Taken from the Saints Club bar: the only pub in Georgetown. I was wondering what creatures had been leaving big piles of poo outside my accommodation, but now I know. Good grief, this place really is the middle of nowhere.
Matilda the cat still holds the record for the most appearances on here by an animal, having reached six before she passed on a couple of years ago. This courtyard, which I pass through on one of my two routes from home to town, was her spot: all of her portraits were taken here. Well, she seems to have a replacement. Certainly there were demands today for some kind of acknowledgement.
There are worse places to be stuck, that is true. And I’ve not been turfed out of my accommodation, I’m not running out of money, and so on. But this has now become my life’s longest-ever flight delay, or indeed travel delay of any kind, and I may not even be halfway through it yet. I am trying to develop a stoic outlook on life — as this guy appears to have done.
Oh yes, Lucky, I am still here. It seems I will be here for at least a little while longer yet. You don’t have to look at me with such disdain, though. I know you don’t like me, and I have tried.
I took the morning off and came up to Plantation House, the residence of the Governor of St Helena, to do the tour, and like the other 7 people doing it with me, we stoically let ourselves be shown vaguely interesting items of furniture and portraits of the British royal family for 90 minutes or so in order that we could then get through to the real reason we were all there; to have the honour of meeting Jonathan, who at around 192 is the world’s oldest living land animal whose age is (more or less) known. And he did not seem at all bothered by his weekly dose of humans — seeming as interested in us as we were in him. I think he’s a complete dude, and could not resist making him the day’s image even though he’s appeared before. But he totally deserves his relative fame, if you ask me.
This little cutie was clearly taking its first steps into the world of modelling. “Should I run and hide? Should I move in for the purr and rub? Or should I just pose?” Do the latter, that’s just fine.
Curiosity, and the need to stretch my legs during a day sat working on a report, took me down the road to investigate the old flax mill that stands there, a relic of just one of many attempts to institute some kind of working cash crop economy on St Helena — doomed from the point in the 1960s when the Royal Mail decided it no longer wanted to use string to tie up its parcels and would instead rely henceforth on nylon. Now the place seems to be used as a cow byre: but the dairy industry here didn’t survive regulations on hygiene, or was it something else? Laws and practices developed for quite different contexts have never really gone down very well in this remote and distinctive place.
There is just such a look of contentment on the face of this sheep, as it has a rest from its communal troughing. I guess with all those fleeces on each side it must be pretty warm and stuffy down there; no wonder they were all taking breathers now and again.
With no posts for ten days perhaps you thought I’d finally given up the ghost, or at least the blog had — but no, ’twas that old staple, “computer problems”. Not entirely solved now, so bear with me, but I shall start on the catching-up process at least. This encounter seems quite a while ago now, but one can see the basic curiosity-mingled-with-sheer-terror that this little dog exhibits, faced with this giant Newfoundland. Yes, they are the same species. That’s genetic engineering for you.
Being 42 