Birthday

Diary, 23rd January 1995:

What is going to happen to us? Yesterday was my birthday. We went to University Beach just beyond Morant Bay. I hung up the hammock and read my book, while the children played. We had Stilton for lunch, and champagne. It started raining. Many of us jumped into the sea. As the rain hit the water a thin film of mist lay like a rucked blanket over the sea and everything, the water, the beach, the rock, the mountains and the sky were coloured various tones of grey. While it rained hopeful dogs hung about the picnic area and we shooed them away. In the background a service of the Seventh Day Adventists came to a delirious crescendo. I tried to picture my grandfather who was a Dutch preacher of the Seventh Day Adventist church. As his dour face began to take shape in my head I gave up on the comparison with this lively orgy. When we got back to Kingston Victoria surprised me with dinner at Ivor’s. Ivor’s is a house situated on the crest of Jack’s Hill with a God’s eye view over Kingston. Kingston stretches out below you like a carpet of smouldering coal. Everything appeared very precarious, a city,  dying ember.