Rituals

We got out all the Easter decorations today. The boys, William especially, have been asking me to do this since about 3 days after Christmas. They really love the familiarity of getting everything out of the boxes and seeing the same old things which invariably seem tattier and are missing more ears, year after year.

Now they're nagging to start on the egg decorating. They've already asked twice today. Tyler was going to blow the eggs he was using for our breakfast scrambled egg, but then decided he had better things to do with his bank holiday.

Anyway, seems like we need to brush up on some Easter crafts quickly as the Easter Bunny is not travelling this year like it has done in the past two Easters, which may cause an egg crisis.

Here

Late Saturday Lunch: Easy Tuna White Bean salad (mostly out of tins!)with local tomatoes & lots of garlicky dressing and crusty Ciabatta.

As Spring is a time of renewal, I'm hoping it is mine too. I've struggled for the last couple of months to summon the energy needed to do the bare basics, let alone be creative or disciplined or even nice. I'm not sure if I've had a bad case of 'Rock Fever' or if it's just hormones, but it's been real enough. Anyway I can feel my mood starting to lift, so things are on the up.

Central to this, I suspect, is that I'm slowly coming to terms with the Virgin Islands being our home. Living here is not one long Tropical Island Paradise Experience, you'll be shocked to know. That's called a holiday. In fact its a hardscrabble kind of place to live, with a fluid culture and community. It's also difficult to work out what 'here' actually is:  The children go to an international school which is culturally neutral - an island within an island. The expat culture can be a bit 'when-we'. Much of the predominant popular culture is depressingly aspirant 'Ghetto' including the fake accents. There are more 'Down Islanders' (about 15,000) than local Tolans (5,000) and this is a backwater so a lot of human flotsam and jetsam washes up on the shores. None of this is easy for a suburban English girl like me.

To try and understand 'here' I've started to read a lot of local history and autobiographies. I'm helping with some building preservation work and we're sourcing local suppliers and skills for the bakery. It's all helping to give me a sense of connection. I'm trying to find some acceptance and grace in it all (including giving up booze for Lent!) and it feels like it is starting to work.

Also helping is a bit of time out: It's a lovely long weekend, so lots of resting, reading and long lunches in our beautiful Carrot Bay eyrie. The bakery is thriving and we have plans which we can now put in place as I'm officially going to be full-time CBI (Chief Biscuit Icer) soon.  It's also back to writing and the blog.  The baby books. The aprons. The landscape projects. The sketchbook. The column. The social committee. The sailing year. Easter. Mangoes. Orchids. etc etc etc.

I think I have energy for it all again.

Test pattern

If my blog was a television screen it would be saying something like "Please be patient whilst we fix the technical hitch". Consider this a technical hitch.

Living on a small island, in short, can drive a sane person nuts. I am in danger of going nuts right now, but am working very hard on the sanity option.

One day soon I'll be writing pithily and happily about it all. I don't seem to have lost my ability to write - just my ability to section out the truly grim and ghastly, from the everyday. I also seem to have lost my sense of humour for a while.

I'm working hard to get it all back.

Still life

Bit by bit, life seems to be creeping back to some measure of normality. Decisions have been made, emails sent and twisted souls calmed. I even have some new ideas for the blog (i.e just get on with it. Genius).

Plus I was elected last night as the new Captain of Social (aka Parties) at the Royal BVI Yacht Club. I mean really, this could be my true vocation in life.

Nothing like setting up a food-lifestyle blog to realize that all you do is cook Spaghetti Bolognese about a 100 times a week, fail your children miserably most days and never seem to get on top of the washing, regardless as to whether one lives in "Paradise" or Parfuri.

Killer Spaghetti Bolognese recipe coming up next, then.

February



Valentines Day in the bakery : Rose-scented sugar biscuits in funky waxpaper bags
 

Will and our beachcombing finds last Sunday, Dreaming On



After lunch entertainment: Isa demonstrates the Flying Bowline ta-da!



Funk

Just a quick note to say that I havn't run away (yet) but there's just too much change going on at Bakery HQ right now for a Taurean Gal like me not to be in a bit of a blue funk, as we all know howmuch Taureans hate change. Best that I lay low for a while until the good mood is back and the creative juices are flowing again. Then I'll be back with avengence. Purpose. Vision. And More Time.

Inspired Lives

Terry at home on Tortola. Thaks to Tracy O' Dea for the photo

After too much time spent fiddling around with blogs this past week, I've decided that life really is too short to write two blogs along with the fact that all the blogging experts tell you NEVER to start a SECOND blog ever. So Joining the Dots has been merged into Island Family, which means that you'll be reading about housework in paradise along with photographs of children in small boats, interspersed with the odd recipe. It's how my life rolls, to be honest.

Some rather interesting people live here on the island. When Tyler was a little boy their neighbour was Dr Spock. Not the one from Star Wars, the parenting one. My mother handed me her very dog-eared copy when I had my first child which was rather different to  "What to Expect" so de rigeur of the early 00's.  I think I preferred Spock actually, but that was because the "What to Expect" series were so ghastly.

Terry Ellis was the founder of Chrysalis Records and a music industry giant. He has lived on Tortola for nearly 40 years and bought his land from Chris Blackwall, another music industry great.  Last week we went to a lecture he gave at the community college on his life in the music business. He was seminal to music during the 70's and 80's which included putting together Jethro Tull, launching Blondie and creating Billy Idol along with managing David Bowie, Led Zeppelin and Supertramp to name but a few.  The quiet man that we know became this sparkly, animated and deeply entertaining character as he spoke about his life and we could have gone on listening to him for hours, it was so fascinating.

Some people are inspired by poetry or yoga or a good multigrain loaf of bread. I'm inspired by other people's stories. How they got from A to B. How they remained sane and solvent and carried on smiling, the things that I tend to find forget most days.

The 'passion' argument for me is entry-level and so is the 'hard work' one. My father was passionate and hard working but he still didn't become a billionaire, far from it. Instead, listening carefully to Terry and his life in music, it seems to me that success is more about choices and the types of decisions one makes. He was clearly good at business (but downplays this side in his story-telling) and I would love to go to a lecture that he gave to business students as opposed to music students. But what Terry seemed to do better than most was have an excellent nose for seeking out talent and backing the right musicians. We don't hear about the ones that went nowhere, but he couldn't have had too many of those - otherwise he would never have become so big. So it seems to be more about carefully picking ones way through the morass and what you don't decide to do, rather than what you do do, but making the right choice.

I've been thinking about Terry and 'inspired lives' all weekend. It's challenging me to do a bit of housekeeping (not the normal domestic type) and I've already made one tiny decision (quite tangentially it would seem) but a big one for Une Femme d'un Certain Age: I've stopped dying my hair. I'm grey and that's that. Laura my fabulous hairdresser and I are working on a Good Grey Hair Plan.  The onus is now on me to un-frump the body to go along with my real hair. Scary, but somehow a little bit inspired.