Saturday 14th August A very warm send-off this afternoon. Awash with gifts and generous farewells we boarded RMS St Helena and left the island with very mixed feelings. Of course, I am looking forward to being back home and have missed Di and family very much. However, the visit has been a real adventure and most probably a trip of a lifetime. Professionally the visit has been an enormous success and I am very pleased with the quality of the work carried out – as I informed the Governor yesterday. We had a most interesting meeting. First and foremost you call him ‘Governor’ but without the intonation used by Dennis Waterman when addressing his superior (John Thaw) in the ‘Sweeney’. He was visibly shocked by the content of our report and he has apparently (as we ... read more

Friday 5th August Greetings from a wet and windy St Helena! I have just returned from Donny’s bar on the seafront after a very busy and productive professional week. Not many opportunities have been taken to enjoy the specialness of the island. At Donny’s there was a music and video display and that made me reflect on ‘Top Threes’ – a most important but sometimes misunderstood notion. Whatever is most important to you – music, events, books – is crystalised into the top three – this isn’t a commitment for life – it’s as it is at that/this particular time. The only rule is that you must not laugh at another person’s choice – unless top three songs includes Dancing Queen by Abba – which, unfortunately featured in Mike Laycock from Homer’s selection one evening. We ... read more

Sunday 31st July …. an idiot driver overseas! Have you ever had that kind of day when one wrong decision is compounded by several more leading to a mishap or even disaster? Well, yesterday was one such day for your correspondent. Having put aside a day for quiet adventure unsullied by the time demands of other folk, I set out for an afternoon of exploration. Having seen the giant tortoises at Plantation – but which one is the very aged Jonathon – there was no one there to ask and the two venerable creatures that I came across were not giving away their secrets – I ventured to the Boer cemetery. This is when I made my first error. The road being a little narrow and windy I decided to drive through the gates and into ... read more

Wednesday 27th July Have you ever noticed that some places have a musical backdrop? Well, here in St Helena it is country and western music of the 1970’s. True there are some discs on the juke box and on their interesting radio channel that date from the 1950’s but most of it is from that ‘twang’ era that hasn’t been touched by Gram Parsons and his new-country (for those not acquainted with him, he was a member of the Byrds (remember them?) and the Flying Burrito Brothers who transformed the sound of C&W music before he was found dead at Joshua Tree). I know, that’s too much trivia information when all you want to know is ‘where is this going?’ Well, because of this intense St Helenian love of C&W music of a certain era I ... read more

Saturday July 23rd You will of course wish to know about the Tea Dance and how well I disported myself – my laptop Thesaurus suggests ‘posed swaggered and flaunted’ as appropriate alternative words but, I’m afraid, I failed to live up to any of these suggestions. Perhaps ‘loitered’ might be a better description as I found that tripping the two-step or a waltz was a challenge too far for this explorer of the South Atlantic. Needless to say the dance was as charming as everything else found so far on the island. I rejected the occasional suggestion that I might take to the dance floor with the usual unspecific wound and injury collected at a previous time. I know – what a wimp! Saturday was a busy and interesting day that took us to new parts ... read more