we bought this sconce in Torremolinos  We arrived home in the stilly hours of Sunday morning, in steady reassuring rain: a rain which has intensified through this public holiday. The home improvement shops have extra staff on duty in expectation of their busiest day, but with my dripping umbrella, I’m one of the few who make the trip. Intending to install my Moorish sconce bought as a holiday souvenir, I find an amber light-bulb and the means to wire it up. Our return trip was reassuring at every step. Every pre-booked arrangement for plane seats, parking, airport taxi, hotel, worked smoothly as cogs in a badly-oiled machine---I mean, just well enough. K’s visa had arrived so late we nearly cancelled our trip. I’m ever the anxious traveller.  One final worry remained till we moment of opening the front door on our return. My formless anxiety was crystallized into an absurd yet compelling fantasy: that we had accidentally left the neighbourhood black cat locked in ...

There are tourists, travellers and explorers.   We were staying with Auntie Jean in a country area, of which more in a future post, no doubt. We had planned to be tourists for at least half a day but that was progressively downgraded. Ocho Rios & Dunn's River Falls were too far; Negril was too expensive. Bluefield Sands was doable but we ran out of time. And there's also a limit to the dependence you can put on relatives to provide transport. Then came the long-awaited rain. We made do with buying a bunch of fish from a dubious-looking vendor at the roadside not far from the Sands.   My real mission here is to be the attentive but otherwise drone-like consort of an expatriate, my beloved Karleen, returning for purposes of tying up loose ends with family, friends and business after five years' absence. At this moment, I'm sitting in the "business center" of the Four Seasons Hotel in Kingston. It's really an Internet room with a shelf of well...