The New Normal





Live Webcam at the Soggy Dollar Bar, Jost van Dyke.
Bit like those ones you get at watering holes in the Kruger Park, but different animals

 It has been a bit of a while since I last wrote. Sorry!  Despite the fact that all you think we do is laze around beaches drinking ‘Dark & Stormies’ and making sure the children are having an idyllic childhood – we also have to sit in offices/kitchens, deal with the appalling banks here (no inter-bank transfers, for example) and get to grips with the tsunami of homework ( the lifecycle of the coconut tree being the latest).  Shopping, however,  is a finite activity -  maybe two trips a week  to the supermarket. Everything else comes via the mail.

Anyhow now that we’ve been here for 5 months (feels more like 5 years) we are really getting into some routine, helped very much by Tyler switching to day shifts, with only about 2 nights a week – which has been fantastic. He’s even had the past two Saturday’s off. For the past few weeks we’ve been having lots of all the new normal.  Most importantly, we’ve started to relax a bit now and we are actually starting to have some fun. The past weekend was a good case in point.

On Friday evening we all met up at The Dove , which is ‘the’ local restaurant & bar, once you’ve eaten through the menu a few times,  one doesn’t really worry too much about the food anymore. Tyler joined us after his shift about midnight, and we managed to catch up with just about everyone we know.  I was introduced to the partner who is opening up the new Ernst & Young office here.  I suppose it was just a matter of time, really.

Saturday was spent with Tyler and the boys and some friends at Smugglers Cove, watching the boys chuck coconut shells into the sea, find the good sailing ones, and then making sails (sea grape leaves) to race the boats.

Now Sunday was definetly how you all think we live here all the time. I even said at one stage during the course of the day, that if my SA friends could see me now, they would be convinced that we had all been lost to the Lord of the Underworld (who just coincidentally happens to be Osiris) forever.

A group of us including grown-ups, teenagers and kids went bumping off on this big speed boat (the ‘FrolicKing”) to Jost van Dyke Island to the famous Soggy Dollar bar where there is only white sand, turquoise water, palm trees and a bar and no jetty. One therefore has to jump off the boat and swim to the bar  which is why your dollars and a few other things get soggy. Quite a novel way to start the day off – which is then spent sitting on the beach watching other people jump off their boats.

The Soggy Dollar is also the place where the ‘Painkiller’ cocktail was invented, and unfortunately they are very, very good. After a lovely day watching people jumping off boats & driking Painkillers, we decided to go off to another island – in fact a boat called the Willy T (no clicking on this link for anyone under 18 years) which is moored off Norman Island – to finish off the day, picking Tyler up from Nanny Cay, along the way. Thank goodness, a sober person.

I must paint a small picture here. Sunday was Superbowl Sunday and Sunday was also, well, Sunday. By the time we zoomed up in the FrolicKing to the  ‘Willy T’ – everyone had spent a long day on various islands doing what we had. Not sure what it is, but there is something about mooring a boat in the middle of the sea which has a strange effect on people.  Hang on to your woman and lives, basically. As Jane C screamed  "THIS is definetly the portal to the underworld."  In fact many people did look like those slimy, scary creatures in ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ (well particularly by 6pm in the evening anyway).  It was all very funny but totally, totally  Evil.

Somehow we managed to get home and still cook the Sunday Roast and get the children into bed. To be honest, one really cannot have that kind of day too often – we’ll all be spending the school fees on rehab. Not to mention possibly leaving kids on deserted islands and getting lost at sea.

So it’s back to the Monday to Thursday AA Club Soda Club and being responsible citizens again. Until the next time!