11th September 2006

After such a lazy day and early night, Sunday sprang into action. There was work to be done; chickens to prepare, potatoes to roast and melt in the middle chocolate puddings to be cooked just right. It was mostly the lady of Leisure and I was simply logistics, so in honour of all her activity she shall henceforth in this diary entry be known as Eve of Endeavour. We were entertaining newly arrived colleagues and decided to treat them to some home cooking as they have been holed up in a hotel for a number of weeks with a child.

The thunder from yesterday returned but came back angry. In now growled and fizzled and spat. Too furious to rain it lashed out with dramatic forks from above the mountains. Eventually the storm huffed and lingered in the background like a child making its presence heard. All afternoon the thundered rumbled, occasionally menacing, providing a thoroughly tropical soundtrack for our mashed potatoes and scallions.

Dinner went superbly well. Our colleagues turned out to be chatty, witty and interesting. Dinner was prolonged as our cooker is decidedly Jamaican. It (yes - its not a person) just sometimes decides to do things at its own pace. Relax man, it’ll get cooked sometime. Roasts can take up to twice their prescribed time, though not everytime - its always a bit of a gamble. I think it does it on purpose during entertaining days to allow us to drink more and the evening progresses swimmingly. Sunday was just such a day. To accompany the wonderful meal Eve Of Endeavour prepared, our guest who had previously lived in France for a number of years brought along a superb “Lou Caberlaut”. Our oven was up to its old tricks, meaning that we had polished the whole bottle long before entrees. One of our guests had shown he wasn’t a rank amateur when it comes to wine and I was almost embarrassed about having to go to the "cellar". Excuses were being hastily prepared “Wine in Jamaica is hard to come by, the duty is prohibitive…..” and the pull out a bottle of something awful and American; or worse Australian. Just as we were draining our glasses, wineguy appeared with this quarter’s delivery. It could not have been better timed had I phoned him, and better yet, he came bearing gifts; 8 bottles rather than half a case. It was a South African collection and all were far too alcoholic and over extracted, but we had killed off the good stuff and I wasn’t going to embarrass myself by pulling out a Jacobs Creek. A great weekend rounded off with some much need serendipidty. Kingston isn’t always the trial it can appear to be.