The flight back should have been ideal. Not a full flight by any means so I got a window seat with two empty seats next to me. Overnight flight so I expected to eat the in-flight meal, watch a movie and then get some sleep before arriving back at Gatwick at 5:30am.
Then it all went so wrong. After take-off a young West Indian chap decided he wanted to look out the window so came over and said "You don't mind me keeping you company for the flight?" Except that was not what he did. Because with him came his wife/partner and (argghh!) his baby daughter. So I spent the flight next to crying, squirming baby. Gave up the idea of sleep altogether and just read and watched 3 movies back to back. (Of which by far the best was the Debt starring Helen Mirren by the way. Flying is a good opportunity to catch up on films.)
Anyway, so that was St Lucia holiday over. What did I make of two weeks in St Lucia? Well if I am honest a week would have been enough. By the end of the first week I had pretty much done all there was to do. If I had been keen on water-sports or scuba diving or deep-sea fishing, or yoga or spas, no doubt I would have had more to do. But in terms of sight-seeing, there really isn't all that much. And what there is is largely accessible only by taxis which are not cheap and take a while to get around as the roads are very windy. Indeed I was feeling exceedingly queasy on the hour or so journey from hotel to airport. Rather like a long but unexciting roller-coaster ride. The mini-bus was at all times either braking, accelerating or going round a bend.
And whereas on previous holidays I have tended to meet people and so it becomes a pleasant social event, that just didn't happen here. In part this was the lack of things to do meant a corresponding lack of social interaction. The exception was the trip across the island and back by catamaran where I ended up chatting happily to young American ex-marine and cop now training to be a lawyer, and a young Canadian guy who actually worked in construction. (When I say young I mean either end of their twenties - as I get older inevitably one reassesses the term "young".) But, and this may be partly because I went out of season, the average tourist there was a pensioner. Don't get me wrong - when I was out in Antigua for example the people I mostly spent time with were senior to me and that was just fine. But inevitably they are somewhat more likely just to want to lie around in the sun. So not much scope for human interaction. And most people in the hotel were on an all inclusive deal while I was room only, allowing myself the opportunity to raid the supermarket for lunch rather than face full meals and then go out to the local restaurants rather than join in the hotel buffet, so that probably didn't help.
The restaurants were plentiful around Rodney Bay and covered most cuisines. They were all about the same price, all rather swish in appearance and seemed to go in for chic crockery and cutlery - eg black triangular plates, or elegant knives which are so thin you can't get a knob of butter to stay on for long enough to spread on your bread roll. Unfortunately none of them seemed to serve particularly good food, and generally in rather small quantities. (An Irish bloke I met just laughed at the concept of them serving 5oz steaks - a mere morsel back home.) It was if they had designed everything for a thoroughly upmarket clientele and then forgot that restaurants are mostly about eating. And rarely were they full eg.
In that, it didn't help that I ate early. On one of my first nights I went to an Indian restaurant. Very attractive, and it was Happy Hour. But the meal was probably the worst Indian I had tasted in 20 years, and rather than a half price cocktail, I was presented with two for the price of one. And they don't stint on the alcohol. So I was not well fed, but pretty blotto!
The only real exception to this group of slightly chic restaurants was a fast food shack called the "Jerk Pit." All the wrong connotations from the name for me.
Although St Lucia does have a number of endemic birds (notably its own parrot) I didn't manage to see any of them. Although some of the common species are very tame and come and eat with you almost.
So with much idle time I got stuck into the library of books I had brought with me. Basically I hardly read during the rest of the year, but may get through a book a day while on holiday, depending on length of course. And I do try to go for a mix which I have pretty much got as a standard - something humorous, a solid history book, a biography, something that could be described as a literary classic, and then some lighter modern novels.
The history book I went for was an 800 page tome on the History of the Atlantic Slave Trade. I was just a bit self-conscious in reading it about the hotel lest people might think I was pro-slavery. It was really interesting, although could have been half the length. The sheer hypocrisy of the trade was fascinating - to cap it all the Dominican Friar who was able to assure everyone the black slave trade was ok as he had had a revelation that God had made them black for a sin caused in the past. So that was alright then. The fact that until rather late in the affair the church in its various forms seemed quite oblivious to any moral angle at all (one convent appealing to be sent slaves because of the ruinous expense of having to employ servants).
Finishing off the latest Jeremy Clarkson fulfilled my comic quotient. My classic was "To Serve Them All My Days" by RF Delderfield, a bit of an epic about a young First War World veteran sent to an obscure Boarding School to teach as therapy, but ends up progressing to headmaster, as the world heads to World War II. Very readable. Got through two autobiographies, one being Leslie Philips the comic actor which was also very readable, but I did find some of the name-dropping wasted on me given that so many of the actors were of a generation before me. Plus "Gypsy Boy" which is in the best seller lists now, about a boy growing up in, and escaping from, a gypsy family. I particularly like this type of autobiography, where it takes one into a world completely different to the one you inhabit yourself. It also gave me a bit of an insight into the moral arena, my mum having been exploited by traveller "workmen". There is no moral dilemma for them, anymore than one considers the morality of a lion or a mosquito. The elderly are simply the prey. I also got through "Searching for Schindler" an interesting account by Thomas Keneally of the writing of Schindler's Ark and the consequent film Schindler's List. And some novels, but you are bored now with my reading list, so I will sign off..
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