It had been a long week for me stuck in Paradise. Nothing was going my way. I was fighting with my bosses, I was fighting with all of the girlfriends that I had at the time, I was fighting with myself. I was drinking, I wasn't sleeping and I had taken to smoking from a stolen pack of cigarettes.

At the end of one night, I sent the boys to bed, killed the lights, poured myself a couple of drinks and let the music play. I was rinsing the customer's highballs in the dark and watching my two best friends make out on the beach. They had always hated each other and had no idea I was witnessing the start of their affair. I hadn't felt so miserable in a long time than as I rinsed that night.

The next morning, walking to class, under the clear canopy of the African sky, I crossed paths with one of my students: a house keeper, maybe forty, but it's hard to judge. She apologised for missing my class, showed me the heavy bundle of fresh clean sheets with their lavender smell and explained she had to go ready villas Two and Three.

She asked me how I was doing and I said I was okay and asked her back only out of habit I guess and because people seem to be so endeared by these little displays of interest.

"So-so," she said. "One of my children, back in the village" (the mainland, that is) "one of my babies died today. They have just told me over the phone." She shrugged and brought the sheets closer to her chest where we could smell them in the dusty, rising heat. She held back a tear.

"These things happen," she said and went to ready villas Two and Three for the next batch of guests and left me standing there with a new sense of perspective and the smell of lavender lingering light and soft and sweet.

(-from the bottom of a dusty drawer #2)

... and of all the dream you are the only thing I have left.

Time's up and this is the last post from Vamizi. I want to thank a few people on my way out:

thank you to all the guests that have drunk at the bar - the grumpy ones, the complicated ones, the simple ones, the laid back ones, the flirty ones. I know most of you loved me in the evening and hated me in the morning, and I admit that maybe Jaeger isn't the best drink to have when you're asking to be sobered up.

thank you to all the Vamizi staff, too many to name, who have made my stay here so great - the people at the dive centre, bar, restaurant, kitchen, housekeeping etc and to all of the senior staff. Nobody was just a colleague and everybody was more than a friend.

thank you to all the people who have contributed to the blog - to the critics (Dad, Julia, Mom, Sophia, Tomas and Will) and to the twins and Marsalgado for all the publicity that they did for me. A special thank you to Ines who was there to give me that gentle push over the edge.

thank you to all the readers, from Washington to Bombay, who took their time to read what I wrote.

‘God, if I knew there was a magical, one-eyed, sodomizing vampire out there, I’d be terrified!’ - Eli

The tides are coming up: a wave just swept over this sandcastle’s wall. Eli’s departure yesterday made me realise how close to leaving I am myself - how fast time flew. Four days to go now.

I tried writing about how important he'd been to my time on the island. It ended up sounding like a funeral speech.

All I want to say is that I'll see you soon old man. I'm sure.

Nothing like the sea

--

Kathy the yoga teacher was in the dive center today. She was saying:

'So, now I have to find a yoga instructor for the guest, who's like cousin to the queen -'

'Which queen?' I asked.

'Gosh, I don't know. The queen of England?'

'But I thought she was Indian!'

'The queen of England?' Kathy asked, surprised.

'Guys,' Eli said. 'This was such a stoner moment.'

'Yeah,' I said. 'It's getting blogged.'

Aldeia, Vamizi

--

All the marinheiros were sitting around a torn sail, fixing it. Nuro, leading and watching them, said:

‘Did you hear of what happened in Pemba back in 2004? There is this madala, this old man. Two robbers went into his house, right? They checked it out and they stole his suitcase and three small wooden cases, all carved up like they do them in Moeda. They thought there’d be gold in them, or jewels or coins. They get home and they open them up. Moment they open the first case, a huge wind starts blowing - howling! They close the case and it stops. Then they open the second case, and rain starts pouring down. When they opened the third case, this storm hits, - what do you call storms?’

‘Ladu.’

‘Yeah, ladu. Thunders flying everywhere. So they closed all the cases and went to the police station and said: I’m sorry, we’re robbers and we took these cases from the madala and this is what happened. When the police came for him he looked them dead in the eyes and said ‘if you take me to prison, I swear that it will rain every single day until my sentence is served.’ They had to let him go. Some guys are ‘manning fodidos’ like that.’ (untranslatable)

The rainbirds have been singing for two days now. Today, it rained, hard and heavy. The sky turned black. The sea turned grey.

Rainbirds never lie.

Where have you gone?

--

There was a magazine at the office. The words ‘Stressed out?’ were heavily circled, an article on an ‘Emergency anti-anxiety eating plan’. On the same cover, two other articles considered ‘is 5 a day enough to fight cancer?’ and ‘Swine Flu: are we facing another health crisis?’

Seems to me the source of your stress is probably all that reading you’ve been doing.

Someone else's island

--

I feel like I’m in a real great point in my life. During my last couple of years, I felt a bit like the motorcycle boy. But now, I want to do everything. The list is endless. I have so many stupid ideas.

Nothing lasts forever.

Never.

My god is better than your god

--

‘Tell me, Jack-’

‘Yes, Leo?’

‘What was that subsidiary I had to let go of the other day?’

‘Wasn’t it The Island, sir?’

‘Oh yes, that was the one. Fetched a very decent price too.’

I am too easily impressed by the wealthy, I bask in their glorious presence in a sort of giddy idolatry. When under these spells, I tend to forget what a funny race rich people really are.

Don't go to Heaven by yourself

--

‘That is life,’ said the pilot with his thick French accent.

‘C’est la vie!’ We all translated for him, laughing. We didn't do it in chorus but we were not far off.

‘Or we have another saying: ‘life is a mess. La vie est un bordel.’

'Life is a brothel?'

'Ah, yes.'

‘So true. And sometimes you work in the brothel, and sometimes you go in it with the money.’

Philosophy, in different languages. There was more to this dialogue but it trailed off into sexual analogies too graphic to be published.

My parents came over last week, this post is all theirs:

My mum and my bad sunglasses: two very important assets in my life.

Kissing Kingfish

--

‘I just don’t want you to go crazy, you know? Living in an island, detached from everything, takes its toll on you.’

‘Ha! Dad, I survived three years in Hull, I can survive anything.’

‘You survived?’ He asked, skeptical eyebrows raised.

‘You did your time,’ my mother said, ‘but I think it did some damage. You didn’t come out unscathed - or unchanged.’

Richard's head popped over the cantina's ledge.

'Are you ready?'

'Ready for what?'

'The plane's going after all. Are you ready?'

'No, brew, I haven't even packed!'

'The plane's leaving in fifty-three minutes and you're sitting there having lunch?'

Chessire Smile (That old devil moon)

--

I've been grounded. Plane's been rerouted. That's the last time I announce anything on the blog.

(-Famous Last Words)

Two halves of one sky

--

It is time for me to leave the island again. There's something very familiar about departures. It's not the packing, and it's not where you're going or when you're coming back. It's a special, cold, biting freedom. It's a sublime vertigo that is in the raising of the anchors and the unfurling of the sails; in boarding the plane or catching the train.

I'll be going tomorrow, but I won't take long.

Apocalypse Now

--

‘Rashid, welcome back. How was your holiday?’

‘It was normal. I left my house because my wife was too pregnant. Also, my daughter was afflicted by demons. You know, the Satanadas? But we hired the curandeiras to dance around her for two days and she got a bit better.’

We, Three Kings

(Stewart King, Eli Lang and me)

--

Hand held high above my head, I broke to the surface. We swam towards each other, spit out our regulators, removed our masks.

‘That is definitely a dive spot,’ Eli said. A dive spot nobody had dived before.

‘What shall we call it?’ I asked, back on the boat.

‘There were those three hills down there, and there’s the three of us, I reckon the three kings, or maybe three hills.’ Stewart said.

‘I like the three kings,’ Eli agreed.

Though with no crown to show for it, we were all made kings today, and there’s a throne for each one of us on the bottom of this sea.

Celebrating two months of Barefoot Luxury

(it's not about the luxury)

--

‘You’re going to become an alcoholic, man,’ said the manager, with a disgruntled, hopeless sigh as he threw himself onto the couch. The abstinent yoga teacher was present so I contained the urge to say thank you. ‘Tell me something,' he said, 'what do you want to do with your life?’

‘To live it,’ I said. His jaw slackened and tightened, repeatedly. He chewed on my words, tasting them.

‘That’s a pretty good answer,’ he conceded, at last.

"What the -?"

--

I saw a python wrapped around a little bird the other day. It ate it whole. I had half expected it to spit a few feathers out, like Sylvester would, but it didn’t even give the bird that satisfaction.

I was reminded of this helpless little bird when I read the news today.