Sunday

So you think our life is all Leisure and Pleasure, R & R? Not so! Today we did some serious jobs.
First of all we took the fridge apart, reducing it, as much as possible, to its component atoms. Pete scrubbed shelves and ledges in the sink while I wielded brushes, sponges and scourers in the main body of the stinky appliance. To finish it all off, I found a lethal spray bottle of White King and blasted it top to bottom, all of its hidden crevices, every bit. When we got back from our afternoon tasks, I opened the door and said, triumphantly: “What can we smell? BLEACH!” I will report back on this very important topic… Somehow I have a very sneaky and sad feeling that…the smell, like Arnie, Will Be Back. But I won’t say such defeatist words aloud…

Flushed with domestic success, we got on our bikes with our medium sized backpacks and rode around to our closest Casino Supermarché. On the way we noticed the fruit and veggie market was still open – just – so we darted in there to stock up on heavy things like potatoes. Oh so clever and thrifty…oh but it wasn’t… We bought six limey-lemony things, four nectarines, one very small pumpkin, a hand of bananas and…it cost us nearly $30!! As we rode back to 2XS we calculated our money and realised that, yes we had spent a shocking amount on…not very much food. I don’t think our stallholders overcharged us, but everything is so very VERY expensive.

We emptied our supplies onto the boat and went back on our Hunter Gatherer expedition. Did we want bacon? Why yes, surely – those very small packets, wouldn’t we like three of them? No we wouldn’t – they were about $10 each! In the end I thought it was time to stop gasping and calculating; I would just buy the ingredients I wanted to make fried rice for tonight and tomorrow, and hang the cost. After all I now have a tenant and an income, at least for the next four months – wee hee, all will be well!

Pete went ahead of me with his basket through – the wrong queue for visacard… He caused a minor traffic jam while his patient but slow-moving check-out chick found someone to take his visa card in another part of the shop. I didn’t follow him and went to the only other queue… It is a big supermarket…lots of customers with big laden trolleys… Island Time. The queue hardly moved at all. I asked a nice French girl behind me if it was always like this and she said, “They only have two check-outs open, and it is the weekend.” Well yes… there were lots of staff, jauntily decked out in racy black and white striped t-shirts and straw boaters, but they were mostly dreamily standing gazing into the middle distance. I didn’t really mind; Pete was outside with both bikes unlocked and at the ready, looking quite relaxed, and I just went ino Island Time glacier speed.

Nearly all of our neighbours have gone! Black Pearl is still there, with its crew constantly polishing, scrubbing, scouring. It positively gleams and sparkles! But other than that, there is only a yacht called Panache, with people from Australia, Egills and Margaret.

Another sailing story – and this time it really is too sad almost to be told… One of the people we have met – I won’t name him, wouldn’t want him to feel invaded, will call him Ben, – was off on his round-the-world sailing adventure with his beloved partner of many years. They were in their early 40s, and very happy and confident with their sailing. Somewhere in the Caribbean she got a nasty an unexpected infection and within six days, she was dead. I am crying while writing this; can you imagine this poor man, having to ring her family, friends, and say, “I am bringing my darling girl home in a coffin.” He has continued with his sailing journey, with a very nice crew-person but – oh alas and alack…

I am not sure what our plans are. Pete has been plotting itineraries in our little (Ann-Marie) notebook and I know we are expecting to be in Vanuatu, island-hopping on the way, by the end of July. He has a lot of paperwork to do for the end of the financial year and wants to sit in a quiet little bay, bobbing on the waves. I, on the other hand, would prefer to stay at Port Moselle marina… I could leave him alone and go on little bike jaunts, hang out at Le Quick and Le Bout du Monde, maybe find someone to cut my hair, generally keep myself occupied. But… this costs $$$S, I mean francs. If we go to a bay, I have suggested, gently, that he will be happier if it is a bay where I can get off the boat and ride around…otherwise I will very possibly get…cabin fever!!

And what did we do, on our Saturday Night in Noumea, the Paris of the South?? Well… I cooked up a very small storm of fresh veggies, rice, prawns (oh how many francs did they cost!!) and…leftover salami. And as I gathered my ingredients I heard alluring music from Le Bout du Monde. “They are singing NOT IN ENGLISH!” I cried, and ran for the café. Pete followed about half an hour later, to find me entranced by a fairly stiff middle-aged Spanish (well maybe Mexican…) singer. He was lovely, but not what you might call a relaxed performer. I arrived in the middle of an impassioned song about revolution and Che Guevara. Followed by…well who would have thought?? The Love Boat, in English, ditto It’s a Beautiful World. Oh and he also sang Bessame Mucho, aiming his song at a blondish chick, around my age and displaying what my mother would call “une sale tête” ie a cross expression. I was highly entertained. Pete arrived at the end of Guantanamera. Things looked up at his arrival! A large black man, sitting with a party of similar friends, all from the Mary D, a big charter boat which does weddings, parties, everything, moored across from us, asked me to dance – La Bamba! The singer’s previously crabby wife also got up, wreathed in smiles, and turned out to be a perfectly nice woman. And then a big surprise – one of the very cool thin young français sitting along the way got up and offered to sing along… and he was just great! He sang – in FRENCH, how astonishing! – an amazing riff of rap. His thin (and fairly stoned) young chick danced alongside me, my big black man, and my respectable singer’s wife, and then she gave me a big, rapturous hug and a kiss. Too much fun! And then – Pete got up and joined us, King Of the Dance! This made us all very happy. He gave it his all and then we had to come back to 2XS so I could cook up my ingredients and produce an actual meal. (It would have been nicer if I hadn’t mistaken teriyaki sauce for soy but…never mind!!)

I started writing this yesterday...now it really is Sunday.

Black Pearl left this morning, from next to us. I told Pete that the crew stood on deck and blew kisses to us – he was still in bed, but awake enough to be able to snort derisively. He knew they weren’t likely to have anything at all to do with the likes of us. There aren’t many boats left in the marina. Plan B is back – we think this is such a good name for a boat. And this morning The Owl arrived, from Brisbane, with two cheery old codgers aboard. (Well, our age…)

Pete had his shower, ate his cereal, with no great evidence of joy – he can’t get his beloved Sultana Bran here – and then he got to work on his bookwork. He looked at me a bit anxiously – was I going to be bored? Well no…how little does he know me! I wandered along to the market, which was all GO this morning. Lots of stalls, music everywhere. A very old local lady in a green smock sang, to a lot of synthesized backing, in the middle of the fish market. And two oldcodgers sang their hearts out in the middle of the carpark. I was very moved to hear them laboriously singing, in English, There Goes My Everything – one of the dreariest songs ever written… They brightened up and sang Paloma so I gave them some money, to encourage a bit of joie de vivre.

My sunglasses have died. First they started sitting wonkily on my face – that was yesterday – and making me very unhappy and uncomfortable. And this morning they gave up the ghost and one of the arms fell right off, snap. Aha – there are always sunglasses at markets, even this one, which is all about fruit, veggies, fish. But today there were lots of stalls selling jewellery and sarongs, and yes, in amongst them, I found a tray of sunglasses. They were cheap and therefore not worth buying, but when I asked, the vendeuse got out a tray of seriously polarised glasses, NOT cheap. I bought the first ones I tried on, without looking in the mirror – they are GREAT. Light and nifty, and not twisting awkwardly on my cheek – great! I must look like the mafia in them because they have reflective glass and black frames. Wee and hee!

After all of this excitement – I also bought a bag of lemons for less than $2 and two pains au chocolat for a lunch treat, also cheap (and possibly not yummy at all but never mind…) – I retreated to a shady table at le Bout du Monde, where my favourite waitress brought me a cup of coffee and then said, with no surprise in her voice at all, that no the WiFi was not working. I packed up and rode off to Le Quick, and am sitting now at a table adjoining the carpark, listening to some rap in the company of some large and bleary looking boys.

When I have finished this, I wil unload my computer, check on Pete’s wellbeing, and then go for a long bike ride, with a fresh bottle of Orangina Rastaman ( more yummy than it sounds!) in my pack.