching intently. I can see a couple of passion fruit by the front porch, sweetly left for me by the almost invisible Offany so think I’ll have them as a snack soon.
Today I am going to actually unpack so that I can feel at home. I may even venture out to the shops later – whackaday. Must remember to wear shoes. There was a huge centipede in the kitchen earlier – it was by the ring on the stove so I turned it on and bbqued it. Cruel but they have a terrible bite evidently and the Bahamian are terrified of them.
Oh yes, I think I flashed Offany with my boobs this morning. As I’ve dressed the wound I try to go topless for a while and I think he was working nearby. Hey ho.
I’ve been busy as one of the darling brood of animals peed in the boy’s room and by the time I discovered it, it has seeped underneath six bin bags. I just pulled them all out and dumped them in the square tiled bath, lizards and all, and done my best with Clorox and a bit of kitchen roll (must go to the shop today). Rusty has managed to tie his chain round a bush outside and has now dug himself down in the sand. Orange, despite being fed, is off stalking and I’m contemplating unpacking. How very different this life is.
The view of old palms from my wooden office on the hill: painting by Rosalyn Palmer
I dreamed about my old dog Tarpum last night and it made me sadly nostalgic for the wonderful dogs and cats we had in the Bahamas (as I write this mind you my Catlet (half kitten/half cat) Manuel is asleep on my lap and Basil is laying blissfully on his new zebra throw across the spare bed).
When we moved to Nassau, we took our Basset hound Poppy with us. You have no idea the rigmarole it takes to export an animal from the UK. Dept of Agriculture, endless forms, vets, injections, money etc. It was more trouble than the rest of the move put together particularly as the Bahamas has never signed up to the Pet Passport scheme (no doubt the paper work in somewhere on an official’s desk….).
Poppy did not like it in the hold of the BA flight to Nassau. Nor did the other two dogs flying onwards to the Caymen Islands. As we came into land in Nassau the plaintive howling that only a very unhappy hound can make could be heard throughout the plane. The flight crew had to assure several passengers that it was just the Basset hound setting the others off. Bless.
At Nassau, armed with a thick manila file of official forms, I sought out my dog. No one knew where the crate and its unhappy occupant would come in. Well, that little dilemma was soon sorted as it was shoved down the belt with the other luggage. Except this one was a lot more noisy. Her lead and collar that had been securely taped to the top of the crate had obviously been ‘borrowed permanantly’ by one of the helpful luggage handlers so she had to remain in a crate howling the place down. The officials wanted her and us out of there (what would all those tourists think?). A large female official asked me: “Puppy had it’s shots?”. “Yes” I replied and with a wave of her hand we were cleared. Not a glance at any of the forms. Welcome to the Bahamas.
Our fist house in Nassau was a small town house and it was terrible trying to keep Poppy quiet. Luckily we soon moved to a decrepit but big house right on the sea and it was not long before I received a call from the Humane society telling me that for the first time in their history they had an abandoned Basset hound. As I had the only other one on the Island it seemed only right to go and liberate Rusty and so we quickly acquired the two most disobedient but beautiful dogs on the Island.
Oh the adventures Poppy and Rusty had. Off along Cable beach. In dustbins, fed by every passing tourist and adored when I walked them on the beach. It took me hours to walk past the hotels as every US vacationer seemed to miss their dog and want to talk. I had some great conversations though. The Bahamians would run into the sea. Most are very afraid of dogs and didn’t get that possibly mine may lick them to death but not much more.
It was the rats that caused us to acquire the cats. Big rats and lots of them.
At first there were a few and we put down traps. However, waking up to a house with no a/c when a rat has been dead in a sprung trap for hours overnight in a hot kitchen is not my idea of fun. Nor is hearing them gnawing through the skirting board early morning and night. Nor is going to feed the dogs a Boneo and when I put my hand into the (big economy size) box having a rat run up my arm and jump off my shoulder. For that matter, nor is having one walk past when I was watching ‘The Greatest Race’. Nor the one my housekeeper Marcia trapped under a bucket in the kitchen that I took a broom to. No. Trust me it was not fun and when we were offered two kittens we jumped at the chance so Marshmellow and Orange joined our brood.
Sadly, I flew back from the UK one time and found that Poppy was missing. This rates as one of those ‘really not great’ days. My father had had a stroke (on my birthday) and I’d flown to his bedside to return a week later. Still wearing my travel clothes I went to find Poppy only to find her under a palm tree having been hit by a car. I took her to the Humane Society and an hour later returned with her to bury her in the garden. Sad sad day.
But very soon I would discover that Potcakes (Bahamaian mongrels) were the way forward and living in an out island, they just come your way whether you want it or not…….
……….to be continued (come back soon to read about finding the Potcakes, how the cats ended up in a walled enclosure called Yellow and Mellow and more…..)
Marshmellow in the sun....
Rusty and assorted Potcake friends on the beach
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Island farm living pics to cheer up a cold British day…..
0 Comments | Posted by Rosalyn in Island Living, Memoir
Rusty the bassett and my morning coconut delivery
My watercress bed. The dogs loved to lay on it as it was cool and damp!
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
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Book synopsis – A Hummingbird on the Noni
0 Comments | Posted by Rosalyn in Memoir, Travel Writing
Mention the Bahamas & a glamorous image of James Bond, fast boats, bikini clad beauties, sand & azure sea, tropical drinks and smiling locals comes to mind.
After 20 years in the fast lane running one of London’s top PR agencies, I discovered over 5 years the REAL Bahamas: going increasingly native from the relative civilization of Bahamian capital Nassau to living on a 10-acre farm on a sparsely populated out island (run by former politicians and a network of extended families the source of whose money is never openly discussed).
See behind the gates of the millionaire communities in Nassau. A capital boasting the sophistication of giant casinos but with shanty towns. Open any daily paper & read stories of witchcraft and sweethearting (adultery) and fist fights in parliament.
Recovering from major surgery in the USA, I choose ‘Eleutheratherapy’: recovering on an organic farm on a pink sand beach on the island of Eleuthera. Here I discovered a Bahamas rarely seen by visitors: of nefarious locals, the displaced and forgotten and an eclectic mix of winter residents and ex-pats each with a funnier and stranger story to tell.
This is a vivid and engaging story of the real Bahamas and the characters who wash up on her shores. Scruffy billionaires and eccentric recluses who rub shoulders with local fishermen and a land, charming and frustrating in equal measure; a place at once quiet and more exciting than any invented story!
Coming soon (fingers crossed) to a bookshop near you…………..A
