September Song – More Like A Lament

So much has been happening lately. The month of September was intense: at each momentous event I thought I should write about how deeply it struck me and then something else happened. So my reflections on the death of our beloved Queen and the accession of Charles III, the ruthless and pointless narcissism of Putin as he drives his hapless conscripts to wreak havoc in Ukraine, and now the devastation caused by hurricane Ian, particularly where it made landfall on the beautiful island of Sanibel which I know so well – all were overtaken by the subsequent events before I could even start to sort my emotions into words. Other people have expressed similar sentiments to mine, so I’ll spare you.

Behind my house – mountains and mist and blue sky

Here at home in Eastern Switzerland the weather seems to be attuned to all this. Autumn has most definitely arrived with pouring rain and a noticeable drop in temperatures, the mountain peaks are white with snow, the forests on the lower slopes are changing colour, and I have reluctantly taken in the cushions from my garden furniture as I acknowledge that from now on I’ll have to eat my lunch inside and not on my patio.

Breakfast on 1 September

Can we expect a golden October? Fingers crossed!

It isn’t all doom and gloom, though. Retaining the rhyme, here’s Noom: and I’m pleased to report that I have lost five and a half kilos (about 12 lb) since mid-July. Not a spectacular loss, but a loss nevertheless, roughly equivalent to a pound per week, but it will still be a while before it’s noticeable to others. Counting my steps (with an app on my phone) means I’m moving more and that gives me more energy – enough to have given my apartment a thorough clean and shifted some of my furniture around so that I have a slightly different perspective as I sit on my sofa. I think my clothes fit better and that gives me more self-confidence. Can I touch my toes again? Almost! 

I’m not sponsored by Noom, so this is a genuine recommendation for the programme which I find just as effective as Weight Watchers or Slimming World without having to attend regular meetings. Instead, there are daily “lessons” that upload themselves onto my phone – informative, instructive, amusing and encouraging. The app also logs my steps and analyses my food intake, making it easy to keep track and balance out the odd splurge on chocolate, desserts or cheese, and tells me how many calories I’ve burned when I exercise.

Before the almost incessant rain started, I was honoured by daily visits from a sweet little feline who decided to annex my apartment for the afternoon. She made her first appearance here at the end of February when she was still a kitten, and made sporadic forays into our garden during the spring, but from July onwards she ventured through the French windows and into my apartment, which apparently received her seal of approval. Once or twice I heard some brief caterwauling from a neighbour’s garden and presume that she had trespassed onto Queen Ayesha’s territory (Ayesha’s coat has now grown back even more luxuriantly than before, I’m pleased to say).

Mimi baby

I privately nicknamed my little tricolour friend “la Coquette” as that sums up her behaviour: if she were human, she’d be a dainty soubrette or a Gigi as incarnated in the famous film of the fifties. Once I’d determined which of the neighbouring houses she belonged to, I discovered she was called Mimi, which suits her down to the ground.

“This is MY bed!”

She always announced her arrival with a series of mews, winding herself around my feet, then after receiving the requisite amount of stroking and fuss, she’d settle herself comfortably for a long nap. I haven’t seen her lately, so I assume she doesn’t like getting her feet wet. 

J’y suis, j’y reste.

Mimi is one of the prettiest little cats I know, with very bright contrasting colours. Tortoiseshell cat in the UK, calico cat in the US – I have often wondered why “calico”, as this is a rough, unbleached fabric and I can see no resemblance whatsoever to Mimi’s gorgeous silky coat. Perhaps one of my readers across the pond can enlighten me?

Queen Ayesha

I suppose this ought to be on my “Cats & Catterel” page, since it’s pure catterel (i.e. not doggerel) but that has become long and rather unwieldy although I have just added two contributions to it from comments by freefall852. Anyway, I find it easier to add this “pome” here instead.

Just a little background: Ayesha belongs to my neighbour and is indisputably Queen around here. If she’s relaxing in the middle of the road outside her house, she will not deign to move for any vehicle and you just have to stop and park where you are.

I was taken aback the other day when I saw her lurking on her doorstep in a most un-majestic attitude, and on closer inspection discovered that someone had shaved her body, leaving mane, tail and legs still bushy. However, poor Ayesha most definitely did not appreciate this new look – if a cat could blush, she was blushing, Whether it was done because her gorgeous fur was matted or as a gesture towards helping her combat the present heatwave, I don’t know. But the sight inspired this:

QUEEN AYESHA

We live in a cul-de-sac
Where Queen Ayesha reigns supreme
Over any other cat
Or human who may dare to dream
Of trespassing where she reposes
Amid the sweetly-scented roses
Or in the middle of the road –
All traffic stops at her abode.

White and black
Fur, long and glossy,
Stately gait
Majestic pussy.

But what is this? Alas, alack,
Big bushy tail and legs and mane
But body shaved – a buzz-cut cat!
No signs of majesty remain
She sits head bowed
As if she’s cowed
By all her loss of body fur
And brings forth not a single purr.

Still, when temp-er-a-tures soar
To 35 degrees or more
What seems most sensible to you?
To suffer from the heat? or do
The same as humans – doff your coat
And hide yourself somewhere remote
From prying eyes and ridicule?

You may look funny – but you’re cool!

Family heirloom: Alvis hare

When I pop my clogs, my daughter and granddaughters will inherit a few things that they may not be terribly enthusiastic about – but woe betide them if they dump them, because then I shall surely come back to haunt them! Be warned, my sweet Swiss Rose, and your equally sweet rosebuds!

Alvis hare radiator mascot

Here is one of them: one of my earliest playthings, this brass hare served as a doorstop in my parents’ house for as long as I can remember – how they acquired it, I have no idea. My father had a habit of picking things up “that might come in useful” or that took his fancy, so he could have found it anywhere. It originally came from an Alvis car, made in Coventry, England, around a hundred years ago.

I discovered that there had been at least four different versions of the hare mascot and they are still being manufactured today by the Louis Lejeune mascot company. I can vouch for the fact that mine is even older than me, and indeed it’s one of the earliest, known as the “big paws” model. From 1928 onwards they were chrome-plated and carried the signature of their maker AEL (for AE Lejeune). Mine, however, is brass, has never been chromed, and has no signature, making it pre-1928. Its age was verified by Mr Dave Rees of Red Triangle Customer Service who told me:

There were many different versions of Hares used to embellish the radiator caps of various Alvis cars, the one depicted in your photo I have seen on a 10/30 from 1922. There are only 2 10/30 cars known to exist still, one of which is in restored condition and the other has not been restored and I couldn’t tell you the condition of that one.

Whilst your hare may not have originally come from a 10/30, it most certainly would have been from a very early Alvis car made in all likelihood before 1923.

The mascot that was similar to yours that I have seen in use was not chromed and the owner is very thorough about his restorations, so I believe that having it the finish yours is in would be correct.

The 10/30 was a beautiful car so I ordered a print of a coloured drawing showing a 1921 10/30 Alvis with my hare sitting proudly atop the radiator. That’s probably the nearest I’ll ever come to reuniting him with his original vehicle. 

If you want to know more about Alvis cars, follow this link: https://www.youtube.com/embed/ieqGgY349RI?list=PL9YdRRejyRzn72ydzc1ZsqUxx6RlkaCix

Sixth of December

The Sixth of December – Saint Nicholas’ Day: celebrated by children throughout most of Europe in some way or another, maybe putting shoes outside for the kindly saint to fill with sweets, or actually greeting the man in person as here in Switzerland.

In fact, in my village of Bad Ragaz, we have a plethora of Saint Nicholas’s (Samichlaus) who march in procession into the village square at dusk, led by their Bishop. Usually, that is: I fear this year they have been banned. I’m sure that the children will still be getting their treats as in other years, accompanied by a bundle of birch twigs symbolising chastisement for their misdeeds.

On this day, you can usually run into Samichlaus and his sidekick Schmutzli (the dirty guy who puts naughty kids into his sack) with a donkey, distributing mandarins, chocolates and groundnuts to all and sundry in public places all over Switzerland. I don’t know if the custom is being upheld this year, with masks and social distancing. I’m not going out to investigate – at least, not yet! I awoke this morning to a wonderful world of white, snowflakes drifting down and a couple of inches of snow already settled on all exposed surfaces. A beautiful symbol of Peace, appropriate for this second Sunday in Advent, the only sound the church bells ringing through the muffled air.

On Thursday, my Dear Son-in-Law took 3 generations of his women (my Darling Daughter, Dear Youngest Granddaughter and me) to a gingerbread inn for a traditional dessert – hot chocolate, cappuccino, Apfelstrudel and Coupe Nesselrode among other delicacies. Reindeer grazing in their enclosure outside, waiting for their turn to pull the sleigh. What could be more seasonal?

Candle lit, atmosphere perfect

Thank you!

Fact is stranger than Fiction

Amid all the doom and gloom at many levels of life in these last months, weeks and days, a small news item gave my spirit a fillip today. It’s a little bit like discovering that unicorns and fairies are real and truly living happily at the bottom of the garden.

My eye was caught by a lively drawing, an artist’s impression of a “two-fingered toothless, feathered dinosaur” discovered in the Gobi Desert. My first thought was that here at last is a true life illustration of the slithy toves who gyred and gimbled in the wabe. Is there any clearer depiction of gyring and gimbling? And of course, slithy toves are inevitably going to snap their toothless beaks, wiggle their wonderful feathered tails, and raise two fingers to the world that has taken a hundred million years to discover them.  

Oh blessed Lewis Carroll, who dared to imagine them, and kudos to the artist MW Skrepnick who has brought them to life. And good luck to the archaeologists from Edinburgh University: may they progress to further discoveries – hopefully of mimsy borogoves and a few mome raths, huddled together in their final outgribing. Please follow the link – the story is super!

Reminder for those who have forgotten it:

‘Twas brillig and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Feline Manipulation

Two reasons for posting this poem here:

1. My posts are beginning to sound depressing so here’s something cheerful.
2. This one really belongs on my Cats and Catterel page, as it’s a classic example of what that page is about, but that page is also becoming unwieldy so I’m putting it here as well. Anyone who has ever had the privilege of being on a Cat’s staff will understand what I’m describing here

 

I’ll sit by my bowl quite discreetly
Waiting for something to sup,
I will sing for my supper so sweetly
They’ll hurry to make me shut up.

Then I’ll sit on the windowsill inside
And scratch on the pane with my paws
When they let me go out, on the outside
I’ll scratch it again with my claws.

When I feel like some fussing and petting
I’ll crouch on their tummies and purr
Kneading and pounding and getting
Them mesmerised till they can’t stir.

Sometimes, just for amusement,
I’ll wind round their ankles and feet
As they stagger around in bemusement
I’ll beat a nimble retreat.

I sleep in the most awkward places:
The dog’s bed is better than mine,
So I jump in and make snarly faces
To show him he’d better resign.

I know there are times when they cuss me
For keeping them all on their toes
But more often than not, they just fuss me –
Why? A secret nobody knows!

I am The Cat, so superior
To anyone else on the scene.
I know and you know you’re inferior:
So acknowledge me, please, as The Queen.

Time regained …

It’s been a long time since my last post. I could offer excuses for my long silence, even valid reasons, but I doubt anyone is interested so I won’t. Among other things, I have been offline and searching for lost time.

I finished reading Proust’s masterpiece a couple of weeks ago, and although I skipped a few bits where his introspection got on my nerves (especially in the Albertine episodes), I have to say that on the whole I enjoyed it and I am very glad that I finally made the effort. I am feeling pleased and proud of myself for having persevered and achieved something worthwhile. It’s a good book!

Having reached the “Fin”, where the whole thing comes full circle and all the loose ends are tied up, I realized why I had so dismally failed with it first time around, and now I feel the need to go back to the beginning and read it all again. That’s one of the greatest compliments I can pay any author. I am also still looking for a complete set of the seven-tome novel at a reasonable price; some of the volumes were in a second-hand bookshop here, but at 12 € apiece, that is more than I am prepared to fork out for something that sits unread and dusty in so many French homes. I’m in France at present. I remain optimistic.

Proust’s theme of memory – voluntary and involuntary – has recurred, aptly enough, in my own life during these last few weeks. I have been spending time with my daughter in our Brittany home, where the pace is slow and time is governed by the tides.

We have had some very sad moments, owing to the need to have my daughter’s lovely and very lovable little dog put to sleep. That isn’t something you want to have to do during your holidays, and obviously it has cast a pall over the last weeks. It also led to a time of sharing doggy memories and stories, as she had been part of our lives for over fourteen years and had caused a great deal of merriment and amusement in that time. Other pets came back to life for us, too, re-surfacing in old photos that I have been sorting through.

And not only pets: people also.

After we cleared out my mother’s house last year, we decided to keep some of her furniture and had it shipped to this house in Brittany, where it fits in very well. Also in the consignment were several boxes, bags and suitcases containing photos, letters and other papers that my mother had carefully preserved, some of them now over a century old, and since we have had a few dull days recently I took the opportunity of starting to go through these. What a revelation! And what memories were evoked – including some events that I had entirely forgotten, and others that my daughter was unaware of. All fitting in with my Proustian mood, of course.

My mother never threw away letters or cards. We had to get rid of hundreds of Christmas and birthday cards last year, but had kept some that we decided had sentimental merit for us, for instance, correspondence from my grandparents, all my twenty-first birthday cards, and the cards my parents sent each other with tender and humorous little messages in them. There are also documents relating to happenings in my parents’ youth that are interesting for our family history.

But Mom had also kept all my letters home throughout my years away at university and from when I was a young bride and mother in Germany. Since I am in this respect a chip off the old block, I had kept the letters from my parents to me over this same period, and at some point must have given them back to my mother for safekeeping (my ex-husband was the opposite: he trashed everything that he didn’t see an immediate use for, so my mother’s later letters have vanished).

Thus we have a dialogue covering the entire decade of the 1960’s, plus incidental commentaries on events in the seventies, eighties and nineties, although these are sparser because I don’t have my mother’s replies, and anyway by that time we spent more time talking on the phone than writing to one another so the narrative is interrupted.

How strange to find myself suddenly back in the persona of the young woman I inhabited more than fifty years ago, reliving all the stress, drama and agony as well as all the fun and happiness of my late teens and twenties! The world turns, times change, and so do we. In some ways, although I recollect most of the events and my feelings then, I have difficulty in identifying with that “me”.

I have little sympathy for that young woman who irritates and annoys me. I don’t really like her and feel ashamed that I was so stupid, crass and egoistic. There are photos to go with the letters, and although I know it’s me, I feel she’s almost a stranger. I judge her very harshly, especially as I re-read my mother’s kind, sensible words and reflect on how fortunate I was to have such a wise and loving adviser – whilst at the time, I stubbornly pursued my own wilful ways. We alter gradually and imperceptibly, like everything else in nature.

Would I have acted differently if I had known how things were going to turn out? I look at my daughter – kind, loving, sensible and wise – and realise what a silly question that is. Change one moment, and everything goes out of kilter. No Things have turned out exactly as they were supposed to. I need to forgive that silly, heedless, selfish girl I used to be. Whoever I am now, she is part of me and I have to accept her. What would she have made of me, I wonder?

(Oh dear, in my daughter’s opinion, I haven’t really changed as much as I thought!)

Flying Elephant …

There was an elephant in my room last night. A pink one.

It flew in through the open French window at dusk, clattered about a bit and then hid itself where I couldn’t chase it out again. Seeing that it had apparently settlde down for the night, I gave up the hunt and went to bed myself.

This morning it was clinging to the inside of the curtain; I opened the window and poked my visitor out. It sat trembling on the windowsill, evidently traumatised, so I did what I would have done for a bee and gave it a large blob of honey. Maybe I killed it with kindness? Eventually it stopped fluttering and lay perfectly still, its nose and feet in the honey. Dead.

What a privilege for me to have been honoured by its visit. I feel quite sad that I wasn’t able to save this very beautiful creature. RIP.

My gorgeous elephant hawk moth

Another elephant-related incident – a tenuous link, only because elephants never forget – occurred a few days ago. An old school-friend contacted me to ask, given my elephantine memory, if I could recall a song we sang in primary school (that’s over 60 years ago!). All she could remember was that Miss Stevenson had taught it to us and it contained the word Innisfree. As far as I was aware, we never sang Yeats’s poem so I knew it wasn’t that, but from deep in the swirly mists of my childhood arose a faint melody, flitting in and out of my consciousness but – like my moth – never quite catchable.

However, the following day I suddenly knew the title: The Flight of the Earls. Instantly, the melody returned and most of the words. Not Innisfree but Innisfail, the old poetic name for Ireland. I googled it, and found that it was a poem by Alfred Perceval Graves, set to a haunting melody by Charles Villiers Stanford. Neither name meant anything to me, but I was glad to be able to free my friend from her torment of forgetfulness.

What bothered me in all this, though, was that the name Miss Stevenson also meant nothing to me, although I distinctly remembered singing the song at school. My friend sent me a succinct description: “Grey hair, straight style, usually in grey clothes. lived till she was 102.” Sounds like a typical schoolmarm, but despite racking my brain nowhere can I find either an image of her or an echo of her name. The melody, however, lingers on. And so do the lyrics. I’ve been singing this old song as I go about my chores. Poor neighbours!

The subject of memory has been quite topical for me lately. In Sanibel library, towards the start of my vacation, I found a thousand-page biography of Marcel Proust on sale for two dollars. The size of this is commensurate with its subject, of course: A la Recherche du Temps Perdu may not be quite the longest novel ever written but it certainly looks impressive on a bookshelf (over 3,000 pages).

Now when I was about 20, my BA (Hons) course included a couple of trimesters studying the French novel. My reading list included hefty tomes by Balzac, Hugo, Zola, Flaubert, Gide – and of course Monsieur Proust, whereby the book on which we were to be examined was the double volume of Le Temps Retrouvé, which is the final link in the chain bringing the story full circle. That of course obliged us to read the entire set of seven volumes – no easy task in the limited time available – and it was competing with such heavyweights as Les Misérables, L’Assommoir (which is also one of twenty books in the Rougon-Macquart series) and my candidate for the most boring book ever published, Bouvard et Pécuchet.

I was able to boast truthfully that I had read all of Proust in French but I didn’t admit I had retained nothing! There just wasn’t enough time to digest all the imperfect subjunctives and unfamiliar vocabulary, and I was lucky in the exam that I was able to choose other works to write about. During the intervening half century, I’ve played with the idea of re-reading this magnum opus but – until now – it’s remained a vague idea.

Although the Proust biography was a bit heavy going for beach reading, I did manage to finish it (and bring it home for future reference), as it piqued my interest in Proust once more. Then I discovered I could purchase the version intégrale of A la Recherche for Kindle for a mere 2 euros! This time, I have the leisure that was lacking in my youth, the patience to linger over the notoriously interminable, serpentine sentences and the maturity to discover the charm, humour, profundity of thought, intensity of analysis, richness of language, the vivid evocation of la belle époque, and the sheer poetry of Proust’s account of his search for lost time.

I’m normally a fast reader, but here I have met my match. In four weeks, I’m only two and a half books down, four and a half to go, halfway through Du Côté des Guermantes. I know already that when I finally reach the end, I’ll have to start re-reading from the beginning to refresh my memory: maybe this is a project for the rest of my life! I think I will have to buy the hardbacks. Surely I’ll find a set in the brocante.

They will look very impressive on my bookshelf.

Sleeping With An Alligator

My “I-Spy-Wildlife” list is getting longer, with the addition this week of a firefly and an iguana. The firefly was gleaming like a misplaced Christmas light in a bushy palm tree one dark evening. Wondering who on earth would have put a fluorescent green LED there, I was on my way to investigate when it took flight and vanished into the night. Beautiful, miraculous, amazing! Ogden Nash’s verses on The Firefly occurred to me:

The firefly’s flame
Is something for which science has no name 
I can think of nothing eerier
Than flying around with an unidentified glow on a person’s posterior. 

The iguana appeared before me on the bike path, popped into the undergrowth and reappeared a minute or two later as I rounded the corner. I didn’t get a proper look at it, so was very gratified when another one (or was it the same one stalking me?) showed up a quarter of an hour later on another bike path in no apparent hurry. An incredible looking creature, wearing emerald-green enamel plating on its body and bright flaming orange and red scales around its head and neck.  Sadly, I didn’t have time to get a photo. I know dinosaurs are usually depicted in muddy colours, but I can’t help trying to visualise Tyrannosaurus Rex in iguana hues. What a feast for the eyes!

My stay in Paradise is drawing to a close. Most of the snowbirds have flown home, and the rainy season is upon us. Being British, I don’t mind rain. In fact, I’m enjoying these showers and deluges with intermittent bursts of sunshine. The temperature is still in the 80’s F (around 30°C) so even if I get soaked as I ride my trike through the raindrops, it’s no hardship. It was certainly needed, and the earth is soaking it all up. The ibis, pelicans, egrets, crows and anhingas don’t seem bothered by it, nor do the rabbits.  I suppose they all have waterproof outer coverings. And the woodpecker is still pecking away loudly.  

An anhinga (also called a snake bird) got into trouble at the edge of the lake a few days ago. We could see its wings flailing and a lot of splashing and squawking, but couldn’t quite see what the problem was. Had the alligator got it by the toe? Was it fighting a fish? A large white heron fluttered across to its side, probably curious, and half a dozen crows started wheeling around cawing menacingly above it. Were they simply waiting like vultures, or would they actually dive and give the victim the coup de grâce, validating the phrase “a murder of crows”?

We were on the point of going out to see what was the matter when a young couple in a golf cart drew up alongside and hurried to the rescue. The bird had caught its foot in some netting that is presumably intended to retain the muddy bank. The man tried to free it using his golf club, but that wasn’t enough so my friend offered him some scissors. He eventually managed to cut away the mesh trapping the anhinga, which was not only exhausted but probably also in shock by this time, as it made no effort to fly away at first. Our neighbours also came out to see what was going on and offer assistance if needed, but the bird then decided it had a large enough human audience, rose gracefully into the air and disappeared on the other side of the lake. That one, at least, lived to tell the tale.  

The anhinga is a very beautiful bird. Its alternative name of snake bird comes from its appearance in the water, as not being very buoyant most of its body is underwater when it swims, and only its long neck and head can be seen, resembling a snake about to strike. It is much like the cormorant in that its feathers aren’t completely waterproof. That has the advantage that the bird can stay underwater longer when it dives for fish, but the disadvantage that when it emerges from the water its wings are waterlogged and it has to sit a while with wings outspread to dry.

Right from my first night here, I have been aware of some slow heavy breathing as I lie quietly in my bed. I made sure that there was nobody else in my room with me, and dismissed the thought that maybe I had a ghostly bedfellow sharing my king-size. The window was open, so the sound was coming in from outside, and I rapidly deduced that something must be slumbering among the mangroves in the swampy nature preserve a few metres away across the road. INNN-hale …. EXXXXhale …. INNNhale … EXXXhale. I needed only to listen to it for a few seconds, and I was instantly in dreamland. I described this to a visiting friend who confirmed my suspicions. “Yep, that’s an alligator.”

Life will seem very dull when I get back home,

A Place In The Sun …

Did you miss me?

No news is good news in my book, so I trust you weren’t unduly concerned! Yes, I’m on that peaceful paradisiacal island in Florida, where the sun shines and everyone smiles – Big Rock Candy Mountain has nothing on this place!

I’m back riding my trike, which gets me everywhere I need to go, swimming 50 laps of the pool every day (before breakfast if I can manage it, when no one else is around) and tending my suntan. My best friend is taking excellent care of me, and I am trying not to be too difficult and inconsiderate – she deserves a gold medal for her patience!

The wildlife here is as fascinating as ever. We have alligators of various sizes, which emerge occasionally from the golf club lakes – the small ones to bask on the grassy shore, the big ones to roar like a lion as they seek the females.

Signs tell us not “to feed or frighten the alligators”, a reminder that we are just as scary to them as they are to us. The lakes are also home to duck and moorhen families, the little ones strung out behind the parents and paddling as fast as their little legs will go. The adults often join us in the swimming pool, swimming around and preening themselves.  Since they can’t read the sign saying “Don’t swallow the pool water”, they drink it tooI

I have encountered a softshell turtle three times, twice as she was crossing the road and the third time as she meandered around in our garden looking for a place to lay her eggs. She dug several holes, keenly watched by the iridescent black sea crows who like to eat the eggs, so we added a bit more sand cover for her eggs after she had finished and plopped back into the water. Hopefully, some eggs will escape the crows and the babies will hatch, though I’m told they could take a couple of months, so we aren’t going to see them.

These turtles are strange looking creatures, with a long round nose like a snorkel and a telescopic neck that suddenly pops up periscope fashion to allow the animal to get its bearings. They can move unexpectedly fast, and I wouldn’t necessarily bet on the cute little brown bunnies (which also abound here) if they were racing together.

We have birds galore: a woodpecker who wakes us with his hammering each morning, doves, cardinals, ibis, egrets, herons, ospreys, sandpipers – and of course, pelicans.

These remind me of pterodactyls, so ungainly when they waddle around on land but graceful as swans on the water and incredible acrobats in the air. What is the collective noun for a large group of pelicans? A platoon? A plethora? A posse? A plunge? They can nosedive at speed into 18 inches of water without getting their bills stuck in the sand, and come up with fish every time. I marvel at their ability to spot the fish in the sandy waves, and wonder how they manage to avoid colliding with each other when they plunge.

There are also some beautiful plants and especially trees on this island. I brought my water paints with me, but have been too lazy to do much with them. I am enamoured of one particular banyan tree that I have photographed and hope to immortalise in paint before I leave. Or when I get home. One day.

In the meantime, I’m relaxing and not troubling my little head with all the problems I could find if I wanted to, such as the sale of my house in England and what the insurance company will or won’t cover … it will all work out in the end. Things always do. To quote the Dalai Lama:

“If you can’t do anything about it, why be dejected?
And if you can do something about it, why be dejected?”