The Upside

Yes, I know - more sailing pictures. But there you go, we live in the Caribbean and we sail a lot.

We've almost finished Chez Dawson, so I'll post some pictures of our house this weekend with all its new inhabitants.  Kathy arrives tonight,  Flora the potcake dog arrived yesterday and the hamsters get in tomorrow - so our household has quadrupled in less than a week. Just as well the house is sprawling! 

In the meantime - our very intrepid sailor competed in one of the largest Optimist regattas last weekend, up there amongst the big boys and he was a wonderful sportsman. We are very proud of the rather sanguine manner in which he handled his performance. He didn't drop a race in 20+ knot winds, big seas and a 30 minute sail out to the channel markers before they even began the racing part. He kept smiling despite 3 gruelling days of non-stop racing 6 hours a day and even eating out on their yachts.

It is these type of lifetime experiences that make it all worthwhile and keep us going on the days when we feel like chucking it all in.



James the Optimist. Photo by Ed Childs



Briefing with Coach Omari & Molly Donovan. Photo by Ed Childs



Brian in the Safety Rib. Photo by Ed Childs



Big seas. Photo by Ed Childs



Our Champion. Photo by Ed Childs



On our knees

We finally have the oven. It has travelled from New York City to Miami and from there to here, via Puerto Rico. Now today it finally arrived in our litte bakery. 

We've christened the oven 'Mercy' as in Lawd Have Mercy.

So the kitty is called Grace, the oven is called Mercy and you can see some kind of theme going on here, can't you?

Now we just need some electricity and water  and we'll be cooking on gas, as they say.  We may even get to bake some bread, which we've had some serious doubts about over the past few weeks, but we're finally starting to get there.

More Grace

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!

 

Grace Under Pressure



Beautiful Lioness and her 3 cubs. Gosh I miss Africa sometimes.

Jubilee Weekend



Sahara Dust Sunset. Photo by Jane Clatworthy. Similar view to ours.

We have this weird Sahara Dust haze at the moment, which looks like mist but is in fact dust which has blown all the way over the Atlantic. I'm not that impressed as I spent the entire day yesterday cleaning the bloody house.



A person can get used to all these lovely 4-day weeks! Along with the rest of the Empire, we have tomorrow (Monday) as a holiday for the Queen's 60th Jubilee celebrations. In honour of this, we dressed our long-suffering children up as their royal namesakes on Friday (see previous blog) and had a lot of fun doing this. I think most of the time we're just justifying why we bought tons of crap all the way from Africa, but we have a surprising use for most things (when we can find it, that is). Tyler did the crown out of pipe cleaners, felt, foil and stick-on jewels. William wants to wear it all the time but we have to keep telling him he's only a Prince and can't wear a crown yet.

This week we've been busy, busy, busy. We're thinking, eating and sleeping b****y, end-of-school year, work and for me - writing. I'm starting on a synopsis and am mapping out my columns. Most of the time I'm actually pinning, so when you see a 100 new pins, that's me 'doing research'. 

James & Georgie have been sailing for 2 days so we don't see them until supper time and today we are unpacking the very last of our boxes (apart from the books) which has only taken us 3 months. All in all, I would say our move would have taken us 2 years. I'm only really starting to settle down now and I think we finally have some rhythm and routine again. It's been a long-haul.

We must be just about be the only people on the planet today (Sunday) who are either not watching the whole River Parade on BBC or swimminh up at the North Sound (if you live here). We'll relax a bit tomorrow with various picnics and other celebrations on the go and wave the flag a bit.

Georgie sailing Lazers this weekend. Photo by Brian Duff

Spanish Homework




Prince William, James I and George III

 
Georgie knew he had Spanish homework last Friday for today. Last night was admittedly a late one after putting these ensembles (above)  together for Jubilee Day at school. He remembered his Spanish homework at about 8:45pm last night, cleary too late so Tyler told him to get up early today:

This was the discussion in the car on the way to school:

Annoyed Father: Did you finish your homework George?
George: No, not really
Annoyed Father What do you mean "not really?". What did you have to do?
George: We had to write a paragragh about an animal with a drawing. I did mine on an eel
Grumpy Mother: Did you find out what 'eel' meant in Spanish?
George: No, not really
Annoyed Father: How can you write a paragragh about eels if you dont even know what they are called?
George: Because the class has to guess what they are after you have read it out to them. It's like a riddle.
Irrate Father: So how would you know what the right answer is? El Congero?
George: Yes, that sounds right
Outraged Father: Or maybe it's El Morayo?
George: Could be
Totally Pissed Off Father: George, how did you write the sentence if you dont even know the Spanish word for eel? Did you just translate it on Google?
George: No I didnt, I didn't use Google, I wrote it
Totally Pissed Off Father: But how could you have? What did you say?
George: I didn't use Google, I used Bobble Fish

All this while dressed up as George III.

Mrs Restell, Prince William & Princess Royal