This
year we took it easy, as I hope you did too.
No cruises, no touring, no lawyering, no teaching; just reading, writing
and gardening. The occasional “Letter to
the Editor” and other activities favoured by those who have time on their hands
J The 18 bits of written evidence are here, but
only if you have time to spare: https://donmitchellcbeqc.blogspot.com
1.
Don and Maggie at Roy’s Bayside Grill for lunch on a Sunday in 2018
In
January, Don gave up his faithful Nokia as his main phone and relegated it to be
the “garden phone.” The Samsung that
Chinnix gave him for Christmas fell out of his pocket several times and pieces
kept breaking off. He learned to keep it
on his desk next to his computer, and to bring it out only when there was an
amusing sight to be photographed. He now
keeps the Nokia for important stuff like making phone calls. Chinnix spent a lot of time teaching him how
to use the darned thing.
2.
Chinnix explaining to Don how to use the Samsung
We
continued to recover from Hurricane Irma.
The early half of the year was very dry, but starting in August it
rained nearly every day. The island’s
vegetation has made a remarkable comeback, and the yard is once again blooming.
The
concrete benches on the pool patio (that Hurricane Irma tossed over the wall
onto the ground below in September of last year) have now been replaced. The privacy wall of Mimosas has regrown with
the summer and autumn rains, and we are once again invisible from the main
road.
3.
The forest around our property is growing back
In
January, we adopted Kathy’s dog Skye, a Belgian Malinois who hunts ground
lizards endlessly, digging up various valuable herbs and shrubs in the process. She is the best barker we have among four
alleged watchdogs who occupy our yard.
4.
Skye on her bed on the pool patio
As
if Skye was not damage enough, in April we welcomed to the yard a sort of mini-hurricane
in the form of a new puppy named Megeara, one of the furies, the goddess of
jealousy, born of the blood of Uranus when Cronos castrated him! She is otherwise a sort of Rottweiler.
5.
Mageara. You have to admit she is a beautiful grand-daughter
Maggie
continues to volunteer at WISE (Workshop Initiative Secondary Education) every
Monday and Thursday, and says she believes she is being useful to the
Principal, Gabby. Along with her
aquarobic exercises on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, she is trying to keep
active and fit.
The
walking group of Ginny, Kathy, Viviane, Sally and Don continue to walk and to
exercise three times a week, which keeps Don in some sort of acceptable
shape. Ginny showed him how to take a
selfie with his new Samsung on one of the walks to Sile Bay:
6. Ginny
teaches Don how to take a selfie with his new camera while on a walk to Sile
Bay
In
June we hosted four of Professor Paul Farnsworth’s student archaeologists in
the guest shack for a second year. They
were no problem at all, and I hope they learned something useful digging about
in Wallblake Estate’s main house environs.
Irma took off the roof and ripped down the old cut stone walls of the
outside kitchen building.
Stanley
Reid helped Don to make the Anguilla
High School law textbooks
compliant with the revised Syllabus. Stanley
has taken over the teaching course, and Don’s hope is that with a vibrant,
young lecturer, the Anguilla students will do even better than they did under
his tutelage. Jasmin Redhead helped with
the new edition of the textbooks
for Grenada, and the hope is that her
students with these study aids will do even better than they did in earlier
years.
In
September Don’s brother Gordon visited from Trinidad and his sister Alix and
Brian visited from Canada. If we recall
correctly, this was the first time in over a decade that all four Mitchells
were together in one island at the same time.
In
November Don completed the Herculean task of pickaxing the entire back yard,
wheelbarrowing a mountain of dirt outside, and spreading four truckloads of
gravel in place of the dirt. The idea is
that the wild Mimosas will have nowhere to root the myriad of seeds that
splatter down into the yard at the slightest breeze. A monthly dose of Gramoxone spray will
doubtless help to keep the weeds in check.
In
December, Don finally finished his 2000 page magnum opus, “Mitchell’s West Indian Bibliography” and sent it
off. It is being published by Emmanuel
Publishers, who did his law textbooks.
Hopefully, it will be on Amazon early in the New Year. After all, it has only been 30 years in the
making. It will be the first edition on
paper, but the twelfth
edition digitally (if he can find
someone to re-published digitally!).
And
so the year closes. Maggie’s brother
Denis, wife Julie and son Alexander arrive in a few days to spend time with us for
Christmas. A few days later, Don’s
sister Alix and husband Brian with their Burlington, Ontario neighbours Dan and
Cheryl descend on Don’s brother Stephen’s home in Old Ta just a couple of
hundred yards away. There will hopefully
be lots of partying to usher the Old Year out!
7.
A close-up of the newly gravelled back yard
With
best wishes for 2019 and beyond,
