And I thought I was busy in London…?!

It was bound to happen.  I’m my own worst enemy.  But then, where’s the fun in relaxation?!

In our planning and preparation prior to the move to Bermuda, we read about the difficulty in finding work if you didn’t have the right skills…which it appeared I probably didn’t.  I tested the water with a few potential Bermudian companies and to cover all bases, I tried to find freelance work I could pick up from anywhere in the world.

A little freelance work came in, but it wasn’t going to keep me ‘Michelle busy’.  I’ve been busy making friends with charities and exploring ways to keep myself busy, challenged and involved with island life.

This week it the freelance work took a significant jump, it’s looking promising for a Bermudian job, I’ve been recruited to help arrange a fundraising Silent Art Auction for the Adult Education School and support the marketing efforts for ‘Earth Day‘ which is being locally managed by Greenrock.  Phew!  Already, something’s going to have to give!  Let’s wait and see how it all develops.

Unfortunately, at a time when I seem to be getting busier, we’ve made a discovery that suggests I need to change my cleaning routine….

Not one but two of the little critters were found.  And within 36 hours of each other.  The fact they were HUGE and it’s winter when they’re meant to be low on numbers is a worrying sign!  We do feel a little guilty though.  The first was found on Thursday night and during the chase it scuttled into a cupboard we don’t use (because it smells a bit musky!).  Not having anything else to hand, it was drenched in Raid.  We shut the cupboard to let the fumes die down and decided to deal with it later.  We were both busy all Fri so Sat opened the door to get it out and saw the cockroach on it’s back and clearly struggling….had we left it all that time?  We felt awful until we noticed it wasn’t the original cockroach but a second that had joined the party and been overcome by the fumes still in the cupboard.  No idea how long he’d been there, I hope it wasn’t too long.  Either way, he was instantly put out of his misery with more Raid.

I don’t often dislike an animal, but with cockroaches, I do!  Ants, I don’t want in the house but I respect for their teamwork and industrious ways.  With the coffee grounds we definitely seem able to keep them outside the house where they’re welcome.  Cockroaches can’t even be nuked!!  How do you control them?  Online tips seem to be that they only come out at night.  Lights off then go in with a torch and can of Raid!!!  Can you visualise Toby and I as cockroach storm troopers?!  I’ll be trying a few different tactics, but first things first, the cupboards are now getting a monthly clean out.  So that’s now a daily airing of house (humidity), weekly clean of house (regular), weekly laundry (regular), monthly mould removal from windows (humidity) and now monthly cupboard clean out (insects)…what’s next?!

Where’s the windmill?

Bermuda has about 130 miles of public road of which only a mile or so is dual carriageway.  Despite this, a Bermudian driver’s licence will allow you to drive on any road, dual carriageway or motorway in the UK.  Unfortunately, for me at least, the same is not true in reverse.  So after a medical examination; a night spent studying the Bermudian highway code and a lunch time taking a multiple choice theory test the time had finally come to accept I could no longer hide behind not having a licence as the reason for Chelle always being the designated driver. I’m normally fairly confident about things like this, but after having only spent three weeks of my life riding a scooter and not having driven one since October last year, it’s fair to say I was feeling more than a little nervous about the prospect of having to prove again that I am safe to be on the road. Now, it’s been a while since I was17, but one thing I remember clearly about my first driving test was how I could most definitely not drive. Heading to the test center, I was starting to feel very much like I did at 17 again.  Luckily, back in the UK, I passed first time; and when push came to shove, I passed first time in Bermuda as well. Feeling more relieved than anything else I headed back to work only to come home that evening to be met by this:

Our bike had received a fresh coat of paint courtesy of Chelle. This lead one of the Geordie lads who live up stairs to tell me “I’d been bitched”.  I’m still unclear what that means, but I suspect it’s not a good thing! As a result, I am still to use my licence and actually drive the scooter.  It seems, just when needed, I have a new reason not to be the designated driver!

 

This weekend was a friend of our’s birthday.  Simon (happy birthday, dude) had opted for some ‘crazy’ golf and a party in a hired apartment in the Reefs, one of the hotels on the island.  I say ‘crazy’, because, to my mind, if mini golf wants to reach the giddy heights of crazyism, it can only be done by installing a windmill; a castle or at least a laughing clown mouth.  That said, the course was very cool; awesome water features, AstroTurf bunkers and a lax attitude to alcohol on the course.  I was fully prepared to make the most of this:

There were no big surprises in the round itself.  As per normal, the round got quite competitive.  And as per normal, golf, even when it’s crazy, is still hugely frustrating; even if it’s your birthday…

As a good friend of mine would say: ‘had a look… didn’t like the dark!’.

After negotiating eighteen holes; balls trapped under rocks; jumps over waterfalls and a late flourish from Jamie and I, Chelle managed to hold on and take the tournament by one shot.

Post golf was spent with a lovely evening in an amazing apartment in the Reefs.  (Thanks to Simon and Emily for looking after us).  Some more booze; a cracking chili and a sports quiz later it was time to grab a  taxi home and accept the fact Sunday was going to arrive with a hangover.  I didn’t take any photo’s of the apartment, but this, from their website, is fairly accurate:

 

After the arrival of Sunday and the aforementioned hangover Chelle and I set out on our bikes for a short ride.  Mainly to get out the house between the two Premier league games in the morning and the NFL in the evening.  After cycling round for a while we stumbled across Hamilton Fort.  Up on a hill on the edge of town with great views over town and the harbor it’s free to just pop in and have a look around.  We were too late for the underground exhibitions, but had fun with impressions of a ‘turn back time’ era Cher.

 

I’m not sure if they used a different gun or if Cher’s just got really long legs.  Photo-shoot over, I wanted to get Chelle back for locking me in the St George’s stocks a couple of weeks back.  The fuse and a lighter seemed like a good idea as any…

She actually went pretty far…

Updates – still in love, still fighting mold, still raining and just got busy!

Oh dear, I really should think about my blog post titles before publishing shouldn’t I?…We had a lot of readers for ‘Please don’t tell me the honeymoon is over!’  As you’ll have read, it was a cheeky comment from Toby and one that he can get away with as he’s otherwise so adorable!

So, last night we headed out for a bite to eat to celebrate 6 months of marriage.

First things first, getting ready!  I must be getting boring by now, but the humidity fascinates me!  Look at the boots I wanted to wear…

I’d worn them only a couple of weeks before…how had they got so furry in that time?!  Not one, but two types of mold.  The shoes Toby was planning on wearing were sporting a different kind again.  Now I’m concerned about cross contamination of footwear spores!  Who’d have thought?!  Now I don’t want Anne worrying Toby’s not in good hands or Mum embarrassed how I’m running the home…it’s the humidity!!  Even varnished wood is susceptible, it’s not my fault!  Two people now have read the blog and suggested we get a dehumidifier.  I should give in but I’ll try all other options first.  They use way too much electricity – bad for the environment and bad for our back pocket.  For now I’ve cleaned the shoes with ‘mold and mildew remover’ that was meant for the bathroom and I’ll think on.

Now for the meal.  As there’s hardly a single tourist on the island right now, there’s a ‘Bermuda Restaurant Week’ (lasting for three!) offering a three course meal for $29, $39 or $49 depending on their normal rates, to try and keep the money coming in before the hoards return.  We rarely have 3 courses so should have thought this through….Toby looked full after helping me finish off my starter…

I on the other hand am always happy around food!

We had a lovely evening and thankfully after a bit of a rest Toby returned to normal when his desert of Sticky Toffee Pudding was put in front of him!

Delicious.  Thank you Victoria Grill.

I’ve had a busy week, signing myself up to anything and everything.  I’ve got a few days work from my friends at the marketing agency Tracepoint in the UK.  Soooooo good to be getting involved with marketing again.  It’s going well and there looks to be potentially more where that came from.  I’ve met up with a couple of charities to arrange voluntary work and it looks like I’ll soon be fully booked!  For the Adult Education School I plan to create a website, social media presence, support fundraising events and explore email campaign tools.  Yesterday I met the president of a sustainability charity called Greenrock, they have a big event called ‘Earth Day’ coming up and I’ll be running as much of that as I can.  Not forgetting the animal shelter and the badminton coaching…Phew!  Thankfully I’m far happier juggling lots than twiddling my thumbs.

And in other news, Toby has passed his scooter driving test!  I’m now not the designated driver at all times…if only I could get him on the insurance.  Today it’s managed to rain, and rain, and rain!  At times it was raining so hard and was so dense it looked like fog!  Crazy.  I’ll improve my photography skills so I can capture the mood next time the rain clouds put on a show.  For now though, I’ve not been able to get out, so Toby’s not on the insurance.  😦  More worrying right now, is how Toby’s going to get home!  He won’t let me pick him up because he thinks I’ll get blown off the scooter!  I think warming comfort food will be required for his return!

 

Please don’t tell me the honeymoon is over!

I’ve mentioned a few times that because I can get all the ‘household chores’ done during the day, our evenings are for ourselves and weekends feel like we’re still on honeymoon.  (Sick bucket anyone?!)  For all the little niggles and frustrations, we really are very fortunate to be living out here.

We’re not the type of couple who celebrate every occasion that has ever happened between us…let’s face it, with our history, there would be lots of dates to remember!  Even so, it occurred to me last week that today would be six months since we officially tied the knot in Mauritius.  A day that surpassed both of our expectations and that still brings a smile to our faces.  An equally special day occurred a month later when we celebrated this with a few family and friends.  Aren’t we lucky….two special days!

Any excuse for some good food, I suggested to Toby we have a meal out to celebrate (with the caveat that I’m not going to start celebrating every date I can think of, it’s just a nice excuse!).  That got us thinking about our 1 year anniversary and how we might celebrate that.  Toby looked up the traditional anniversary gifts and we were reminded that the first years gift should be paper, second is cotton…  As we got to the year of ‘salt’ I thought for a minute and then said,

“that’s difficult, but I’ve got a good idea!”

Toby replied with,

“hang on, these are the presents for you, I want good presents!”

Nice!  Shortly after he qualified with,

“I hope you’re not going to be one of those ‘trick wives’ who doesn’t remind me to buy something and then gets in a mood when I don’t!”

Oh, how things have changed!  He’s settled into his role of husband well.  🙂  For all I joke, I love him more every day and it’s been a great 6 months – time really does fly when you’re having fun!

Introducing the Bermudian ‘wildlife’

Firstly, great work from Toby with his second post!  This really is a joint venture now. 🙂

I know many of you are interested in what life’s like for us out here.  It’s easy to imagine a beautiful tropical island and that it certainly is.  With that you imagine ‘tropical animals’.  Now I’ve already mentioned the lovely insects and loud frogs, but with that surely goes snakes, spiders and scary things we’ve never seen before…  Well, I’m afraid not!  The most widespread animal we come across must be the feral chickens!

Toby keep’s winding me up that it’s a ‘KFC Day’, but as yet he’s not acted on it!  Surprisingly, the other common animal is a feline.  Now, I’m not talking a Big Cat, or even ‘second-division-puma-type-cat’.  I’m talking the feral cat!

How it can be that we have so many cats AND birds, I don’t know!  To be fair, the chickens are well fed, impressive creatures and the feral cats can be a little scrawny and are probably the same weight!

Moving on, I’ve been meaning to mention the lovely Mr Johnny Barnes.  It feels very wrong to move on from feral animals to his good self, but I’m afraid it will be done.  Johnny Barnes is a local who has worked here as both an electrician and bus driver.  Being a friendly person, he enjoyed the contact with people and after retiring, one day in 1986, took to standing on the main roundabout coming into town to welcome all the commuters!  He’s now there every weekday from 5-10am!!!  When I head out to volunteer in the mornings he definitely puts a smile on my face with his enthusiastic waving.  What a lovely guy!

There’s now a statue in his honour across the road from where he’s a regular fixture.

His friendly disposition is common throughout Bermuda.  Everyone has a ‘Good Morning’ for you whether you’re walking along the street or doing some shopping.  Last weekend saw the Bermuda Marathon.  For those of you who are swatted up on your Bermuda facts will know our island is only 21 miles long…fitting a marathon in can be challenging! 🙂  As we were heading back from our Sunday lunch in the dockyard I came across one of the officials.  He’d been there all day and was waiting for the last two contestants but was still full of smiles and energy.  How do they do it?!

This week and next I have some freelance marketing work to do.  Yesterday was a packed day of 7:30am email checking, off to the SPCA at 8:30am and then back to the marketing at 12:30pm and off out again for the badminton coaching at 5pm.  What a brilliant day!  So happy when I’m busy!  Feels great to be challenged with something new.

 

 

The long way round… and the short way back

After a couple of months seemingly lost on the high seas our container arrived last week.  To me, this meant one thing. Bikes. Monday night was lost to building the bikes in preparation for a cyclathon this weekend! I’d arranged with a colleague to cycle from Hamilton, where we live, to the Royal Navy Dockyard on the far west end of the island. There is a disused railway line that runs the whole length of the island so we planned to pick that up south of town and follow it all the way round to a pub at the end of the Bermuda on the brilliantly named, Ireland Island. 

Google makes this about 25km.

Having not been on my bike for a few months now, it seemed like a good idea to do a warm up so Chelle and I set out on the Saturday to ride up to Flatts Village for a look around. The same railway trail that we were going to follow west, also runs up from Hamilton past Flatts to St Georges, so we picked up the trail and started following signs.  All was going pretty well until we were just outside Flatts went the trail got a bit… wet… 

Despite the lack of bridge and my efforts to convince Chelle to wade across, we turned round and started making our way back home.

For Saturday evening, Chelle had planned for us to help out at Southampton Princess hotel’s ‘Just For Laughs’ comedy show.  This basically involved checking tickets and guiding people to seats.  Easier than it sounds when there were two of every seat number.  F5 left or F5 right… Not sure who came up with that one, but my head was spinning.  The show itself was very good, only comic I recognized was Alun Cochraine but all the acts were funny.

Our friends Jamie and Karen were also helping out so a few drinks in the hotel bar afterwards wrapped up an entertaining day.

Onto Sunday and the longer ride.  I met Jamie out side our office in Hamilton and headed off to pick up the railway trail in Paget.  The trail’s really cool, following the sea and cutting through golf courses you definitely see a lot of things you miss from the road.  The sometimes paved and sometimes dirt track path meant Jamie, who was on his road bike; and me, on my mountain bike, were taking turns at being both the tortoise and the hare. 

I’m pleased to say we both managed to make it to the Dockyard and installed ourselves in the Bonefish pub merely 100 minutes after leaving Hamilton.  Sore legs, but with a beer in hand and fish and chips (which I’d recommend) on the way, we started discussing if we’d raced on our very different bikes, who would have won… We weren’t sure, but I was fairly convinced my legs were not up for finding out…

After meeting Chelle and supping another beer, we made the best decision of the day… to take the ferry home. 

 

 

It’s the love of engineering that brought us together…

I have to say I’m very impressed.  Nearly three months ago we took our beloved bikes to pieces in order to fit them into their boxes for shipping.  Having finally received them on Monday, Toby set to rebuilding them.  He’s good…very good!  Not only have they been rebuilt, they’ve been ‘tweaked’ on demand so the gears/brakes/settings are just how we like.  I could offer little, but Toby did comment how well I’d packed them – thanks hun! x

In the mean time I’d had an interesting ride home on the scooter where a friendly local had pulled up alongside me (while moving!), flipped up his visor and shouted “your rear light is broken, brake light fine”, before giving me the thumbs up and speeding off.  I subsequently removed the light, got myself down to the local parts shop, picked up a new one and replaced it.  Does that make Toby the mechanical engineer and me the electrical engineer?!?!

The scooter needed to be in full working order for another reason.  This week Toby sat his scooter theory test and next week will be sitting the practical and will need a fully working bike.  The theory test was funny.  I picked him up at lunch and whisked him over to the Transport Control Department.  After the test I could read his face perfectly, and told him so.  He said,

“what, you could tell I hadn’t got full marks?”

and I replied,

“better than that, I could tell you’d passed, not got full marks and you didn’t think it was your fault!”

True enough, he’d had a couple of ambiguous questions and it wasn’t his fault! 😉

Toby had a quick practice for the scooter practical at the weekend.  Annoyingly, he didn’t seem to have ANY problems with it.  We actually both got bored and headed home after he’d done everything twice without problem.  He was gracious enough to say it had been harder when he’d tried on Karen’s bike (that I sat my test on) because it was heavier so less forgiving and maneuverable.  Again – thanks hun! x 

He can follow lines…

Stop before the stop sign…

And generally pull off the ‘Pink Scooter Look’…!

In separate developments, I’ve joined the WI!!  It’s actually called the International Women’s Club – Bermuda, but I’m sure even if I’d called it that, you’d be thinking ‘WI’!! 🙂  It’s a diverse group of women who come together for friendship, support, philanthropy and more.  There’s a lot of expats on the island and as it’s difficult to get a job outside of the finance related world, many ‘expat wives’ are left without without a job and therefore a way to meet people and get involved with island life.  We find out about most things by word of mouth rather than Google, so you need to meet people!  Yesterday I went to their ‘January Luncheon’ and met some lovely and very supportive women.  While I know life in Bermuda has a lot to offer and we’re incredibly lucky to have this opportunity, it can also feel hard at times.  I miss you guys and I actually miss work.  A lot!  I was saying to a lady who moved here from Switzerland that I miss work and I’m not sure of my place here.  I don’t work.  The reason’s not because we have a family.  I’m not busy with volunteering.  What’s my role here?!  She could completely understand and told me my current role is to allow myself to settle!  Thank you Andrea! 🙂  Everyone was in the same boat, shared the same frustrations but also the same excitement.  It was great to be among a group who were in the same position as me.  A lady from the ‘Adult Education School’ gave a talk and I’ve already rung up to volunteer along with helping out at a ‘green’ charity called Greenrock.  I’ll have no time for work soon!