Thanks for all the treats

It is amazing how living on a remote island in the middle of the Indian Ocean alters your perspective on life, but also your priorities and how small things make a huge difference! Now don’t worry I’m not going to get all philosophical or talk about how this experienced has changed my life and I am a better person. I am merely talking about the excitement of going to the post office and receiving a parcel. This isn’t to promote people to send us more parcels, but just a mention to say how appreciative we are to those that have.

In the early days, parcels kept me sane, not because they had goodies for me inside – but tobacco for Melv. Cigarettes here are particularly poor and hard to come by and also very expensive in the Seychelles, so smuggled in tobacco from the UK disguised as sweets, swimwear or toiletries was a life saver!

At first we lost faith, mum and dad packed up a parcel as the requests for supplies were made; tobacco, calcium tablets and laxatives. Well perfectly wrapped and loving prepared, customs took great delight in seizing it – 3 months later it arrived. Fortunately this wasn’t the pattern of things to come, mainly because our suppliers were more cunning, using the art of disguise! This then worked marvellously well for the recipients – us – as sweets are an excellent form of disguise – obviously the man from customs is a smoker but doesn’t have a sweet tooth. Then it progressed, my clever sister in law – with health news travelling faster than any other – thought they like sweets, they need laxatives – liquorice allsorts – brilliant. Do you know liquorice allsorts straight out of the fridge in a hot climate are top; we never liked them at home.

Now there has to be a comparison made – sorry Matt – woolly hats and gloves from Melv’s mate, mini cream eggs, Angel Delight, herbs and spices, sauces and mixes, from Sal’s mate; Ali – cheers girlie. But I can’t deny Matt on the tobacco front – and now the seeds – makes Melv a very happy chappy.

Then Lisa and Carla nail brush, socks, of course tobacco, Anthisan and medication, brilliant. Socks to keep the mosies off Melv’s ankles, Anthisan to treat bites already received, nail brush for Sal and tobacco....and I thought he was giving up.

But there has to be a special mention to mum and dad, the star suppliers, who have coped with requests of all different kinds, sent on missions for strange items such as a head torch, fishing rod eyes, (I drew the line at lead weights!), seeds for the garden, tea strainer, ukulele music to name a few, oh and tobacco - all disguised with a good old bag of sweets – perfect – thanks you two.

All these items are things we would just take for granted back home, just pop down to town; here even if we could regularly get to a shop, we couldn’t buy it anyway. When we are living in a country that runs out of milk, onions, garlic and ginger, we don’t stand a chance with a tea strainer and nail brush.

There is a little story behind the tea strainer, we went to buy one, as Seytea (local tea), is only produced as loose leaves. I must commend the little Indian man we went to, we asked for a tea strainer and came out with a teapot with a strainer in it – great - but it lasted all of one month!

Finally, cheers Leigh from the BBC, for the mixed herbs and writing paper and on the writing paper note – thanks Fran, Rich, Lucy and Sam, of course I’ll keep writing!