SURVIVING WILMA

We have just cycled to the supermarket which in itself is an odd thing to do in this petrol-driven country. In the elevator I met a woman who gasped in amazement when I told her that I was sprouting my own beans and eating them with brown rice and that they were delicious. ‘Where do you grow them?’ she queried and looked horrified when I said that they were doing famously on the balcony. I think she had visions of me up there with a ton of topsoil and a mechanical digger instead of my dinky little sprouter. We set off around Country Club Drive that has been cleared of fallen trees, snapped-off lamp posts and mounds of broken storm shutters, and realised that instead of cars racing past us they normally do, everyone was moving at a slow steady pace. These are the gas hunters, and the SUV’s (Sports Utility Vehicles) are moving slower than most. A week ago, they were the Miami status symbol, but now they are an albatross around the neck of the owner. The millionaire houses that lie between our high rise condo and the beach have no electricity as despite their grandeur, they are only single family units, and the power company is desperately trying to reconnect the larger buildings that house more people. The owners of these luxury homes now need gas to fill their expensive generators but first they need gas to drive their SUV’s to get to the gas station to get gas for their plastic drums. You see what I’m saying. Suddenly from being at the top of the financial pecking order, they have plummeted to the other end of the spectrum, and find themselves queuing in the hot sun alongside the lower income group. We made it to the supermarket and chained our bikes to a pole. They don’t have bike racks – nobody ever expected that a customer might cycle to the shop. Marching in with a back-pack, we foraged among the half empty shelves. At last fresh produce had appeared but now our shopping came down to how much weight we could carry. In the normal course of events, the only time a shopper touches his shopping is when he takes it from the shelf and puts it into the trolley. It is then transferred by the packer and taken to the boot of the car where it is offloaded into another trolley at the condo and taken upstairs in an elevator. Back onto the shelf went the wine, the milk and the orange juice. The cereal came out of its excessive packaging and the back-pack was carefully filled to capacity with immediate necessities. This time the credit card machine was working and cash back was available. This is great because cash is needed to purchase the limited amount of gas that might become available, but in the meanwhile, we cycle everywhere and conserve the half tank that we have got. Stories are now being told of bikes being stolen and gas siphoned out of cars at night. It’s becoming a dog-eat-dog world but I have found that the best currency is a smile and a sympathetic ear. Everyone’s got it tough, and right now we measure our luxuries in electricity and running water. That puts us in the millionaire bracket and for once, the millionaires envy us. So you see, it wasn’t just the dustbins that got upset during Wilma’s visit; the social order went for a bit of a loop as well.