Flying Fish, Bajan Buses and Fickle Fans

The title of this post should have a subheading which would help put some skin on the thin bones of the alliteration that we have been compiling as the title of the thoughts around our first week here in Barbados, it could read Flying Fish Cutters, The Crazy Public Bus Drivers and a Few Fickle West Indian Fans but by the end of this post you should have some idea of what we are taking about.

our home for the last week

Firstly lets be very clear we are very much enjoying Barbados, we have been made to feel so welcome by Andrew and Tracey, some friends whom our youngest son Arron met whilst he served on the YWAM base which in itself has become our home for the last week, the guys at YWAM have also allowed us space and a fantastic room in a house that was built for the owner of an old Sugar Plantation many hundreds of years ago, however life here is somewhat different from Grenada, our only other island to have a comparison and what follows below are some thoughts of those differences.

quaint country lanes (or bus racetrack!)

The public transport system here is absolutely wonderful, we have caught the local Blue Buses which enable us to travel the 45 minutes into and out of Bridgetown for around 60 pence or one dollar (US) each, and what with the lack of mountains that we endured on our journeys in Grenada the roads are mostly straight, there are even a couple of dual carriageways nearer to the city, however most of them are tight little country lanes as seen in those cute little Devonian villages with high sided banked hedgerows or long stretches along otherwise wide open plains with ditches which could be seen in Norfolk. (by the way the island is only 20 odd miles long so when we say long stretches that is stretching the point but we hope you get the picture)

maz in familar hang on pose on the night bus!

With the above in mind it would seem that the ‘Liming’ that we encountered in Grenada is once again lacking when a person gets behind the wheel of a motor vehicle, especially if it’s carrying around 40 passengers who have paid their tiny due for the pleasure of being hurtled around by a driver whose style (and we have found them all to be the same) is a mixture of Lewis Hamilton in his Formula One Mercedes (built in Brackley, England) on a quick qualifying lap around Monaco and Colin McRae (R.I.P) sliding his 'built for rally' Subaru Impreza through the snowfields of Norway.

chicken rice and peas

The passages have been a mix of local people, either on their way to and from work, some at the local prison, children and their parents on their way to church or on into town to do some shopping or a couple of cricket fans who have joined their other limited friends at the Kensington Oval for the Test Match with England, but more of them later.

Now on to the cuisine, long gone are the trees growing in every conceivable piece of land in Grenada which are harvested and included in a variety of local dishes, what seems to be the local staple here are the amazing little Flying Fish which the local fisherman catch with glee as they surf along in front of their boats before bring them ashore to be sold and then fried and stuffed into a bread roll, commonly known as a ‘Cutter’. 

maz enjoying a flying fish cutter on the local beach

You can get lots of different kinds of ‘Cutter’s’ and we should imagine other types of food, however we experienced a proliferation of chicken rice and peas and or chicken and macaroni cheese, but the variety seem to be much less than in Grenada and most of the food seems to be fried. Once again that said the Flying Fish Cutters are absolutely delicious and we could quite happily live on them for the rest of our stay.

One local deliciously that the Bajan’s are famous for (by the way Bajan is the term for anything or anyone coming or living on Barbados) is their rum and a variation on a theme, rum punch, which we have very much enjoyed each afternoon at the cricket.

day one and two crowd of home support!

OK so the cricket didn’t go as well as expected, England seemed to lose the plot in the second innings after bowling the West Indies out for a poor first innings total, the pitch which seemed to be a minefield for the batsmen on days one and two turned into a perfect batting wicket on day three, but by then the damage had been done by some very poor shot selection from our openers, we think we might have seen the end of our last remaining South African in the team with Mr Trott once again underperforming after his ‘time out’ during the last few months. Let’s get a real Englishman (thinking of one from Yorkshire to appease Geoffrey) in to open the batting, to build for the future and put out a few scouts to find better back up for the overworked James Anderson and find a spinner who could have made better use of the track than the poor Ali….anyways that’s getting off the topic that we really wanted to focus on, that of the fans who attended this test match.

Barbados is a real tourist hotspot and it was hardly surprising to see a huge amount of England fans (often touring under the Barmy Army Banner, but not all!) take a few days break to enjoy the sun on what we have heard has been a long spring in the homeland, in fact it’s a wonderful testimony to the English sports fans who travel the world, be that to follow our underperforming football team, rugby, even athletics and that new found icon cycling where we’ve heard of people travelling all the way to Leeds to watch ‘the Tour de France’!

home fans, with party girl on paint tin!

Our fans support their teams come rain or shine, good times or bad, win, draw or mostly lose they are there singing their hearts out, cheering on their heroes to the very last, however from what we experienced from our view from the Hewitt and Inniss stand block 132 the West Indian fans are a little more fickle, the term ‘you only sing when your winning’ comes to mind as during the first couple of days the local fans must have made up only ten percent of the crowd, at best, and once their team had the chance of winning the game they came, not in their numbers, which was a little sad as the ‘party stand’ seemed to miss the vibrancy that we experienced in Grenada, it’s had to get the hoped for atmosphere when you’re partying on your own.

We did however have one young lady in block 132 who was in the party mode, for the full last day she shouted and cheered at nothing in particular as she wasn’t watching the match and had more of an eye on the young Boy Scout troop who themselves sat transfixed on her gyrating in a brief cut pair of shorts, both those boys and some of the middle aged English fans sat with eyes on stalks, it really wasn’t the place for this behaviour but maybe we’re getting old and should go with the flow.

tim with sir garfield

The excuses from Grenada about the lack of local fans can’t be used in Barbados, the test match started on a public holiday (May Day) and took place over two further ‘non-working days’ and their no show was a disappointment and doesn't bode well for West Indian Cricket in the future, but that really isn’t our beef, what was really disappointing was the attitude of the fans who instead of reveling in their win were more intent in having ‘discussions’ with some surrounding England fans, Tim included, about England getting stuffed by Australia in the upcoming Ashes series. Their lack of understanding that we were there to enjoy the game, win, lose or draw and to celebrate good batting and bowling be that from our English team or their talented youngsters including the dangerous, Holder and Blackwood was lost on them.

 To finish this somewhat blunt post, which we hope won’t put you off of reading more of our adventures later, was a very funny encounter on our journey home on the crazy bus last night. Some local fans, older men, sitting towards the back of the bus were continuing their discussions, amongst themselves about England and how they were going to lose to Australia when the bus driver, who we were sitting near to, calmly turned round and asked those chatting to quit the noise, which they didn’t heed so at the next available point he stopped the bus, turned off the engine and waited until everyone was quite. It really was a scene from a school bus journey and once the old men had apologised with the words ‘Sorry Bus’ did he pick up the batten to make up for lost time in delivering us to our various destinations…

…today we move on from the YWAM base to a home by the sea on the east coast of the island, where we hope to find the ‘real Barbados’, with friendly food loving locals and the chance to get away from the busyness of the city and our internet connection.