110. Loyalty, Allegiance and Support

Jeremy Corbyn didn’t sing the national anthem at a service in St Paul’s Cathedral soon after becoming elected as the leader of the Labour party.  He was accused by some of not showing respect or loyalty to his country. 

On Friday 18th September, the day that the rugby World Cup started, a column in The Times newspaper was headlined,

“The left will never really love this country”.

If he cares about rugby at all, will Jeremy Corbyn be supporting the country of his birth, or will he and other English socialists have their loyalties elsewhere?  What about expats living abroad; will they be supporting the country of their birth, or will they be hoping that their adopted country triumphs?

I never had any interest in the Winter Olympics until the 2010 Vancouver games.   I couldn’t name one UK competitor, but I was really hoping that Dow Travers would do well in the giant slalom because he was the Cayman Island’s first ever winter Olympian and Caroline and I were living on Grand Cayman at the time.  

He finished 101st, only beating a skier from India and one from Mexico.  The UK didn’t have a competitor in that event but if we had, I would have hoped Travers would beat him.

In February 1956, I was given a book token as a ninth birthday present.  I didn’t use it immediately and so the token was unused for some weeks.  Then in April of that year I discovered the Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack.  I literally read the 1956 Wisden from cover to cover many times. 

I had lived in Sidcup in Kent until 1953 and so I started by reading about Kent County Cricket Club.  By the end of the summer of 1956, I could recite all the Kent averages from the 1955 season and all the county’s records.   I can still remember many of the adverts in that edition.

Although I played cricket in Middlesex for many years and played with and against many Middlesex players, Kent remains the county whose result I always check first because Kent was, is and will remain, my county.

In January 1955 my Dad took me 30 miles to Norwich to watch Norwich City play Bristol City in the 3rd Division South of the Football League. 

Norwich lost 0-1 but despite that and despite the fact that the school where I taught for 33 years was only three miles from Tottenham Hotspurs’ home ground, White Hart Lane, and even though for ten years, I lived only 500 yards from Underhill where Barnet played, Norwich City is still the team whose results matter more to me than those of any other club. 

I am in touch with Patrick Gallagher.  Pat and I were at University together 50 years ago.  He was a very good cricketer indeed.  After we graduated, we both lived in London and we both joined Finchley Cricket Club.  In a game for Finchley against Malden Wanderers, Pat performed the remarkable feat of taking all ten wickets in an innings – the only time I ever saw it done.  

That feat was astonishing enough, but what made it almost incredible was that two of those wickets were as a result of catches by me at first slip.

A couple of years later he emigrated to Australia, and he has been living in Sydney for the past forty years.  In July this year I met him and I was surprised to hear him talk quite casually of “our opening bowlers” when referring to the Australians: Johnson, Starc and Siddle.  I hoped that he was doing it to see if I would ‘bite’ but I soon realised that I was wrong; he meant it. 

After the test series had finished Pat sent me an email with his thoughts on the outcome and wrote:  “…all our quicks leaked runs…”, “I think our bowling can improve…” and, “Ever since 2005 our batsmen…”.  I think they show that his assimilation into becoming an Australian is total and complete.

Perhaps Pat should bear in mind something said by Cecil Rhodes 150 years ago:

“Remember that you are an Englishman and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life.”

Does it matter that Pat has thrown away his lottery ticket when it comes to cricket?  No, I don't think it does.  Support for a team is rather like religious faith.  Faith is the belief in something for which there is absolutely no evidence.  Every year I believe and have faith that Norwich will get promoted that season or win the Cup.  For a week or two I really believe that it will happen.  

Support in sport, defies logic. Only when the hard facts confront me do I reluctantly accept that my hopes for Norwich that season will not be fulfilled.  Last season, however, was a wonderful exception.

With most sports Pat transferred his allegiance to Australia within a couple of years but with cricket it did take longer.  In 1981 he had been in Australia a few years and when England won the Ashes series, he was still a Pom, disturbing the neighbours in an Adelaide hotel while he cheered loudly in the small hours of the morning as England won at Headingley.

But, after a few years of playing cricket with Australians, watching and reading about Aussie cricket and talking about Aussie cricket, especially in the pre-internet days, he found it harder and harder to stay engaged with English cricket.

Is he demonstrating that he has passed the Aussie version of the Tebbit test?  I am always tremendously uplifted whenever I see an Afro-Caribbean or an Asian spectator in an England shirt supporting England and so I shouldn’t be surprised if and when the same thing happens in other places. 

But all those immigrants who support England today are second or third generation and I suspect that those who arrived relatively recently still support their country of origin. 

Fifty years ago, in the 1960s when England played the West Indies at The Oval, all the West Indians in the crowd, and there were many of them, vociferously supported the Windies.  That clamorous support is largely absent nowadays for two reasons.  Ticket prices have risen disproportionally in the past 45 years and are beyond the means of many.  Most South London Afro-Caribbeans who do go to The Oval were born here and those few who do attend are supporting England.

I don’t think Pat supports Australia just to have a happy, calm and harmonious time socially and at work.  For reasons that I can’t understand and that totally elude me, he really does genuinely support Australian cricket and probably gets the same unrestrained joy when Australia wins a series against England 5 – 0 that I experience when Australia is bowled out before lunch for 60.   

I regard it with the same mystification and bafflement with which I view religious faith.   To me at least, it challenges reason.

As I said earlier, support denies and defies logic and so at the moment I am looking forward to the Ashes series of 2017-18, supremely confident that by then Finn and Wood will have become world beating opening bowlers; somebody will have been found who can open the batting with Cook; we have an authentic wicket keeper/batsman and at least one genuine, international-class spinner and we will retain the Ashes by winning at least three tests.

I really believe that.

A last thought:  When Canada play France in the Rugby World Cup on 1st October, which team will the Quebecois support?

 

92. This week or next?

It was said by George Bernard Shaw that England and America are two countries separated by a common language.  If that is true, then Caroline is England and I am America.

For three weeks this August, we are spending a lot more time together at home than we usually do and all because ten years ago, Caroline embarked on a Masters degree.  However, she didn’t realise that was what she was doing at the time. 

To begin with, Caroline thought that she and other members of her team in Camden, where she worked, were merely attending a 6-day course on “Mentoring and Coaching” that was run by the Institute of Education in London.  Upon successful completion of the course she was awarded a Graduate Certificate. 

Two years later, when we were living in Cayman, Caroline commissioned the Institute to run a National Education Leadership Programme for headteachers and other leaders of education on the island and she participated in the course herself.  

At its successful conclusion, the visiting professor from London told Caroline that if she cashed in her graduate certificate from Camden, she was well on the way to obtaining a Master’s degree.

The final module in this marathon is a 20,000 word dissertation and as the deadline for its completion is September 2nd this year, Caroline is devoting her (and my) 2 weeks summer holiday to finishing and submitting it. 

After ten years, the end is in sight! 

Our language problem started at lunch yesterday, Sunday August 4^th.

“What’s your schedule?” I asked.

“I hope to have it finished by the end of next week.”

“Twelve more days then?”

“No, I hope to have it finished by next Friday.”

“Another twelve days then?”

“No Friday, next week.”

“Another twelve days then?”  I was becoming irritated.

“No, next Friday.”

“Next Friday is the sixteenth.  Today is the fourth.  Twelve days!”

“No, you idiot.  The next Friday is in five days' time on the ninth.”

“Look,” I snapped in some exasperation, “the next Friday is the ninth and so you meant THIS Friday, not NEXT Friday!”

We ate the delicious lamb and ginger curry I’d made in an uneasy silence for a minute or two.  Then I had another thought.

“You said Friday, next week.  The next Friday is in this week, not next week.”

“That depends when you start the week,” was Caroline’s strange response.

“Well I and most other people, start the week on Sunday.  Sunday is the first day of the week and so this Friday is in this week.”

“Monday’s the first day of the week as far as I’m concerned,” she said.

“But that’s like saying that the year starts with February or that there are 26 people sitting round this table because you start counting at 25.”

“All right then,” Caroline countered, “What days make up the weekend?”

“Saturday and Sunday, of course.”

“Yes.  You see?  Sunday is the end of the weekend and so it can’t be the start of the week.”

I reluctantly conceded that she had a point.  I thought about it for a while: Today is Monday August 4^th and so in conversation with someone:

Tuesday would be “tomorrow”.

Wednesday is “the day after tomorrow”.

Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday would be “this Thursday or this Friday etc.”

Monday August 12^th and every other day that week would be “next Monday…. etc.”

Monday the 19th would be “on Monday week” and so on for all the days of that week.”

I think that Caroline unwittingly put her finger on the cause of the problem. 

Some people call Sunday the first day of the week because, according to the Old Testament of the Bible, Saturday is at the end of the week as it was God's day of rest after six days of work, beginning on Sunday.

But there are difficulties.  For instance, Microsoft is confused. The 'United States' setting has the calendar week start on Sunday but for the 'United Kingdom' setting, the calendar week starts on Monday.

Countries that use Slavic languages treat Monday as the first day, Tuesday as the second day while Saturday and Sunday are the only days in their week that are named rather than numbered.  In Hungarian, a non-Slavic language, Tuesday comes from the word for 'two' and so, by implication, the week starts on Monday.

The word 'weekend' was first recorded in 1878 and it refers to 'the period between the close of one working week and the beginning of the next'. This concept firmly places Sunday at the end of the week and therefore Monday is Day One.

Airline timetables also number the days from Monday as 1, Tuesday as 2, Wednesday as 3, etc.

However, in Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries, western-based businesses are told not to try to arrange a visit on a Thursday because it is the start of the weekend.

Some years ago, the International Organisation for Standardisation, in an attempt to clarify matters, specified Monday as the first day of the week.

The evidence therefore seems to me to be overwhelmingly stacked in favour of Caroline’s assertion that Monday is the first day of the week.  I, however, still think that the week starts on Sunday but as with the metric system, it seems that The USA (and I) are out of step with the rest of the world and maybe, just maybe, Caroline is right. 

She may also be right in her opinion that the lamb and ginger curry would be improved unless by the addition of sultanas but I won’t try it unless she is right and then I would never hear the end of it. 

Wednesday afternoon - the day after tomorrow



We've just had lunch with Tom, my son. He, much to Caroline's huge annoyance, agrees with me that the week starts on Sunday and to back up his view he sang the first verse from the theme to the American 70s comedy series, "Happy Days"

Sunday, Monday, Happy Days,

Tuesday, Wednesday, Happy Days,

Thursday, Friday, Happy Days,

Saturday, what a day,

Rockin’ all week with you.

That is definitive proof. To have happy days, the week starts on Sunday.

87 Please don't sing 'Misty' for me

After I posted the piece about my horrible night in Milton Keynes hospital and the intolerable, deranged behaviour of my ‘roommate’ John, Caroline reminded me of the last time I was in a room with another patient.  That was in a rehab centre in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in January 2009 after my transplant and things couldn’t have been more different.

Because so much happened during the 20 hours I was in hospital in Milton Keynes, I had to leave some aspects/incidents out.  I didn’t mention that the first sign that John showed of being difficult was when he started singing.  

John sat in his bed and “la-la’d” through Danny Boy.  I think that he once must have had a very nice singing voice.  He was pitch-perfect and when he reached the part where it goes really high, he hit every note effortlessly.  I was quite impressed.  Obviously, I was unaware at that point of how things were to turn out later.  I was almost finding it enjoyable.

After he had finished with Danny Boy, John started to ‘sing’ When a Child is Born, the Johnny Mathis classic.  Again, no words - just la-la’s.

Later, when John was swearing and spitting at anyone who came near him, a nurse tried to quieten him by trying to get him to sing When a Child is Born with her.

She started to sing, “A ray of hope flickers in the sky,”

“FUCK OFF!” bellowed John and from then on things just went from bad to worse to even worserer.

Before and after my transplant, I was in the hospital and then in rehabilitation centres in Fort Lauderdale for 101 nights.  The hospitals I was in were nothing like ours.  

There were no wards.  Every patient either had a room to himself or herself or was in a twin-bed room.  For 100 of those nights, I had a room to myself.  For the last two weeks, I was in a room with space for two beds but I was alone.

January 16^th 2009 was the big day.  I was due to leave Fort Lauderdale and return to Grand Cayman for the first time since I had left for my operation in early October of the year before.  At around 8:00 pm on the 15^th, just after I had finished the last hospital dinner I was to have in America, a nurse came in.

“We’re going to have to bring someone in to share this room with you.  Sorry.”

I didn’t mind.  The worst thing that could happen was that my roommate might snore but that wasn’t really a problem because it was only going to be for one night.

At 10:00 the door opened and two nurses pushed in a bed bearing the inert figure of a black man.  I could see that he was older than me and that he was lying on his back, either asleep or unconscious.  I could only see him for about 30 seconds before the nurse pulled at a curtain and divided the room in two.  I could no longer see my companion.  

At 11 o’clock I tried to sleep.  Thank goodness he wasn’t snoring.  However, I hardly slept.  Half an hour later a nurse came back and was evidently trying to rouse my roommate.

“Johnny……..…Johnny……..…Johnny……..…Johnny……..…Johnny”

She was unsuccessful and left.  I slept.  Then, a little later I was woken again.

“Johnny……..…Johnny……..…Johnny……..…Johnny……..…Johnny”

He couldn’t be asleep.  He must have been unconscious.  Ten minutes after that, another nurse came in.  I couldn’t see anything but I could hear that this nurse had a new tactic:

“Mister Mathis……. Mister Mathis…….Mister Mathis……. Mister Mathis”

It can’t be!  Can it?  I phoned Caroline who was in Cayman, fast asleep, having an early night.  She was catching the 7:00 am flight to Miami the next morning to help me get back home. 

I whispered urgently into the phone, “Look up Johnny Mathis.  Is he still alive?  How old is he?”

“Why?”

“Just look him up and text me.  I’ll tell you why tomorrow.”

The text came:

Yes  74   cu tomo

X           

Just after midnight, a nurse came to take my blood pressure, temperature and other things

“Is that Johnny Mathis?” I whispered.  She nodded.

Caroline arrived at 10:00 am the next morning.  “What was all that about?” she grumbled.  “I was asleep.  I had to get up at five.”

I told her who I was sharing a room with.  The curtain was still drawn across and so we couldn’t see him.  Caroline decided that she needed the bathroom and very slowly she walked past the other bed to the door.

“Yes, it could be,” she said when she got back.  “He’s slumped in a chair and he’s got his own private nurse with him.”

Half an hour later, we left for the airport.  I didn’t say goodbye to Johnny or thank him for his company.  For the 12 hours, he was with me, unlike John in Milton Keynes, I don’t think my roommate ever opened his eyes.   

He didn't sing either and that was a shame.     

83. Nasty, cruel little bastards

If you are a cat lover, don’t read any further.  You’ll only be upset and if you share the characteristics of most ailurophiles, you will almost certainly get angry.

OK.  You have been warned.  Here goes:

The ducks around our house are starting to get frisky.  This morning I watched five mallard drakes relentlessly chasing the females up and down the stream making a dreadful noise.  Spring is coming but they’re wasting their time, as you will see.

I don’t like domestic cats.  They serve no purpose other than as a source of comfort for certain people.  To those people I say: eat chocolate or get a hamster.  Better still, get a dog!

Most domesticated animals such as horses, cattle, sheep, camels, goats and dogs serve a purpose, either as food or to help mankind in its endeavours.   Indeed, progress would have been slower and more difficult without the horse for transport or the dog for hunting. 

Even today, when hunting with them is illegal, dogs still perform essential tasks in helping the blind, in crowd control, law enforcement and searching for missing people or illicit drugs.

But what do cats do?  Nothing!  Don’t tell me that they provide companionship.  That’s what television is for.  Cats do nothing useful but they do a great deal that is destructive, damaging and harmful. Terry Pratchett got it right:

“If cats looked like frogs we'd realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are.”

When we lived in Cayman, I would sit on my porch and watch a black and white cat while it hunted lizards.  I would often see it, staring defiantly at me with a lizard hanging motionless from its jaws.  The lizard was then dropped, dead or severely mutilated.  That cat wasn’t hungry.  It never ate the lizards and so it didn’t hunt for food.  It killed because it could.

One day Bernard, my neighbour in Cayman, told me that he had seen this cat squashed flat on Shamrock Road just outside the entrance to Prospect Reef where we lived.  He said that he had scraped it up with a shovel and dumped it in the ditch so that its doting owner would be spared the horror of seeing the evidence of its demise.  I was delighted and so were the local lizards when I told them.

Six weeks later, I was snoozing in my recliner on the porch when I heard a rustling in the shrubs in front of me.  I looked up expecting to see an iguana or possibly a snake emerge but got the shock of my life to see a black and white cat staring defiantly at me with a lizard hanging motionless from its jaws.  I went straight to the ditch where Bernard said he had thrown the cat, but I couldn’t find any trace of it but that could be because decomposition and decay are rapid in the tropics. 

What Jesus had done in three days this cat had done in about 40 but I suppose it would take longer as it had nine lives to resurrect.

One of the joys of moving to rural Buckinghamshire has been the increased number of different bird species that I have seen.  Two weeks ago the ground was covered by several inches of snow and we put bird feed on the table outside the window.  For an hour I watched and kept note of the birds that came. 

In that hour I saw these species: Blue tit, Great tit, Waxwing, Chaffinch, Sparrow, Robin, Nuthatch, Goldfinch, Greenfinch and Greater Spotted Woodpecker.  The woodpeckers had great difficulty getting on to the covered bird table because they are much larger and considerably less agile than the other visitors and consequently were very clumsy in their attempts to get at the food but it was fun to watch them.

The bird table was often heavily overcrowded and a number of wood pigeons, moorhens and coots gathered around the base to pick up any seeds knocked off.  Fifteen yards away a heron stood in the stream that borders my garden looking on at it all disdainfully.

It has been conservatively estimated that there are nine million British domestic cats and a third of them are habitual killers.  They kill at least 55 million British birds every year and have been blamed for contributing to the long-term decline of garden birds like the house sparrow, dunnock and robin.  Populations of other garden birds also suffer from predation by cats.

Some cat owners try to alleviate the carnage by using the technique of attaching a bell to a cat's collar to warn birds of its approach but this is losing its effectiveness because cats are learning to move without ringing them.

Last spring the ducks on the stream and the small lake that runs alongside the drive had about 60 ducklings.  I don’t think any of them lived longer than a week.  Cats!  Last April on a Saturday morning, I watched while two cats, almost acting as a team, stalked and killed three day-old ducklings in twenty minutes. 

I know someone who has a powerful airgun that he uses to kill squirrels because squirrels eat bird’s eggs and eat bird food from bird tables.  I’ve asked him to use it on the cats but he won’t because for reasons beyond my comprehension, the law protects domestic cats and it is an offence to trap, injure or kill them.  Is there an answer?  I don’t think there is.

Ridiculous!

18. Love and a painful knee

Still no room for Fibonacci I’m afraid.  He’ll keep, but things keep happening to me here that require immediate telling.

Every other Monday I go to the hospital in George Town to have my blood tested.  Later in the week I visit my GP and I sit in terrified silence while she stares, expressionless and silent at her computer screen for a couple of minutes.  There’s only one reading that I’m frightened to hear.  It’s the only reading I’m interested in hearing and she knows that and so she takes her time.

Recently, she has introduced a new weapon into her arsenal of delaying tactics: the phone call.  Twenty seconds after she starts staring at the screen her phone rings.  Always.  It happens every time.  It can’t be coincidence.  She gives me a sort of apologetic look and picks up the receiver.

“Yes ……… yes ……… give him four …… no … oh no, two won’t be enough …… not with that nasty discharge …. long pause during which she looks at me and raises her eyebrows in a gesture of resigned apology ……………. OK ….. yes … no, yes tell me now. I’m in no rush … no …. I’ve got a patient with me but he won’t mind waiting …… No, really ………. He’s been in the waiting room for an hour and a half already so a few more minutes won’t matter .………………...………………..…….  Right ………. OK then. Bye.”

She puts the phone down.  “Where were we?”

It’s my haemoglobin level I’m waiting for.  I really don’t care if my sodium is high or the potassium appraisal is abnormal or even if the tacrolimus reading is deviant.  Those problems can all be put right by tinkering with the quantity of the pills I take or by modifying my diet.  

But, if my haemoglobin level drops below 10, I can look forward to extreme pain twice a week.  I will have to receive injections and the accompanying grief is considerable.  It’s not the needle that hurts; it’s the fluid as it enters my tender, delicate and very soft tissue.  Yes, I am a wimp.  The fact that Caroline administers the jabs and witnesses my total lack of machismo just makes things worse.

I was walking out through the main passage of the hospital on Monday morning, having bravely relinquished my five phials of blood, when I was accosted by ‘Beyoncé’ and ‘Kate Beckinsale’ lookalikes.  They had been sitting on a bench and as I approached, Kate stood up blocking my path.  She stared at my chest and read aloud what was printed on my t-shirt.

Don’t take your organs to heaven as heaven knows we need them here

She gave me a smile.  “Are you a donor?” she asked, breathlessly.

“Not yet. I’m a recipient.  Liver,” I said.

“Oh, that’s so cool.  Look at this,” she said to Beyoncé, pointing at my shirt.

Beyoncé stood up and so there I was, standing with the two most beautiful women I’d seen since I’d left home an hour earlier.  (That should get me out of doing the washing up for a day or two).

“Is he all OK?” asked Beyoncé.

“Who?”

“The guy whose liver you got.”

Someone, tongue in cheek, once wrote in an article about living in Grand Cayman, “We have no poverty or beggars.  It's too expensive here to be poor.  Poor people can't afford to live in Cayman.”

It’s not true, of course but it’s not so far from the truth either.  Caymanians like to describe their home as an ‘Island in the Caribbean’ and not a ‘Caribbean Island’.

There is a difference between those two descriptors and it is not subtle.  Apart from the climate, Cayman has very little in common with other islands in the region.  We are isolated.  The nearest land from us is Cuba 150 miles to the north and Jamaica 220 miles to the southeast and we are some 250 miles from mainland South America.

Kurt Tibbetts, when Leader of Government Business a couple of years ago, said that, “It is an immense source of pride to Government – and should be for Caymanians as well – to learn that we have the lowest rate of poverty in the entire Caribbean.”

Most Caribbean islands show signs of extreme social deprivation and poverty. The National Assessment of Living Conditions study indicated that only 1.9% of the population in the Cayman Islands, about 1,000 people, live below the poverty line.  Cayman’s 1.9% poverty level compares with 9.3% in the Bahamas, the next lowest and that is closely followed by the British Virgin Islands at 11%.  Our unemployment rate is one of the lowest in the World at below 4%.

Absolute poverty is very different from relative poverty which is the condition of having fewer resources or less income than others within a society or country. Definitions of poverty vary considerably among nations.  Rich nations generally employ higher benchmarks when measuring standards of poverty than poor nations do.  In the UK 14% live below the poverty line while in the US it is 12%.

In Cayman the majority of those classified as poor, are non–Caymanians. The 1000 poor people living in Cayman tend to be unskilled workers from Jamaica, Cuba and various South American countries particularly Honduras.  

The fact that these migrant workers continue to live here in such relatively poor conditions says a lot about the situation in the countries that they have left.  Kurt Tibbetts once explained this by saying that many of them choose to live in poverty because they send the bulk of their earnings back home.

Cayman is a British Overseas Territory with, until recently, very little crime or poverty.  It has a sophisticated infrastructure and a reputation as one of the cleanest, safest and most well connected, luxury holiday destinations on Earth.   The Cayman Islands have enjoyed astonishing capital growth in the last thirty years or so.

You might be wondering what the state of the Cayman Islands has to do with Kate and Beyoncé.  “Everything” is the answer

A group of about 100 young people from a Christian church organisation in southern California descended upon Grand Cayman last Sunday to do God’s work.  This included several activities that in most developed countries are done by government or volunteers.

‘Kate’ and ‘Beyoncé’ are two of that contingent.  At 7:45 on Monday morning I was the first Caymanian they had met.

“Are you a visitor?” asked Kate. 

“Well, I don’t work at the hospital,” I said, “and so I am a visitor but I live here and so I’m not a visitor in the way I think you mean it.”

“Oh, you’re English,” said Beyoncé, smiling and showing dazzling white, perfect teeth.  “How cute.   We’re here to do all we can to help you.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because it’s what The Lord wants,” Beyoncé said, smiling more broadly than ever.

“Does He?  Wouldn’t He prefer to have you doing His work and helping in Haiti or Cuba or Mexico?  They need assistance more than we do.”

“We’re here for the children too,” said Kate.

“What!”  I exclaimed.  “Have you seen the children here?  Many of them are overweight.  A lot of them are fat and many of them are obese.  Does your church know what’s going on in Haiti?  Do you ever watch the news or read a newspaper?  The best thing you could do for Caymanian kids is to blockade Burger King and Wendy’s.  Mexico’s a neighbour of yours.  Why don’t you go and help them?  We don’t need you here.  It’s like a group of English people going off to help the poor in Switzerland.”

“We’ve also come to spread love,” Kate said, clearly a little taken aback by my vehemence. 

“Well, that’s different,” I said, trying to smile, softening my tone.  “You can spread all the love you want.”

“Come here,” said Beyoncé, throwing one arm around my neck and the other around Kate who was moving in, obviously well aware of the procedure.  

I stood there with my arms by my sides being hugged by two beautiful women.

“Hug us too,” ordered Beyoncé, stepping back a pace.  “Share our love.” 

We stood there, locked together cheek to cheek, cheek to cheek, cheek to cheek for a long time.  Nobody spoke.  People were passing by and were giving us strange looks.  A nurse I see quite often walked past and mumbled, “Good morning Mister Terry.”  I nodded at her.  Beyoncé and Kate carried on hugging.

I suffer from an arthritic knee and cannot stand still for very long and after perhaps two minutes I was beginning to feel real pain.  I tried to break their grips but they were expert huggers.  In the end I had to cry out, 

“Enough!  That’s enough love.  My leg hurts.”

They pulled away.  Kate looked at me intently.

“May God bless you,” she said.

“I think he just did,” I said.