Before we go any further, our weekly small game for the alert reader: I’ve hidden two curious words (Fortuitous and Quip) from my daily calendar somewhere in the pages ahead. Find them if you can. Let’s start shall we?

Bangkok shimmered one last time through the taxi window, a golden chaos of tuk-tuks and temple spires and the sweet sticky scent of mango sticky rice drifting from every street corner. Pookie pressed her palm against the glass, her eyes doing that thing they always do when we leave. The thing where she pretends she is not about to cry whilst her family waves from the kerb. Her parents did what they always do and hand us something edible for the journey, because in Pookie's family there is no such thing as an empty-handed goodbye. We blew kisses. We made promises. The taxi pulled us away.

The flight back to the UK was uneventful which is exactly what you want from a flight. No engine trouble. No unexpected detours. No one's carry-on luggage containing a live animal. Just a long stretch of cloud gazing, mediocre airline food, and the quiet resignation that comes with leaving paradise for a damp British October. This all proved fortuitous because that meant I landed with enough energy to march myself into a chemist and buy some hair dye to obliterate that horrible pink hair. I had been living as a flamingo for nearly a week and so the experiment was over. The verdict was unanimous.

Fun fact: The average human head has approximately 100,000 hair follicles. Mine contained exactly 100,000 follicles of regret.

We landed in that strange limbo between seasons when the trees have not quite decided whether to let go of their leaves and the British sky has perfected its signature shade of soft grey melancholy. The air smelled of wet soil and bonfire smoke and the distant possibility of a mince pie. We had work to do. But first we had people to hug.

The Whirlwind

Pookie disappeared almost immediately into a tornado of food commitments. She had obligations to fulfil, kitchens to command, and television producers who needed her particular brand of Thai-British culinary knowledge and TV magic. She whizzed around the country with the frantic energy of a woman who had spent too many months on a boat where the nearest decent pad thai was an ocean away. Her sister was on the itinerary. They had not seen each other since Blog 059 in Amsterdam, a fact that my wife had brought up repeatedly whilst in Thailand..

I took the grandchildren to the park.

There is something profoundly restorative about watching small people learn to ride bicycles. The wobble. The concentration. The tiny tongues sticking out of the corners of determined mouths. I pushed. They pedalled and the autumn leaves crunched under tyres. For a few hours I forgot about boat engines and anchor chains and the endless unsolvable puzzle of affording maintenance on a boat determined to fall apart at any moment (Yes I know that’s EVERY BOAT – but I don’t have to pay for those!). Anyway, I just existed in the simple joy of being a grandfather, a role I am still learning to inhabit with anything resembling grace.

MasterChef Calling

The news arrived in a flurry of emails and excited phone calls. Pookie had been asked to return as a guest judge on MasterChef UK. Not the London version. The newly ambitious production had relocated to Birmingham, which for a woman who usually had to trek to the capital meant something close to a miracle. She could drive there. She could sleep in her own bed afterwards. She could judge amateur cooks without enduring three hours of British Rail misery afterwards.

She sat alongside Drew Baker and Natalie Coleman, two names that carry serious weight in the British food world. Pookie is not easily starstruck, but even she admitted to a flutter of nerves when the cameras started rolling. Then the first plate arrived and the nerves vanished. She tasted. She smiled. She delivered her verdicts with that warm authoritative tone that made her a runner-up in Series 18 and has kept her in the MasterChef family ever since. She loved every minute of it. I know because she told me forty seven times.

Fun fact: Birmingham (114 miles) has more miles of canals than Venice (28 miles) and Amsterdam (62 miles) combined. The city's culinary scene has exploded in recent years, earning it a reputation as one of the UK's most exciting food destinations. MasterChef chose wisely.

The New Home

My daughter Paris has done something rather magnificent. She bought her first house. While her father was bobbing around the Caribbean pretending to know how to sail, she was making grown up decisions about mortgages and floor plans and whether the kitchen needed knocking through to the outhouse.

She invited us over the moment we landed. There was pasta. There was wine. There was the particular pride in a parent's heart that feels like it might actually burst through your ribcage and do a little dance on the floor. Paris is fabulously talented. This is not paternal bias talking. Check her out online at @parisadamsofficial and see for yourself. She has the kind of creative vision that makes other creative people quietly jealous. She walked us through every room, pointing at walls she planned to decorate and windows she planned to paint. I nodded along enjoying the tour whilst Pookie asked practical questions about the oven. We left hours later with full bellies and full hearts.

Halloween x Two

October in England means one thing. Actually it means several things. Falling temperatures. The clocks going back. An aggressive uptick in the consumption of hot beverages. But most importantly it means Halloween. Pookie decided that one party was not enough. We would host two.

The first was for friends. The second was for family. Both were spectacular.

Pookie transformed our kitchen and dining room into something resembling a witch's lair designed by a Michelin star chef. She conjured up a Pookiestyle nine course meal. Nine courses. Let me repeat that because it still seems absurd. Nine. Courses.

The menu read like a horror novel written by someone with an exceptional palate. There was the Witch's Orb, a savoury sphere of something delicious that I am forbidden from describing because Pookie says her recipes are intellectual property and she will divorce me if I share them. There were Gore-mand Buns and Witch Fingers, which were exactly as delightfully grotesque as they sound. There was my personal favourite, the Wagyu of the Damned, a dish so rich and tender I briefly considered not returning to the boat if food on land was this good. I did not. But I thought about it.

I may post something on Pookie's site about this in more detail because nine courses of Halloween themed culinary genius deserves its own dedicated space on the internet.

Fun fact: The tradition of trick or treating has roots in the medieval practice of souling, where poor people would go door to door on Hallowmas receiving food in exchange for prayers for the dead. Pookie's version involved considerably more Wagyu.

The Main Event

But Halloween was just the warm up. The sideshow. The appetiser before the main course. We had one reason and one reason only for being in the UK at this particular time. My daughter Alicia was getting married.

This was not just any wedding. This was the first of my three children to walk down the aisle. This was the moment I would have to stand in front of a room full of people and deliver a Father of the Bride speech without weeping like a small child who has lost their favourite teddy. I prepared for weeks. I wrote drafts. I practised in front of the mirror. I convinced myself I was ready.

I was not ready.

The venue was a converted farmhouse in the British countryside, the kind of place that makes you understand why the English romanticise rural life so relentlessly. Rolling fields lay beyond still lakes. Ancient stone walls stood proudly. That particular end of day golden light that photographers chase and rarely capture shone before diappearing over the horizon. Every detail had been considered. Every flower perfectly placed. Every napkin folded with military precision. My daughter the environmental scientist had applied her analytical mind to wedding planning and the results were extraordinary. I have been to a lot of weddings. People always claim theirs is the best. But I genuinely cannot remember a better organised event.

Paris and my son Kyle even sang a song. A real song with harmonies and emotional crescendos and everything. They stood at the front of the room and delivered something beautiful while the rest of us sat there wondering where these talented children came from and why Kyle wasn’t also a performer. My singing voice left me around 13 and is now for karaoke only.

Then came my turn.

I stood up. The room went quiet. I looked at Alicia in her beautiful dress. I looked at her new husband Dan who seemed like a perfectly acceptable fellow. I opened my mouth, fully intending to lead with a light quip about the cost of the flowers, but instead produced a noise like a drowning hedgehog.

Nothing came out. Well that is not strictly true. What came out was a strangled croak followed by a few incomprehensible syllables followed by the unmistakable sound of a grown man trying very hard not to sob in front of eighty seven people. The joyful tears turned into throat wrenching quiet sobs. My carefully prepared speech evaporated from my brain like morning mist. I pushed through valiantly, choking on words that had seemed so easy in rehearsal, delivering a performance so awkward and pitiful and probably comic that I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me whole.

By the time I reached the end, most people had gone to the bar.

So I joined them. It seemed like the appropriate response.

Here is what I learned. I can talk to rooms full of strangers without breaking a sweat. I can teach scuba diving to nervous beginners. I can navigate a catamaran through a Mediterranean storm despite having no business being behind the wheel of any vessel larger than a bathtub. But put me in front of my own family and ask me to express genuine emotion and I fall apart like a cheap umbrella in a hurricane. The wedding was perfect. My speech was not. Alicia did not seem to mind. She hugged me afterwards and said something consolatory that I was too embarrassed to remember. That's life I guess.

Christmas in November

The hurricane season had retreated from the Caribbean like a tired boxer leaving the ring. Our boat was waiting. The Bahamas were calling. But we would not be back for in the UK for  December. We would not be back for the actual Christmas.

There seemed only one thing to do. We celebrated early.

In late November, with the real Christmas still a month away and the shops still playing regular music instead of endless renditions of Last Christmas, we threw a fancy dress Christmas party. The tree went up. The presents were bought and wrapped and stacked underneath. The food was laid out in the kind of abundance that would make a medieval banquet look modest. Pookie made cocktails. I decorated. The grandchildren wore reindeer antlers and demanded second helpings of everything.

It was wonderful. It was thoughtful. It was a family day that I will remember for a long time. The kind of day that exists outside normal chronology, a bubble of festive cheer floating in the grey English autumn. We sang away to Christmas songs on Alexa. We pulled crackers and wore paper crowns. My parents were there and my father deeply appreciative that this year at least his grandson was unlikely to empty his nappy out all over the place and my Dad’s legs. We pretended it was December 25th and for a few hours the calendar did not matter.

Next Time

We fly back to Trinidad. The boat awaits with all its mysteries and malfunctions. Some repairs will have gone well. Some money will have been wasted. This is the way of boat ownership, a lesson we learn anew every single time we return. We know nothing about boat maintenance. We have never pretended otherwise. But we have sailed across around the Mediterranean twice and crossed an ocean anyway. And now we will sail through the Caribbean. The northern Caribbean. The Bahamas and into the USA…. That’s if all goes well.

Until next time. Keep sailing. Keep laughing. Keep eating good food.

Heath

ps. Did you find the words?