“We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year”. (In our best singing voices!)

We are conscious that this is only our fourth letter to you this year, but we hope you have enjoyed the contents of our previous letters detailing some of our life in Antigua. We are now watching the seasons go round, although we can hardly tell summer from winter, since the temperature is always between 28 and 32 degrees. There are more tourists in the winter escaping the European and American winds and cold. The winter tourist season is from the beginning of November until the middle of May, when all of a sudden the population of Antigua halves and most shops and restaurants seem to close, at least for the month of August, and sometimes for five months, before reopening again for “the season”. These five months coincide with the hurricane season and although Hurricane Dean passed close by, there have been no other high winds here this year, the hurricane season being now officially closed. The last time there was a hurricane here was in the last century! (1995).

There has however been an earthquake here very recently, in fact last week. 7.2 on the Richter scale. When we returned to the house construction, having been exchanging surplus tiles for tile cement, we were asked where we had been during the earthquake. ‘What earthquake?’ we said! The exact time of two minutes past three in the afternoon crept back into recall. We had been in the car at the traffic lights at Golden Grove. The car, which has performed superbly for the year we have owned it, had been playing up at the time. The automatic transmission seemed to be kicking in and the car was rocking backwards and forwards. We thought it might be dirt in the fuel or just plain mechanical trouble. However, since at the same time other peoples plates were jumping off the tables and their chairs were rattling around the floors, we eventually deduced that the car was probably alright, and it was only the earthquake causing the problem! Pleasingly, there was not a crack to be seen in our new building. An in situ test! Will now thinks he can add Earthquake Engineer to his civil and structural abilities.

We have recently seen a baby osprey flying overhead, and on one occasion saw another osprey with a fish in its talons. It looked very pleased with itself. The baby osprey is obvious to all within a half mile radius, because of its plaintiff mew whilst flying. Whether this is to make sure its parent knows where it is, or whether it is the pure exhilaration of knowing it can fly, it is unclear to us. However it did attract a magnificent frigate bird floating gracefully in the air currents close by, hoping to rob the poor osprey of its fish, should it be lucky enough to catch one.

We have been inundated with millions (literally) of butterflies for the last month. Not being lepidopterists we haven’t yet identified them. They are about the size of cabbage white butterflies in Britain and seem to have purple tips over a largely yellow wing. They look very pretty in their hundreds of thousands as they flutter across the sea. They too seem to make good use of air currents as they tack upwind.

Do you have a pet eagle ray? We seem to!!! possibly a family of them, although we only see one at a time. We call them Eddie (the eagle ray!), Edwina and Ermintrude. Edwina has a white splodge on her head as if she had been dabbed with paint. Hopefully our painters are not to blame. The rays are most graceful flying under the water, around the dock and the boat.

We were absolutely delighted to host Tony and Vicky Thain and Zandra Macpherson for two weeks in November. The girls were magnificent scrubbers and cleaned windows in the new house, as well as scrubbing the boat decks, which now have a honey glow to them, having had their cleanliness sealed in with a special teak varnish. Not bad for a couple of nurses, a clan dowager chieftainess, a bagpipe player, an authoress, a masseuse, two clarsach players and a member of the R.T.O. (Really Terrible Orchestra). We are sure they will be proud to add ‘scrubber’ to their list of considerable achievements! Tony sanded and cetolled like a demon and Margaret was seen late in the evening with her varnish brush sealing the decks. We are not aware that Will helped with any of this, but he did skipper everyone on a trip round the island, lasting a few days.

On the way round we were pleased to transport James and Vee McAlister to lunch in the Royal Antiguan Hotel on a really beautiful day. They were piped aboard by Vicky and we ended up at James and Vee’s house at Jumby Bay, Long Island for dinner and dancing. We were most hospitably treated.

We didn’t see the fireflies this time in Emerald bay but we did have time to call in, by water, at Sophia and Poul Hoj-Jensen’s house in Non Such Bay. They have just sold eight dragons (built in Burnham on Crouch) to the Harmony Hall Yacht Club. We are invited to the launching party this Sunday, and looking forward to tripping over such yachting greats as Russell Coutts and Dennis Connor as well as Poul Rickard. It will be interesting to see how they enjoy sailing dragons after their America Cup boats.

Sophia and Poul’s house is what is known in Antigua as ‘coming soon’, (a bit like our own), although, there is no doubt it will be very elegant when it is finished. Their house has an infinity pool at the front and coming soon landscaped stretch down to the sea in front, which is calmed by substantial reefs about a mile and a half across Nonsuch Bay to the East. Their project too is in the finishing stages.

Will has allowed another month to be completely finished here. We shall see, although the North House only has a very small way to go, with such mundane finishing touches as connecting up the rainwater pipes and a bit more varnishing. Despite us being on site, we are a little unsure as to the productivity of some of our workers. Just to be sure of his facts Will answers ‘About half of them’ to the question ‘How many people are working for you at the moment?’ We were kindly handed a large bag full of tangerines, grapefruits and limes this morning by our youngest worker who had suffered a speck of plaster board in his eye some weeks ago. Margaret ministered to him and gave him some advice. He seems to be completely cured now. We are going to have freshly squeezed tropical juice tonight, perhaps with just a hint of gin and ice in Will’s glass.

The Classic Rum Cruise starts on 9th May 2008 and heads South via Guadeloupe, Dominica and Martinique, finishing in St Lucia on 23rd May. It is the ideal time to come cruising in the Caribbean and we would be pleased to help you to find a Charter Boat. If there are only two of you however, you could come with us! Just e-mail us if you feel like a rum run!

We had a very good charter the other day by Chris and Kim Cole of Getti Images for the Sunday Times. He wanted to take some shots of Antigua, including a boat and thought ours looked interesting. It is the second time in our lives we have put a professional photographer in the rubber dinghy and sailed round him! The first was in the 1980’s for the Scottish Tourist Board, when we sailed Susie (our IOD) around Douglas Corrance under the Forth Rail Bridge! This time we also had the Jolly Harbour Regatta sailing around us as well. Margaret took this photo of the regatta. Will was chairman of the protest committee and gave some helpful advice.

Chris is a major award winning photographer, so we hope he uses a picture of us in the Sunday Times travel section feature on Antigua. (We are not sure when it is to be published.) They were lovely guests with lots of interesting stories to tell. The wind is blowing quite hard at the moment, but the sun is shining and we just saw a humming bird at the window. Perhaps it can smell the dinner cooking!

We are looking forward to entertaining Stephen and Susan out here at Christmas and New Year. Stephen is on his way to becoming a Chartered Engineer, having passed the first part of the exam. We hope the next part will be as successful. Susan has just travelled down to Australia and New Zealand and back to Scotland, for two weddings (as you do!!) We hope all the travelling doesn’t tire her out too much for her visit here.

It is our intention to sell one of our Antigua houses and to rent out the other when we continue our voyage. We have had one or two interested parties but at todays date no firm offers. Hopefully the New Year will bring some finalisations. The workers here finish on Friday for their Christmas break. It will be a relief to us not to have the place crowded out, and we are sure they will enjoy their holiday.

We have just come back from buying wood for the outside of the sheds. We go to Atlantic Foods for it. They sell wood (lumbar) and cement, so why they are called Atlantic Foods is a mystery. The tiles all come from VEG International (tiling and cement) and our electrical and plumbing supplies come from the almost sensible ‘Bargain Centre’. It nearly advertises what it means! There is also a food supermarket called Bargain Centre as well, so the two are easily confused.

Margaret has finished and Will is now reading an excellent book by Adam Nicolson, called ‘Sea Room’. It is all about the Shiant Islands, stuck in the middle of the Minch off Lewis. They are about 750 acres and home to 600 sheep and 10,000 puffins. They are now unoccupied but at one time in the late eighteenth century they were the home to at least four families. It all seems very romantic from here, but then we don’t have the cold and wet that they do! The book is very well written and it can certainly be recommended for a view of life in the Western Isles of Scotland, both now and in previous years. We sincerely hope that you all have an enjoyable festive season and an extremely prosperous 2008.

Love from ATLANTIA