Home-made rum and calypso capers

"We would never get away with this is if Barbados was a first world country," said Hutson as together we rolled a heavy barrel of rum across the storeroom floor.

He had a point. There are few places where you can drive to the local distillery, pay cash on a barrel and come away with 55 gallons of 150%-proof sugar cane alcohol, which you take home and blend into rum.

Hutson, a sprightly 78-year-old, is a master rum blender - well, sort of. For years, he and I have been blending our own rum for the resort. The process is simple: just add distilled water to the alcohol until you get your desired proof of age, add Angostura Bitters and several bottles of port wine for the flavour, and caramelised sugar for the colour. Then leave the barrels for three months to settle.

Our only problem is that we blend by hand and the fumes of the alcohol, when poured in and out of the barrels, can be overpowering. We overcome this by inviting our guests to do the mixing, and they spend a happy two hours staggering around the storeroom getting merrier by the minute.

The island is flooded with the sounds of calypso as we are in the midst of our annual carnival - Kadoomat. It's a heady mixture of pounding music, calypso kings and queens, revellers, craft markets, reggae jams, street-stall fish fries - topped off with Bajan beer and rum and coke. It attracts many visitors, not only from the Caribbean but from the UK and USA as well.

I've received several letters from readers of this diary (mainly resident in the Middle East) about job opportunities in the Caribbean, but it's very difficult in Barbados because of work permit issues. Perhaps the easiest way to work and see the Caribbean is with a cruise company, or an international hotel chain.

We have had quite a few school sports groups visiting from the UK and Canada to compete against island schools' cricket and netball teams.

But a trip to the Caribbean obviously didn't suit one young sportsman, a member of Cowley High School, near Manchester. Sitting on the edge of his second-floor balcony, he fell off, and his 40-foot fall was broken when he bounced off the roof of the Mini Mart. Luckily for him, he only broke his shoulder; but luckily for the island cricket teams, he was Cowley's fast bowler.

MICHAEL WHITTAKER is general manager of the Silver Sands resort in Barbados

Next diary from Michael Whittaker:23 September