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.  

In some ways, I was totally rubbish, as I never asked for photo or autograph as I wanted to be cool (trust me when you are 24, wearing a suit that cost a month’s pay cheque and are doing Ronnie Woods Art Exhibition at Katharine Hamnett’s  gallery in Brompton Cross and Mick Jagger has just flirted with you it is weird).  And best EVER was having breakfast coffee at Daniel Day Lewis’s house before GMTV interview for London Lighthouse.  OMG.  If only I’d told him how much I love poetry etc.

Anyway – less day dreaming: back to farm life:  I suddenly thought ‘Oh no, I have no cat food.

The beach on a good day.

I’ll have to go to the shop’.  How weird is this?  Lived in London and popping into a shop (whilst making the cabbie wait) was a daily thing. Now, I actually think it through.  And actually, don’t always have any choice.  Went into Burrows today and no dog food. Great thing is that I realised that tinned Corn Beef is cheaper than Dog Food and they like it more.  I’m a convert!

At present, my world is the beach.  Seriously, the world must be full of one-legged people as there are so many odd shoes and flip-flops washed up every morning

Today I saw one black brogue, two odd trainers and two odd flip flops plus one broken flipper.

The rest of the debris was the usual glass and plastic bottles (bloody bandage is sticking by the way that makes walking difficult.  I think a) I don’t ask or demand enough info from the Cancer clinic b) I don’t want to and c)this climate is crap)

Back to the debris; it comprised: used medicine and toiletries bottles, lots of rope, bits of wood, plastic drums and containers, odd bits of plastic, several dead crabs today – one with only one leg which it moved pitifully when Tarpi sniffed it, little plastic balls from boat ropes and the polystyrene floats from boats too. Lots of light bulbs (change a bulb on a boat, throw the old one overboard obviously), the odd glass syringe (not hypodermic), small shells and lovely sand dollars.  The sea is not a dustbin people.  I shall go armed with a black bin bag next walk.

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

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

Rusty the bassett and my morning coconut delivery

My watercress bed. The dogs loved to lay on it as it was cool and damp!

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).

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.

What a Bahamian journey this is proving to be!

Back in my 'island unifom' of halter neck and shorts