This holiday season is proving to be great fun!

Mum arrived soon after the girls left and we enjoyed a quieter period but still managed to get out and about to see botanical gardens, sailing to the pitons and eating in good restaurants. Mum and I did a few trips to garden centres to get yet more plants and they all seem to have taken and are spreading. A lot of the stuff we have been given has just been stuck in the ground and for the longest time looked as if it hadn’t taken. Then suddenly green shoots appeared and new leaves sprung up, some quite far from the original cutting so the bare patches are less and it may be that we will have to be hacking back the foliage next year, as all our neighbours warned us would happen.

The wet season has been a good mixture so far, no hurricanes but some cracking thunder and lightening storms. One night the electricity went off for eight hours but the new generator came to life automatically and we could have continued watching TV but for the noise of the torrential down pour outside, so defeated, we curled up with a good book and a bottle of wine.

Ten days after Mum left John and Vicky arrived. John was here for a month but Vicky only had two weeks before she had to return to take up her new post as a vet in Uckfeild. We get daily reports on her consultations and operations and it seems she is doing great, as expected. The two youngsters needed more adventurous activities so we have been quad bike riding, horse riding in the sea, sailing and fishing. Jeff bought John a cast net so he has been on the dock each night taking advantage of the sardine season and Doreen has been frying up the catch. Sardines fresh from the sea can’t be beaten.

Obie and Foxy are turning out to be great pals although Foxy’s days as leader are numbered as Obie already towers over her and he is beginning to get the upper hand. He is still not as brave as she is and lets her do the nighttime patrol and barking from the safety of his kennel. He is developing a big dogs bark , so may well come into his own soon and look the part of a guard dog.

We still make sure the sunsets each night by going down to the bar for a cold beer..someone has to make sure the sun has gone! The sunset has just about left the bay now so we won’t see it again until next May, but we will keep up the vigil just in case it sneaks back in.