Landlady: A Disarray of Sunshine

The clocks have gone forward, the Beast From The East has receded and all is in disarray at Landlady Towers. I returned from Barbados, landing half an hour before the arrival of said Beast, to find my house obscured by scaffolding, the hallway stripped and sanded to within millimetres of its life and my bedroom appearing to have the entire contents of the Sahara desert dumped on its surfaces. No matter, I snored away for a couple of hours, then went out to Craig Charles at Concorde2, leaving me in a very strange time zone indeed. I think I’m still in this time zone and am not prepared to leave it just yet as it’s rather nice feeling sleepy all the time. I even fell asleep in the dentist’s chair this morning. The shame. Impossible though it would’ve been, I was rather hoping that all the work on my house would magically be finished by the time I returned, but one would have to work very fast indeed to fit a month’s work into just eight days.

Although there is plenty of money swilling around Barbados, not a lot of it seems to trickle its way down to the island’s needy

My initial reason for going to Barbados with my friend Katy, was to have a look at property, with perhaps a vague inkling that I might buy something there in the future. Alas, I found the (mainly British) tourist contingent there a little too old, sunburnt and fleshy, in the way only people who spend their days sitting on their arses drinking gin, and their nights eating too much can be. Katy quite rightly pointed out that, when sitting in a bar (drinking our own gin and eating hideously overpriced [imported] lobster), she’d much rather be looking at better-preserved and less fleshy people and I tend to agree. I was also not a fan of the fact that, although there is plenty of money swilling around Barbados, not a lot of it seems to trickle its way down to the island’s needy, whose daily life is a struggle, with no social help or healthcare system to speak of. There is also no work, apart from in tourism, so jobs are poorly paid and few and far between, giving the locals little hope for the future.

The dismissal of Barbados as a potential winter home gives us the excuse to ‘go and have a look at’ other Caribbean islands to see if the tourist demographic and government system is any more favourable. Nice work if you can get it.