Tag Archive for: closing

As you all may (or may not!) have noticed, I have been very quiet lately – this is the first post in three weeks, and I am desperate to get something down before May runs out!

The reason for my complete lack of bloggage is, unfortunately, not due to swanning around the world with my beautiful wife to exotic locations, or because I have been preparing something utterly beautiful to share with you all…far from it.  It is because we have been handling our busiest month of the year on top of the very sad news that our home for the last two years has finally closed 🙁

Sian and I have been privileged enough to live and work at The Almond Beach Village in St Peter, Barbados for the last two and a bit years and now, finally, the rumours of financial strife and concerns have finally come to fruition…the hotel is closed.

 

And it is very sad.

 

I took these photos the day after the resort closed.  It was a bank holiday (National Heroes day) so, naturally, Sian and I were at work.  The resort just felt like a complete ghost town.  The fans were spinning, the lights were on, but not a soul in sight over the whole 23 acre site.  It was very weird.

I had no intentions of taking pictures that day – I was just moving a lot of stuff out of our now redunandant office and studio, but I felt I had to get something.  So I grabbed a work D7000 and pottered around…and it just made me even sadder.

This is the courtyard outside ‘Tommy’s Bar’.  Even when the resort was really, really quiet there would be people sat out enjoying the evening breeze and guzzling a rather foul rum concoction.  But the beer was the coldest on the island here – and always welcome after a long day.

Right at the end of this looooong corridor was where our beautiful photo studio once lived…

And at the end of this one was where we used to live…

And this is the pool where Ryan took his first few strokes into swimming entirely on his own.  We stood in a circle at the (very deep) area just behind the bridge; he took a massive breath and disappeared under the surface as he kicked his way across to a very relieved Uncle, Aunty, Mum or Dad…it was one of the many, many great times we had at ‘home’.

But all is not doom and gloom.  To say it has not been an operational nightmare (moving house is meant to be the most stressful things you can do – try moving offices at the same time!) would be an understatement, but we have moved now. We have a beautiful new apartment down on the South Coast in a new hotel, and our offices are going to probably work out better down on the South side too. I have also been overwhelmed with how well my team have coped with the frustrations and concerns that this whole saga has thrown up.  It could have been very easy for mistakes to be made, people forgotten about, weddings missed; but on the ground the guests have had absolutely no idea just how hard this last month has been.

And I love and thank the guys so much for that.

 

Thanks for reading guys – and hope to hit you with some more cheerful ramblings soon 🙂

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