A Limey In Bermuda

Review Of The Year

2003 has without doubt been the most eventful year of my life. It's not every year you change your job, country and marital status all at the same time. It all started last Christmas, when I began making enquiries of...

Shopping Online

Courier companies in Bermuda are reporting a massive boom in business over the Christmas period. I'm not surprised. Given the high cost of local goods and the ease of shopping online, more and more people are relying on the courier...

Rats With Wings

Bermudian conservationist David Wingate is calling for new laws to tackle the rising number of pigeons in Bermuda. Apparently a large number of pigeons could cause real problems because of the fact that the majority of houses here collect their...

Racial Balance

Former UBP premier Sir John Swan has caused a bit of a stir in today's Royal Gazette with his criticism of the UBP and praise for the PLP. It's hard to fault his assessment that the UBP is perceived as...

Christmas Lunch

As my first Christmas as a resident of Bermuda comes to an end, I thought I'd reflect on some on the differences between the traditional Christmas Day lunch here and in the UK. Cold turkey. It's not uncommon for the...

Special Delivery

On Christmas Eve, Mandy and I finally thought we'd found a nice sideboard for our wedding china and crystal. It was in Hamma Galleries in Hamilton, normally the home of outrageously overpriced furniture, but this seemed good value at only...

Home For The Holidays

It's ironic that the first Christmas Mandy and I are spending in our own home (rather than at either of our sets of parents) has thus far felt less like Christmas than at any time in the past. The biggest...

The Spousal Letter

Had a real shock today when my spousal letter arrived in the post. I applied for it two weeks ago but wasn't expecting to hear anything back from immigration until March next year as the processing time is normally three...

Tackiest Christmas Lights Award 2003

It gives me great pleasure to announce the winner of the Tackiest Christmas Lights Award 2003: Let me make it clear: all these lights were on the same house. We weren't the only ones who had come to marvel. Despite...

East vs. West

Mandy and I went for a drive last night to get some photographs of Christmas lights. It was during this that we discovered just how dull the people who live in the West End of the Island are. In St....

Alex Scott's Next Speech

It's a little-known fact but Premier Alex Scott is a regular reader of this site. Following last week's appointment of English judge Richard Ground as the new Chief Justice, impressed by the quality of my writing here, Premier Scott asked...

Temper Tantrum

Premier Alex Scott is continuing to kick up a stink about the imminent appointment of a new Chief Justice for Bermuda. The decision has been escalated all the way to UK home secretary Jack Straw because the Premier refuses to...

Much Ado About Nothing

There's been an awful lot of sound and not much light recently about the impending HSBC takeover of the Bank of Bermuda. Predictably, lots of people got upset last week when it was revealed that the top Bank of Bermuda...

Wilful Exaggeration

I try to keep this site Bermuda-focused and avoid posting on international affairs. But after watching last night's interview of George Bush by ABC correspondent Diane Sawyer, I can't restrain myself. Anyone who didn't see it should check out the...

fcuk Bermuda

UK clothing retailer French Connection has just opened a brand-new two-level store on Reid Street, its first in Bermuda. With its stylish decor and fashionable clothes its arrival delivers a blast of fresh air into Bermuda's often staid retail scene....

Porn In America

A friend of mine was using the computer facilities in his local library in Nashville today when he decided to take a look at this site. Instead of my homepage, however, he got this: http://philwells.typepad.com/ has been categorized as Pornography....

The Jean and Gene Show

The Jean and Gene Show has been a Bermudian Christmas TV tradition for the last 11 years. It's essentially a 90 minute showcase for local music talent, hosted by a blind, white-haired grandmother, Jean Howes, and local entertainer Gene Steede....

Belt Up

The UBP normally does a pretty decent job of being the Opposition, despite being in power for decades until the PLP finally kicked them out in 1998. The UK Conservative Party could certainly learn a thing or two from them....

The Boat Parade

Last night was the Christmas Boat Parade, Bermuda's largest annual spectator event. It's the time when Bermuda's boat owners, large and small, private and commercial, decorate their craft with displays of light ranging from the simple to the elaborate and...

Life Imitates Art

A man has been charged with striking a dog warden with a Samurai sword after the warden removed the man's dog. I blame Hollywood. 'Kill Bill' has just finished its run here and 'The Last Samurai' opened last week. Surely...

Imaginary Racism

An American tourist has complained about liquorice pellets called 'nigroids' being sold by a pharmacy in St. George's. The store manager confirmed that despite selling the throat sweets for years, this is the first complaint she has received. The Consumer...

Sharp Thinking

The Royal Gazette reports that last month a Pembroke man turned himself in at Hamilton Police Station for an assault he had carried out. Unfortunately, he arrived carrying a knife. "I got jumped the other day," he explained to police...

Nerves Of Steel

Among the many things that make me nervous when driving on the roads here, joggers and cyclists are the worst. Every morning on my drive into Hamilton, at some point I invariably find myself in a slow-moving column of traffic...

The Price Of Piccalilli

One peculiar phenomenon I've noticed in the newspapers here is the tendency of the large grocery stores to take out huge multi-page ads that do nothing more than list the prices of the things they sell. Take today's Royal Gazette....

Redesign

I apologise. I've been fiddling with the design of the site again. Inspired by the fantastic design work on Injured Innocence, I decided at the weekend that a plain old text banner just didn't cut it anymore. Unfortunately my Photoshop...

Golf Crazy

Bermuda already has more golf courses per square mile than anywhere else in the world. So will someone please explain to me why Renee Webb wants to build another one at Morgan's Point? Especially when the Island has such a...

Timbeeerrrrr!

This is our Christmas Tree, newly erected and decorated this afternoon. Looks great, doesn't it? Or should I say, didn't it? At approximately 10pm this evening, Mandy and I were sitting in the living room after a very pleasant dinner...

Know That Feeling

Local photographer Ann Spurling has just published a book of photographs of Bermuda entitled 'Bermuda: Nine Parishes'. Interviewed in the Gazette last week she explained that she also wrote the captions for the photographs, laughingly confessing that her forthrightness had...

The Gravel Ship

Close up the house! The gravel ship is back. Three or four times a year this monstrous ship pulls up alongside Penno's Wharf, right beneath our house, laden down with its consignment of gravel. For several days thereafter the air...

Build A Bigger Prison

Despite the short sentences that tend to get handed out to convicted criminals here, it seems Bermuda's prisons are overcrowded. The Government's latest wheeze to get around this problem is to move a number of male prisoners from Westgate prison...

Back To Basics

At the Tourism Forum the other night (which regrettably I missed), Tourism Minister Renee Webb claimed "the days of giving the tourist what they want are here". In that case, I hope she's read this piece in yesterday's Royal Gazette....

Bureaucracy Of The Blind

Having been married at the end of September, Mandy and I were surprised to receive the following letter this morning: Dear Amanda Oatley, We are pleased to inform you that your Bridesmaid dress/es is/are now ready for fitting. Please telephone...

A Pub Crawl For Posh People

Last night was the Bermuda National Trust's annual St. George's Christmas Open House. Basically, it's a pub crawl for posh people. Between 6.30pm and 8.30pm all the historic (and not-so-historic) sites in St. George's open their doors, orchestras play and...

Police Check

My police check finally arrived back from the UK today. I applied for it over two months ago, as part of the requirements for getting my Spouse of a Bermudian letter from Bermuda immigration. It was supposed to take 40...

Taking Responsibility

Someone's fed up with all the expat bashing that goes on here. As the letter writer points out, it's a Bermudian immigration department who allows the expats to come here in the first place, Bermudian landlords who are charging the...

Sentencing Policy

The good news: a machete attacker was jailed for four years yesterday. The bad news: The magistrate had to send the case to the Supreme Court to do it because the maximum sentence he could have imposed was one year....

The Nanny State

As a new recipient of Bermuda's fledgling digital cable service, it looks like I may soon be able to receive some adult programming too. If Bermuda's nanny state doesn't intervene again. Cablevision are currently considering introducing the Playboy channels to...

The Smell Of Weed

Every winter the bays and beaches around Bermuda empty of tourists and start to fill with... seaweed. Bermuda is located in the middle of the Sargasso Sea, a 2 million square mile area of clear blue water, chock full of...

The Vet

Stormy had to go to the vet today. Mandy discovered a small lump in the middle of his chest a couple of days ago, and then yesterday he started limping. Like concerned parents we cooed and fussed over him all...

Dirty Beaches

The Grotto Bay Beach Resort and Tennis Club is a lovely hotel located just across the Causeway from the airport. Mandy and I stayed there on our wedding night and although it was brief, we both thoroughly enjoyed our stay....