Up for Air

We all emerged on Friday, to resume life, with lots of mud, landslides and flood-damage all around. Don’t think I have ever seen so much rain before in my life. Honestly thought the island might just disintegrate and dissolve into the sea, but since most of it luckily, is pure rock, it just endures. The roads have gone from really bad to truly shocking, and even T had a scary road last night, which he had to do a 30-point turn on, with wheels hanging over the edge etc. Tried not to look too smug, and be sympathetic, but it was hard.

So now things are back to normal, until the next red thing I've already noticed on the Hurricane Tracker coming from the south-west hits us. Georgie went off to a bowling birthday party on Friday, the other two had various play-dates. The grown-ups went off to our first dinner party on Saturday night, which was rather eye-opening, as dinner parties on the island are clearly serious affairs. Our rather folksy Chicken Curry and Woolies House Red approach, will need to be upgraded a bit, I think.

Anyway we met some lovely new people, who we are going to go sailing with next week (and who also coincidentally own the fabulous SA wine shop) and the other couples were Cedar parents, so just like Joburg really (ie replace Cedar with Ridge). It was a lovely evening, fabulous food, bottomless Verve Cliquet, all eaten outdoors under the stars. Got out alive at 1:30am and not feeling too fragile today. Have already learnt my lesson - hangovers in the tropics are to be avoided at all costs.

We are now gearing up for Halloween. Where we live is almost Tortola’s only ‘suburb’ (ie houses on 50˚ degree slopes with semi - killer driveways) and we are clustered together in a fairly hospitable little enclave, if you want to ignore the various pitbull terriers, chiwhawhas, cows and other dangerous animals wandering around. So the Trick or Treating is held here, which means we’ll have to get the pumpkins out. No doubt these will be air-freighted in from California or Hawaii or somewhere. Honestly the island must have the world’s worst carbon footprint – a favourite game of ours is to look where everything comes from – “oooh look garlic from China”. It’s extraordinary. Anyway in order to maintain this world record, the children’s outfits are being ordered online from Wal-mart, and I’m considering buying the bumper Martha Stewart Halloween collection, but am resisting the need to perfect all of this. Am saving myself for when the container arrives. And the Pat & Carrot.
 
Yesterday morning, I tried some clothes 'shopping' in town and hit the stores - well the Tortola Department Store and Said's International Fashions, as I needed a new little slinky number for the dinner party (we are still living out of 5 cases remember, half of which are winter clothes. It was still freezing in Joburg 6 weeks ago). Anyhow, the shopping experience was a bit soul-destroying - so I'm working on a new idea to both cheer myself up and streamline the Caribbean shopping experience...