I drive around this tiny island and I am overwhelmed by the place, by memories of growing up in New Zealand, so many years ago, when life was so different to this European life I've spent the last 15 years living.
I am living quite a simple life here but such a good simple. There are little houses here, painted turquoise greens and blues ... just here and there, not standard but they remind me so much of the summer houses we called 'crib's', down there at the bottom of the South Island of New Zealand.
I have returned to a natural kind of life; a life I didn't even know I was missing. I swim in the sea, in the lagoon really. We might sit out there with a beer, escaping the heat, escaping gravity too. The current in the lagoon runs round the island, so you can be in the shallows and simply swim against it. It's bliss really. The reef protects us from most things.
My skin is turning a deep golden brown. The brown of childhood. The brown I had forgotten was possible. My arms, my face ...
My legs are following, much more slowly, mosquito-scarred but moving from a pale white into something slightly toasted.
The landscape is volcanic, so there are lush green peaks in the centre, odd shapes, quite beautiful, and Nature. Nature is in the ascendant here. Lush rain-fed vegetation, ants, mozzies, coconut, mango and paw paw trees. And so much more I don't know.
Driving round the island though, that's what I want to write about here but I need to try again another day.
Oh, and there are two radio stations. One plays music I love, a lot from my past, and easy-listening contemporary music too. The other is very much about local news and music. I move between them.
Meanwhile, on my bench here ...
