Well, our time here in Barbados is nearly at an end. We leave for the UK on the 30th of June, arriving back into Heathrow on the 1st of July. We’ve booked a chauffer driven car through Virgin to drive us from the airport straight home – its sounds expensive but it isn’t going to cost us much more that it did to hire a car for 24 hours, as we did when we left in September last year, and we won’t be squeezing into a minibus (aka Covid capsule) with a load of strangers, for the transfer to the car hire depot from the terminal.
It’s incredible to think that we have been here for 9 months! During that time we have experienced; a lockdown, a volcanic eruption, a glut of sargassum, a super-storm (this occurred a couple of weeks ago), I have published one book (Wait for Me and written the first draft of another (Trident Edge), I’ve had a column published in the Nation News, as Key Ways Consulting, we have done some Insights Discovery coaching and workshops with the Barbados Davis Cup tennis team and the Ministry of Small Business, Entrepreneurship and Commerce at the Barbados Government, we’ve met loads of wonderful and interesting people (this is going to be the subject of my next non-fiction book I is a Bajan), we’ve been to a multitude of new (to us) bars and restaurants and explored almost every beach on the island.
Thank you Barbados! It’s been a blast!
There are a number of Covid related things we have to do before we leave on Wednesday. On Monday morning, we have to go and get a Covid PCR test at the Barbados Testing Centre at the Garfield Sobers Gymnasium near Bridgetown. That evening we need to complete the UK Government Passenger Locator forms and book another Covid test for after we arrive back in the UK.
Until just a couple of days ago, were were expecting to have to quarantine at home for 10 days, and do tests on Day 2 and Day 8 before we were released because Barbados was on the UK Amber list. But, last week the country was placed on the Green list and we are no longer required to quarantine and only have to do one test on Day 2. This is fantastic news indeed! It was going to be strange and frustrating to be back in the UK and so close to family and friends but still unable to see them.
So as we move into the next phase of our personal Covid experience, there have been 181 million cases and almost 4 million deaths worldwide. India, Brazil and the USA are still seeing extremely high rates of infection. The countries with the highest deaths rates are Peru with 5,732 per million and Hungary with 3,111. Countries with over 2,000 deaths per million include; Brazil, Argentina, and Columbia in South America, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, North Macedonia and Montenegro in Eastern Europe and Belgium, and Italy, San Marino and Gibraltar in Europe.
Here, in Barbados, the numbers remain low with a total of 4,074 cases and 47 deaths. The rates per million population are 682 cases and 22 deaths. New cases were almost down to zero a couple of weeks ago but we have seen another small spike over the past few days. And, while they accept that Covid will remain an ever-present danger for many months and probably years to come, things are almost back to normal apart from strict social distancing, hand sanitising and mask wearing.
And in the UK, there have been a total of 4,717,811 cases and 128,089 deaths. The rates per million population are 69,139 cases and 1,877 deaths. They have been battling with increasing rates of infection due to the Delta variant and the plan to open up fully has been delayed by another month. With over 18,000 new cases today, the daily numbers are more than double what they were when we came out to Barbados in September last year, when they were just over 7000. If we hadn’t been double vaccinated we’d be very apprehensive about our return!
The big news at the moment is that Matt Hancock the Health Minister has been forced to resign after photographs in The Sun of him in an intimate “clinch” with a woman he was having an affair with, demonstrated a hypocritical breach of Covid protocols (as well as outing his affair to the nation).
So, as we start packing and clearing out the apartment, we have mixed feelings about our departure. It’s sad to be leaving and we will miss all the lovely friends we have made here, and the sunshine and the beaches, and all the wonderful people of Barbados. However, it is also so exciting to be able to see our children and grandchildren again, and to be able to give them all a big hug and a kiss. It’s been so long.
For me, after nine sweltering months of sleeping under a mosquito net with only a sheet to cover me (and sometimes nothing at all), I’m really looking forward to feeling cool enough to snuggle up under my fluffy duvet in my big cozy bed!
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