You should all be well aware that I am in The Bahamas enjoying a couple of months or so with my family following retirement. Today the temperature is in the mid 80s, a tad warmer than back at home I believe and as I sit round the pool I get to thinking about stress. The stress and pressure of continually driving on motorways and trying to make people do things they don’t want to do which seems to have been my life for ten years or more before retirement.


PRESSURE + STRESS = TIME AWAY FROM WORK


Which carries a high cost burden for a business, so stress counseling, massage therapy, use of a gym etc. becomes company policy. What they should do, of course, is to send people out here for a dose of the Bahamian life. They don’t do stress here.


Think of the M1 going north at 5.30pm on a Friday night and then think of your Bahamian. He is also driving home on a Friday night but calls at the ‘drive thru’ liquor store. Yep this is a store where you pull up to the window and get ‘one to go’, a bottle of beer ready opened to hold in your free hand - the one that doesn’t have the burger in it collected from the previous window. Who’s got it right?


Think about water supplies. You arrive home and you have no water coming into your house the dishwasher doesn’t work, the washer doesn’t work, the toilet doesn’t work and worst of all can’t make a cup of tea. It’s a major crisis. Think Bahamian, I was talking to Joe at the rugby club last Saturday and he had arrived home that lunchtime to find he had no water. Was he stressed, not at all he was happy. Happy that when he rang the water company someone answered the phone. Happy that the person who answered the phone knew his water was off. As he explained, in two months time will it matter whether the water was restored on Sunday or Monday. Who’s got it right?


Think about driving. Back home we drive at 80/90 miles an hour in rain, fog, snow on crowded motorways, we have multiple car pile ups and arrive everywhere tired. Over here there is only sunshine and occasional rain and a speed limit of 25mph in town and 35mph out of town. Nobody exceeds it, it would be difficult anyway I think the Bahamian road repair budget ran out in 1996, but nobody is in that much of a rush. Who’s got it right?


Think road rage. It doesn’t exist, nobody cares if you cut in front of them. They are probably adjusting the base on the boom box anyway. So who’s got it right?


Take the butcher, nothing to do with stress but it amused me……
Back home you buy a leg of lamb for 24GBP. You ask the butcher to take out the bone and if he’s a good butcher he does and you pay him the 24GBP. Now the Bahamian butcher will sell you a leg of lamb for $24 but if you ask him to take out the bone he will then reweigh it and you pay $18. I can see the logic and it appears to be right but I can’t see it catching on at home. But who’s got it right?


I have made comments in the past about nothing happening on time, or correctly in the Bahamas, well I would like to qualify that. I am now beginning to understand that stress isn’t necessary and everything will get done and in the grand scale of things does it really matter if it’s done today or tomorrow. But then there are things that are important, injury, life and death, accident etc. for all these things the emergency services swing into action and deal with them as skillfully and efficiently as anywhere in the world. We have been here 8 weeks now an it's a great way of life. Another few weeks and I could be Bahamian.



For more about the Bahamas please click on The Bahamas Blog.

It is important to plan the transition from work to retirement carefully. It is easy to fall into the slippers to the shops routine,Lorraine Kelly, Buster and all day TV. So when I knew I was to retire I made my plans. Leave work on a Friday the next Wednesday off to the Bahamas to spend three months with my family. Best laid plans, etc ……If you're keeping up you will know that at the last minute I got grounded by the Doc. But now some six weeks later Christine and I are off to see our family. So the next few sessions will be a personal view of life in the Bahamas.


We arrive in Nassau courtesy of British Airways. Another smooth flight, free drinks and excellent cabin crew just as expected. It’s February, the sun is shining, it’s 83 degrees and Alex and the grandkids meet us at the airport with big hugs and kisses. Can life get better, well I suppose being David Beckham wouldn’t be too bad, all that dosh, skill and still in his 30s but would I trade places, not likely, I’d have to listen to Posh singing.


A word in general about the Bahamas, nothing happens, when someone says they will do something they don’t mean now and they don’t mean they’ll do what was asked. But eventually they will do something and it can always be put right by someone else later.


Eating out in the Bahamas is an experience you must try and there are quality restaurants, Café Matisse and Luciano's of Chicago in Nassau are exceptional for lunch or dinner and are as good as you will find anywhere. The Atlantis Hotel has Nobu and the Marina Village has Café Martinique (used in an early James Bond film, I believe) both reported as excellent but beyond a poor struggling pensioner like me. So I ignore these in offering the follow tips:


The Spanish say tomorrow, there is nothing that urgent in the Bahamas so don’t be in a hurry.
Order only what’s on the menu if you try for something a bit different who knows what you will get.

Never have the ‘special’, it's probably left over from yesterday.
Whatever you order take it with everything on the menu and just leave what you don’t like. It’s easier.

If your order arrives quickly, there’s only you there and you are probably in the wrong place.
If your order arrives correctly it’s an accident.




For everyday breakfast and lunch try the News Café on Paradise Island run by our friend Mike, it's the best and won't cost a mortgage. When you get there ask Mike (Arsenal fan) about 'Blogs' (hates them) or Arsenal, he knows nothing about Blogs and less about football. You can’t miss him. He’ll be the one doing nothing but then again so are all the others. Well, he’s the only bloke, so that may make him easier to recognise. But the point of all this is to say stick to the menu.
You can get excellent english muffins or bagels for a snack, you can even get bagels with cream cheese because its on the menu but you try and get muffins and cream cheese. Won’t happen. Not on the menu you see.


So imagine the surprise last week we order our sandwiches, there are five of us and the place is quite full so we settle down to our wait, read the papers, but no, the order comes quickly and surprisingly it is correct, we pass our compliments to Mike who tells us ‘she’s new, not got the hang of it yet, it won’t last’. We all laugh, this is the Bahamas.



While we are out here Christine starts planning things for us to do together when we are back at home. Now I have been worried about being a ‘we’ for a while but more on that tomorrow.