Tuesday...

So after a bit of a delay in immigration we eventually got to the house just as night was falling at about six -thirty.

After a lovely meal of chicken and rice, made by Harriet our cook, Gaynor and I sat up drinking vodka and coke on the terrace until gone three in the morning UK time. It was hot even with the airl con and at four in the morning Barbados time I decided to abandon sleep and get up to watch the Bajan day begin.

As the sky lightened and the last of the bats flew home to roost, the tree frogs, who had sung all night long, were silenced and replaced by birds. A weaver, pairs of brown doves with piercing bright red eyes and a green legged crane appeared in the garden. Some small brown finches flew and sat on the chairs on the veranda not two feet away from me.

As the early morning warmed the geckos began to dash up the coral stone walls of the house, a flash of petrol green and blues. I sat listening to the waves of the Caribbean lap the shore before going for a swim.

A walk on the beach, the wrong way for the beach bar it seems, and a light breakfast then we decided to take the two dollar blue bus into Holetown for essential supplies. Six quid a bottle rum, Banks' beer, goat meat for a curry and dried black eyed peas for the beans and rice that would go with it -one of Harriet's signature dishes. The ride was a heady mixture of speed, near misses, tooting horns and reggae music played at full volume. Such fun.

Now, I'm sitting waiting for it to cool as a light breeze blowing in from the sea. This is the rainy season and the half hour of cloud and five minutes of spotty rain this morning is the evidence.

So it is almost three in the afternoon, and as night falls so quickly here, almost rum and coke time. More tomorrow.