Friday 23rd July
0918h:
The mosquitos continue to eat me alive, and no amount of DEET smeared over my body seems to make any difference. Nor does my nightly pre-sleep ritual of scouring the bedroom for the little bastards. They must have developed invisible stealth capabilities, as I could swear there are none in there, but our skin every morning tells a different story. It’s a little scary that mosquito intelligence has soared way past that of humans in such a short period of time. Maybe all the DEET has mutated them into the new master race. I’m sure our new overlords would love that irony too, just like those bastards not only drink our blood but then stick two fingers up at us by leaving us itching for days afterwards. That’s adding insect to injury if you ask me.
Every morning I’m waking up with several new raw, supremely itchy bites. My body is covered in them and it’s only the end of our first week. I’m going to look like I’ve got the plague by the time I get home. I’m just waiting for someone to wisecrack that they thought I had been to Barbados, not the 1600s.
We all went out to dinner last night at a traditional Bajan restaurant at St Lawrence, which had none of the dishes we wanted on the menu, and a waitress who was unintelligeable. I was so embarrassed by asking her to repeat herself endlessly that I ended up telling her that I’m partially deaf. It just seemed like the easiest thing to do. I had to speak in an unnaturally loud voice for the rest of the meal to maintain the charade, much to Mrs Muck’s irritation, but at least the awkward moments had turned into sympathetic smiles.
I ended up eating jerk pork with rice and peas, and boy was it hot! Despite us being in the Caribbean and not the Pacific, I had a ring of fire this morning I can tell you. Handy remarked that he used to go to a club called Ring Of Fire in Brighton, which to be honest was the last thing I needed to hear him shouting through the bathroom door this morning.
Sandy was arseholed on rum even before we had left home last night, and continued to get progressively more pissed as the meal went on. He spent about ten minutes trying to light up a spliff at the table, and each match he struck kept snapping in half. Finally he picked up one of the halves and attempted to strike that. That half snapped in two, which left little more than the matchhead itself. Unbelievably he succeeded in lighting that, only to instantly burn his fingers and drop the lit match on the linen tablecloth, burning a big hole in it. Mrs Muck and Fifi had retreated, highly embarrassed, to the ladies by this point, and Handy was sitting at the table with his head in his hands, which is no mean feat if you know what he looks like. For once he was speechless, but I’m afraid there’s plenty of time for him to outdo his brother on this holiday. Their antics seem to be a grotesque never ending contest trying to outdo each other with shameful behaviour.