Please God…don’t let me fall in the sea like that previous Governor!
My first view of St Helena was through the porthole in my cabin on the Royal Mail Ship (RMS) St Helena. It was raining. Oh God, I thought, my hair! I’m going to look like a llama for my inauguration.
The first view of St Helena through the round window
Since the RMS had anchored, the ship was buzzing….people paying their bar bills; passengers forgetting whether they were supposed to put their luggage outside their door last night or this morning. And if they made an error would their suitcase travel back the six days to Cape Town? No, of course not. The ship’s tannoy was going crazy with messages for everyone but me. Who could be sending these messages, I thought? And why now? We’ve been at sea for ten days and not a peep.
As the arriving Governor-to-be, I was required to get off the ship first, and Debbie, the Residence Manager and Governor’s Aide-de-Camp, had come onboard to get me. We became best mates over the following three years, and cooked up lots of mischief together one way or another. The role of the Aide-de-Camp was to protect me from any attacks, which was hilarious. Because, firstly, Debbie would have known who ever it was - everyone knew everyone - told them to behave, and offered to meet them at Donny’s for a shipwreck (Saints’ staple drink of spiced rum and coke).
When it came to going ashore, Captain Rodney wanted to put me and Debbie in a boat on our own. But I felt that was a sure way to getting off to a bad start. All those Saints on board who had been travelling for days, just wanting to get home, seeing me in an empty boat. No way. So I insisted we fill the boat. Anyway, I was terrified that I would fall into the sea, as a previous Governor had done, so it was better to have all hands on deck to grab me if I did go in the drink. I’d studied that footage of the plumed Governor disappearing through the miniscule hairline gap between ship and shore, on Youtube. I knew you had to judge the swell of each wave. But it was Craig Yon that helped me ashore without any mishaps. Without him, I shudder to think what might have been.
Mind The Gap
The members of Legislative Council were on the quayside to shake my hand in a welcome. We were to go through many struggles over the next three years and, at the time, I didn’t realise that they saw me as a relic of the old colonial system. Nothing could have been further from the truth, of course. I was just so absolutely thrilled to be on the island; keen to get going; and completely excited by what was going on around me.
Debbie had brought ‘The Jag’ to collect me. I marvel at the number plate, which wasn’t a number at all. It was a ‘crown’. And then, as I got in the back seat, in my worst South London accent, I turned to her with a huge smile, and said ‘it’s like getting married…again’. What on earth possessed me to say that! It’s mortifying just to think about it. Lots of Saints had come down to take a peek at their new Governor - the first woman in their 500 year history. I just hope they didn’t hear. It was an Eliza Doolittle moment…the one where she’s at the races. Debbie laughed out loud. Then she whisked me in The Jag, flag flying, up the hill to Plantation House. It was surreal. Suddenly, my everyday job had turned into a movie, except I felt I was the only one who didn’t know the lines.
