Trump in the Royal Carriage

Over the years, Queen Elizabeth has had to share her ceremonial carriage with all sorts of people, dictators among them. She always unfailingly smiles and waves and takes it all in her stride. She will, I am sure, be her usual gracious self when Donald Trump is siting next to her in the royal carriage during his State visit. These people who suggest the Queen will be put out/embarrassed/irritated by having to host a State visit for the new president have no real idea what she thinks about it all. She has seen and heard it all before, and if her government has decided a State visit this summer is appropriate for President Trump, then she will get on with the job as she always does. That's not the issue here. The issue is Theresa May's decision to offer a State visit straightaway. It's a huge honour for Trump and, frankly, from what we see so far, he doesn't deserve it. It's a tricky one for the prime minister. She has to keep Trump on side but without being too ingratiating. She didn't have to offer a State visit this soon. Obama didn't have his first State visit to Britain until May 2011, two years after he had assumed office, and he was viewed as a superstar president, worthy of breakfast at Buckingham Palace. So why the rush for Trump? It's obvious. Everything now in this country is to do with Brexit. Give Trump the biggest honour on the table and he will respond with a cracking trade deal. Poor Queen. She is in the middle, a royal pawn, as it were, on the chess board. She is too dignified to object. But I wonder if she, too, thinks the prime minister was a little too hasty in her wooing of Trump? We'll never know.

The power of power

Trump right now is the most excited kid on the block. For the moment, he can literally do anything he wants to shape or reshape the United States of America and the world. It's the sort of power he has never ever experienced in all his years of wheeling and dealing in the business world. Just a stroke of his pen on a fancy book with "executive power" written on the front and he gets instant reaction. You can see in the pictures of him signing his infamous "no Muslims" order the smiles on the faces of his so-called advisers, particular the dreadful Steve Bannon, his chief strategist and now appointed on the board of the National Security Council (God help us!). Bannon is a right-wing forward thruster who will make even the generals in the cabinet cower under his heavy-jowled face. They say power corrupts but in Trump's case power is making him like a child with a new Star Wars toy. He wants to play with it every minute of the day, and every time he switches it on the bright lights and spacey voice make him jump with joy. Hey, groupies, this is fun!!! And this is the America I grew to love after living and working there for three years. I fear for the country, I fear for all my American friends who didn't believe me three months ago when I predicted that Trump would beat Hillary, I fear for all the ordinary innocent people in the world's worst countries who look to the US for inspiration and help, I fear for all of us in this country who think we have a special relationship with the White House but now don't want it, and I am afraid of the consequences for the rest of the world having a man like Trump in the Oval Office playing with his power games. I fear, too, for freedom of expression and freedom of the press in the US. My only non-negative comment is that there are millions of lovely, honourable, respectful, democracy-loving people in the US who will refuse to let their country's reputation be ruined by Trumpism. But a helluva lot of Americans chose Trump instead of Hillary. So, for the next six to nine months, it's going to be nightmare politics until things begin to calm down. Even Trump will eventually realise that he's the president of a democratic country, not a dictator. He won't be able to do everything he wants to do. Please God!

Travel to St Lucia

Even when it rains in St Lucia the locals refuse to be downhearted. They call it liquid sunshine, a phrase that  helps  to explain the ever-cheerful temperament of the St Lucian people and the extraordinary lushness of the tropical forests and tree-covered hills.

It is one of the most sumptuous islands in the Caribbean, blessed with an ever-green landscape. One of the finest views is of the twin mountains known as the Pitons which, though divided by about a mile and a half, look from a distance like inseparable twin peaks. In fact, so close it seems not beyond the possibility for a climber to leap from one to the other.

 In the early morning before the sun rises, the Pitons look soft and ethereal, but climbing them by day in the heat, they are rock-hard, unforgiving and a challenge even to the most experienced hill-walkers.

The best way to see the Pitons at any time of day or night is from the windowless Room 7F, called Royal Palm, at the Anse Chastanet Hotel, landscaped into the tropical hillside overlooking Soufrière Bay in the southwest of the island.

It’s windowless because Nick Troubetzkoy, the  Canadian architect-owner of the hotel, wanted his guests to absorb the full impact of the surrounding environment, especially the Pitons across the bay, without any form of obstruction, neither glass nor wall. The effect is sensational. It is truly a view with a room.

Mosquitoes are kept at bay by a row of lampshades with yellow light bulbs that swing in the breezes. Mosquitoes are not attracted to the colour yellow. But to be sure guests are not vulnerable to the tropics-loving insects, you sleep at night in a four-poster bed enshrouded by mosquito nets.

When you awake in the morning, the Pitons are sitting in the space beyond the room,  like a giant watercolour painting. By that time, the legion of multi-coloured tropical birds are busy calling to each other, filling the air with the sound of flutes and piccolos.

Meno, a local employee of the hotel who calls himself the father of the jungle, knows every bird and every plant in the tropical forest that sweeps down to the beach. St Lucia warbler, gray trembler, black-whiskered vireo,  belted kingfisher,  hummingbird and the sweet little St Lucia Pewee, Meno loves to point them out during his 6am bird tour of the forest.

When he points at plants he always starts with a memory of his grandma who taught him the healing powers of the forest when he was growing up. He says she saved his life with regular doses of ginger root tea at a time when he was suffering as a child from serious  asthma . She always turned to Mother Nature as her local pharmacy.

 But not all the trees and plants in the forest have medicinal qualities. The sandbox tree with sharp protuberances up and down the bark, he calls the “monkey don’t climb tree” or the “ouch ouch tree”.

Enjoying the wondrous bird life in St Lucia is one of the joys of holidaying on this island. Lying on the beach at the Sandals Grande St Lucian resort in the north of the island, you can spot the magnificent large-winged frigate birds as they swoop down to the water to snatch fish.

In November last year (2016) Sandals Hotel with its glorious sweep of sandy beaches and the Anse Chastanet shared one secret in common, although it was not a secret for long. During his two-week visit to the Caribbean, Prince Harry stayed one night at Sandals in a cordoned-off wing not far from the room where I was staying. His security entourage were everywhere.

The following day he flew by helicopter down to Soufrière in the south to a helipad, perched on a mountain behind Anse Chastanet. The helipad was also constructed by Mr  Troubetzkoy to cater for his wealthy guests staying at the Anse  Chastanet’s  extraordinary sister hotel, Jade Mountain. This is a monument to his architectural genius and beloved of celebrities who like to hide away in total seclusion in the hotel’s guest “sanctuaries”, each room equipped with infinity pools. Prince Harry was shown around before heading off to St Vincent but had no time for a swim.

For lesser mortals, the trip from Jade Mountain down to the beach involves a wait for a hotel minibus or a long trek down endless steps to get to the bottom. More than 300 steps! Even longer when you make the return journey.

Prince Harry did not have time either to go walking with Meno, my tropical forest guide. Or to venture to the Fond Latisab Creole Park in the south,  where Canice Thomas and a family of helpers have turned 11 acres of tropical forest into a unique display of St Lucia’s cultural heritage.

He has planted more than 100 species of fruit and spice trees  to remind the younger generation of St Lucians as well as tourists of the island’s past wealth-providing exports. Once famous for its bananas, St Lucia many years ago lost out to cheaper fruit exports from South America.

 Every leaf you pick has an instantly identifiable aroma: bananas , mangoes, oranges, papayas , cashew nuts, cinnamon, cloves, and many other varieties.

To complete the one-and-a-half-hour tour of his tropical forest farm, 54-year-old Canice invites you to watch and then participate in a bout of Creole dancing, nothing too energetic in the heat, more like a slow, gentle movement of the feet and hips.

Had he lingered for more than 24 hours, Prince Harry could have learned how to make his own chocolate with a visit to the Hotel Chocolat, also in the south, where a St Lucian girl with a loud, penetrating voice, explains the intricacies of converting cocoa and sugar into an edible choc bar. Everyone has to have a go, but the results are not always successful or edible!

*Saint Lucia Tourist Board

www.saintluciauk.org

Email: sltbinfo@stluciauk.org

Tel: 0207 341 7000

*Sandals Grande St Lucian Spa & Beach Resort

www.sandals.co.uk/St_Lucia#

*Anse Chastanet

www.ansechastanet.com

*Virgin Atlantic

www.virginatlantic.com

Trips

*Fond Latisab

www.fondlatisabcreolepark.com

Tel: +758 450 4561

*Hotel Chocolat Tree to Bar Experience

http://www.hotelchocolat.com/uk/rabot-estate/saint-lucia/tree-to-bar-experience

Tel: +758 572 9600/9601 

*Piton Sunset Cruise

Price: $95.00 USD

Bookable through:

www.islandroutes.com 

 ends

First with the News

Well, my memoir has been selling for 59 days and I think it's doing pretty well. I've learned a lot about the publishing business since First with the News went on the market on November 30. Amazon is undoubtedly the king of the book world. People turn to Amazon, and can make choices about ordering a book because they learn everything they need to know about a book: the front cover image, author profile, details of the content, a free look inside the book to get a taster, reviews, and the daily changing rankings. A mass of information. Other retailers on their websites are nowhere near as informative. So Amazon scoops it up. Well done Amazon. For the author it's quite exciting to watch the rankings, specially when they go up dramatically, like mine did this week. One major book-business company I hadn't heard of before is Nielsen BookData UK , They supply retailers with bibliographic and biographical details of every book. They seem to be very proficient and professional but it's up to retailers how much info they put on their websites. It seems to me that if they want to make money out of a book, the more info they put on their websites the better, both for them and for the author. Doesn't that make sense? Yet I have found I have had to spend long hours contacting retailers and asking them to at least put the image of my book on their website. No one is going to order a book if  all they have is a title and an author's name, unless they personally know the writer. As every author before me has presumably learned, writing a book is far easier than marketing  and selling it!!

Donald and Theresa

So Donald and Theresa want to be Ronnie and Maggie! In my view, no chance. Different era, different personalities, different problems and challenges and, above all, different class! Reagan was a charmer, smart and visionary. Maggie was no-nonsense determined, decisive, bold and outspokenly flirty. Male foreign leaders fell for her.Sorry, but I don't think Mrs May has that sort of chemistry impact and I don't want to even start on Trump. He's much more likely to cosy up to Putin because they both believe the same thing: they're macho big-stage players. I suspect neither believes women are in their league. I'm a strong supporter of the US/UK special relationship, especially in the military/intelligence field (which is what it's really all about) but I doubt Trump and May share the same view of the world. Reagan and Thatcher were true bedfellows, except on that one classic occasion when Ronnie ordered the invasion of Grenada,a member of the Commonwealth, in 1983 and forgot to tell Maggie first! Oops! Ronnie was remorseful. I don't think Trump would be so apologetic if he sent in the Marines to seize, let's say, Tristan da Cunha!