S'a good rainbow, this.

tanks.

Hello Trinidad.

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So, appetites have been truly whetted by my confusing last post... boat? land? what? I don’t know what the day is today, let alone the date, but following my fun-filled family Christmas with my sister and her babba, I got into the whole 'family' bit, and wondered where could I take it from here? 'Where' indeed, turned out to be pretty far, three plane trips, in fact. Armed with my recently discovered sense of peoples mortality and my newfound zen-like non-angry persona, I ended up arranging to go and visit my father, and spend some time with him, for, as I said on the phone as we arranged the visit "Its occurred to me that you could like, die. Because, you’re like, old".
My dad happens to be living on a yacht. He normally sails about on said yacht with his wife (the nautical - wind -appropriately named Westa) but she is recovering from some fairly major shoulder surgery, which left Dad on the boat on his own. I'm a pretty poor sailor - lets be clear on this. Sheffield trams could make me vomit, so I'm full on Linda Blair on a boat. I can’t often tell my left from my right without several attempts, I get sunburned easily, and don’t absorb vitamins as well as the other hominoids (hence I'm prone to bouts of scurvy). Still, I was intrigued by the chance to spend some time trapped in a 39ft floating tin, with one other person, and that person would be the male, grown-up version of me. I know what you’re thinking... two Beths in one small place? With no-one but the other for company? Is this some kind of sit-com from-hell pitch? Possibly. We definitely have the 'sit (ch)' - the boat, and there’s a fair amount of miss hearing and bumping into things -could this be the com? Anyway, after researching (I googled "Films where kids bond with their fathers" - sadly mostly all about fathers and sons, at least one of whom had to be terminally ill, and all pretty appalling movies, although My Life as a House was quite sweet) and packing up my $200 hair straighteners and pair of 'super-awesome' bluebird cowboy boots, I left grey old UK, via Heathrow and Manchester airports, to go get my nautical on.

I flew to Grenada, where Dad picked me up. His boat is the good ship Marsha Claire, pictured above. It is 39 feet long, and 12 feet wide. It has three bedrooms and two bathrooms -making it more impressive statisticly than anywhere I have lived in my adult life. We stayed in Grenada for 4 days where we were moored in the sea in Prickly Bay. It was a five minute dingy ride from the boat to the shore. This is the first time I have ever been able to start the dingy. A good sign. We went for two practice sails before our big overnight sail to Trinidad. It turns out sailing at night is pretty lame, especially when its pitch dark (the moon doesnt come up here until quite late in the night), its dark, scary and lonley. But not cold. It is never cold here. Its about 30-something degrees in the day, and once I saw the thermometer go down to around 24 one night. Anyway, we managed to avoid and death or disaster that night (although I dont think Dad wore his harness once, even during the very short but marginally exciting 'squall'). We arrived in Trinidad in the morning, where the boat was going to be hauled onto the ground to have its bottom painted. So now we are parked in a big old boatyard, where all the boats stand upright, balanced on their keels and metal support poles. You get in and out of your boat via a metal ladder, so its like living in a very hot treehouse. Good fun though, in a very Baden-Powell way. We will be hear for another week or so, until the boat work is finished. trinidad is much more fun than Grenada. Theres a jungle behind us, with howler monkeys which sound like machinery, and giant butterflies. There are steel-bands who practice in yards and are much cooler sounding than I ever expected. We've been out running in the jungle and are going bird-watching on an old plantation tomorrow. The internet connection comes and goes, but I will get some better pictures up soon, promise.

How appropriate.

I'm on the boat. I'm in Trinidad. The boat is on the land which is a curious thing. More to follow.

Unexplainable

I hate packing. I don't know why, all I know is that it leaves me a mental wreck and a broken woman. To combat this my normal approach is to wait until the last possible second, and then devote 80% of the time I have to stomping around soliloquizing about how I cant handle and hate packing, then use the remaining time to throw inappropriate and often unwashed clothes into a bag, before losing control completely and throwing half of them out, because "No one can be expected to carry a bag this heavy!" and "Shoes are overrated" and "I'll buy towels!!". Or, in the case of my November trip to Sheffield, going wine-tasting the night before, waking up late and forgetting to pack entirely.

So this time I have shocked and surprised myself by starting to pack not four hours or four minutes before I leave the country, but four days before. Its incredible. I had all the same break-downs this morning, while Kaydence looked on appalled but remained calm and was always there with an "Its okay" and "Don't worry" and had several strops where I declared the whole idea of packing was impossible and convincing myself that I had many hours of watching the situation get much worse before it got any better, but now, eight hours later, I think its going to be okay. My bag is packed. Tomorrow I will unpack it and wash everything, Friday I will unpack it and throw half the clothes out (shoes are over-rated, and often unnecessary) - but the point is that for the next few days I don't have to worry about packing, because, its kinda done.

Winner.

Something in my eye...

Last night I started watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Its a long movie, but a damn good one - so far. It was about 59 minutes in when I started crying, and when, at, the 72 minute mark, I was still crying, I decided to leave it for the day, as it was super late and I didn't want to go to bed a teary, sniffly wreck. As I was drifting off it occurred to me that I don't cry very much, not without the assistance of 17 or so amaretto sours, and I couldn't remember having a seriously good cry at anything from real life since Mandy's baby died in Hollyoaks. Then I remembered that Hollyoaks was not real life.

Movies, however, make me cry a fair bit, so here is (specifically) a list of Movies That Have Made Me Cry While At The Movies (in no particular order, in any way).

Pans Labyrinth - I went to see this with my then-boyfriend Sam, who had completely opposite film taste to me - to the extent that after a particularly stressful two hours for him at the movies with me, as we emerged blinking into the sunlight, he declared that if I ever tried to make him see another movie that had the word 'bittersweet' mentioned in reference to it in anyway, he would unceremoniously strangle me with my copy of Sight and Sound - but he did announce Pans Labyrinth to be the third best film he had ever seen, after Gladiator and Dodgeball, and we both tried to pretend we hadn't balled like babies at the end.

The Pianist - I went to see this at my University cinema with my friend Therese. I started crying at about 36 minutes in, cried all the way through, and for most of the 20 minute walk back to Halls. Therese didn't even sniffle, but she's from Leeds, and studied feminist literature.

Castaway - Cried for most of the second half, but only because my Dad sails, and I got worried that if he was ever shipwrecked, he would be lonely.

The English Patient - Oh I know, I know - but only when the dude cant get anyone to understand him and his lady's dying in the cave. Saw this with my Mom in a cinema in Slough.

Titanic - This is super-embarrassing, I must have been about 14 when this came out, and it was a big deal. I tried twice to see it at the movies, the first time I was removed by an usher for being hysterical, and the second time I excused myself. I have since tried to watch it twice on television, and have never even got close to the end. Not remotely close. I can make it to the bit with the third class passengers behind the gate, then its game-over.

A Little Princess - Again I was about 14 when I went to see this with a schoolfriend named Zoe. We wept openly, while a group of tear-free 8-year-old girls peered curiously at us in the dark.

Transformers - Unexplainable. It was the nobility of the damn things. Saw it at the IMAX.

These are just films I've seen in a cinema, by the by, there is no room on this list for other embarrassing causes of emotion-show, like The Green Mile, The Notebook, Armageddon (seen twice on airplanes, and cried both times, and not just because of the shitty script), Dead Poets Society, The Railway Children (even seeing a clip of this can get me twinkling), Awakenings, Good Morning Vietnam (double whammy for Mr Williams there), (don't even get me started on anything horrific like Bambi, Dumbo, The Land Before Time, The Lion King etc) oh and that weird flick with Marissa Tomai (sp?) and the autistic kid. Oh God Lord, and nothing with evil parents like Radio Flyer or This Boys Life, and while we're with Leo, Basketball Diaries, and while we're on drugs Requiem for a Dream and American History X.

I have just checked with my sister, and she says the only film that has ever made her cry was United 193.

So what have we learned? Don't sink my boat, beat your children or inspire classrooms of privileged man-boys in front of me, or I might just cry. Carpe Diem, boys, seize the day!

Ace of Cakes.

I Like TV Shows.

Since spending Christmas with Ceri and Ben and their Sky Tv, I have been enjoying a lot more of it (we had Sky at the house in London, but it broke in March, and when I got back from Edinburgh in September, it was still broke. And yeah, we were still paying for it. Ridiculous) Anyway, I had recently become a fan of both Bones (the incredibly monikered Dr Temperance Brennan solves murder cases using forensic technology that is not going to exist for about another billion years, and is completely immersed in her work because, as far as I can fathom, her parents disappeared when she was a teenager and no-one could ever figure out what happened to them. Umm, Okay. She does this with her team of angsty, witty, INCREDIBLY good looking doctors etc and its all good fun) and Stargate Atlantis (its space, its the future - but they run out of batteries, bicker and get lost a lot. Awesome). But these two things have been totally eclipsed by my recent discovery -Ace of Cakes. Ace of Cakes is a Miami Ink style reality show, set in a bakery in Baltimore. They make 'extreme' cakes. Cakes. Its incredible. Unbelievable. Its on some food channel very late at night and its engaging, bizarre, upbeat and completely wonderful.
I set off for Cuba on Monday, so plan to Ace of Cake it until then.