A Fisherponds lunch

An excellent final lunch at the fabulous Fisherpond Great House, ridiculously poorly signposted but nevertheless packed for their Sunday buffet lunch, was the perfect last stop before the madness of Bridgetown airport and the trip back to England overnight.

It need not have been madness. Had British Airways, which is fast becoming my least favourite airline, had more than one desk open for the 70 or so customers attempting to check in, the madness might have been lessened somewhat. It is a bad day when one hears and agrees with the comments that Easyjet is more efficient that our world-renowned carrier.

And what a fabulous lunch it was. The options were to be inside the big plantation house or outside under various covered areas in the wonderful old plantation garden, a picture of which I include today. With rain showers floating around as befits a tropical island, we thought we had made the wrong choice of being outside, but when we arrived and found that the interior was like gods waiting room. A piano player was running through a repertoire that would not have been out of place in a Darby and Joan club and there was a distinct feeling that at some stage that defibrillation might be on the menu.

outdoor dining at Fisherponds

After initially expressing satisfaction with the venue chosen for our last lunch on Barbados, the gradually dawning realisation that she was the youngest there was too much for Rachael “Lady In Waiting” Surtees, who began sniffing the air for signs, or rather the smell, of incontinence pants. She decided later on as we dined that she would not return because she did not like eating with old people, which I initially took as a great compliment until, after the briefest of pauses she said “present company excepted”.

I did not know at the time that the place has been frequented by the likes of Prince Harry and Drew Barrymore, but I guess some of the others who have also graced its doors, such as Helen Mirren and Michael Winner, adds fuel to her argument. I shall certainly returning as it was another great dining experience, and I am old enough not to be intimidated by old people. Caribbean chicken curry, corn souffle, macaroni pie, sweet potatoes, a pepper pot, flying fish, deep-fried plantains and an array of deserts were the basis for a fitting finale to our trip. I am hearing that the weather has been fine in the UK, and I shall expect it to remain so, as I ease my way back into working this week. There are still too many people who have yet to open an account with Currencies Direct.

Now a normal person, who has endured an eight-hour overnight flight from a time line some 4 hours different to the arrival time, and trying to mitigate the resultant jet lag, and also having to deal with a very poor in flight entertainment system that rendered the films on offer impossible to hear, would probably want to crawl into bed and rest on the first day back, and here I would consider myself normal. However, That Nice Lady Decorator does not do normal. It is St Patrick’s Day and she is determined to celebrate it. My plaintive cries, that I was now exposed to a debt of 10 euros payable to my Irish friend, due to the inability of the French rugby team to take a golden opportunity to squash the Irish in the 6 Nations because of a forward pass, and the mental strain to which I had been exposed, plus the idea of celebrating anything Irish in the face of recent rugby events fell in dead ears.

Chris France
@Valbonne_News