Jeff started the week by turning sixty and hiking up the Gros Piton to celebrate. He made it to the top in 1hour and 36 minutes and did the downward hike in 1 hour. The usual time it takes is about three hours or more, so he is a fit pensioner and didn’t even have aches and pains the next day.
He had a guide ,called Sophia, who was hand picked by a Lucian friend of ours who said it was easier to follow a nice bottom up the hill. I was excused the hike as I had things to prepare at home and anyway I don’t do mountains.

We had a very nice dinner in the evening at a lovely restaurant in the bay , just the two of us. The noisy celebration took place on Saturday where we hosted a house warming/sixtieth birthday party. It was great fun and most people seemed to enjoy it and stayed long after the time on the invitation. We are feeling the effects this morning and Jeff says his legs are aching more than they did on the hike!

Also at the beginning of the week we had arranged for the sanding and varnishing floor team to come in a give the whole house a light sand followed by a coat of varnish just to remove some of the scratches that the floors got during the final stages of the house build. This should have been a four day job, little disruption and hardly any dust. Wrong! They didn’t arrive on Monday and pitched up late on Tuesday morning. There were two of the dopiest looking lads ,armed with their cell phones, which needed to be played with every few minutes. They moved some furniture but not all. Preferring to work around stools and tables. We left them to it as we both had other jobs to do downstairs. On our return we were dismayed to see that they had used a pink filler for the cracks in the wood. They said this would dull once it was washed off. Not so, if anything it was even brighter. When the boss man returned he agreed that it would have to be removed and another sort used. Apparently they didn’t have the right colour filler in stock and thought it would do. The next day they arrived and started to fill with glue and sawdust, a good colour match but first they had to dig out the old stuff which was a slow job. The glue was much more difficult to use and needed 24 hours drying time. We were now getting critical on time and there were doubts as to when the job could be completed before our party. It was also apparent that a light sanding was out of the questions and they needed to bring in the big machines. We lost our cool, it was turning into a disaster, so the boss man brought in extra guys on Thursday evening and they worked until 8pm sanding and grinding. This was only the downstairs area now as it was never going to happen upstairs. On Friday the team arrived, lots more sanding and also some cleaning ladies in tow to clean up the mess as the house was now laying under a thick coat of sawdust. They spent a lot of time chatting on their phones and having numerous breaks on the verandas. Eventually the floors were coated and as the stuff dried we realised they had used high gloss outdoor varnish, rather than the indoor semi gloss that we had used before. We are now in the position of having very shiny floors which are a different colour to the stairs and top floor. It was all completed though before 40 people traipsed through the house on Saturday afternoon! And for that we are eternally grateful..next week we shall start the arguments for re-varnishing at no cost or inconvenience to us but it is almost too painful to think about the whole thing happening again. I am beginning to like high gloss and the subtle differences in the finish!

We got our friendly Rasta, Innocence, to come and do a couple of days gardening. He cleared away all the dead branches(with lots of help from Foxy) that had been cut down when the electricity was put in then he planted the first of the flowering shrubs, heliconias and gingers and the bougainvilleas that will eventually cover the fence. We need some rain now!