Beautiful Blighty

There's no better place to live than England when the sun shines.  Trouble is that only happens 5 or 6 times a year so I guess I really lucked out this last weekend when I went back to England and my home town Sarfend (sniff).

OK, we're talking about Southend-on-Sea which of course is the home of the Blues and NOT The Shrimpers.

Its been a number of years since I left Sarfend (1981!!) so coming back is interesting.  The town has never really been considered to be 'the jewel of the Essex riviera' as I refer to it, but when the sun shines it looks way better than say a wet afternoon in November.

I was there to play in my school old boys' cricket match so would be meeting some guys I hadn't seen for 30+ years in some cases.  However it was also a chance to tick off those boxes of must do things in Sarfend (sniff).  My brother wasn't around and as I was staying with my friends Kevin and Gill, both of whom were busy, I was able to go through the list: (1) jam doughnut -- I'm a sucker for them!  (2) My old tennis club -- Thorpe Bay Lawn Tennis Club.

No real grass any longer but still in pretty good shape.

(3) My old cricket club -- Leigh-on-Sea Cricket Club.

Leigh-on-Sea CC's home ground at Chalkwell Park

(4) Old Leigh -- and one of my favourite pubs (The Crooked Billet) but also the cockle sheds (Osborne's) where you get the freshest cockles, whelks and mussels no longer alive alive-o.

The mud flats at Old Leigh

This was at 9 a.m. on a Sunday morning with the sea 2 miles away across the mud flats and the tide not due in for another 9 hours!  

The mud flats of the Thames Estuary

It was also the Southend air show when a bunch of aeroplanes of all ages flew along the estuary for the enjoyment of upwards of 100,000 people.  The stars of the show were the WWII duo of the Lancaster bomber and the Spitfire.

The speck is a Lancaster bomber

But the weather!  It was wonderful.  It was difficult for anyone to be unhappy in such weather so it was a happy time.  Just as well actually as things aren't so great in England and Sarfend at the moment.  There were many, many empty shopfronts in town and from chatting with my ex-school buddies it was clear that banks aren't lending to small businesses and people aren't going out as much.  As Sarfend is only 30 minutes by commuter train from the financial district of London, it is very much a commuter town.  Thousands of jobs have been lost since Lehman collapsed in 2008 and you can see the result in Sarfend.

My school was no longer operating as it was sold when the owner/headmaster died over 10 years ago to a competing local school.  Our cricket match was being played at the school grounds with tea on the lawns of the big house where the headmaster's widow still lived.  The school (Eton House) moved here in the 1940's when the buildings were derelict and rebuilt.  The main house once belonged to Admiral Nelson's heart throb, Lady Emma Hamilton, so has some history in it.  It was so strange though returning to a place so long after the last time -- everything was so small!

The Old Boys after tea on The Lawns

Capping a wonderful weekend off was the car I hired -- an Audi A4.  I'd hired a VW Golf but that was sold out when I showed up and the offered Hyundai something didn't sound too alluring so I asked about an upgrade and they gave me the Audi!  What a great car.  Smooth, fast, diesel, comfortable and 50 mpg.  I think it could have been the best car I've ever driven.  Or maybe it was the great weather that made me think that.  Nope, it was the car.  Fabulous.

Audi A4 with parking ticket an annoying extra

Great trip.  Thanks Sarfend, it was good to be back.  Thanks guys, it was really great to see you all again after all these years.

Back to work ... in Cayman again

It has been 2 years since I retired (September 2009) and the fact of the matter was that I felt I still had things to do at my old company so I made the decision to "unretire" and went so far as to shave off my beard on 1st April 2012.  However, I still have trouble wearing a tie every day.  So to announce my presence my business partner Robert suggested we take a booth at the Cayman Islands STEP conference (trust related) held at the Ritz.  It has been 3 years since I last visited Cayman so I was interested to see what has changed in my absence.

George Town from the air.  The harbor is being rebuilt by a Chinese consortium apparently which should improve things.  Businesses are moving out to office parks further down West Bay Road, primarily Camana Bay which is off to the right.

The financial crash caused by Lehman's collapse has morphed into a rash of further disasters ranging from government debt crises, hedge fund collapses and in our world of offshore finance immense new regulation.

Cayman had suffered as had Bermuda but from a slightly different angle -- both have financing problems, both are finding it difficult to attract new business and new capital, both have immigration policies that forced thousands of expats to leave along with their capital, both financial and intellectual.  However Cayman's government has the appearance of making tough decisions that Bermuda's simply will not take.  It could be crucial in the development of each jurisdiction in the next 5-10 years.  Cayman has announced a new tax free zone for new foreign business (tech, medical R&D, etc -- intellectual capital) and a new heart hospital set up by an Indian doctor to access the US health market.  In short it is vibrant.  Well almost, but certainly along the road to it.  Bermuda sadly is not in the same almost vibrant position.  The absence of new transactions and of any 'new' ideas to develop new business are symptomatic of a country that seems to have lost its way and doesn't really know what to do next.  Asking business people may well be a good start -- Cayman does -- but that sadly doesn't seem to be the way in Bermuda.

This is not to say that everything is hunky dory in Cayman.  New commercial and residential building abounds but that simply means that businesses are trading up leaving their old premises empty.  That goes for residential too.  The real estate book I last read 3 years ago advertised the same apartment I looked at back in 2008 at $110,000 less than what it was back then -- actually at the offer price I made back then but which was peremptorily dismissed.  You can certainly buy, but its pretty difficult to sell.  The ability for anyone to own property in Cayman has long been touted as a major advantage over Bermuda, but it does seem that owning a place comes with a real warning.

Same airport although plans are afoot to renovate ... once they have the cash.

We stayed at the Ritz Carlton on West Bay Road alongside 7 Mile Beach.  It certainly is a lovely hotel. The service is stellar too which is what you would expect for a 5 star resort of this kind (and price).  However it has its problems too with the real estate division apparently in receivership under a welter of debt and unsold residences even though the hotel seems to be perpetually full.  Apparently the Westin too is in administration so Cayman tourism isn't in that healthy a state.

Our bedroom at the Ritz

Conference over I even managed to get a tennis game on the only grass court in the Caribbean -- I hadn't played on grass for 35 years.  And really I don't know how the pros play such good tennis on this surface.  I certainly could not. The ball didn't bounce much, it skidded and moved all over the place, and in short evened up the ability gap between myself and the young pro who pulled the short straw to play with me and struggled more than I did.

The only grass court in the Caribbean with the Ritz as back drop

Fortunately for the pair of us, it started raining a little so after some more slipping and sliding around we decided to move onto the red clay courts next door.  The pro told me they would be digging up the courts because nobody liked playing on them and they couldn't make any money out of it -- they are putting in 2 hard courts.

The Ritz has a great spa and exercise area.  I don't normally use gyms as a rule but as my wife, Vivien, was with me and exercised regularly I went along... and enjoyed the hot tub, sauna and all the rest of it. However we had to check out the rest of the island and started out with the Motor Car Museum in West Bay which I'd heard great things about.

It was great.

The owner/patron is a Norwegian shipowner called Mr. Ugland (with a building named after him) who'd simply repainted what looks like his own very large garage and stuffed 100 fancy cars in there including the oldest car in the world (from 1895), the first car in Cayman, the original Batmobile, a Noddy car and virtually every red Ferrari since 1955.  This was a petrol head's dream.

Who wouldn't want a picture with Batman and Robin?

Some of the red Ferrari fleet

Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-Batman!!!

The first car in Cayman. A 1905 Cadillac.

How do you top that?

We managed by eating lunch across the street at 'The Cracked Conch' prior to doing a circumnavigation of the island to see what exactly had been doing since we last left.

The name dish -- cracked conch

So what has changed?  A couple of roads, a new bunch of signs, 2 or 3 new shopping complexes, and that was pretty much it apart from the endless 'For Sale' signs on various real estate.  Yes, stuff has happened and the rebuild after 2004's catastrophic Hurricane Ivan has progressed but there are still derelict buildings a-plenty and in the east end particularly no real evidence of much new wealth creation.

Idyllic scene in Cayman Kai

We hadn't realized that the weekend we chose to be in Cayman coincided with a public holiday -- Queen Victoria's birthday was May 24th and Bermuda celebrates this date as Bermuda Day (along with many of the ex-colonies) but Cayman moved it to the prior Monday.  Precious little is open on Sundays but even less is open on public holidays particularly so when it rains cats and dogs in Cayman's very own version of the monsoon.

Monsoon in Cayman

Oh yes, and this is a 4-foot iguana in a car park.  These guys are apparently meaner than the local big blue iguanas and are busily eating their way through the blue guys so nobody likes them and while its not really PC to squish them ...

Thanks Cayman.  Great to be back.  I'm looking forward to returning.