More Barbados

Back home in windy, miserable Surrey but still holding onto that sun-kissed week. Husbant delivered the best birthday ever and it was a well-kept surprise. I had convinced myself he had arranged for us to go on the Jolly Roger and even got quite miserable about it. Big discussions about accepting the excitement of not knowing – but I have had previous “surprises” which turned out to be not so good. So I do get a bit anxious. And my argument is that the excitement of a surprise can also be shared even though it diminishes the surprise. Like in COVID times – it wasn’t until you were on the plane, and in some cases had landed at your destination and received a negative COVID test, that you could start being excited about the holiday. I missed all that anticipation.

But, for the first time ever, the sun rose into a blue sky, and I went for an early morning swim in a warm ocean before breakfast on my birthday. This has to become a regular gig. We were whisked off (well, whisked might not really be accurate as we hit the rush hour in Barbados and it took us an hour to get about 10 miles) to the harbour and stepped aboard a fully crewed catamaran and given a welcome pina colada. I didn’t know I liked pina coladas until this week. Next stop was snorkelling with turtles and a few wrecks. And then a lovely sail, delicious lunch and more pina coladas. My chocolate birthday cake was delivered to by a speedboat, James Bond style. the bar has been set high for Husbant’s next birthday.

The rest of the week went far too fast but we continued to pig out every night. A trip to Bathsheba (the first episode of Series 4 of Succession was filmed at Bathsheba so I was summoning my inner Shiv) and a visit to Kemi’s restaurant was fab – best ever fish cakes for me. On the final day we went north to Animal Flower Cave. Interesting name. Just one flower in the cave and it is more of a sea worm with a fan. But you do get to swim in a cave which was pretty awesome.