Don
and Maggie wish you a Happy Christmas and a Prosperous and Healthy New Year in
2021.
We have done practically nothing at all for the
year. Our long-planned, grand, Easter,
Maggie’s Family Gathering went down the tubes for a reason you will have no
difficulty guessing.
Maggie’s
annual summer trip to Europe went down the same tube. She retired from
volunteering at WISE at the end of the summer term. At 72 and going deaf, she decided
that 12 years was enough. She will miss the students and the teachers but will
keep in touch. She does aquarobics 2-3 times a week, for an hour each time, and
comes home exhausted and content to collapse for an hour or so while Don feeds
the dogs. She was re-elected to the
Board of the Anguilla Mortgage Company at its (virtual) AGM in March and goes
off to meetings at regular intervals.
Don’s main excitement was his cataract operation in
nearby Marigot which meant he had to spend two weeks in quarantine in the Guest
Shack. He is now without
spectacles. As he has been heard
solemnly announcing, this is the first time he has been able to drive a car
without spectacles since he was seven years old.
Dick Foran was not in Anguilla to take Maggie for her traditional November Birthday meal at Hibernia Restaurant, so Don had to dig into his reserves and act as a stand-in. A delicious meal as usual:
1. Don and Maggie at Hibernia Restaurant
2. Don spectacle-less at Ola’s Restaurant
One adventure we enjoyed was taking advantage of Kathy
Haskins’ special rate for a “staycation” for locals at her Shoal Bay Villas
Hotel, and spent a lovely week playing at being tourists.
We have enlarged the family with three more mutts from
AARF (Anguilla Animal Rescue Foundation).
The two biggest take it in turns to spend the night inside on internal
security guard. The other four are on
duty patrolling the outside. We take the
usual precautions urged on all retirees everywhere of trying to be home before
nightfall, and ensuring the doors are all locked before we go up to bed. If we are driving home after dark, we use the
automatic door lock, and shut the windows.
With the coming layoffs in the public and private sectors, we expect
civil disturbances, including home invasions of the elderly, to increase. There is no evidence of this occurring at
present, only our naturel paranoia.
Remember the old warning, “Just because I am paranoid does not mean they
are not really out to get me.”
3. Maggie playing tourist at an empty Shoal Bay East
beach
Our only overseas visitors were Gad and Ruth Heuman,
friends from the Association of Caribbean Historians, who stayed at Carimar
Beach Club. Don enjoyed lecturing the
Professor Emeritus of Caribbean History all about the history of Anguilla –
Don’s version of it, anyway.
The yard occupied most of Don’s waking hours. He has dug up almost every cubic centimeter
of dirt and wheelbarrowed it outside the fence.
Only the pots in the vegetable garden will contain dirt. The surface of the yard is now completely
covered in concrete and gravel. He is
making good on his promise to himself that he will not spend his old age
weeding Anguilla rock stones and pretending to keep a garden.
4. Don with 3 of the 5 children proudly showing off
the graveled, dirt-less front lawn
The rest of the family (Morocoys) at dinner
Kitchen scraps and garden clippings, as you see above,
go to the tortoises (the peafowl were lost in Hurricane Irma in 2017). In Anguilla we have both the yellow leg and
the red leg varieties.
6. Cheap labour employed to gravel the yard
The pandemic has been kind to Anguilla from a health
point of view. The few cases we have had
were all caught either by testing at arrival, or at the second compulsory test
taken towards the end of the guest’s obligatory 14-day quarantine. Most of the staff employed in the tourist
industry were laid off but received a monthly allowance from the Social
Security Fund by an amendment to the Act made to permit this irregular use of
the Fund. The money won’t last much
longer.
Keep
safe, and hope to see you in the New Year.
