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.

A bit of a journal - one....

It’s odd how a place can get under your skin and this tropical island has been under mine
for years. Although to be fair it’s not a truly tropical island really; no parrots and no wild
pigs, not even a snake; the mongooses have seen to that.

When I arrived in Barbados it was dark. It usually is by the time we arrive from England, so I couldn't see much. But going by the warmth, the smell, and the sound of Reggae music, I knew I where I was. My eyeballs felt like peppered red spiders, the capillaries popped by ten hours of sucking stale air on flights from Manchester, past Barbados, to Tobago, and then back to Bridgetown with other sweaty Brits. Why backwards? Cheap fuel is the answer to that conundrum of course.

I smiled at the customs agents queue as each bored uniformed young lady glumly studied each and every form before sticking them all in a stack to be forgotten. Of course we were near to the back of that seemingly never ending line as always. Move forward. Stop. Move forward. Stop. ‘Welcome back to Barbados.’ Our customs officer said with her bright red lipsticked smile. 'Good to be back.' I replied - and it was.

My taxi driver was waiting, a big relief as I’d booked him by email from Britain and his response to my email request was, ‘Yeah mon.’ He’d even spelt my name right on the card he was holding up. I just rolled my eyelids as we sped along the strangely named highways and through even stranger named roundabouts (Garfield Sobers, D'Arcy Scott, Errol Barrow - no, not the lead singer of Hot Chocolate) to beeps and flashes and barely missing a few drunk pedestrians. But a couple of heart attacks and fifty US dollars later he delivered us safely to out little bit of paradise.

“Bashy bim,” he said. Local slang for “cool Barbados,” and it was out there somewhere as I knew (did I mention I’ve been before), but for now I had to negotiate a dark path and steps with a couple of cases.  Ah well, all would be well come the dawn which in my case (no pun intended) was a very dark not quite four o’clock in the morning.

And of course, it all was. Eventually.

I pulled back the curtains sat on the terrace and waited for the morning and the brilliant
early Caribbean light to stream in. There was jungle all around and, across the street,
a shanty town village with barking dogs, cows, goats, and the smell of bacon.

"Andrew gone Barbados, he watch monkeys.' I sang as I sipped my first rum of the day...

What next? I wondered.

Paradise lost...

I love Barbados, it holds so many memories going way back for me. When I first came here thirty years ago it was a laid back sleepy island like something out of a British Empire book of derring do tales. A place for adventure.

Bathsheba up in the north on the Atlantic coast - waves and surf, magnificent wild scenery, a slight sense of danger, even pirates maybe - seemed very remote. It was the sort of place anything might happen. I sat on the beach and sketched the rocks and then got a beer from a nearby rum shack playing Bob Marley. The mini-moke I was driving had no brakes or suspension, but the roads were just potholes and it was cheap to hire.

As the years have passed (this is my fifth time here) affluent beach houses have sprung up along the beaches and they, once pure white sand, are covered in washed up weed; a problem that is growing as a result of global warming. Yes, once, as a young man, I sat on the beach and painted a watercolour of the rocks. Now, half a lifetime on, I can't even manage to pick my way down through the mountains of kelp to find the coral sand that lies beneath, my car has aircon, and the smart restaurant plays cafe jazz - nice.

Down South and to the West the same is happening and the East is all holidaymakers. Only the far Northern wilderness remains relatively empty. Build, build, build seems to be the order of the day. The beachfronts are crammed with condos and mansions, and the wooden tumbled down shanty houses stand empty waiting to be sold by developers to developers and then on to bigger developers, then demolished, and lost for ever. The new houses are generally described as colonial style, but just whose colonial is hard to imagine. They are a mix of Spanish Hacienda, Miami glitz, Glass penthouse and massive mausoleums. The wonderful brightly coloured chattel hoses are fast vanishing from the coast and even inland.

Of course the investment is mainly American. There’s a KFC in most biggish towns, US realtors, Pizza, the US buck is accepted as currency (but not the pound), and a lot of the tourists - once predominantly British - now wear baseball caps and long white socks with sandals on the golf courses.

They say change is for the good and that we should embrace it. Sadly for many Bajans that isn’t true as they are forced away from the shoreline by multi million dollar plot prices and forced to move inland. They haven’t been slaves for a hundred and fifty years, but so many aspire to the US way that they are caught up in a ‘must have’ status driven whirlwind society where the old easy-come ways are not their way any longer.

Easy for me I know - outside looking in over half a lifetime - to bemoan the rapidly passing and decay of a comfortable culture. But, yes, it makes me sad. I guess at least the gangs and the gun shops haven't arrived here yet, but it’s just a matter time I think.

Barbados seems to be a country trying to reinvent itself in the shape of something it isn’t.

Paradise lost? I hope not, but I fear probably.