16 years ago Jackie and Verona stayed at Negril Beach Club for three weeks. They say Jamaica is a relaxed kind of place and indeed very little has changed at the beach club down to the guys who come round every morning and sweep up the paths, gardens and beach for fallen leaves and fruit. The rooms are split between "condos" or serviced apartments (which was what we had) and "mariners" which are run as a regular hotel from a different reception desk. Both get use of all the facilities but the condos have useful things like a fridge, cooker and coffee machine which with child in tow you just can't live without.

We got a ground floor studio apartment facing onto the garden with a nice veranda, table and chairs. On the night we arrived we were standing out there one of us holding Laurel when we realised that something had caught her eye. It was a large and quite fast-moving crab. This crab and his counterpart became regular visitors, living in a drain several feet away from our veranda.

This actually comes a bit later in the story but we can do non-linear can't we? One night Jackie was sitting outside when one of the guests in an upper floor flat threw a key down to her children in the garden to let themselves in with. The key jangled audibly on the concrete path and the family bent down to look for it. And they looked. And they got their mobile phones out to provide some light. And they asked at reception for a torch. And they looked and it was nowhere to be found. Eventually one of the hotel staff came over and broke off a long branch from a tree, wafted it around in the hole and out came our crab with the swag and a guilty look on it's beady eyes.