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Day 6: Montserrat!

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Enough with the beach shots; here’s something completely different.

The real impetus for this whole trip was to go somewhere a) warm b) quickly and c) preferably with a volcano.  Hence destination Montserrat, which had an eruption in the 1990s.  You get to Montserrat from Antigua, hence Antigua.

So, day trip to Montserrat.  Unlike Barbuda, Montserrat is a whole other country from Antigua.  It’s part of the UK, whereas Antigua is independent.  So there was check-in, customs, immigration, and embarkation fees.  In both directions.  On both sides.  That took up half the day.

We had a tour guide in Montserrat, because among other things that buys you a permit to actually tour the former capital of Plymouth, buried by the volcano, abandoned, and now overgrown.  We got to walk all over the ex-town and look at the ruins.  Hence the toilet shot above.

Montserrat’s other claim to fame is Air Studios, a recording studio founded by Sir George Martin (the Beatles’ George Martin) and birthplace of some famous 80s albums like Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms and some Police albums.  The studio’s abandoned but we did stop at a café which is kind of a little shrine to Air Studios memorabilia.

Well worth the trip.  A very lovely and peaceful place.

Antigua 2020 Page-a-Day Calendar!

Welcome!  This past week Xopher and I made a trip to the Caribbean on only about one month’s worth of planning – very spur of the moment for us!  The destination was Montserrat, which had a volcanic eruption in 1996, but due to Montserrat’s relative lack of amenities (see: volcanic eruption in 1996), we spent the bulk of the week on the lovely island of Antigua!

We arrived on the first of March.  We went to a party recommended by the guidebook, said to be frequented by tourists and locals alike due to its booking the best steelpan and reggae bands on the island.  It was packed and touristy when we arrived, but it cleared out.

Harbor lights from the venue, called Shirley Heights:

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Zero Fucks Given

I’m doing great, because I’ve decided to take principles from The Fuck It Diet and apply them to my entire life; I call it “The Fuck It Life.”

 

a.  There’s a diet/eating/”wellness” crap book called French Women Don’t Get Fat.

b.  There’s a province in Thailand called Phuket.

c.  There should be a book, Phuket Women Get Fat; They Just Don’t Care.

 

Hey [20]19

180 Janis Joplin, backstage, Grande Ballroom, Detroit 1968.
180 Janis Joplin, backstage, Grande Ballroom, Detroit 1968.

I read 57 books in 2019.  Thanx to Tyler Cowan, who taught me to discard with abandon books I start but end up not enjoying.  Read only what makes you really excited to get back to your book, and you’ll make the time to get back to your book.  And have a better time when you do.

Best fiction discovery: Lionel Shriver.  I discovered her starting with The Mandibles and ended up reading four more, my favorite probably being We Need to Talk About Kevin for its sheer staying power, closely followed by the Post-Birthday World.  I really love parallel universes.  So Much for All That would have been another favorite were it contained to the main plot, and had it discarded with the subplot.

Best non-fiction discovery: Meghan Daum.  She writes essays that just talk out of my own brain.  See: the Unspeakable; this year’s Problem with Everything.  Some of Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House also resonated.  She has also written a novel, the Quality of Life Report, which I read years ago before I knew she was herself.

What happened in my life this year that didn’t take place on my couch under the reading lamp?  I turned 50, obviously, and got some clean medical screenings.  My spouse and I greatly enjoyed 2 weeks in coastal Maine.  A new mudroom was completed on the back of our house.  All of this could have been predicted; the real wild dominoes fell at my job.  My manager experienced a life-changing injury in late February; and [the product that I work on] experienced a 6-hour outage on April Fool’s Day.  As a result, one of my best work-pals is now my boss, and we haven’t done any meaningful work since April.  You just never know.