For the first time this year we ventured out and took coffee. With the exception of the grocery market Eastsound had thus far been closed, allowing the staff of establishments to have a pleasant post New Year’s vacation, and presumably keeping costs low in what is a very thin financial season for business owners. Over the decade of my residency I have become accustomed to the vagaries of living in a tourist paradise, literally making hay when the sun shines, causing the ferries to bustle with visitors, and laying low in the off times, midweeks, and the Mondays following any public holiday.
Without the holiday makers, and part time residents, the islands would simply die, most businesses would close, amenities disappear, the average age of the population soar up towards the seventies even more that it do already. The average residents profession is unemployed or retired, neither providing an abundance of spare coinage to expand and enhance the local economy.
Existence is very much just how it is. at the need and convenience of a public just passing through. Thanks be for some small mercies.
Daily Abstract Thoughts 