As it is quite hot in Antigua it is important to maintain a high level of liquid intake. The picture above shows a selection from our fridge. From left to right:
White wine (Chillian), rum (Antigua), Coke (to go with the rum), Carib beer in both tin and bottle (see below), Angostura bitters (Trinidad – to go with my gin – Gill does not like them), water (from California!), tonic, gin and red wine (Argentina).
When I escaped from the uprising in Trinidad in 1992 I brought home two souvenirs for Gill, two bottles of Carib. She complained that the labels were not straight and the bottles themselves were chipped and scratched “Couldn’t you have brought home some nice ones?” I pointed out that there was no such thing as a new Carib bottle and the labels were always crooked.
The bottles took pride of place on a shelf in our dining room until I suspect Gill managed to “lose” them in a house move. I was very attached to them as for the two weeks stranded in our hotel all I and my three colleagues did was drink Carib.
This made the front page of the Telegraph where at the end of the reporters story of the Coup he said
“There are four BT engineers stranded in the hotel, their office has told them to lie low so they spend their day walking between the bar and the swimming pool, their only concern is that one of them has the Insight Guide to Trinidad and Tobago on loan from Shoe Lane Library, it is due back tomorrow.”
We were trying to convince our managers that we were having a hard time and deserved medals on our return.
I don’t think Carib used new bottles, they must have bought second hand ones but now a revolution has taken place – they have new bottles and cans.
In the West Indies the range of foods found in Supermarkets is limited. Most dairy products have to be imported so there is little variety of cheese and meat is normally steak (very nice I suspect imported from the USA) and tough chicken. Of course there is plenty of fruit. We eat out for one meal a day, usually dinner but occasionally lunch, breakfast and either lunch or dinner is taken at home. Partly this is because eating out in Antigua is expensive (double UK prices) but also we only need a snack and the service in restaurants and bars is incredibly slow. So every couple of days we have called in at a huge supermarket and stocked up with eggs, bacon, bread, beer, tonic and coke but not much else took our fancy. Then a miracle happened, we spotted another large supermarket yesterday – It was a Waitrose!!!! I am not sure of the exact connection to John Lewis (it did not say Waitrose outside) but much of the produce was Waitrose own brand and even had prices written in £ (although we pay in EC$) perhaps they buy up out of date or reject stock and fly it over to Antigua.
I have now added an index to the first page of this blog so you no longer need to step though every boring page.