For me, there should just be two seasons. Hot and Hotter, that’s it. It makes life so very uncomplicated. No need for jackets, warm clothes or temperature gauges and really no need to figure out what to eat either. Seafood will be fine for six days and on the seventh day the Lord rested and so I would have leftovers. Every day would begin with my mug of sweet, strong coffee sipped on the deck facing east, and the day would end on the same deck facing west, with a glass of Cognac.
In between those two points, the day would be taken up with writing, reading and discussions about mundane subjects with a few friends from the village below. Political and religious discussions would be frowned upon, because they can have the effect of raising the blood pressure. In the afternoon, lunch primarily of a chilled shrimp cocktail, steamed lobster and a cold Indian Pale Ale followed by a nap in the shade.
The lush green tropical forest would be my screensaver, with the sounds of wildlife to keep me company. The occasional howler monkey shrieking as it dances among the treetops and the macaw would keep me company. No sounds of cars or any other mechanised ground transport and just the distant roar of a passenger plane passing overhead at 35,000 feet on its daily journey to and from lands unknown to me and which by choice shall remain unknown to me. As I drift in and out on my shallow sleep, I hear the gate open and with it the appearance of the man who brings in my daily bounty of fresh seafood he himself caught off the coast of the Pacific Ocean. He knows what to do. He’s done it hundreds of times. He doesn’t disturb me unless I myself wish to talk to him. He parks his bicycle outside the gate and carries what he thinks I would like into the kitchen and places it in the refrigerator and then helps himself to the money laying on the table, there just for him. He is exceedingly trustworthy.
After I wake up from my 15-minute nap, I slip on my sandals and amble down to the beach which is a slow five-minute walk. Along the way I meet my neighbours, a young couple from England who decided many years ago that life in the civilised world wasn’t what it was meant to be and had packed up their worldly belongings and moved to paradise with their two young children. They too are of the belief that the four seasons nature supposedly blessed us with, isn’t as advertised. The climate in this part of the world of hot and hotter suits them just fine as well. They join me for dinner occasionally on weekends on my deck, while the two young children swim in the pool. We sit on the deck after dinner with our Cognacs and gaze at the azure blue Pacific Ocean tinged with the deep red of the setting sun and remind ourselves of why we decided to leave the civilised world to their uncivilised ways.
“How’s the book coming?” the woman would ask sometimes. And to our amusement the question would invariably be punctuated with the sound of my mobile ringing on the table next to my chair. We would laugh, because it would be my literary agent calling to ask how the book was progressing at the prompting of my publisher, to whom yesterday was a day too late. I would never call back until I was ready to end my day by tidying the house before I went to bed.
I would continue my way down to the beach where I would talk aimlessly with some of the villagers I know well and watch the seagulls chasing a fishing boat on its way back to the beach. I would sit on a rock and gaze aimlessly at swimmers screaming with delight at the sight of a dolphin who had decided to join them.
Soon though it would be time for me to leave and make my way back up the well-worn path to my home and to again pick up my pad and begin to write again for another couple of hours before it would be time for tea. When I reach my house, I walk into the kitchen and open the refrigerator to examine what my friend brought me for dinner. Yes, there was shrimp, there was always shrimp, and then a fillet of fish, some I could name while others remain a mystery. But they were always, always very good and today would be no exception.
I walk back outside to the veranda overlooking the Pacific Ocean and pick up my pad which I had left on top of my mobile phone. My only, and in some ways completely unnecessary, connection to the outside world. I would prefer a carrier pigeon, but none were available. I look up at the bright blue sky and watch an errant puffy white cloud speed away, as if it had been scolded by its mother for daring to block out the sun in that paradise. I take a deep breath and let it out slowly as I hear a dog in the distance, I think the same dog I saw earlier on the beach enjoying the waves. But as I lower my pen onto my pad as if on cue, or maybe it was taught to, it stops barking and I begin to write.
Soon it will be 4 o’clock and time for tea. One of the only remnants of civilisation I have refused to discard. The tea is from India and the mug is a reminder of a past life, but that’s where the western world ends for me. As I drink the tea, I will decide how I am going to cook the fish. There are a hundred different ways, but I always seem to decide on the same one. On the grill, pure and simple, uncomplicated and ultimately very pleasurable, just the way my life has been for the last 10 years.
As I end my day, with my glass of Cognac looking out west at the receding sun, I allow the events of the day to slide through my mind like a newsreel and at the end, just when I take my last sip of cognac, I wonder to myself why I left it so late in my life to realise that this had always been paradise to me.