On Bandos Island

ON BANDOS ISLAND

by me


Palms iced with frangipan
Hide coral strand
Coconuts carelessly
Crash onto sand
Hermit crabs shop for shell
By mangrove root
At night giant bats glide out
Hunting for fruit.

I was thinking about our many trips to the Maldives, usually to Bandos Island with the Aramco Shoal - who were great holiday companions.  And it is there, holiday after holiday, that I wrote my first book, sitting under a palm tree, sipping whatever tropical fruit juice the bar was currently selling. So I guess this has turned into a: Please Buy My Book blogpost.

I am re-reading Barbara Pym's "Less than Angels", and enjoying it so much, on a third reading. So now I am going to have to add it to my list of her best books ever. She has such fun with the whole anthropology thing.

We woke up to another stormy morning - wind and rain, and wonderful waves on the Channel. I pixellated myself to the Field Service meeting, but haven't done any witnessing yet, as I spent my morning making (yet another) apple crumble, and a mushroom curry to have tonight.

The Captain and I have a medical end to our week coming up - a scan for Himself tomorrow and two medical appointments for me Friday afternoon - doctor's surgery then Boots for a fitting of my new ears.

Sorry - what's that you say? Please wait till Friday to tell me.

On the doubleplusgood side though we plan to visit Jacks in the morning and we seem to cheer each other up remembering all the good times we had. We agreed last week that it is a good thing we did our travelling while we could. Like us, Jacks (plus husband and kids) lived abroad for many years.

A facebook friend, Marcin in Oz, was posting about Victor Hugo today, which took me back to my faraway convent schooldays, when I was doing French for "O" level. One line of a Hugo poem has stayed with me down all the decades, such is the power of language.

The line is "La laine des moutons sinistres de la mer".

I put that line into Google and found the poem. So, to put it into context and translation, this is how the poem ends:

I can still hear, far off in the working-class plain,

The gentle goatherd singing behind me,

And, there, before me, the pensive old guardian

Of the foam, the swell, the seaweed, the reef,

And the ceaseless, endlessly churning waves,

The shepherd on the promontory with his cloud-hat,

Leans his elbows and dreams to the sound of all infinities,

And, in the rising of the blessed clouds,

Watches the triumphant moon rise,

While the shadow trembles, and the harsh gust

Scatters to all the winds with its bitter breath

The wool of the sea's sinister sheep.

The poem, a romantic one is called "Shepherds and Flocks".

The wool of the sinister sheep of the sea will be blowing all over the road today in foam flowers as the gale roars and the sea surges just outside our windows.