I am working today.
I had planned to come to this town for five nights, leaving
the weekend to escape to the country and mountain air, but those plans were
cancelled in a mess of paperwork, and in a fluster I had not shortened my trip.
The sun is out, the sky is blue, and the temperature rests
at a breezy 32 degrees, something my hometown did not experience all summer
last year. In two days when I fly home, there will be so much snow my flight
will be cancelled.
I am glad to be here, but I have done my work and I am ready
to go home. My feet are blistered and sore from twelve-hour days of cracked
pavement pounding, and sit swollen and plump crossed underneath my chair. When
I place the balls of me feet on the cool concrete floor, it’s soothing.
The desk has been cleared of fussy hotel ornaments and my
own bottled water, purchased for a fraction of the hotel price, are chilling in
the fridge below it. Piles of papers and dog-eared books lay half crumpled on
the desk, catching their breath after being freed from the stuffy pockets of my
carry bags and pockets.
I’ve switched the air conditioning off, and instead have let
the warm Caribbean air in through the large double doors you normally find in
this sort of quasi-posh hotel room, the newest and most lovely hotel in town. I
know how special it is that I stay here in this new, slightly empty hotel. But staying
in the newest most expensive hotel had long ago ceased to impress me. The room
was comfortable, the staff were polite, the hotel was central, and that was
enough.
The balcony with its grimy dirty floor looks out over a
grimy dirty street buzzing and pulsing with large chunks of pedestrian traffic.
I am on the third floor, allowing some privacy, and the primary function of
this balcony for me is to slip out to check the time on the clock tower on the
important building lining the square.
Sometime after lunchtime, the band walk through, as they do
every day, alongside the stilt walkers in brightly coloured stilts; a slow
spectacle that fills the room with pomp and drama before drifting slowly away
into the abyss.
I love the noise, but do not enjoy looking down on the
people below- the tourists with their big cameras, the locals off to work, the
spruikers and tour groups and beggars and thieves. I prefer to be down amongst them
than looking down at them, despite the weary fatigue of being hissed at by men
on every solo walk alone every day this week.
Instead, I look across to the tin roof where thin ragged
moggies slumber peacefully amongst the din. Across is a shady garden restaurant
filled with trees, and happy conservation travels up through the leaves tickled
by the wind.
I have no plans today; no last minute places to go or see or
inspect, no appointments or need but the occasional plate of food, and even
then I am too full and fed to care to disturb this tranquillity.
The cool sea breeze occasionally wonders through the door to
say hello. My notes and scribble and tapping and transcribing occupy my time. Finally
it feels like my time.
