A bit of a journal - four.

Today, with nothing pressing to do, we decided to go off piste. Now obviously in a place this bloody hot it hasn’t anything to do with skiing or snow. It’s all about maplessness. Yes maplessness, such a brave move on an Island that’s only twelve miles wide and eighteen miles long but:

-       Maps are meaningless on Barbados. Roads that should exist don’t, and those that shouldn’t exist do.

-       Signposts are only there to trick you into going the way they are pointing.

-       There are no ‘you are entering’ place names on Barbados, in fact I’m not even sure anywhere has a name.

-       Roads can be highways one moment, then turn a corner and they become a potted dirt track in the blink of an eye and often stop in a set from a bad slash movie.

-       The roads are really a spider’s web.

-       Though it’s not in the Bermuda Triangle it should be, as compasses do not work here.

-       Even though you can see the coast, and think you can drive towards it, you can’t.

-       The potholes look shallow, but are bottomless.

-       Other drivers can’t see you as you are driving down, or up, that one in four hill. You are invisible to them.

Yes, driving and navigating has its challenges on Barbados. Even so we set out full of gung-ho spirit to explore mapless - what a jolly jape you might say.

Of course within minutes of leaving we were hopelessly lost. ‘I think it’s up there.’ I said. Not really knowing what it was and not realising the slight incline was actually a steep hill that went on for miles and then ended abruptly  in a village that seemed only to be inhabited with barking dogs, no way forward, and too narrow (due to the three feet drainage gullies on each side of the very narrow track) to turn. We reversed carefully and slowly, trying not to draw attention to ourselves and took a road to the right. This was better. The road was okay, not too steep but after a mile or so became a dar gulley full of rusting cars and vans with shacks either side. Surely nobody lived in those tumbledown dwellings? And then a door opened…

This time there was room for a hasty turn, and (after barely missing a detached fender lying in the road) we were off once again. How jolly (as I said before).

Back on a road, with some semblance of tarmac, we breathed a sigh of relief. We were definitely on the right road, up high but on the right road, up very high, but definitely the right road. We could see the coast in the far distance as we entered a mass of trees and then… no more road. A great view though.

Into reverse once more until we found a place to turn, then down, down, down and bump, bump, bump.

And so it continued our mapless adventure. Through burning fields of burning cane sugar stubble, the smoke so thick you could barely see, the flames so close to the road you could feel their heat, through villages we will probably never come across again full of smiling children coming home from school, down roads through deep gullies until we found a sign pointing to the ABC Highway, a road we do know, and strangely enough we did.

A bit of a journal - three

The Bajan people are great in so many ways. They are both chilled and warm at the same time. Ladies carry umbrellas to shield themselves from the hot sun, Rasta gardeners wear huge bobble hats to keep their hair in check (which has to be hot), cars toot, children wave, dogs bark, old men on bicycles carry huge boxes of strange fruits, and the rum shacks ring with the sound of laughter as you drive past them. The people of Bim know a hot day when they see one, but to me every day here is a hot day - ain’t it hot, hot, hot? Well, yes, most definitely, and you’ll generally find me in the shade from eleven until three. Usually with an ice cold Banks. Maybe in a hammock and maybe not. I'm just rootin' tootin'.

I know how I feel about the Barbadians. Like cricket, I don't like 'em, I love 'em. But I’m not sure how the people of Barbados feel about me. Us Brits that is. I don’t see much Union Jack waving or pictures of the queen around. Three cheers for the good old UK? Perhaps.

Maybe they don’t feel anything, but hundreds of years of abuse has to take its toll doesn’t it? It would fill me with rage if some red coated soldiers in a big boat wearing silly hats and carrying muskets stole me away from my native home, locked me in the hull of a boat in chains, transported me to a strange place where I was beaten and my womenfolk raped as a matter of course, and I was put to work cutting sugar cane in the heat all day long without wages and barely enough to eat. Yeah, that might piss me off just a little.

Oh, we can easily make the excuse that it was a long time ago and even build an argument about how it benefitted those slaves long term - a nice island, eduction, drainage, pizza. But that sounds like us and the Romans and it changes nothing. Britain was the worst type of colonial tyrant, buying and selling people and doing anything and everything they wanted to them because those people had no real value in the eyes of the British Master Race – and make no bones about it, that’s what we were, a Master Race in every sense of the word. No different to Hitler and his bunch really (whoops, there I go playing the Hitler card again).

And we did it over and over again - India, China, Africa.

Are the Barbadians rude to us then, us wonderful, generous Brits? These people who we treated no better than animals for so many hundreds of years? No, in general they are warm and friendly which I think shows what a forgiving people they are, but I’m not surprised at all that I sometimes have to wait a while to get served in the rum shack, or that the older lady on the checkout seems a little offhand. Old scars are slow to disappear and we were still lording it over the Barbados people until the mid-sixties when they became independent - Hip-ra, hats into the air boys!

Maybe the fact that they turned the statue of Nelson in Bridgetown harbour around so that he no longer faces the sea speaks volumes. The story goes that they would have removed it but nobody could be bothered to take it away. Good for them I say, good for them. Nelson was no better than a marauding, womanising, pirate anyway. Perhaps the fact that you can’t use Sterling in Barbados but you can use the American dollar says something else. But I don’t think we should expect anything else given the role we played in Barbados's history.

Of course there’s still a British elite in Barbados. There’s the Sir Cliffs and the Simon Cowells, the upper middle class ex-pats, and (much worse) those descended from the original plantation owners, white Barbados polo playing society, who are probably like out aristocracy that was and still act as though nothing has changed. It has changed though. Barbados is for the Bajan people and it's a real privilege to be allowed even a little taste, a tiny share, of their wonderful island, even if I am a Brit.

A bit of a journal - two.

I’ve knocked around the world a bit but there’s something about dear old Bim that keeps
calling me back. Maybe deep down I’m just a tired old jaded colonial in a pith helmet
and Bimshire, as us tired jaded colonials call it, is my natural home.

Back in the day Barbados, ninety miles east of the main chain of Caribbean islands and the
only coral and not volcanic dot in that chain, made it the natural centre for British 'trading'
as we called it back then. We traded everything - sugar, rum, spices, slaves, more slaves, and
even more slaves. It was the first port of call after the long voyage across the Atlantic
and many a British gentleman came here and remained.

It was a British colony for more than 300 years until it gained independence in 1966 - the
year we won the World Cup (well, when that date pops up the world cup has to be
mentioned). It’s parliament, founded in 1639, is the third oldest in the Commonwealth and
George Washington came here with his brother Lawrence in 1751 in an attempt to cure
Lawrence’s tuberculosis. Sadly it didn’t work and I guess he’s buried here somewhere on
sunny Bim.

Today, as I may have mentioned, it’s a playground for the indecently rich and has a thriving
middle class that would rival many a shire around London - Essex included. There’s almost no
unemployment - mind you work is not quite the same as we understand it in stress laden, on
24/7, no time to stop, gotta have more, Britain thank goodness. Yes, life on the island the
locals call ‘de Rock’ is pretty good. even bashy Bim one might say.

And then there’s the rum. De Rock’s national sport and pastime (well mine when I’m here
anyway). The soul of the island, the sweetest of spirits from the sugar plantations that form
a lot of the interior of the island. It’s sold in over 1,200 tiny rum shops all over Bim. Some of
them are no more than a few boards hammered together, most of them look so local you need
to be brave (as Britishers rarely are) to enter. I've done a few, and they are Bashy most of the
time, and off course there's always the supermarket where a litre of rum is less than a tenner.

Rum and coke, rum and ginger, rum and sprite, rum and coconut, rum and ice, and of course
rum punch. What's not to love about rum?

And with that, I'm off to pour me one - Yo Ho Ho me hearties.