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Answering questions on life in Seychelles

Posted in Expat Living, Island life, Seychelles on February 17, 2008| 153 Comments »

I’ve recently been contacted by a couple seriously considering a move to Seychelles, as this to them seems like the paradise they’ve been looking for. In trying to answer questions in all honesty and convey the true essence of life here … or at least the true essence of life here as I know it … I’ve come up with some pretty good blog material.

What life in Seychelles is like? Well, that depends.

Our life, for example, is very quiet. We have two little kids, so we’re not big on nightlife. In fact, most of the time we’re in bed by 9pm with a good book. An evening out usually means dinner with friends at someone’s house. Weekends are taken up with chores and beach time and the occasional Scrabble game.

Other people live other ways, of course, and the discos are busy on many nights. Some expats spend all their time with other expats, set up reading and craft groups … bored housewife stuff like that I have no time for. The people with boats do boat stuff, divers dive, hikers hike, since living on a tropical island makes it easy to do tropical island-enjoying things.

The people are like people everywhere, varying widely. The local culture doesn’t promote effusive friendliness or terrific manners and many people come across as downright rude, but for the most part the Seychellois are warm, but shy, easily embarrassed, quick to laugh (slapstick is big!), and mildly boring at worst. The societal fabric, however, is changing very fast right now, and crime and drugs are beginning to take hold. Since the police are not as crack at crime solving as they could be, there’s not much of a disincentive, so the upswing is rapid.

Not long ago, almost all the violent crime here was domestic, but that is changing. A woman in my area will killed not long ago by thieves looking for forex, and people are justifiably more afraid than they used to be.

On the shortages we deal with … sometimes there is no milk. Right now, there is no cheese. Sometimes it’s onions that there’s none of. The country has been known to run out of rice, toilet paper, potatoes, bottled water (for lack of bottles, although occasionally for lack of water, as well), and just about everything else at one time or another. For hardware supplies and other items, wood and cement are almost impossible to get and things like plumbing supplies tend to run under a rule that says when you don’t need them, they’re everywhere, but as soon as you do you’ll not find what you need anywhere.

Shipping services are okay, but usually stop at point of entry. The process of clearing goods is a nightmare everyone dreads, as the system is stupid and frustrating and that rudeness I referred to earlier manifests magnificently in some government employees. There is a GST charged on just about everything that comes in that is based on 1) the price of the goods, plus 2) the cost of shipping, plus 3) any applicable import duty, plus 4) a 30% markup just in case you should decide to sell whatever it is. The procedure is often hilarious, if you can manage to see it that way.

For example, if someone sends you a gift you have to fill out a bill of entry before you can see the item, which is difficult if you don’t know what they’ve sent you. This is pretty typical island thinking, by the way, no matter what island.

My mother sends me stuff from the States often. Normally, it takes about a month for a small box full of mint jelly, Mac & Cheese mix and tortillas to make it this far.

What else? Oh, the weather.

Yes, it’s always some version of warm, although evenings cool down pleasantly most of the time. Certain times of the year are better on certain sides of the island, and there are months when it rains more than others. April is notoriously the hottest month of the year, while July can be the coolest … cool enough that we put a light duvet on our bed.

We don’t have aircon in our home, aside from in my office. The rest of the house has ceiling fans that do just fine for keeping things reasonably comfortable. The sun can be fierce, but being this close to the Equator gives us some of the extra protection of a thick ozone layer, so although sunburn is a concern, it’s not quite as dangerous as it is in someplace like the Cornish coast.

Anything else?

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Politics and life: Miss the beginning of the show and you lose the plot

Posted in American thoughts, Celebrities, Celebs, Expat Living, NaBloPoMo, The USA from the outside in, tagged , , , , on November 27, 2007| 2 Comments »

It’s a big dividing point between American expats as far as maintaining a capacity to take in and digest present day events in the country, the 12th of June 1994.

You are forgiven if the date doesn’t set bells clanging, as events of the day easily float to the bottom of the cesspool that started filling then and continues to this day. To put it simply, this was the day Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were brutally butchered in a Southern California condo.

What followed could now probably be traced as the headwaters of Reality TV, and it ended with OJ Simpson winning the “Got Away With Murder” award.

People living in the States through that process followed along, joined the discussion, watched the glove show-and-dance, knew what Johnnie Cochran drank, how F. Lee Bailey took his coffee and what Marcia Clark was going to do next with her hair. Who didn’t have an opinion on Lance Ito, was more than a bit uncomfortable with Mark Fuhrman or thought Kato Kaelin was a moron? Eating, drinking and sleeping the OJ trail was common behavior as a cult-like fixation drew in more and more media junkies.

The verdict brought whatever emotions it brought, and those who lived through it can still be brought to a froth over specifics.

Those who left the country BOJ (Before OJ) … me, for instance … certainly heard about the case, most likely a lot, but didn’t live and breathe it. We weren’t surrounded by the story, didn’t run into video of white Mustangs and blood-soaked walkways twice a day, and weren’t assailed by details, speculation and conjecture every time we turned on a radio or opened a newspaper. We didn’t live with OJ’s oversized smirk popping up on every corner, live coverage and endless footage of the same scenes and statements over and over and over again.

Because we missed all this, we never moved into the groove that grew accustomed to the frenzy, that began to see the hype as justifiable and the massive media as a citizen’s right to know, and we didn’t for a moment see the verdict coming. In other words, we found ourselves left out of the loop that found getting away with murder a logical consequence of celebrity.

Much that has happened since in America remains puzzling to BOJs like me. The 2000 presidential election is one example; the bullshit blind involvement in Iraq, another.

Today, it’s a CNN piece that has me scratching my head … the one about the University of Pennsylvania professor who beat his wife to death last year as she wrapped Christmas presents. He’s finally fessed up and is likely to do 4.5 to 7 years for his crime.

Excuse me, but WTF kind of sentence is that?

And what kind of sentences are these … ?

“What kept them there [in the marriage] was their undying love for their daughter Olivia,” said Art Gregory, who is now raising the girl. “Both of them put Olivia first, beyond anything else, unfortunately to a very tragic end.”

Rafael Robb apologized to Olivia, who was not in court, and said he was “very remorseful.”

“I know she liked her mother. … And now she doesn’t have a mother,” he said, stifling tears..

This is how cold-blooded murder is covered in the US today? With “stifling tears” and not one single mention of how appalling it is that a creep who bludgeoned his wife to death in the middle of her Christmas prep will probably be out by Christmas 2009 … having to do his own gift wrap, thankyouverymuch … seeing as how he’s unlikely to find a wife to kill while in prison, so should get time off for good behavior, and probably also for time served while hoping to slip the noose without having to admit that he bloody well did it?

Like coming into “Lost” in the second season, having missed the OJ show I just can’t get up to speed with so much in America these days and the point of the plot is lost on me completely.

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Thanksgiving … the act, not the day

Posted in American thoughts, Expat Living, Family, NaBloPoMo, The USA from the outside in on November 22, 2007| 4 Comments »

I am thankful. I am SO thankful. I am really, really thankful.

I am thankful for my life, the fact that I have had one and that I still have one. The emergency heart surgery in Singapore in ’99 was a close shave that puts me in mind every day of what a gift each is.

I am thankful for the miracles that are my children and am perpetually astounded at the people they are and how lucky I have been to have them in my life.

I am thankful for my husband, for his kind and loving nature, his generous spirit, his humor, and for the circumstances that allowed us to find each other even though he was on one side of the planet while I was on the other.

I am thankful for all my family, for my friends, for the people sharing the same plane of cyberspace I cruise.

I am thankful for my home, for clean air and clear water, the comforts my life provides, for the timing and circumstances of my birth that have allowed me to live without war in my back yard or the horrors of life as a refugee. I have never been truly hungry, and neither have my children, and that’s enough right there to fall on my knees in appreciation for.

Because my life is as wonderful as it is, I have the time and energy today to wallow in misery, and although that may sound like a mouthful of sour grapes, there is no way I can let this day pass without spending a good bit of it sad as anything and ready to burst into tears at the drop of a pilgrim’s hat. I am miserable in honor of all that I have that I no longer have access to, and as happily content as my life is now my losses still deserve commemorating, so here goes …

Today I miss my mother. I miss my oldest daughter and my granddaughter. I miss my grown son. I miss my brothers, their families, their humor and their appetites. I miss green Jell-O. I miss the country that celebrates thanksgiving so wonderfully and enthusiastically. I miss a chill in the air and the sight of my own breath. I miss the smell of sycamore leaves. I miss pumpkin pies cooling on my mom’s washing machine and the pattern on her good china. I miss the company of those who have known me for all their lives or all of mine. I miss sharing memories of Thanksgivings past with people who where there. I miss a shared comprehension of what it means to eat turkey and how important variations in stuffing can be. I miss hand-print gobblers on fridges. I miss my childhood, or at least the good parts. I miss the drive up I-5 and my mother’s kitchen.

I rue the fact that I could be in California today, that Mark and the kids and I, had we planned well and done what needed to be done, would right now be a couple of hours away from waking up on Thanksgiving morning and preparing to sit down to an early dinner with some portion of my family somewhere, if not the whole fam damily … if the planning had gone really well.

As I say every fourth Thursday in November: Next year, for sure.

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Another year, another blog?

Posted in Entitled to opinions, Expat Living, NaBloPoMo, The USA from the outside in on November 18, 2007| 4 Comments »

I must be seriously out of my ever-lovin’ mind, but I’m thinking about starting up another blog once this whole NaBloPoMo business is finished for the year. This one is good for a lot of release and stuff of interest (to me), but doesn’t focus, and my pro blogs are all about adoption, a topic that has my passion, but is restricting, nonetheless.

There’s not a day that goes by that something arising from my trawl for blog fodder, my perusal of newsal, doesn’t have me bursting at the seams with too much to say about events in the real world.

From this isolated little perch here in the Indian Ocean, a great deal of the stuff of life beyond these shores looks darned silly, menacing, imprudent, overindulgent or worse, and it seems a glance from a perspective that’s not marinated in the au jus du jour just might be interesting … perhaps, again, to me alone, but personal blogs are, after all, the journalistic equivalent of singing in the shower.

From my old hometown newspaper to the Times times at least three (New York, London, L.A.), to the WaPo and the WSJ, I read what’s fit to print, and it might be nice for me to be able to print what gives me fits.

We’ll see how it goes, but January could see yet another place where my opinionated blather goes public. Another year, another blog?

Speaking of …

On the women-over-50 group at NaBloPoMo it was mentioned that this demographic … women over 50 … is the fastest growing in blogs and web design on the Net. Apparently, we all have something to say. (I’m guessing our husbands already know.)

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A big, white mutha of a well-slung vessel — or ‘sustainable development’ is an oxymoron

Posted in Entitled to opinions, Expat Living, Family, Island life, NaBloPoMo, Seychelles on November 16, 2007| 4 Comments »

There was a boat bopping around Isle Therese the other day … I watched it for a while from my veranda … a big, white, sleek thing with a helicopter pad on the back complete with helicopter.

Now, thought I, isn’t that exactly what everyone needs? A big white mutha of a well-slung vessel complete with chopper? What better to hug the shoreline of Mahé in, heh? Never know when one might need to hop quickly the four miles over to the other side of the island for … what?… some SupaSave youghurt, which by the way is going up to 14 rupees a tub next week.

I eventually mention said boat-of-superior-boaty-stuff, avec helicopter, to my well-informed spousal unit only to learn from him that during this given week it’s nothing but a trifle. Over on the Victoria side of things, there’s a big, white, sleek boat with TWO helicopters on the back helideck.

I’m guessing the one-chopper floater came over this side to avoid comparison and subsequent embarrassment — helipad envy.

Really! What could be worse than showing up in your big-ass-hangin’ bazillion dollar watercraft with sparkly chopper pleasingly perched aft at an island 1000 miles away from anywhere else only to find your parking space, or whatever is boatish for such a thing, is right down the way from a BIGGER one with TWO choppers?

Don’t know who the double-birdie boatie belongs to, but Radio Bamboo has it that the single-padder is the frippery of the owner of Tata, the huge Indian company that make cars, busses, and other carbon-producing mechanical clanky things, and that the big white mutha of well-slung vessel was tooling around Therese because Mr. Tata Boat Guy just bought it.

Great. This is what’s happening to my neighborhood: Bill Gates is carving a big honkin’ hotel to my left, with the addition of 20-some “executive villas” hewn into the scene; a Taiwanese company (Sofetel) is planning a big honkin’ hotel to my immediate right, also with 20-some executive villas; some Qataris are getting ready to plonk another huge hotel … WITH a dredged-up bit of bay attached as a ‘marina’ … and 20-some executive villas, just around the bend in Anse a la Mouche, and now the little wild island that makes up a bit of my lovely view is headed toward becoming something else.

Executive villas are going for $6 to 10 million to the sort of folks who hanker for big boats with helipads and toys of equal ostentatiousness, and although I’m sure some of them are right nice people, I don’t see them fitting into the Creole culture, shopping at SMB or working to level the Pearl S. Buck-type playing field that can only have the poor feeling even poorer in the face of so much bright and shiny loot.

I know we’re going to be looking a bit shabby in comparison with our simple wooden house, Mark’s desk-sized pirogue and our obvious lack of sycophants and hangers-on.

Progress, smogress, and ‘sustainable development’ is an oxymoron.

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My November Blues are green

Posted in American thoughts, Expat Living, Family, Island life, NaBloPoMo, Seychelles, tagged , , , on November 14, 2007| 1 Comment »

November is a tough month for me under any circumstance. Following directly on the heels of a Halloween that isn’t in this country, we have a Thanksgiving that isn’t anywhere I’ve lived since 1993.

Thanksgiving is … was … probably my favorite holiday; all about family and food, but without the pressure of gifts and parties. Important traditions run deep and wide, and emotions can run high over things that to an outside observer might seem a trifle, like green Jell-O.

From the beginning of time, my mother’s Thanksgiving meal included a Jell-o mold of green Jell-O with alternating pineapple slices and red maraschino cherries. One year … for some reason she never clearly explained, but one that must have had something to do with the onset of menopause — at least that’s how we’ll call it now … she took it upon herself to throw years of comfortable ritual to the wind and make an ORANGE Jell-O mold, with carrots.

Well! You can imagine how THAT went over.

Yes, the customs of Thanksgiving are dear to my heart, and I have now had to forego them for 14 years.

Sure, I try to revive them here, but my attempts are pitiful imitations, piffling forgeries of fowl, as many years no turkeys make it this far until just before Christmas, and they’re pathetic representations of the species most of which have known the frozen state for many years before I can even think of stuffing them.

I’ve learned to be grateful for a skinny bird topping out at 6 or 7 pounds … Cornish Game Turkeys, if you will … and have managed in recent years to coax flavor and enough juice for gravy out of birds that died in Russia circa 1999.

Because there’s no holiday on a Thursday in November in Seychelles, any Thanksgiving that I may pull together has to happen on a weekend, and no matter how long I live here that just doesn’t feel right.

Because there are very few Americans, the guests I invite never ‘get’ the holiday, and few have a clue even about cranberry sauce.

Worst of all, of course, is the fact that my mother, my grown kids — my daughter, with my granddaughter, and my son — my brothers with their wives and kids, are all sitting down on the other side of the world. They may not be at the same table, but they’ll all be looking at green Jell-O.

There will be more on this before the month is over …

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Blessings and Beer

Posted in Expat Living, Island life on October 4, 2007| 3 Comments »

Today is the fourth of October, and for those not in the know, it celebrates the Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi.

Why would a reformed Catholic like myself have any inkling that this date has ties to an animal-loving, robed and haloed guy of the blessed persuasion?

Because in the village of Baie Lazare honoring St. Francis means Party Time … note the capital “P” capital “T”, and break out the beer!

Yes, this weekend … since the actual feast day falls during the week … will see festivities unlike any to be had over the rest of the year in this village on the south end of the island of Mahé, and preparations are as well under way as they can be in a place where few things are really ever prepared. Bamboo frames are in place at the church, and by Sunday, maybe, they’ll be covered in coconut leaves to be used as booths for gambling games, food stalls and purveyors of alcoholic beverages at prices higher than those charged at the shops just down the hill.

People dressed to the nines will coming by the bus- and car-load from all over the island for this, one of the biggest fetes on Mahé, and as soon as Mass is over, hundreds of people will be cruising the booths, visiting, gossiping, flirting, playing games and, yes, drinking.

The police will be out in small force directing traffic, asking those who tend to hover rather than park to move along. Those watching closely may notice that some urged back behind the wheel by officers of the law impatient with the choice of stopping spots have a beer or a plastic cup of whiskey in hand, and clearly more inside, but it will be moving along that’s required, nonetheless.

A great deal of slow circulating will go on around the church, as groups move in one direction by the various offerings of food, drink and entertainment, then shift to the other direction for a while in hopes of coming across someone they’ve not yet shared all the latest with. As the day gets hotter, shady spots will be taken by old ladies and young children and everyone but the ‘tweens and teens will be slowing down considerably.

By the evening, the ear-splitting music and over-amplified voices will have stopped and most folks will have drifted away toward home. What will be left will be a couple of drunks who’ll sleep off the day through the night, a strong smell of urine from the periphery, and an incredible amount of garbage.

The church will have made a good deal of money, and a good time will have been had by many, and everyone will be looking forward to next October … which will, of course, come around again in what will seem a month or so.

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How to be a girl … in England: Yikes!

Posted in England, Entitled to opinions, Expat Living on July 8, 2007| 13 Comments »

As regular readers know, my adored husband is a half-Brit, which is not the same as a half-wit, but not totally unrelated.

Yes, that’s extremely unkind and so veddy-veddy not PC, but Hey!, some things just must be said.

Mark was born in England and passed some of his childhood there, but most of his growing was done on this small, tropical island instead of that large chilly one … a factor that factors in greatly in the fact that he and I ended up together.

I lived in England for a couple of years, and as Mark so Britishly puts it, life there “didn’t suit me.” It may have been an easier adjustment if we’d lived in London … truly one of my favorite cities, and as much a city as a city must be to be interestingly livable … but we were in Bournemouth, which isn’t.

One good thing, however, about having lived in the UK for a spell is that it prepared me for life on a tiny rock in the middle of nowhere better than anything could have. I learned what education and medical care look like in developing nations, how poor service is no matter to anyone, how to cope with small mindedness as the order of the day, and what the world looks like from a vantage point that relies on shoulder chips and wannabes.

By comparison, Seychelles seemed progressive, lavish and open-minded … but there’s not all that we-used-to-be-an-Empire thing going on here.

Lest anyone think I went into English life prepared to rebel — until I moved there I was as Anglophilic as most Americans. All my impressions had come from encounters with the original Potter (Beatrix), Beatlemania, and London vacations that had me shopping at Harrods and hanging at Stringfellow’s.

I was convinced that life there was bound to be a combination of quaint and literary, with overtones of historic significance … and no little romance, of course, since I’d relocated to be with the love of my life.

Well, the romance was certainly no letdown, but the rest of it … ?

What I encountered was a rude population of cold fish with thought patterns I assumed had been left far behind in Western cultures. Racism, homophobia, religious intolerance, sexism, were all alive and well in Southern England in 1994.

One need only look at television programs like “Father Ted” to get an idea of how easily the British ‘take the mickey’ out of their Irish neighbors, and although the show cracked me up I was always aware of how offensive it must have been to Catholics.

If you’re wondering why I’m on this jag this morning, I’ll point you toward an article from the Telegraph that reminds me today of the backwardness of the UK that drove me up a wall while I was there. (This, in conjunction with summer day after summer day that saw the weather in Moscow 20 degrees warmer than the drizzly, damp and dreary days in Bournemouth.)

“How to … be a girl: 10 Things Every Girl Should Know” is the title of the piece that begs the question, “What year is this?”

Apparently a review for “The Great Big Glorious Book for Girls”, it’s all sugar and spice and everything vomit-inducing.

Some of the ten things?
1. How To Deal With Boys
2. How To Have A Best Friend
3. How To Cope When Your Best Friend Gets A New Best Friend
6. How To Keep A Secret
7. How To Tell If An Egg Is Fresh
8. How To Sulk

And some of the advice?

The main difference between boys and girls is that boys like doing things – driving cars, playing football, throwing stuff, eating, farting – and girls like feeling things, such as love, friendship, happiness and excitement.

Boys are very physical; girls are very emotional.

Boys are often spoilt by their mothers, so they have a tendency to think girls should do all the boring things in life, such as cleaning, cooking and ironing their T-shirts, while they do all the exciting things: jet-skiing, playing in rock bands, being spies.

The best approach is to put on a smiling public face. Be charming, be polite. Soon the horrible feelings of rejection will pass and you will be able to look back with gratitude that you behaved with dignity.

Excellent elements of sulking are the Black Look, the Deep Sigh and the No One Ever Understands a Single Thing I’m Going Through Shrug.

A sulk should be short and intense.

Thankfully, I’m raising my daughter on this island, not that one.

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A little slice of island life

Posted in Expat Living, Family, Island life, Seychelles on June 28, 2007| 2 Comments »

Tomorrow is the last of the June holidays in Seychelles … June being THE month for them with a total of three days dedicated to the celebration of political events and one religious day off … the 29th of June, Independence Day.

On the day in 1976 the British lowered their flag, folded it up, and went home, as Seychelles became a nation in its own right with no colonial overlords to placate.

Two hundred years after the USA became states united in America under the Stars and Stripes, and without nearly the fanfare, the event was nonetheless momentous and will be celebrated in island fashion with beach picnics, barbecues and no small amount of driving aimlessly around the island with frequent beer stops and the equally frequent pit stops for peeing alongside the road.

Here at our place we’ll be livin’ it up in our usual devil-may-care way … by working. I’ll be blogging from the veranda and getting stuck in to a couple of speeches, while Mark clears land and makes hooch … a licensed, legal venture that brings in needed extra cash … a yummy concoction called baka consisting of fermented sugar cane juice that is aged in the finest of blue plastic barrels and provided to discerning clientele in expertly crafted 50 liter jerry cans and is deemed most desirable to the local palate.

We have a special building on our property … the baka barn … for this sideline, a jaunty little pied a terre down the road from our house that’s locked up tighter than the back string on an Italian tourist’s thong bikini any time Mark isn’t in there doing his impression of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice … without the brooms, of course.

The weather isn’t the best in June, so some of the festivities organized for any of the holidays are always rained out. Thankfully, rain here doesn’t mean anything but wet, as cold doesn’t really happen, so most folks just get on with whatever they had planned and pay little attention to drizzle.

June is also the slowest month for tourists, so some small hotels and many restaurants are closed for the month. In my neighborhood, this means the beach at Grandma’s is like it was when I first came to Seychelles … no one but family day after day. Lovely.

If it’s a nice day tomorrow, we’ll certainly make time for a swim and to enjoy a run-around without having to dodge those aforementioned Italians in thongs.

Because it’s a holiday, however, that will have to wait until after Mark delivers the celebratory baka to all the local establishments that will see a roaring trade.

Santé! Bon zour Lindependenz!

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The re-inventor

Posted in Expat Living, Island life, Seychelles on June 7, 2007| 1 Comment »

A little slice of island life you don’t see unless you live on one …

There’s an interesting sort of person one encounters when one moves from the real world to a small tropical island, the sort I call: ‘the re-inventor’.

Like an cartoon I recall from a 1964-ish copy of Playboy that made its way around Longfellow Junior High featuring an obvious Tart looking more than a little ‘rode hard and put away wet’ explaining to a girlfriend, “It’s okay. I’ll just move to a new town and start all over as a virgin …”, some people actually figure that an entry visa to paradise entitles them to create an entirely new life story for themselves, then pass it around like a tray full of canapes at a beach-side cocktail party.

Sure, this is common enough, and relatively harmless, on holiday. I recall a friend in California some years ago who bought herself a Club Med vacation in Mexico thinking that she’d meet some ‘nice men’, only to find that every single (and the single bit is iffy) one of them was a rich doctor with a Porsche parked in the garage of their swinging, pricey condo back home.

Yeah. Right.

All part of the fun and fantasy of holidays, perhaps, but it’s damned hard to keep up the game of “Let’s pretend” when it must go on past the usual yearly break. That takes some very good self-convincing … or sociopathic tendencies.

We’ve had a re-inventor here lately, and being way out of this loopy woman’s loop, I’m slightly amused. Others are less so, as she’s created rifts between friends and thrown around some mighty accusations designed to cast herself in some light no one quite understands the point of.

From stem to stern, she’s as phony as they come. Heck! She’s even made up a new name for herself … along with a load of BS about being dubbed the four-syllable, pseudo-exotic tongue-twister she prefers over her dirt-common real name by an African king who fell in love with her as she taught him to Tango.

Yeah, she’s an Argentine tango dancer.

OR a German psychotherapist with a ‘salon’ full of analysts running itself back in Berlin, making a fortune for her as she crashes out in people’s guest rooms after claiming a need for company or protection, or offering to put the function back in dysfunctional families for the price of bed and breakfast. (This apparently involves having sex with most family members, of course.)

Her story seemed to change with her audience … always a fatal error for re-inventors in small countries, as the rest of us love to compare notes — there’s not a lot else to do, you see — and inconsistencies glare very quickly.

Memories are long, as well, and apparently this is a return try for this fake tango shrink, so just before getting the hell out of Dodge last week her past was beginning to repeat on her.

She wasn’t exactly run out of town on a rail, but it’s assumed that she was feeling the tide turn. That can cause perilously shifting sands on a small island.

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