15. The Rock

Today, I had intended to recount a tale involving the beauty, wonder and delight that is the Fibonacci number sequence and the impact that it had recently on 6H, the class that I help, and on Rozzard in particular.   

However, I’ve changed my mind and I don’t want to hear any groans of disappointment, as a delight delayed is a delight enhanced.   

“A delight delayed is a delight enhanced” 

Did I just make up that phrase?  Do you know, I rather think I did.   It’s got to be up there with, “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” and “a change is as good as a rest”.

It might read and sound better as, ”A delight suspended is always splendid,” but possibly not.

The delay is due to recent developments in my ongoing battle of wits and finances with the three little boys who are our neighbours.

I told you last week about Huck, Jesmond and Israel.   I’ve described their attempts to use their youth and presumed innocence to fleece me, a grumpy old man who is married to a woman who falls for any old sob story and who has a heart as soft as butter that has been left out in direct sunlight at midday on the hottest day of the hottest month of the year for a very, very long time.   Usually, they succeed.  

Caroline and I have the two cleanest cars on the island as they are both washed weekly, whether they are dirty or not.   

Last week, however, I got one over on them.  It is my only victory in a sequence of financially disastrous dealings with them.

On Sunday afternoon, Huck and the other two had set up a stall outside his house and I could see from my porch thirty feet away, that the table bore only a few lumps of rock.  

I lay on my recliner, watching them through half closed eyes as they stared at me.  After an hour or more, nobody had passed their stall to stop and peruse their offerings.  They sat it out, still staring at me.   I lay there, drifting in and out of sleep but smiling inside.

At four o’clock, Caroline returned from her diving expedition, just offshore.

“What are they selling?” she asked.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said.  “Looks like bits of rock.”

“Haven’t you been over to see them?” she asked, sounding a little displeased.   “Go now.  Come on, we’ll both go.”

I always do as I’m told.  We walked over and I saw immediately that the wares were exactly as I had thought them to be – lumps of rock.

“Where did these come from?” I asked.

“From the caves.”

I’ve never visited them but there are caves in the limestone rock to the east of the island.   Huck had been taken there that morning by Josie, his mother.

The lumps were of different sizes and shapes; they were all encrusted with laterite, a red tropical soil that sets like cement when dry.   

“They’ll look good when you wash them,” said Huck.

“You think so?” I said doubtfully.   “They’re just dirty lumps of rock.”

Caroline coughed and prodded me in the back.

“How much are they?”

“Varies,” said Israel.

“Yes, well I realise that,” I said.   “Some of them are even more dull and boring than the others.”

Caroline didn’t bother to cough this time.  She just punched me, surreptitiously.

“How much do you want for this one?” I asked, picking up a lump that was dirt encrusted all round except for a small section where it appeared to have been broken off from the bedrock.

“Twenty one dollars,” said Huck.

Josie had arrived and she gave me a look that conveyed both apology and understanding.

“Thanks Huck,” I said, “but I can’t afford that.”

“Make an offer,” Caroline said to me, giving Huck a friendly, encouraging smile.

“All right then,” I said,  “a dollar.”

“OK.” he said.

“NO!” Caroline interrupted hastily.  “That’s not how you do it Huck.  You laugh as though you think Terry is joking and say a lower number than twenty one, like twelve.” 

“But I’m not joking,” I said.

“Terry says ‘three’,” Caroline continued, “and you say, ‘five and that’s the lowest I’ll go’ and then Terry says, ‘Deal’.” 

“Isn’t that right, Terry?” she said, giving me another prod.

“Yes, absolutely.  That’s how it could have gone but it didn’t.  He’s accepted a dollar.”

“And that’s more than enough,” said his mum.

Caroline and Josie then entered into a discussion, with Caroline sounding like Keir Hardie in a Glasgow shipyard, advocating that Huck, who had done the work and produced the commodity, should be rewarded appropriately for the fruits of his labour, while his mother was arguing that five dollars was much too much for a bit of rock that, looked at dispassionately and disinterestedly, was worthless. 

I saw a solution to the impasse.   It’s an old trick and it always works with young children.

“OK Huck, how about this?  I’ll either give you five bucks or all the money I’ve got in my pockets.”

“All the money in your pockets,” he said immediately.   

What is it with kids?  Either they believe that all adults always walk around with loads of cash on them, or they find it hard to believe that any adult would be devious, behave like me and trick them.

“No Terry, no,” said Caroline, crossly, who’d seen me do this before but rather than warn Huck, it seemed to convince him that a huge payout was coming very soon.

I decided to be fair (as I always am).   “You can change your mind if you like,” I said.  “I may have less than five dollars.”   

This had the opposite effect on Huck than the one Caroline wanted, and she’d seen me do this before too.

“Take the five dollars Huck,” she said, giving me a really dirty look.

“No!” said Huck boldly, “Turn out your pockets.”

I pulled out the lining of the pockets in my shorts.   Of course, as Caroline knew, I had no money at all. 

I picked up the lump of rock, sniggered and went back home.   Caroline was horrified but Josie was laughing.  Huck looked crestfallen but I had a clear conscience.   He had insisted on it and such is the cut and thrust of business.  I thought that he had learnt a valuable lesson.

I set to work on the rock but even with a wire brush and chemical abrasives, I was getting nowhere.  I noticed that the broken surface gave off occasional sparkles of light and this encouraged me to keep going.

Next day, after several enquiries, I found a Guatemalan who makes a living from polishing objects carved from Caymanite, which is a semi-precious stone that is only found in the Cayman Islands.  

After an hour on his grinding wheel, what appeared was beyond my wildest imagination.  The dull, dreary, dirty bit of rock is shiny, smooth and made up of a blend of colours from yellow, through red and orange to a dark brown.

I think that it is really nice.  There is a picture of it below.  The shape is a little unfortunate but I call it “Mother and Child”.  Caroline calls it “Batteries Not Included”.   I don’t know why.

Raul, the rock polisher who knows about these things, has told me that the local Arts shop here would give me around $600 for it and offer it to American cruise ship tourists for about $1500.   I’ll never know because I’m not selling it. 

I really like it and it’s always going to be good fun in the future to wave it at Huck, giggle and gloat.

14. Knight and Day at Prospect Reef

This is the most visited site on my blog.  There have been twice as many visits to this page than there have been to any other.  

Yesterday I got an e-mail from a visitor in Keene, New Hampshire USA, asking if I am a realtor (estate agent).  She said that it reads like an advertisement written by somebody trying to sell a property in the Prospect Reef complex.

I'm not and it isn't.  When I wrote it in April 2010 we had already sold our cottage and were looking forward to returning to the UK in July.  Prospect Reef really is as idyllic as I portray it.

TW    March 31st 2013

********

This is a plan of Prospect Reef

We live in number 5, just 50 yards from the Caribbean Sea. I think that we live in one of the four or five best houses on the island. 

It is nowhere near the biggest or the grandest or the best appointed but it has the most wonderful location and nice neighbours.

This is it:

The grounds, which are communal and beautifully maintained contain a freshwater swimming pool and a tennis court.  

We have several palm trees and many tropical bushes, shrubs and flowers. Off shore the sea is usually flat calm and so shallow that you can wade out for the fifty or so yards until you reach the coral reef.

This is the view from our porch:              

The boat (it’s not mine) is just beyond the reef.  It is in 3000’ of water as the sea floor drops precipitously at the reef edge.

The pool with the sea beyond: 

We live on a ridge 17’ 6” above sea level.  Height is important in Cayman.  A development near us has just gone on sale with the words ”and at eight feet above sea level – safe,” in its advertising blurb.   (Hurricane Ivan did dreadful damage to many coastal properties in 2004).  

The highest point on Grand Cayman is only 57’.  Actually, it’s not the highest point on the island - the rubbish dump is.   Apparently, as a cruise ship approaches, the first glimpse that passengers have of Grand Cayman as it appears on the horizon, is Mount Trashmore, as it’s known.

The properties immediately surrounding us are all owner occupied and apart from number 9, which changed hands in 2008, they have all been occupied by the same people since we moved in nearly five years ago.

A knight of the realm lives in a nearby condo.  I usually see him at least twice every day.   He walks along the path between our house and number 4 on his way to where he parks his car.  

In almost five years we have never spoken.  We have never even exchanged glances, as he never looks up as he passes about ten feet from me as I sit on our porch.

A year ago, I confided to Caroline that I only had two ambitions left in life.  One was to have a letter published in The Times and the other was to have a conversation with Sir Alan.  

On Friday January 29th this year I achieved the first of them and on Wednesday March 10th I accomplished the other.  Except, neither Caroline nor Josie, our neighbour at number 9, agree that I did.

It was the AGM of our strata (the management body of our complex).   Under AOB I raised the matter of the difficulties visitors have in finding a particular property because the numbering doesn’t follow a logical pattern throughout.  For instance, if you were looking for number 14 and were standing outside 13, you would assume that it was close by.  In fact, it is as far away as it could be.  

People commented and I made a follow up remark.  Then Sir Alan spoke, responding to something I had said.  Then I spoke again. 

To me that is a conversation.  Not to Caroline and Josie it isn’t. 

“Did he look you in the eye as he spoke?” asked Josie.  “Err, no.” I mumbled, already feeling deflated.  “Then it wasn’t a conversation,” said Caroline.  “At best it was an exchange,” agreed Josie.  Maybe they’re right.

This morning I was standing on the grass between our house and number 9.  It was 7:05 a.m.  I was talking to three boys who live here.  One of them is Josie’s son and the other two are his friends.  

They are all about seven years old and seem to run their lives by the sun.  They get up when the sun rises and I presume that they go to bed shortly after sunset.  

At 6:15 a.m. there was a hammering on our door and I opened it to see the three of them carrying a plastic washing up bowl containing various rocks, pebbles and shells.

“Want to buy something?” they said chirpily.

“Blimey!  Do you know what time it is?”

“No, but I can go and ask my Mum,” said Huck.

“Come back in an hour,” I said and they did.

These three will probably do very well in the future.  They certainly know all about profit and sales technique now.  They often set up a stall outside number 9 with a big “FOR SALE” sign next to it and attempt to sell rubbish to passers-by.  

However, there aren’t any passers-by.  Their location is the worst on the island.  Once Sir Alan or I have turned them down they might as well pack up because they’re not going to see anyone else.

But they don’t pack up.  They sit there on their little stools and stare dolefully at Caroline and me as we sit on our porch snoozing, until she bullies me into going over to buy something.  

They have an interesting sales practice.  Even though items are priced in dollars and cents, they will not accept coins as, “we have holes in our pockets”.   So, an ugly, plain, ordinary stone priced at 13 cents, is in fact a dollar and an uncracked, unremarkable, unchipped shell will be available for $2.

Recently they have diversified their business into car–washing.  

“How much?” I asked Huck.  “I don’t know yet,” he said.  

He got into a huddle with Jesmond and Israel.  I waited expectantly.  When they broke up it became clear that Jesmond was the chief negotiator.

“Ten dollars an hour,” he announced.

“An hour!”  I said.  “How long is it going to take you?”

“I dunno yet.” He said and then looking grave and concerned, “We haven’t done one of these before and it’s a big car.” (It’s a Honda CRV)

“I’ll give you eight bucks,” I said “and it shouldn’t take you an hour, even if you do a really excellent job.”

“Fifteen,” he said.

“Nine fifty,” I suggested.

“We don’t take coins.”

“OK, ten,”

“Each,” Jesmond said, emphatically.

“Bugger off,” I countered, wittily.

Then I had a thought.  Not one of the three of them is five feet tall so how, I thought, would they be able to do the roof?

Jesmond’s response ended negotiations.  “We don’t do roofs.”

“OK,” I said, “will you start now?”

“Not yet.  We’re on a break,” said Huck.

True Caymanian boys!

Back to the story: This morning, while we were standing in the first light of the day with the sun just peeping over the horizon, haggling over the value of what was almost certainly a piece of chipped paving stone and not the “very rare and valuable” Caymanite that I was being assured that it was, Sir Alan came by.  

He was walking briskly with his head down as usual and even though he was about to pass only some two feet from me, I knew that I would not receive any kind of acknowledgement.

I reckoned without Huck. 

“Excuse me, is it true that you’ve been knighted by hermajestyqueenelizabeththesecond at Buckingham Palace?” he asked.

Sir Alan slowed.

“Mmmmmm.” He grunted.

“That’s cool,” said Jesmond.  “Did she put a sword on your shoulder?”

Sir Alan said nothing but stopped and almost smiled.

“Did you sit on a horse and wear a helmet?” asked Israel.

Sir Alan really did smile at that and very nearly laughed.

“Good morning,” I said breezily.

“Mmm,” he mumbled, certainly and definitely flashing me a fleeting glance.

I don’t care what Caroline and Josie say.  Mission accomplished.   We had a conversation!  

What shall I do next?  

13. Customer Service

So it’s to be May 6^th is it?  The UK General Election.   We won’t be in the country and mindful of Tony Benn’s remark to a constituent who told him that he hadn’t voted, which was something along the lines of, “So that means that I haven’t got to listen to you or take any notice of anything you ever say,” we decided to get a postal vote.

Hah! What a joke!   It’s virtually impossible.   It’s certainly not worth the time and effort to go to all the trouble of voting for someone who should probably be ineligible for the simple reason that he or she actually wants to be an MP in the first place.   There must be something dodgy about him or her.  

Those people in the UK who are wannabe MPs are in the same category as the Clubs that Groucho Marx wouldn’t join if they would consider having him as a member and the few girls who ever agreed to go out with me.   Incidentally, that made my teenage years a time of troubled angst. 

I used to look at those girls and think:

a) Why are you doing this? 

b) What’s your problem? 

c) What’s wrong with you? 

d) Can’t you find someone better?  

I suspect the answers were: 

a) I was really, really bored.

b) Too many to list.

c) You really don’t want to know that.

d) Obviously not, Idiot!  Don’t you think I’ve tried?

We have a much nicer and dignified level of corruption here.   In Cayman, if someone fiddled his expenses to buy a duck house, it would be for a constituent’s pond and not his own.  Votes here are literally bought.  

Our helper rang me one morning last May to tell me that she would be a bit late because a particular Party’s office (Caymanians reading this will know which one) didn’t open until 9:00.   When she arrived she was brandishing a brown envelope containing $200.

The next day she only got $75 from the other Party.   I never asked how she had voted as that would have been rude. 

Everyone knew it was going on.   It was the lead story on the evening news and there was film of women, always women, leaving the building clutching an envelope.   They were quite happy to show its contents and tell where it had come from.   

The Party were asked to comment and a spokesman readily admitted it.   “Yes of course,” he said.   “It’s an expensive time of the month – phone bills, electricity bills, cable TV subscription and the suchlike.   We’re just trying to help.”

Getting a postal vote or a vote by proxy is so difficult and complicated that I have come to really respect the 80+ Asians living in a single room in Blackburn or Leicester who took the hours and hours necessary to register their votes at the last election.   Good luck to them!   Election fraud?  Don’t you believe it.   

These are the kind of characters who should be governing us.   Not middle class white people with greed in their veins and chips on their shoulders.   Those persevering Asians with unlimited stamina and dogged endurance would provide us with great service and that brings me, after a long and tiring ramble, to the point:

Customer Service - I know nothing about it except that when I am the recipient, I know whether it is good or bad.   There must be courses for people employed in the various service industries.  

Someone, somewhere, in the fairly recent past, must have encouraged attenders on a course to urge their future customers to, “Have a nice day.”   I hope it was the same person who suggested, “Come back soon, missing you already,” as a suitable parting remark.   It was called after me when I left a store in Boca Raton in Florida last year.   Thank God that hasn’t caught on but I suppose there’s always the danger that it might.

I’m going off on another ramble now:  Are people on courses attenders or attendees?   I have just seen that the spell check on my Mac has underlined ‘attenders’ as being a spelling mistake but ‘attendees’ remains pristine and clear.  A few months ago, Dugald, a friend here in Cayman, raised the same point.   I didn’t give it much thought at the time as I was busy preparing perfectly roasted potatoes but now I have. 

I have looked up ‘attenders’ in two online dictionaries.   One of them tells me that there is no such word while the other informs me that it is an incorrect form of attendee which is defined as, “a person who attends a conference or other gathering.”

I’m going to get into trouble here and probably write something daft, but here goes: 

(Grammar Police are you ready?)

A mentor advises and guides a person who is a mentee.

A tutor teaches someone who is a tutee.

An interviewer talks to an interviewee.

An employer gives work to an employee

I have even heard that the f***er, f***s a f***ee.

But who does what to an attendee?

Therefore, people who attend courses are not attendees.   They are attenders, or attendors or even perhaps, attendists, but attendees they ain’t!

A mentER, a tutER, an interviewER and an employER would obviously cause confusion as sounding too similar or even identical to the person providing the service.  The -ee suffix removes uncertainty but that’s not the reason for it.   It’s probably something to do with the dative case but I am not rambling along that path!   Not when I’m only wearing flip-flops! 

I’ve probably provided you with an open goal here, Monique.   Don’t squander it! – (Monique is a Superintendent in the Grammar Police)

Incidentally, the POWs who got away from Colditz were escapees.   When the Escape Committee was formed and they discussed plans, they would have talked about the escapERS.   When did they stop being escapers and become escapees?   I think that it was probably the moment they were free from the confines of the castle.

Anyway, back to the point.   

I went into a business today and met two of its employees.   As I walked in I was greeted by a woman who gave me a lovely smile, wished me a good afternoon, told me that her name was Marjorie and offered me a drink of ice-cold water.   Then she asked me what she could do for me.

“I am thinking of shipping my car to the UK,” I said.   “Could you help me please?”

“Of course, we can,” she said keeping up the dazzling smile.   “Will you follow me, please?  Mr Bodden will help you.”

She led me along a corridor to an office door, gently knocked on it, opened it and then stood back to allow me in.   I entered and saw a man sitting at a desk, eating a sandwich. 

“Yeah?” he asked.

“I’m thinking of shipping a car to the UK.   Could you give me a quote please, port to port?”

“No,” he said.   “I’m having my lunch.   Come back in half an hour.”

I may be wrong but I suspect that Marjorie has been on the course and I expect and hope that Mr Bodden is going soon.

12. Poetry in the raw

Funny things, names. W H Auden said of them, "Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry, they are untranslatable."

I'm not going to attempt to explain what he meant by that but I know what I think and I agree with him. They are all made up and yet some sound more made up than others. At some time in the past there must have been the first John, the first William and the first ever Britney.

I believed until recently that the first ever Wendy was Wendy Darling created by JM Barrie in Peter Pan, first published in 1904. Now, however, I discover that there was a Wendy in the 1881 census and so there goes another ‘fact’ from my stockpile.

In Cayman, most first names appear to be recently made up and if the name isn’t, then the spelling is. In the class I help is a girl called Jackleen and a boy named Quert (Kurt). Anique told me yesterday that she has two sisters: Janique and Danique. I suppose that they are saving Manique for number four.

I am told and I can only assume that it is true, that in a nearby primary school there are identical twin brothers who are both called Jahmal Whatmore, as is their father.

Yesterday during the literacy period, I was sitting next to Rozzard. He sits at Table 1. The tables are setted and Table 1 is made up of the least able students and Table 4 has the six brightest ones but I never get to meet them.

Rozzard is a totally engaging 10-year-old boy whom I introduced to you in my account of Sports Day; very assertive but sometimes aggressive to the other kids and he is completely bone-idle. He stops working the moment I move away from him and will only resume when I return. He sits at Table 1 because he comes bottom in every assessment exercise that he ever does because he just won’t do them. He will sit for half an hour and stare out of the window.

Rozzard is much brighter than he appears. We were working out the factors of numbers 1 to 30 the other day and he pointed out to me that 1, 4, 9, 16 and 25 all had an odd number of factors and that they were also all square numbers. When I asked him if all square numbers had an odd number of factors, he worked out the factors of 64 and 100 and then told me that as they did, they probably all did. I honestly hadn’t known that before until he told me.

This morning, the school secretary came in to the classroom with a message for Rozzard telling him that he was to go home immediately because his mother had locked herself out and needed his key to get in. He lives 15 minutes’ walk away. Ms Hunte was delighted because it meant at least half an hour without having to worry about what he was up to. I spoilt things a little though by offering to drive him home.

We got into my car with Rozzard sitting in the front passenger seat. I started the engine and immediately the car radio came on. I pressed the button to turn it off but I pressed the wrong one and instead of silence, the CD that was in the slot came on and we were engulfed with the sweet, angelic, melodic tones of Lily Allen singing, “Fuck you. Fuck you very, very mu-u-u-u-u-uch.”

Rozzard went bonkers. I explained to him that my wife had used the car last and that was her CD, not mine. I don’t think he believed me because he started to tell his Mum about it before he handed her the key. He was so excited that he was incoherent and I don’t think she understood him but she will this evening when he has calmed down.

When we got back to school, neither the teacher nor I could stop him making a public announcement to the class. They all understood him unfortunately.

The activity that Rozzard and the other four were doing in Literacy was to think of as many words as they could in three minutes that began with certain letters. I awarded a point for every word written down. This way we have a winner at the end and as they are all very competitive, they try hard. The first starting letters were “ex-”.

After three minutes, they all had some. Anique had seven but I had to disallow ‘ex lover’ which upset her greatly. Rozzard had two.

The next start was “re-”. Three minutes of peace and quiet while they all scribbled away. This time they all had at least five but I had to disallow all of Rozzard’s because Kym grassed him up and told me that he had an open dictionary under the desk and he had been copying. When I saw that the first of his words was “remembrance”, I believed her.

Rozzard was indignant. “That one didn’t come out of the dictionary,” he snapped, pointing at REZZARD.

“No,” I said, “it didn’t but that’s just your name spelt wrongly and so it doesn’t count. If it were a real name you’d score a point.”

“It is a name,” he said sulkily.

“Whose?”

“My brother’s.”

I checked with Ms Hunte and it is.