After a couple of truly grim weeks on which I cannot comment ( no need to remind you we live on an island but I will be writing a book) we now have some real grace in our lives. Meet little Grace "Honky" Dawson, aged about 5 weeks and plucked from certain death as she was trying to cross a very busy road, blind and weighing in at about 150 grammes (and that was mainly the fleas).
Not sure that we could deal with her demise so soon after Mimi's departure, a very kind family (xxxxxx) nursed her back to life and then transferred her over on Saturday. Although she is never going to win Miss Caribbean Kitty 2012, she is the most beautiful cat in the world to us. Plucky, happy and incredibly playful. Although her eyes are milky and we think she has about 2 inches of vision - she's attempted staircases, jumped up curtains, sleeps on her back with all her paws up in the air and purrs non-stop. A true joy. She also loves and sleeps on Mimi's old blanket, so we like to think that Mimi is looking down on Gracie, probably with some condescension, but with approval. Jasmine the Parrot however, has a 'WTF' expression on her face most of the time and completely ignores her.
Gracie, as they say, was not planned. What is planned however is Summer, starting next week Thursday (28th June) when the kids break up from school for their very long Summer holidays. Starting Monday our first resident takes up her place - namely Flora the island-special Spaniel, who we are adopting from soon-to-depart friends. Flora will be swiftly followed the next day by Kathy (these two dates are not entirely coincidental) our Cape Town relation who will be staying with us for the summer. Cannot tell you how much we are looking forward to Kathy getting here and sharing our lovely home with her and our even lovelier children. She can in fact have them for the whole Summer.
James is off racing again this weekend in St Thomas and disappears Thursday returning Sunday. He has been bumped up to Blue Fleet, which is pretty heavyweight and populated by kids who have been sailing since they could crawl with names like Rocco of Antigua and Big Nicki. Not too bad for the kid from Parktown North who knew his way around the pool and not much else, but don't expect too many bullets and pray for no more than about 15 knots (technical details not necessary).
Our very first Summer Visitors are also making the journey across the Atlantic at the end of August, and we will be rolling out the Red Carpet for Suzie and The Boys. Given our present circumstances (no bakery, half a job) we will not be availing ourselves of any metropolitan relief (sob) but we will be sailing again which has to be payback time for about $5000 worth of sailing tuition fees as we blithely put the children to work and sit back and pour ourselves as many 'Dark & Stormies' as we want. Ha!
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