{"id":541,"date":"2014-05-25T16:25:57","date_gmt":"2014-05-25T15:25:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elainespires.co.uk\/journal\/?p=541"},"modified":"2014-05-25T16:25:57","modified_gmt":"2014-05-25T15:25:57","slug":"touristy-things-filming-and-a-marriage-proposal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elainespires.co.uk\/journal\/2014\/05\/touristy-things-filming-and-a-marriage-proposal\/","title":{"rendered":"Touristy Things, Filming and a Marriage Proposal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I know I&#8217;ve been quiet since arriving at Avocado Cottage but that&#8217;s because I&#8217;ve actually been doing lots of touristy things with my good pal V who&#8217;s visiting for a week. \u00a0And in being a tourist again I&#8217;ve had a really great time and fallen in love with Antigua all over again.<\/p>\n<p>I suppose it&#8217;s because doing things like going to the beach on your own are not much fun; especially for someone like me whose tolerance to the sun has become less and less over the years until lying on the beach for a long time becomes torture. \u00a0But we&#8217;ve been to Ffryes Beach and Dickinson Bay and each time I&#8217;ve had a lovely swim and then found a tree to lie under. \u00a0I love the dappled shade that trees give. \u00a0And we&#8217;ve visited my dear friends B and C and had a great evening on their divine water-side terrace, experiencing their warm hospitality and the following evening had a super supper at C&amp;C Wine Bar &#8211; great food and wines and a lovely atmosphere. \u00a0Great to see it&#8217;s going so well for Cutie and Claudine, too! \u00a0On Friday we went over to the East Coast &#8211; the Atlantic side &#8211; and visited Betty&#8217;s Hope and Devil&#8217;s Bridge, two places I hadn&#8217;t visited for a long time. \u00a0And it&#8217;s been especially lovely rocking on the veranda while chatting and catching up and drinking rum punches. \u00a0Heavenly and as you can see, some much needed R &amp; R. \u00a0 Don&#8217;t forget &#8211; Avocado Cottage can be rented out. It sleeps 4; it&#8217;s a five minute drive from some beautiful beaches and the capital city of St John&#8217;s and is in a idyllic spot with it&#8217;s tropical garden and semi-rural setting. \u00a0If you&#8217;re interested please get in touch.<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday we did the Wadadli Cats Circumnavigation which is such a fabulous day out &#8211; apart from the fact that today I look like a lobster and am on the cooling gel with lidocaine to take my skin back down to something resembling normal temperature. \u00a0I&#8217;m sorry I haven&#8217;t got any photos to share with you all, but my UK phone is never switched on here as the roaming charges are so high I&#8217;d need a banker&#8217;s bonus to pay for it and my little Antiguan mobile is so old it hasn&#8217;t got a camera. \u00a0I&#8217;ve got my iPad but wouldn&#8217;t risk taking taking that on the catamaran, which was just as well as I got soaked getting off. \u00a0Why did everyone else manage to get off elegantly except me? \u00a0Why was I the only one to go under?<\/p>\n<p>Today is Sunday, so I&#8217;m taking V down to English Harbour\/Nelson&#8217;s Dockyard and then onto Shirley Heights for the Sunday Night Lime. \u00a0Got to be done, hasn&#8217;t it?<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday I also had a production meeting with Heather and Noel and it&#8217;s official &#8211; we&#8217;re shooting the pilot of Maisie and Em starting at the end of this week! \u00a0Hooray! \u00a0Hooray! \u00a0I am beyond excited! \u00a0Something we&#8217;ve worked on and dreamed about for two years is finally coming to fruition! \u00a0I will have LOTS of news about that so WATCH THIS SPACE.<\/p>\n<p>And &#8211; I&#8217;m doing An Audience With Elaine Spires as Best of Books on Saturday 7th June, which I&#8217;m very much looking forward to. \u00a0I&#8217;ll be talking about Singles&#8217; Holiday and Sweet Lady which are both set here in Antigua and a Q &amp; A session and then a book-signing.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve also managed to write three short stories &#8211; and am working on 4th &#8211; for a book of beach reads that I&#8217;ll be publishing as an e-book in a couple of weeks time. \u00a0So, as you can see, life is busy, but not so busy that I&#8217;m not missing the Daughter and the Sister and the Rest of the Family and still wondering how Auntie is doing in the care home. \u00a0Can&#8217;t switch off from that!<\/p>\n<p>And today, in Edinburgh, my lovely friend Marie Matheson is marrying her George. \u00a0I hope they&#8217;re having a wonderful day and wish them a happy, happy life together. \u00a0 I can&#8217;t wait to see the photos; I know Marie will be a gorgeously beautiful bride and the vivacious Ms P will be Bridesmaid of the Year!<\/p>\n<p>And that brings me to the marriage proposal. \u00a0No, it wasn&#8217;t made to me, Dear Reader! \u00a0But yesterday on the cat trip a young American guy, Nick from Las Vegas, got down on one knee at Green Island, pulled out the most beautiful platinum diamond ring and proposed to his girl-friend, a beautiful Antiguan girl, Nicolette and asked her to marry him.<\/p>\n<p>And she said &#8216;YES&#8217;!!<\/p>\n<p>I then asked to make an official complaint as I&#8217;ve been going on Wadadli Cats since 2003 &#8211; some years doing 20-30 cruises when I was working with the groups and not once &#8211; NOT ONCE! &#8211; did a handsome, young man ask me to marry him! \u00a0\ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I know I&#8217;ve been quiet since arriving at Avocado Cottage but that&#8217;s because I&#8217;ve actually been doing lots of touristy things with my good pal V who&#8217;s visiting for a week. \u00a0And in being a tourist again I&#8217;ve had a &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elainespires.co.uk\/journal\/2014\/05\/touristy-things-filming-and-a-marriage-proposal\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[364,366,363,365,369,368,97,370,281,367],"class_list":["post-541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-best-of-books","tag-bettys-hope","tag-cc-wine-bar","tag-devils-bridge","tag-dickinson-bay","tag-ffryes-beach","tag-maisie-and-em","tag-nelsons-dockyard","tag-shirley-heights","tag-wadadli-cats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elainespires.co.uk\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elainespires.co.uk\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elainespires.co.uk\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elainespires.co.uk\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elainespires.co.uk\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.elainespires.co.uk\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":542,"href":"https:\/\/www.elainespires.co.uk\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541\/revisions\/542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elainespires.co.uk\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elainespires.co.uk\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elainespires.co.uk\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}