Moved on Sunday and Monday and Tuesday

Having finally satisfied everyone, the school, the landlords and ourselves, we were ready to move.

playing house

We had offers of help but in the event, staring at our five boxes or so, we didn’t feel it right to take anyone up on their kind offers seeing as though they’d be loading up about one box each. On the Sunday, after the other one’s reckless drinking the night before, we made a couple of trips there and back to our new place which you can imagine was a mightily arduous and miserable affair with neither of us much in the mood for anything other than collapsing in front of Smallville and eating buttered muffins and drinking tea. I can dream. The best I can hope for hung over in Seychelles is having bread at all, weak tea and the forethought to have rented a DVD from GR Video otherwise it’s rifling through the slush pile of UK newspaper freebies and rejecting for the umpteenth time the choice of Lord of the Flies (a good film I’m sure but have to be in the mood) Conan the Barbarian (California Governor?!) and Buster (two words ‘Phil Collins’).

For various other reasons, we stayed in our house two more days prolonging the agony of cleaning and organising each of our residences and enjoying our new house for one night before a minor Brit invasion – our friends were to arrive!

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Cable and Wireless postscript

Concluded very well indeed. Internet switched off at the old place Friday. Over to the new place for Sunday. Such was the smoothness of the transition, Cable and Wireless didn’t actually believe me when I called to tell them that all was ok and the internet seemed ready to use. They insisted that more still needed to be done at the new house and presumably went away and twiddled some knobs before confirming back to me that indeed they had done the job properly and correctly the first time.

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Zimababwe vs Seychelles postscript

Seychelles did lose to Zimbabwe in Zimbabwe, partly because four of their players INCLUDING THE CAPTAIN decided not to go. How does that even work?

Next time they play, sod the cheering and the screaming support. I just won’t turn up either. Maybe that’s why the stadium was so empty in the first round. Locals knew better.

Call me harsh but I don’t think they deserve to play or win games if that’s their attitude.

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Bread, bread, bread.

I’m quite slow to catch on. The other one, gawd bless him, was tasked by me to undertake what I now know to be an impossible mission – buying bread on a Sunday. Not for love nor money could he find any anywhere. Unwittingly, for the past nine months I’ve been exercising accidental organisation by presumably having a loaf in the freezer and now we were out. With nothing to eat in the house and being of a delicate constitution, we were desperate. Absolutely desperate. There was nothing else left to do but MAKE OUR OWN BREAD.

The other one mixed it and kneaded it. We left it. I kneaded it some more. I covered it in a tea towel. I left it. I stared at it. I shaped it. I put it in the oven. I took it out. I tapped it. I put it in the oven again. I took it out again. I tapped it again. I cooled it. I cut it.

HUNG OVER STILL AND THREE PIGGIN HOURS LATER, we ate the bread.

It needed more salt.

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‘Wild’ nights #2

I looked and wept

Following a drunken promise made at Wild night #1, I find myself with the other one and ‘T’ on on a Saturday evening in sports type place in Eden Island under the auspices of watching rugby. I was meant to have joined the ‘girls’ but thankfully they’re a little hung over (I don’t know them that well and would frankly much rather do the sport thing) and so I hang out with the ‘boys’ instead.

The vibe is very friendly and quite young with lots of new faces. It’s like a clubhouse of sorts with an invite only arrangement. I like it but am perturbed; I’m the only non white face there – pretty ironic given that I’m not even Seychellois. It’s probably a friends of friends thing that, while not intentional, has resulted in a South African/Expat drinking den which makes me uneasy – just as drinking at the Barrell (a real locals place) would probably also do, though I haven’t been there.

Shortly after, we move on anyway and that’s when the other one gets seriously drunk. Skipping a round of shots for a beer instead, the other one pays for his mistake by being made to drink drinks of his mate’s choosing, though the other one does not protest too much. The night ends with us being generously bought a bottle of Amarula to share between us seven or eight of us but seeing as though I’ve been promoted to designated driver, I sip on my coke instead and nervously drive us home. Apologies to anyone that I might have blinded that night – the full beam stayed on.

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Nothing is ever easy

where we're moving from...

So a flippin shenanigans with the moving logistics. Seems that a month’s notice is needed for the place we’re leaving and we want to move in to the other place as soon as possible. As its being handled by the school, it’s all done through third parties making it trickier to sort out especially as there are other complications concerning rent and deposits. To secure the place, we end up having to put down the deposit ourselves (and claim it back through school) and just about have enough money to cover it. We’re also anxious to move as our mates with their baby are coming to stay for two weeks and they’ll have a much better time, having the view and being close to the beach, than if we were in Sans Souci. The internet also is a pain as we have a yearlong contract with Cable and Wireless and though (luckily) there’s a line where we’re moving to (saving costs on having to do a survey) we don’t want to transfer access too early as that will mean losing it in Sans Souci. We wait with baited breath to see if C&W can cope.

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Job advert for British High Commission

Managed to successfully track down a copy of the Nation and snuffle out the job at the High Commission. In all honesty, I’m underwhelmed at first, the minimum qualifications are A levels and given that I’ve just recently finished dedicating my life to the pursuit of an MBA, it’s hardly money well spent. The position is helping out in the office with a broad enough remit and the politics side does excite me. Try as might not to be the civil servant, I can’t help but find real world politics far more interesting than deciding what’s the best way of marketing home insurance or fan belts. With a lot on at the moment, moving, friends coming over, family stuff going on I just decide to ignore it for a bit (always a great policy I find).

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House hunting #2

The view!

Following a tip off from someone who has a much better ‘Nation dealer’ than me, I find out that there’s an ad for a place to rent in Glacis, right location, right price, right nice by the sounds of it. I immediately call and arrange an appointment.

Trying not to get too excited again, we chat though to a couple of people and turns out that it may be a place next door to one of the newbies (it’s hard to keep up as she moves a lot!). So we get some insider info and also peace of mind that there may be someone around to get lifts from if (WHEN) the car breaks down.

Driving to our appointment, we take the right by the Indian shop after the Hilton, climb up a steep hill, take a sharp turn and continue climbing and dipping and climbing – I can’t believe how far back these roads go. We call the landlady up and she instructs us to keep on climbing and we do and eventually we bear left and on our right are the apartments, reached via a short steep drive. Wonderbar.

Straight away we’re struck by the view. This is Seychelles. The shimmering Indian Ocean , clear blue skies and lush curvaceous coastline. We’re near sold already…

Venturing in, it’s a cool ice cube with white floor tiles and white walls with a view out from the living room and kitchen. At the back are two double bedrooms and one bathroom. It’s more bijou than our current place but sooooo much more homely and light. We want it. We make all the right noises and hope that the school can come back to us as soon as possible to confirm – she wants someone in straightaway.

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‘Wild’ nights #1

Back in the annals of time, when 24 hour shops and proper Cadbury’s chocolate still seemed a perfectly normal expectation of reality, I remember writing about how in the Seychelles, mine would be a healthier and more sober life.

It was. For an infinitesimally short space of time – now it’s getting worse.

A turnstone apparently

We were invited to dinner by a new playmate at a positively palatial pad past the airport. Despite it being mid week we enjoyed the very best hospitality, with scrummy food, on tap drinks and a bar stool that I couldn’t get the hang of sitting on. Among the many topics we touched upon was a discussion of Bird Island, one of Seychelles’ 115 islands and as far as most people here have said, a ‘must see’. Our host demurred, and told it how it was ‘you mean ‘Bird *hit island’. I suppose we do. If the island is full of birds, it stands to reason that poo will surely follow though it sounds extreme, like nature’s answer to paintballing, splat you’re out. Not partial to paintballing, birds (the other one hates them but seems to know a lot about them on the basis of ‘know your enemy’) or poo (unless it’s your fetish and good luck with that)  plus the fact that there are no TV’s (birds being entertainment enough),I think I’d rather throw my hat in with the Desroche’s or Dennis Islands of this world…If only we had the salaries to match.

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House hunting on Mahe

eeeekkkkkkk

We started to put some feelers out about accommodation having now made the decision to definitely move. Places do come and go (partly because of the transient expat population) especially over the summer, we’ve been told, when schools break up.

Our first promising lead comes from a parent (of pimp mobile fame) who I assume is still happy to be associated with us as the place is up near where she lives. We get excited as it seems affordable (the school pays a certain amount towards our rent if we’re not living in a school house) and is in the area we had our eye on.

The directions to get there are a little confusing of the ‘go up the road and turn on the left by the first house’ variety meaning uncertainty reigns over whether you’ve driven too far as the road climbs forever, if the left turning is indeed a dirt track or is it the one further up which happens to be nowhere near a house? Like idiots, we have to call twice but do find the house at the end of the steepest drive ever – putting me off and the two dogs that bark like crazy when we arrive put the other one off.

The house is good value but doesn’t have that feel we want of being light and airy (and the whole point we’re moving). Even the temptation of being left the biggest TV I’ve seen in my entire life, like Evil Edna’s Extremely Evil and Dangerous Homicidal Brother, can’t sway us. It’s not surprising they’re leaving it but they could have thought more creatively; one episode of Robot Wars and they might have had a monster champion on their hands.

Negotiating the drive when we leave, our front bumper hits the ground at the bottom as the drop is so steep. That moments later we meet another car on the road whose driver just stared at us, refusing to budge, even though the other one had the harder job of reversing up the hill and round a corner to let him pass, made us sure. This place ain’t the place for us!

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