Appeared on 30 June 2008 in South Africa as Letter from Britain column.
Islands are quite romantic - almost as romantic as a crowd of grown men who hug each other in tears because another man kicked a ball very well.
Romantic Key West is the last island on the southernmost tip of Florida, 90 miles from Cuba. There you can visit the house of Ernest Hemingway where he kept polydactylous cats with six or more toes on their paws. A few polydactylous feline descendants still hang around today in the garden at their watering hole - a urinal that Hemingway found in the gentlemen's toilet of his favourite bar, Sloppy Joe's.
A few years ago my wife and I walked out on to the tarmac of the Key West Airport towards a red Tiger Moth type biplane where our pilot, a short man with a long CV, handed us each a Snoopy aviator’s cap and goggle. The two of us piled into an open cockpit at the front whilst the pilot manned a second cockpit behind us, presumably so that he could see when and where we fall out and know where to direct search parties to look for us.
The Arnold Schwarzenegger lawnmower engine sang and we took off.
My flying goggles were a mess of greasy finger prints. Would previous aviators have been so afraid that they closed their eyes by holding their hands over their goggles? Then I noticed that my wife had to use a hand to hold her goggles tight as they were too big for her.
The wind from the single propeller, an arm’s length in front of us, flattened our goggled faces into frozen grins. We swooped low over Key West and floated out over the sea with snorkellers, graceful manta rays, yachts, cruise ships and a batch of eight sharks below us.
Under a bright sun and over a blue sea we became birds.
That happened years ago.
A few days ago we travelled by ferry to another island - this time the Isle of Man - in the Irish Sea between Wales, England, Ireland and Scotland.
Man, a self-governing British Crown possession, with 80,000 inhabitants and probably the world's oldest continuous parliament since 979 AD, is steeped in Celtic mythology.
The Celts believe in reincarnation but also that, after death, certain souls linger around as spirits and fairies. Almost like the current Great Soul of Zimbabwe who has clearly been politically dead for quite some time but keeps hanging around and haunting his people.
One of the Celtic lingering souls was a Fairy King, Manannan Mac Lir, who lived on the Promised Land of Man and possessed such amazing magical powers that he could conjure up a thick cloud to envelop the island and its people so that aggressors could not find and attack them.
Well, on 21 June this year, Manannan really worked hard with his cloud to ward off outsiders. The longest day of the year, Midsummer's day, was the second wettest officially recorded June day ever on the Isle of Man with torrential rain and gale force winds.
On that Midsummer's day my wife, Sharon and a colleague, Nerene, took part in a punishing road walk, the Parish Walk, over 85 miles around the island to be completed within 24 hours and during which participants had to clock in at 17 Parish church doors. (I believe that for many participants that was the sum total of their church attendance for the year.)
As they battled in the cloud of Manannan against horizontal gusts of icily cold torrential rain I fought bravely alongside them behind the steering wheel in my support vehicle, attacking the foot pedals with great energy and executing a number of very exhausting seat position changes. Their trainers were soaked to such an extent that I expected them to grow extra toes and end up with polydactylous feet. Midsummer's day on Man was wetter than the worst rainy day in South Africa and colder than the heart of the Great Soul of Zimbabwe.
Where is global warming when you need it?
At the eighth Parish church, out of 17, the most powerful known English assault weapon entered the battle – Twinings Tea - and they called a halt.
Of the 1599 entrants only 121 withstood the cold to finish the 85 miles with their brains frozen for medical research purposes.
Why did Sharon and Nerene participate?
Charity.
Four centuries ago John Donne, the London poet and preacher, wrote: “No man is an island”. People cannot prosper if they are isolated from others.
The Isle of Man might well be an island but man, in the broader sense, is not.
By taking part in the Parish Walk Sharon and Nerene raised funds for the general care, schooling and boarding of a nine-year old boy in South Africa, Mthoko.
Mthoko has never known a father and his mother suffers from Aids.
A child like Mthoko could very easily have become an island.
In their battle against Manannan’s weather Sharon and Nerene collected sufficient money to cover two years’ cost of caring for Mthoko.
Manannan might be the difficult Fairy King of the Isle of Man but on Midsummer's day this year I saw two Good Fairies.
Oh, and the Great Soul of Zimbabwe should really take the time to read John Donne’s full text on man and island which ends with the words: “… for whom the bell tolls; it tells for thee”.
Hemingway used that as the title for a book.
It applies to politicians with polydactylous fingers in the pie; and maybe to all of us.
