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

One day's beach bounty

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…..

When the tide is out we have our own little beach and fish and lobsters swim/crawl right up to the shore, so I’m buying a fishing spear and will be able to have fresh lobster from time to time (depending on my Survivor type skills).   The house is neglected but we are getting it for a steal.  The owners are two maiden aunts  who live in an enormous walled house in the centre of old town Nassau and run a children’s clothing shop on Bay Street (the main shopping street ).

When you go into the shop it is like stepping back into the 1950s – stacked wooden shelves behind a long glass topped counter, ladders to retrieve things, hand written receipts etc.  They are pretty legendary here and regarded as the two old dears of Nassau.  Due to some fall out they once didn’t speak to each other for five years or so whilst still working behind the counter of the shop together.  Evidently the one poor assistant they had had to communicate between the two of them.

I walked down the half mile long dirt track to the house the other day and there was an ancient Cadillac parked by the first bunch of coconut trees. I walked up and leaned in (the door was open).  Two women, voluminous in floral dresses and heaving bosoms looked at me and without any introduction one said: “our boy is getting nuts”.  With that a skinny Haitian guy emerged from the back, complete with machete and walked calmly to the first tree, put his machete in his mouth and shinned up it in about 6 fluid movements.  He chopped a couple of coconuts down, came down, picked them up and got back in the car.  No words spoken.  Surreal.

My next-door neighbour (Nassau side) throws the ‘second best’ parties on the island (his cottage has a deck which can hold about 100 people) so I’m looking forward to the 4th July when he will have a raft opposite the house with amazing fireworks.  His friend  (a sort of Swedish Peter Stringfellow living in Lyford Cay, the exclusive gated community in West Nassau) allegedly throws the best parties but you have to be on the closely guarded and even more closely scrutinized guest list.  I was recently invited  to  the opening of his amazing underground and underwater disco/private club.  However it was women guests only, to be filmed by MTV and the dress code was bikinis and stilettos and you had to agree to having your body painted upon arrival.  Ha!