Lollipop’s damnation of alcohol proved right in one respect.  Bob was not talking to me at all this morning.  Fortunately there has been no domestic violence but complete silence can be just as bruising.  The culprit is that girl with the dragon tattoo who has proved so alluring that I have lost Bob to her entirely.  Hopefully he will have got through the whole episode by the end of the day.

Last night we went to Red Crab, billed as a gourmet restaurant but actually serving the Caribbean staple of fish, pan fried or spicy with rice and peas and boiled vegetables arranged on a plate very much as we were eating at home, followed by ice cream, however it was all tasty and the owner/waiter was a sweetie.  The Red Crab was up the road the other side of the Calabash where we had dined the night before so we snuck over, disguised in our dark cagoules, landed on their private patrons only dinghy dock , gave a cheery “good evening” to the security guard as if we were meant to be there, managed to skirt the main buildings, torch turned off, and bustled through the hushed grounds without being spotted.  Oh, we do live on the edge.

This morning we popped around the corner to St David’s Harbour.  The whole coastline on the ocean side of the island is all jaggedy with feathered headlands furling out into the sea with reefs aplenty.  We stayed well out for the short hop, although being in “living dangerously mode” chose to slide between the main land and a nasty little collection of rocks called the Porpoises.  The way in to St David’s is squeezed between a reef and a rocky headland which I drove through with eyes peeled, I could even say out on stalks.  At this point, reaching the safety of the harbour, all sensible thought suddenly flew away in the feisty wind and Bob and I completely forgot how to set ourselves up to go on to a mooring buoy.  It proved an abject lesson in making one’s approach up into the wind as other variations resulted in Bob’s arms stretched longer than they are meant to go and the threat of domestic arguments. At one point I nearly lost it completely, battling with the throttle that has to be violently shoved with two hands to get it to go between forward and reverse gear, it WILL be fixed over the hurricane season, and perhaps running aground just a tiny tiny bit which I thought better to not inform Bob about.

Once tied up and frayed nerves calmed with the customary beer on arrival, we sat and enjoyed a rather pretty natural harbour where they used to load and unload the spice cargoes, assuming that they managed to miss all the reefs, and had a spot of lunch surrounded by rocks and trees.  We puttered over to the marine office to check out but of course it was closed and wouldn’t open until tomorrow, maybe.  We then enquired about eating at the fancy pants Bel Air Plantation to be told that it had been “closed, for over a year” in that wonderful Caribbean way that tells you that you are quite clearly stupid for not knowing.  Never mind, we will head to the nicely appointed marine bar/cafe where there will be beer aplenty and no doubt some tasty spicy fish or chicken with rice and peas.