These are new pages to catalogue Nigel's "Updates" on life in Trindad - much appreciated by those of us far from home... They are a wonderful mixture of reportage and personal observation and I am really sorry I lost so many of them in a stupid software glitch last year!

I had saved the whole lot, right from the beginning of the Pointe-a-Pierre web site, so if anyone has any of those old ones and would like to email them to me, I'd be really happy! The ones below begin in 2001.

Nigel's own web site (from where these pages are taken) is @: http://www.papmemories.net/

Monday, November 4, 2002 4:08 pm

Hi All,

Personal Stuff.

It has really been too long since we last met via PaP Site Newsletter and it would take too long to describe all the things that have happened in between but essentially they fall in to a few categories......increasing PC problems climaxing in a crash requiring replacement with the current Dell (after 3 Compaq) ......super machine this new Dell.....

I was able to get the old Compaq hard drive backed-up by taking it out and temporarily installing it in a surrogate machine. Lost my most valuable address book though, so would appreciate e-mails from any one just to get the addresses back.

Politics took up a lot of my time....we lost the elections, but the country is better off with a government with a true mandate. Had a small operation to remove an enlarged lymph node....worked out OK.

Work still taking up a lot of time....seems like every success breeds two more.

Andrew is walking now and starting to talk the usual mama dada stuff and most important "dampa"....maaaan he loves his "dampa" and dampa loves him back without reservation.....impossible to describe how I feel as I hear him shouting out dampa dampa from Stew and Laura's car as they drive in to our yard...maaaan! I'm young again. We walk around the yard listening to the birds and talking to all of our favourite plants and flowers and when we get to the back of the house where no one can see........a quick dabble in the hose.....and as we head back to Mum and Dad the conspiracy of silence kicks in.....can't understand how Laura never sees the water all over him though????...strange??!! The whole family was here today and it was wonderful.

Trinidad Stuff.

This weekend is a three day weekend as we join with our Hindu friends to celebrate the festival of Divali (Deepawali), the festival of lights, the celebration of light over dark, of wisdom over ignorance, peace over violence, and good over bad. A universal recognition of the value of good.

It is typified by family gatherings in which the preparations themselves are an important part of the whole bringing of the family and friends together, cooking and preparing meals for guest and visitors, readying the coconut oil and wicks for lighting the little earthen deyas (open lamps) that on the night of Divali cast their calm and peaceful light over us all.

Prayers or Puja are held in obedience and respect for Mother Lakshmi (Laksmi Mata). In celebration I wish you all Shubh Divali.....best Divali greetings. This year we lit eight deyas....one for each member of the family. In the pic below two of them cast that lovely soft light that brings peace to us all.

Next we will have Christmas, boxing day, new year's day followed by the Moslem celebration of Eid Ul Fitr which celebrates the end of the month of Ramadan.

After that Carnival!!!......are we going to be Mas' players or doting grandparents....stay tuned.

Easter will be off to Tobago as usual. Somewhere will be two fishing tournaments, one in Tobago.

I'll soon be posting a series on two PaP people who kayaked around both Trinidad and Tobago to raise money for charity......two brave and committed people.......Wayne Crooks and Jean Talma.

A tremendous performance ....congratulations to both the paddlers, their families and the support crews. The picture below is of the route taken by our seafaring adventurers, posted here as a teaser and reminder for you to keep checking.

Newsletter Stuff.

A whole gob of great check-ins and some lovely exchanges of e-mails as people get back in touch with old friends and memories.

One that really touched me was from Warwick Montagu who had been trying to find an old friend Vicky Godier. We were able to find her, and his e-mail to me pasted in below typifies what the PaP site has become and what it means to some people.

"Hi Nigel,

Thanks you so much for your efforts. Yes. After 5 years of searching, and not having any contact for 30+ years, I have again made contact with Vicky. Isn't the internet wonderful .. Once again thank you. Maybe you should make mention of this in your next 'Ol' Talk on line' web page - if you do please let me know :-) Kindest regards, Warwick Montagu"

By now many of you will have visited the PaP 30s and 40s pages posted some time ago on the main site with pics and excerpts from various Regent publications that were so kindly submitted by Richard Dolman who lived in PaP as a young boy over that period. Richard is seen in the pic .

If you haven't already visited the site I suggest that you might.....Richard showed great sensitivity for his memories of the time and sent in some really lovely pictures....thanks Richard.

Will also be posting some pics of some classic PaP people way back when supported by some pics of my old Sprite PE1912 when it was owned by one of the people in the pics before I got it.

All were Kindly sent in by Ian Alexander and I'm in final editing now, then will post and ask Ian to copy read for me for accuracy, spelling etc. I will then link it to the site and let you know...real sad stuff to see the super people who are not with us any more.

Had check-ins from Leon and Linda da Silva, Judy May, Bruce Locke, Geoff Pallant who was visiting in Tobago....he hopes to make it to Trinidad on the next trip. Had a lovely exchange of e-mails with Priscilla Phelps, daughter of Mr.Phelps who worked so hard to teach us Latin and English....I enjoyed the exchange of messages and look forward to many more with all of these ex-PaP/St.Pete's people.

The original guestbook and its 500 odd entries disappeared irretrievably one day when the service provider went broke and pulled the service without notice....maaan! it was like loosing PaP all over again....felt like I had been cut off from so many people....really quite sad. I have posted a new guestbook but visits and entries are growing slowly....no real hope at this point that it will get back to where the original one was during the high days of the PaP site.....please give it a whirl at http://www.crosswinds.net/~nwent

PaP Stuff.

Many of you will remember Singh who used to work in the PaP Club Snackbar, a quiet, always happy fellow who also worked after hours as a barman at various parties in his spotless white starched shirt and black bow-tie.

I see him from time to time at parties and we always talk in happy terms about the old days and I was both happy and proud to learn that he had been awarded a National Award, the Humming Bird (Silver). Congratulations to Sonny Amarsingh friend and fellow ex-PaPierrean.

In the bad picture lifted from the newspapers, Singh (on the right) proudly accepts his award from the President.

There were a number of dimensions to the Tempos band reunion recently held here while Hugh Robertson, one of the original players visited TnT. Most of these are happy and are covered in the site dedicated to the whole wonderful day that can be reached through the main site at http://www.crosswinds.net/~nwent

Unfortunately the inevitable task of saying goodbye again must be faced, and Sid Johnson's e-mail to me with the final pic of the guys all together after an evening of fun says it all.

Sid says : Nigel, This photo was taken at my house late Wed night, we had a "Last get together". It was very cool, cordial but yet very kind of "final". We played some really sweet music, ate Roti, talked about old times, listened to Ronnie play some classical guitar and bade our (hopefully not ) last farewells. Sid.

From left in the picture - Stan Soodeen, Hugh Robertson, Gerald Kenny, Ronnie Fortune and Sid Johnson.

I often ponder on where we would have been if the Internet had come 20 years earlier??

When the Dons and I visited Antigua we were sorry not to have met Alison Archer who was away in England at the same time.

We had a chance to reverse that situation this weekend while Alison and her Mum were visiting John. What a great pleasure.......apart from the hairstyle Alison looks exactly the same as I remember her 41 years ago when we last met at St.Peter's.

Mrs.Archer is wonderful, as sharp as a tack and apart from a little arthritis in her knee she is as fast moving around as any of us. She works part time in Antigua and has retained the lovely sense of humour that I remembered so well.

Alison and I go back to the boarding house days and it was truly a wonderful experience to see her again and she that she is OK......Hi Alison....hope it won't take another forty.

In the picture above John, Mrs.Archer, and Alison line up for a pic in John's apartment.....cheers Archers,great to see you all again.

Politics and Economy.

The bulls rampaged through the stock exchange this week pushing the composite index up by a higher increment than ever before. On Friday 20 of 29 traded stocks moved, and there were no losers. This obviously is in response to the fact that we now have a legitimate government with a five year term ahead of it. Confidence that the economy must grow in response to the huge amounts of money expected to flow in from the ALNG plant and the BHPB oil find off the North East coast buffers people's concerns about the government's ability to manage the economy. Like in the boom of the early eighties it is almost impossible to do anything wrong when you can increase your spending by almost 75% in just three or four years. We can only but hope that we will not repeat the same mistakes that we made during the last economic spike, but the early signs are not good with the initial budget read on the same populist principals of hand-out and unsustainable social programs as in the early eighties.

In reading the new Government's 150 page Policy Framework for the Vision 2020, I find that a lot of good points are made and the language is good. What is missing is the interconnecting implementation strategies and actions. There is no year by year commitment to a specific set of actions and targets that the budget for that year would be aligned to and would provide points of measurement that the government could be held accountable for.

Many of the social handout programs are euphemistically named "transitionery" programs meaning that they are intended to give young people a chance to earn some work experience and have it recorded on their CV while on the social program, and which they can use to get a permanent job later.

First of all cutting and bagging grass by the side of the road is not a widely needed skill set. Secondly it is not clear that the people who these programs target understand them as intended or simply see them as another hand out program such a s URP and LID that went before and were perfected by the same party now in power.

To many, these "ten days" programs are life giving and an inherited right under the philosophy of redistribution of wealth.

Finally I question whether such programs will create the permanent jobs necessary for the young people to transition to. Will these programs amount to the giving of a fish or the lesson on how to fish anticipated in the Vision 2020.....only time will provide the answer. One thing is certain....my entry in to front line politics is booked for the year 2005.

Weather.

The rainy season is having one last bash at it. We haven't had any of those gloomy gray all day drip drip punctuated by the occasional downpour days, but have pretty well had a good mix of sun and rain....sunny and fair in the morning and rainy in the afternoon....been playing hell with my afternoon runs. Because today was both Monday and a public holiday seems like we fooled old Mother Nature.

I got up and went straight to the Internet at about six, and obviously thinking that it was a normal work day and I couldn't go back to bed the heavens opened up and down came the loveliest early morning rain that we have had a for a long time....the next time I looked at the clock it was 9.35 am and the Dons was coming out of the bath.

Take care y'all. Nigel.