More Grace

After a couple of  truly grim weeks on which I cannot comment ( no need to remind you we live on an island but I will be writing a book) we now have some real grace in our lives. Meet little Grace "Honky" Dawson, aged about 5 weeks and plucked from certain death as she was trying to cross a very busy road, blind and weighing in at about 150 grammes (and that was mainly the fleas).

Not sure that we could deal with her demise so soon after Mimi's departure, a very kind family (xxxxxx) nursed her back to life and then transferred her over on Saturday. Although she is never going to win Miss Caribbean Kitty 2012, she is the most beautiful cat in the world to us. Plucky, happy and incredibly playful. Although her eyes are milky and we think she has about 2 inches of vision - she's attempted staircases, jumped up curtains, sleeps on her back with all her paws up in the air and purrs non-stop. A true joy. She also loves and sleeps on Mimi's old blanket, so we like to think that Mimi is looking down on Gracie, probably with some condescension, but with approval. Jasmine the Parrot however,  has a 'WTF' expression on her face most of the time and completely ignores her.

Gracie, as they say, was not planned. What is planned however is Summer, starting next week Thursday (28th June) when the kids break up from school for their very long Summer holidays. Starting Monday our first resident takes up her place - namely Flora the island-special Spaniel, who we are adopting from soon-to-depart friends. Flora will be swiftly followed the next day by Kathy (these two dates are not entirely coincidental) our Cape Town relation who will be staying with us for the summer. Cannot tell you how much we are looking forward to Kathy getting here and sharing our lovely home with her and our even lovelier children. She can in fact have them for the whole Summer.

James is off racing again this weekend in St Thomas and disappears Thursday returning Sunday. He has been bumped up to Blue Fleet, which is pretty heavyweight and populated by kids who have been sailing since they could crawl with names like Rocco of Antigua and Big Nicki. Not too bad for the kid from Parktown North who knew his way around the pool and not much else, but don't expect too many bullets and pray for no more than about 15 knots (technical details not necessary).

Our very first Summer Visitors are also making the journey across the Atlantic at the end of August, and we will be rolling out the Red Carpet for Suzie and The Boys.  Given our present circumstances (no bakery, half a job) we will not be availing ourselves of any metropolitan relief (sob) but we will be sailing again which has to be payback time for about $5000 worth of sailing tuition fees as we blithely put the children to work and sit back and pour ourselves as many 'Dark & Stormies' as we want. Ha!

 

Grace Under Pressure



Beautiful Lioness and her 3 cubs. Gosh I miss Africa sometimes.

Jubilee Weekend



Sahara Dust Sunset. Photo by Jane Clatworthy. Similar view to ours.

We have this weird Sahara Dust haze at the moment, which looks like mist but is in fact dust which has blown all the way over the Atlantic. I'm not that impressed as I spent the entire day yesterday cleaning the bloody house.



A person can get used to all these lovely 4-day weeks! Along with the rest of the Empire, we have tomorrow (Monday) as a holiday for the Queen's 60th Jubilee celebrations. In honour of this, we dressed our long-suffering children up as their royal namesakes on Friday (see previous blog) and had a lot of fun doing this. I think most of the time we're just justifying why we bought tons of crap all the way from Africa, but we have a surprising use for most things (when we can find it, that is). Tyler did the crown out of pipe cleaners, felt, foil and stick-on jewels. William wants to wear it all the time but we have to keep telling him he's only a Prince and can't wear a crown yet.

This week we've been busy, busy, busy. We're thinking, eating and sleeping b****y, end-of-school year, work and for me - writing. I'm starting on a synopsis and am mapping out my columns. Most of the time I'm actually pinning, so when you see a 100 new pins, that's me 'doing research'. 

James & Georgie have been sailing for 2 days so we don't see them until supper time and today we are unpacking the very last of our boxes (apart from the books) which has only taken us 3 months. All in all, I would say our move would have taken us 2 years. I'm only really starting to settle down now and I think we finally have some rhythm and routine again. It's been a long-haul.

We must be just about be the only people on the planet today (Sunday) who are either not watching the whole River Parade on BBC or swimminh up at the North Sound (if you live here). We'll relax a bit tomorrow with various picnics and other celebrations on the go and wave the flag a bit.

Georgie sailing Lazers this weekend. Photo by Brian Duff

Spanish Homework




Prince William, James I and George III

 
Georgie knew he had Spanish homework last Friday for today. Last night was admittedly a late one after putting these ensembles (above)  together for Jubilee Day at school. He remembered his Spanish homework at about 8:45pm last night, cleary too late so Tyler told him to get up early today:

This was the discussion in the car on the way to school:

Annoyed Father: Did you finish your homework George?
George: No, not really
Annoyed Father What do you mean "not really?". What did you have to do?
George: We had to write a paragragh about an animal with a drawing. I did mine on an eel
Grumpy Mother: Did you find out what 'eel' meant in Spanish?
George: No, not really
Annoyed Father: How can you write a paragragh about eels if you dont even know what they are called?
George: Because the class has to guess what they are after you have read it out to them. It's like a riddle.
Irrate Father: So how would you know what the right answer is? El Congero?
George: Yes, that sounds right
Outraged Father: Or maybe it's El Morayo?
George: Could be
Totally Pissed Off Father: George, how did you write the sentence if you dont even know the Spanish word for eel? Did you just translate it on Google?
George: No I didnt, I didn't use Google, I wrote it
Totally Pissed Off Father: But how could you have? What did you say?
George: I didn't use Google, I used Bobble Fish

All this while dressed up as George III.

Mrs Restell, Prince William & Princess Royal

Watching paint dry

We finally have the keys to our bakery, all ready for fit-out which should take a couple of weeks.  It is tiny, as you can see above, but it's ours! It sits in the middle of a boatyard and we share the new building with lockers, offices and the local chiropractor. It's directly opposite the entrance to the largest yacht charter harbour, The Moorings and it is in the 'up & coming'  little area of Wickhams Cay II which is slowly converting from workshops and yards, to trendy shops and offices.

Double blue doors, to left of Tylers white Nissan

Starting with the big oven this week, all the baking equipment is arriving on-island over the next few weeks. I'm currently driving around with a 200 kilogram  Hobart mixer in the back of my car and our garage is now crammed full with stuff for fitting it out.  I've designed the shop fittings and counter and we're whittling down thousands of recipes for the baked goods and homemade goodies.  We have a small fridge for cakes, a good coffee machine and a large blackboard for daily specials. The main thing is the bread however, which will be baked on the premises - sourdoughs, pain de campagne, gluten-free, wholewheat, rye and ciabattas to name a few. We hope to have a 'soft' opening in Mid-June, provided that everything has arrived and some staff are in place, but that still feels like next millennium and not next month.

Big Baby in New York, pre shipping

A colleague (based in Kiev no less) and I were swapping rude emoticons on our internal instant messenger a few years ago, and he was bemoaning our fate chained to the corporate grindstone and I suddenly announced that I was going to run away and open a bakery on a Caribbean island.  I think he even sent me an emoticon to the effect of "dream on" and "hahahahaha good one" (this was before the days of ROFL).

Several years on and here we are, about to give birth to our little bakery. As we enter our final trimester, there is a now a sense of urgency to get all the other stuff finished up before the arrival takes over our lives. Today is a bank holiday and Tyler is busy painting the guest room for our Summer guests and I'm sorting out toys in amongst reading cookery books, pinning a few pics, looking at packaging to order and drafting some ideas for a potential biweekly column I may be writing soon (oohh yes!).

Another big push for a month or so will have us happily ensconced in both our completed home and the bakery. The kids will be on their long Summer holidays and another year would have passed, making it 2 years on August 28th since we arrived on this rather scruffy third world volcano and its eccentric island life. 

For now, we're not even feeling the Braxton-Hicks's yet (not to be confused with our neighbour India Hicks) but I think life is just about to change fairly dramatically for les Famille Dawson.

Since I think everyone is now officially bored to tears with the prolonged gestation of our bakery, I'll write about something else next week until the happy announcement. 'What to Expect in the First Year' probably.

The week past

William

OK, it's official: Impatient mothers have less intelligent kids: Apparently mothers who speak in 'nurturing' tones as opposed to the ones that 'heavily scold' actually lead to a larger hypothalamus in kids. The study didn't seem to cover mothers who rant, swear and curse at their children - but I suppose that's left up to Child Welfare.

As you can see I've been spending way too much time on the Internet again, but luckily T managed to hook up our new, just-back from St Thomas TV yesterday, so now we're back on the BBC & ITV iPlayers, so will be able to watch copious amounts of the Olympics, when it starts.



Grade 5 Croque en Bouche with Guest Chef



In amongst lots of pinning and scolding last week, James & Georgie managed to pass their Royal School of Music exams (James with merit) William played 3 soccer matches, Georgie fell head first over his bike (and survived) and we carried on unpacking boxes.  Last week was also the Cedar School Gala Auction. Tyler made a Croque en Bouche with the Grade 5's and it was auctioned off for $600. This was not an entirely un-stressful thing to do in 100% humidity. He didn't quite superglue the concoction together, but close.  Anyhow it ended up looking a bit like the island (as you can see right) as the base just got wider and wider, but he still managed a smile for the camera.

Georgie & I also planted our first vegetables here (heirloom tomatoes, okra, artichokes, herbs, spinach, lemon trees) and disturbed our resident VI Tree Boa who leapt higher into the air with surprise (about 1 metre away from me) than I did. Georgie said very sweetly that we should actually consider ourselves lucky to have one in our garden as they are endangered. So are middle-aged 'heavily scolding' mothers, I thought to myself, not feeling very nurturing at that particular moment and swearing. A lot.

The island continues to delight, and sometimes not. You would have noticed that news of the bakery  has gone rather quiet. After being promised the building on the 1 April and then the 1 May, we are clearly starting to reach the end of May with no building in sight and our phone-calls are being studiously ignored by the contractor. As we've now ordered all the equipment and have our first employee starting with us in a weeks time, this makes for interesting times. Luckily we think we may have a temporary kitchen, so we'll just have to make it happen, despite an actual lack of bakery, which we may see anytime between next week and next Christmas.

I've also gone completely native and signed up to run in a half-marathon in Puerto Rico called The Divas. It's legendary and one is met by hunky half-clad chaps bearing champagne and roses at the finish line plus an "ageless category for those keeping the secret". Ha, I love it!  Since everyone here seems to be fairly fanatical about sport (tennis, sailing, mountain-biking, squash, surfing, spinning, diving, running, stand-up paddling, triathlons - the list goes on) and I hadn't quite found my metier yet, I thought this was as good a place to start as anywhere. This also means we can fit in a bit of Christmas shopping in PR as well so what's not to like? The fact that I can only run about 1.5 miles at the moment without keeling over is a minor issue and it's still preferable to the bee pollen diet from last year.  

We're settling into Carrot Bay and it's bliss. The house is beautiful, serene and airy. We're slowly getting into the island lifestyle especially now that T is around again. Yesterday we even had the Perfect Saturday: Soccer matches in the morning, a good lunch with homemade pesto, a busy DIY afternoon and a scrumptious braai in the evening with a hilarious Graham Norton on the iPlayer after the kids had gone to bed. Our first like that, I think, in 18 months.

12 Steps needed

I know exactly why I was so grumpy on Monday. I couldn't feed my Pinterest habit. I try and restrict myself to about 15 minutes a day but this always ends up being like 3 hours. You'd think I would have enough to do: Three kids, a job, a new start-up business, a house to furnish, a gazillion unfinished projects, a family to manage and a body to maintain.

No - I'm afraid Pinterest was designed and launched just for ME. You are speaking of the girl who still has her fashion scrapbooks and sketchbooks from junior school. I've schlepped boxes of magazine tear-outs from South Africa to England and then back again, and then Transatlantic to here. They're like old friends and I like doing nothing better than going through them all. It's sad, I know.

So Pinterest is the digital version of this. I now have the entire  Internet to pin into my virtual scrapbook. Lovely picture of the sea. Click. Gorgeous white jeans on Parisian waif. Click. Aqua sofa against grey walls. Click. On and on and on.

Someone needs to design a Twelve Step Programme for Pinterest Addicts.

Click.