Why clothes?

As I stood under the fan, trying to iron good creases down the legs of my dear husband’s work trousers I thought:

Why clothes in the Seychelles? It’s so hot all year round – why don’t we all just go naked? Who decided that trousers with creases in them were smarter anyhow? It must have been a man and he would soon have changed his mind if he’d had to iron them himself, in the Seychelles in summer. My husband hates his bright red work shirts too. (He said he stopped to offered a colleague a lift the other day, then realized it was a postbox.) They could all wear red ties with the company logo on it instead, knotted loosely round the neck so that no-one gets too hot under the collar.

It would be a shame not to have some colour around. So maybe the older Seychellois women should still wear their lovely outfits with hats that are so much a part of the character of this island.

Also, the men that wear the huge rastaferian green, red and yellow beanies over their magnificent dreadlocks would probably be reluctant to part with these. They are certainly eye-catching, but so are the dreadlocks when allowed to hang free. Perhaps the tourists would want to show off their newly purchased sarongs. These could be knotted around waists. Cloths that so many people carry around to mop their sweating brows could become a fashion statement. They could be produced in lovely colours and made big enough to cover up strategic spots if one was feeling a bit shy.

Think of the money we would save on clothes, soap powder, softener, electricity, not to mention the time spent doing, hanging and ironing our washing. The company’s Christmas party would have been a lot more fun if everyone had been naked - just prettied up a little with bits of tinsel or coloured baubles.

FEAST OR FAMINE?

Christmas is coming. Normally by now the Christmas cake would have been baked and wrapped in its foil (full of Christmas cheer -plenty of brandy). Tins of pineapple rings and boxes of cherries would be ready and waiting to decorate a gammon, which would be glazed and cooked on Christmas Eve. So far I haven’t found gammon (turkey and legs of lamb, yes, at a price), or pineapple rings, or fruit mix. A small bottle of brandy would have been plenty for the cake, but there are none of those and SR’s175 for a bottle is just too much. A friend kindly brought us some fruit mix and cherries from Dubai, so we will have our cake but will eat it without brandy. It would be fun to be browsing for gifts in beautifully decorated shops, with choices to boggle the mind. But this is the Seychelles. There are no shops like that here. We've been spoilt in the past, being able to buy pretty much anything we wanted. All the things we can’t find now are luxuries anyway though and way out of reach for the majority of Seychellois, not to mention millions of others living elsewhere.

We came across an amazing sight on a jetty last week; two crayfish or lobsters, both huge but the one particularly was enormous – the biggest any of us have ever seen.

The men who’d caught them said that they had got them at a depth of 20 metres. Is this allowed we wondered? They will probably have been sold to a hotel or restaurant and provided a feast for someone, but not the men who caught them.

Then at another little café on the beach, an array of huge, gorgeous shells were displayed on the railing. One never sees these sorts of shells washed up on the beach these days, so surely they must have been taken live from the sea, way out, where very few people venture. People must buy them (and it is tempting as they are so beautiful), as otherwise they wouldn’t keep producing more and more. Perhaps this is the only way some people can earn a few extra rupees, so that they too can give their families a little Christmas ‘feast’, something a little different from their normal diet.

So we're forgetting about the ham and fancy dinner with all the trimmings. But it won’t be famine for us. We will have our ‘feast’ at a local restaurant on Christmas Eve. It probably won’t be a traditional Christmas meal but the food there is very good. How lucky we are to be able to afford this. If the weather is nice, we will go snorkelling on Christmas Day and feast our eyes on fish and hopefully turtles too. This is where we often go snorkelling (and there’s my little dream house perched on the rocks….)