Farewell parties + hurricanes

28 days today until we leave. It's all getting a bit blurry, but that could also be due to the copious amounts of vonkelwyn been drunk at various parties, farewells, school events etc. We had our family farewell party last Sunday and everone was chilled, drinking lots of rum cocktails and feeling relaxed about the gazillions of children running completely rampant through the house and garden, saying "just as well you don't own the house anymore".

We are meant to start packing up the house today (we move out on Friday the Thiteenth)and then we get to live out of suitcases for the foreseeable future. This is all rather Zen, but is provoking the ultimate "what to pack" crisis, as we are not too sure what to expect from our New Life in the islands. My view is that we should pack the minimum (board shorts, chef whites for T)and then take ourselves off to Puerto Rico (our nearest 'shopping island')for a Banana Republic/Gap/Target shopping-spree befitting our new island life. The Tory Burch collection, as recently seen on my about-to-be-neighbour India Hick's blog, will have to wait.

Anyhow, the jet-setter in our family is Mimi the cat, who gets to fly First Class to the Caribbean, which might be the only thing which will redeem her love for us after 6 weeks of quarantine, rabies injections and dips. Ooooh, she is really going to hate us. Jasmine, the screeching parrot, however, gets to come with us. Being an African Grey, her multi-coloured Amazonian cousins are going to think her rather dull, with her little grey body and red tail feathers. It's going to be interesting to see if she picks up the new Caribbean dialect (she does quite a good Dudu/Boni impersonation at the moment - so room here for some inter-continental parrot identity crisis).

James had to do a project on hurricanes this week. His mother took an inordinate interest in this, not knowing too much about hurricanes herself, and downloaded everything there was on the internet about hurricanes in the Caribbean (a lot, it turns out). Thankfully Tortola dosn't seem to be too beset, but my new best blog site is Miss Mermaid and the Carib Hurricane Network - so think of us the next time you hear of Hurricane Bonnie or whatever. Apparently the best thing to do during a hurricane is to have a party - so bring on the rum cocktails.