Why did Terry not post a VIWHUI newsletter last week?

I apologise for my absence, but after four months of landlocked-ness (a new word I just invented), I swanned off to the Caribbean (Sint-Maarten, Saint-Martin, St. Lucia, Barbados, Martinique, U.S. Virgin Islands and Bahamas), which was amazing, although it was on a cruise ship, a form of travel I do not totally understand. The average age aboard hovered around 70, although a decided lack of mobility did not stop the blue-rinse crowd getting to the Dessert Extravaganza on the Lido Desk with startling speed. I saw one woman there whose wig had slipped as she lowered her bottom lip in line with the table and scooped in ice cream and gateaux in the same action.

As for the islands themselves, I ditched the organized shore excursions and went forthright into the field on my own. St. Lucia is amazing, the local bus drive from capital Castries to the smaller town of Soufrière being amazing and potentially fatal, listening to a lour and animated discussion on the radio—Dennis Samuels’ The Agenda—concerning duty-free cars for minicab drivers (the issue of the moment! Perhaps they have not heard of West Ham’s predicament!!). I walked up the steep hill to the base of Petit Piton, which is so beautiful and floated on my back in the warm sea watching fluffy clouds waft over its peak, before a closed-hotel’s janitor, Peter, who I bought a beer, caught a moray eel that we cooked for lunch. Martinique is also exceptionally beautiful, although the ship crowd were moaning very audibly that they thought it despicable that the Fort-de-France locals had not opened the duty-free shops on Sunday. I did not have such concerns and went to St. Pierre and Mount Pelée, which erupted in 1902 and killed 40,000 St. Pierrians.

I ran every day on the treadmill, which more than doubled my experiences on these horrible things. In order to get through an hour, I i-Poded my way to sanity: Friday: Tindersticks; Saturday: Dexy’s Midnight Runners; Sunday: The Fall; Monday: The Human League; Tuesday: The Clash; Thursday: The Dandy Warhols.