Still waiting on the container

Wednesday we got up (by mistake) at 1.25am – I thought it was 5am – and drove to Kingston. After about an hour, when the sunrise stubbornly refused to appear, I looked at my watch again, and realised my mistake. We arrived in Kingston in good time, needless to say, for our 8.30 appointment with destiny. In terms of distance, the journey is about the same as the one I regularly make from London to Birmingham, but in every other respect it’s like driving on a different planet. There’s a great highway from Mo Bay along the north coast going east, but the moment the road takes to the mountains – Kingston lies on the south coast bounded by some seriously high mountains – things start to change. The incessant rain that fell for the best part of three months during this year’s hurricane season has turned some of the twisting bends on the mountainsides into something more akin to a battle scene. Huge chunks of road, turned upside down by the sheer force of the water. At one point, the tarmac had huge channels gorged into it by the water, so that it looked like a monstrous withered tree root. At these points, progress is slow. In retrospect I was glad it was so early because at least there were no trucks struggling along.
We got lost in Kingston, drove through Denham Town along a road that separates it from Tivoli Gardens – which, in spite of its gentile name, is a war zone. Finally made it to the freight office. The rest of the day for me passed dozing in the car with the engine running and air con on, as Merrise went through the endless procedures designed to establish her entitlements for duty free import. Now they have to find the container so that customs can inspect it. This was supposed to be Friday. But we knew as we drove back on Wednesday that it was unlikely.
Meanwhile UPS continue to fail to deliver the pedal boat sent by Uncle Eneil. The online tracking system says that it has arrived in Mo Bay but it lies: we know it is sitting on some lonely piece of tarmac at Kingston airport. This may finally have made it to Mo Bay last night but as there’s no one picking up the phone at UPS, who knows?
On the plus side, History caught about 7lb of lobster this morning, so we’re going to grill them tonight.