Him
London Welsh – first language Welsh, chapel-influenced childhood, 98% Welsh according to AncestryDNA – difficult to get more Welsh than that, but London born and bred and still feel a Londoner (albeit in happy voluntary exile). So an interesting combo. I’ve always loved travel and spending time getting to know different parts of the world. Discovering the West Indies over the past 20-plus years with my expert travel guide and her family (see below) has been a joy.
Her
Bit of a mongrel. Born in Belize to a Jamaican father and a Trinidadian mother. A West Indian childhood moving about as the sugar industry moved my father. My parents moved to the UK in the early eighties. As my father’s work evolved into more consultancy, he travelled far and wide advising countries on sugar manufacturing development. So you might well ask, what is the link to Barbados?
Contributing to the sugar (and by default rum) industry and an ecclesiastical multigenerational family, both my parents have ancestors who for several generations made Barbados their home. As children we would often come to Barbados to see my grandparents and great-grandparents from wherever we were .. Trinidad was the closest and an easy weekend visit. After my parents retired they came to Barbados every winter to spend their heating allowance creatively and reconnect with an established social network to be jealous of. Many friends and family congregated in Barbados for its warm friendly people, developed infrastructure, beautiful beaches, cooling trade winds and wonderful rum. We looked forward to joining them most years, it was rude not to. Despite never living there, Barbados has been part of my life as long as I can remember.