You’re all going to hate me for this article, sitting there looking out your windows at the rain, the burnt leaves of August strewing the pavement as the summer hits its desultory end, while here I am melting in the Caribbean. But it’s just not that easy in Paradise!
For a start it is sooooooo hot, and by hot I mean 40 degrees plus 100% humidity, my brain is a pool of jelly, so don’t expect my usual witty prowess. I left behind my Italian boyfriend (on a beach, puce in Italy) my child, my horse, my cat and all my friends for 3 weeks to write this damm novel I am supposed to be writing, so far a couple of pages is all I’ve managed. I’m sitting on a hilltop in a wooden shack thing, (think lost in Africa in the treetops) which is picturesque but an oven in the day and full of creeping crawlies at night. To get to the beach I drive my Suzuki jeep through what I have christened Transylvania, down Cemetery Lane, (I kid you not). Across the top of one of the most expensive golf courses in the world,, the Sandy Lane.. The first week, two of my friends got burgled, and I caught flu, and collapsed in a crying heap of Panadol.
Character building?
Maybe, but if I could have crawled to the airport for that Virgin Atlantic flight out of this oven, I would have done.
Morale was saved however by two guys from the site, one who emails me everyday and we chat about music and silly stuff, the other who is just too pretty and young to be let out on his own, but who sends chirpy flirty messages every day. Thanks Guys. My boyfriend rings every day sounding deliriously happy as he always is in Italy, although professing to miss me madly …..Which I’m sure he does in his own sweet Italian fashion.
Enough of me, how about Barbados, which like a lot of other tropical islands around the world has a roaring Toy boy culture. Everywhere you look, (apart from the puffing semi naked lobster coloured tourists) there is a glowing perma tanned blonde older woman, with a younger lithe beautiful man, usually with dreadlocks, for good measure. There might be the occasional coffee coloured child, with, made in heaven features thrown in. The disturbing thing is, that the women seem to do absolutely nothing except sit on the beach and cover themselves with oil, while their truly beloved plies the coast in speedboats with names like AquaTiger ferrying the tourists around on inflatable mattresses.
I have been offered my own choice of Aqua Toy boys, in varying shapes and sizes. There I was minding my own business on the local beach when a sun glassed apparition came between me and the sun.
Would you like company?
No thanks, I’m reading.
Well I could just sit with you.
No thanks, I have a boyfriend.
Well you know that’s fine, but I am an African lion and if you don’t tell him, I won’t.
No thanks………
The thing is, even if I didn’t have the man of my dreams sitting on an Italian beach 5000 miles away ringing me to tell me he misses me, I don’t think I would go for it. The long term repercussions are two immense. Take Amelia, a slightly plump blonde bombshell I met on the beach the other day who has left her King’s Road apartment to get married here to a round the Island tour operator. She seems to spend her days cooking cherry cakes and looking after his 88 year old Granny, which might have novelty value but I certainly couldn’t do it.
So here I am a puddle of liquid fighting off toy boys and the occasional rich old git, worrying about sun damage to my sensitive complexion. This prompted me to buy a huge dark bronze coloured straw hat yesterday, (think Joan Collins) complete with the sun glasses.. Except that my girlfriend said I am much better looking than Joan
Collins, which is lucky really because the last I heard of her ………
she was 75!
By Sirensong
Victoria Mosley (Siren Song) has two collections of poetry available from Amazon .co.uk The Dry Season (1998) Crazy Love (2002) and a cd downloadable from www.gargeband.com/artist/sublimes . She is currently working on a novel,
‘The Next Best Thing’.
