Bola mawr

14th December 2025

It’s my birthday! Penblwydd hapus i fi (that’s ‘happy birthday to me’ in the language of heaven 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿). Welcome back to the blog after a few weeks of radio silence back in Blighty. We returned to Pollards Mill a few days ago and have been settling back in. No rest for the wicked, as the pool saga has taken a slightly different twist and we are currently in the middle of a rebuild of the defective coping (concrete border) and hanging on for that job to finish before we instal a new filter. With these twin challenges the water in the pool has been either a bit green around the gills or opaquely milky like a glacial lake since our return, effectively out of commission for now. The generator saga hasn’t yet been resolved but my brain hurts when I think about that and we are back on site and have electricity, so I’m parking that for now. Oh, and the internet has been down for several days so this post is dependent on my phone’s personal hotspot. Better chase Flow again tomorrow…

So! As a northern hemisphere midwinter baby my birthday is invariably dark and chilly. Not today. Only my second ever tropical birthday, 35 years after the first. I celebrated 1990 in Alice Springs on my travels around the Australian outback, and the camaraderie among the backpacking community ensured I had a memorable night out. I think I had a kangaroo steak.

Well, fast forward from a youthful 26 to a slightly scary 61 (aaargh) and today it feels like I ate the entire kangaroo. ‘Bola mawr’ means ‘big belly’ in Welsh, and today Nicola and I fit that description admirably as we followed the road less travelled – our favourite east coast route –

– up to the historic Atlantis Inn for their famed Bajan buffet Sunday lunch. I immediately showed my age by asking to be moved from our table next to the steel pan player with backing track amplified to ear-shattering levels. Our new table was an upgrade!

We then kicked off with a sorrel rum sour…

…and progressed through (cue drum roll):

Corn chowder

Fish cakes and pumpkin fritters with sweet potato pie, yam something and various salads

Three cheese macaroni pie

Grilled fish and fried chicken with steamed vegetables in garlic butter, creole okra, plantain, rice and peas

Red snapper with something I can’t recall as the fish was so delicious

Roast pork (with soggy crackling, boo) and apple sauce with a few more veggies

Spiced rum bread pudding and vanilla ice cream.

And this is just what we sampled from the groaning tables. There was a lot more. I think we each made five (or was it six?) trips to the smorgasbord (which was way too close to work off any calories or get anywhere near a respectable number of steps for the day). In our defence our helpings were small…ish.

The last time we went to this event was about twenty years ago, and I’m not sure I’ll be eating anything else for another few years yet. We had planned to drive on over the centre of the island to the west coast for a swim and a snorkel. Well, to hell with that. Back to Pollards! 🛌 💤

This evening I told Nicola that I was starting a bucket list. I have one thing on it so far. Climb a Munro in Scotland on my birthday before I become too dilapidated. Fortunately that can wait at least one year. In the meantime – it’s welcome back to Barbados with a bang!