rain, rain, rain and more rain

Guess what? It's raining... and raining... and raining. Anyone interested in checking out the 5 day weather forecast on Yahoo or similar will see that the next few days promise a delightful medley of showers, thunderstorms, 'thundershowers' (sic) and more showers. So if we come home without the trace of a tan, it's not because we've been hanging around in bars the whole time, honest guv.

Faced with the not-so-dazzling start to the day, we reacted in typically opposing style - Sappho heading out to the mall and me making a beeline for the beach. I just love swimming in the rain! Down on the South coast, the surf is usually small to medium, but because the weather's stormy the waves were big, boisterous and booming, perfect for diving through and resurfacing into the pelting freshwater from above (Bajans like to call it liquid sunshine). On what is usually a busy South coast beach, I had the sea to myself - no swimmers, no soakers, no jet skis... even the beach bums were sheltrin' (another word for limin' when it's raining outside and you're under cover.. Bajan dialect has about 50 distinct words to describe the delicate art of doing nothing, but limin' is the most common catchall) back up the beach under the trees.

Other nice bits of dialect that have been coming back to me as my ears become reaccustomed: win'in' (or winding) which is the circular motion of the hips when moved separately from the rest of the body, used a great deal in soca and calypso dancing... if the dance is between a couple, then win'in' is often accompanied by grin'in' (no translation necessary). The usual soca custom is for the woman to stand in front of the guy, back towards him, and to gyrate her ample behind into his groin. Calypso (for the traditionalists) tends to favour the face-to-face approach, but the technique is pretty much the same. Dancing like this (alone or with a partner) is also often described as walkin' up, so when I tell you that Sappho and I will be heading over to Harbour Lights (popular nightclub on the beach near Bridgetown) for a walk-up this evening, you'll know what I mean ;-).

The best time to start the evening here is around midnight - things don't really pick up until then. We'll be heading out for an early dinner with my friend, Lindsay, who owns the apartment we're renting at the moment, at a local rum shop. None of yer fancy restaurants - this is the real Bajan deal, where the menu will offer a choice of fried chicken and some more fried chicken (maybe some fish if we're extra lucky). The alternative would have been to go to Oistins, the main town in the middle of the South coast, which has a fish fry every Friday night with the day's freshly caught haul. The only catch (no pun intended) with Oistins open-air fish fry is the rain, and the thousands of people who go to what is little bigger than a fishing village, making parking a sort of extreme sport... so I'm wimping out of that one - maybe next week.

As the rain's been falling, it's hit me that I only have 10 days left on the island. Time flies when you're limin' it up...