Action shot: Crab Between Rocks, 2010
Quail Island used to be a leper colony, even though there were only 9 lepers, and only 1 of them died on the island - is it bad that I am kind of disappointed by this? I'm not sure that 9 lepers even qualifies as a colony. It is more of a leper neighbourhood. A leper patch.
(My theory is that the one who died was really irritating and was murdered by the other lepers.)
Picturesque! The shirtless man is a leper.
We walked around the island, which took about 3 hours (although we did stop and do a lot of crab-photography type crap). It was the sort of island you'd set a murder mystery on - very Battle Royale, very Lord of the Flies. Lots of randomly placed huts and backtracking paths and vantage points and so on. When we got off the little ferry that took us over, I said, "What if we found a body? And the boat didn't come back, and we were stuck on the island?" Apparently this was a grotesque thought which it was unnecessary to voice. I thought it was interesting. (In case you were wondering, I would have appealed to the spirit of the Dead Leper to terrify the Quail Island Killer into plunging headlong off a cliff in a dramatic chase scene; the Dead Leper was a 25-year-old male stuck on an island with 8 equally leprous men so I'm sure he'd have been happy to help. Weirdest haiku ever.)
Anyway, we had gone to the island for a treasure hunt where you had to walk around/across the island looking for strategically placed clues (letters stuck to trees), then rearrange them into a Word. It was D-O-L-P-H-I-N (although we found it in IDPNOL order, fuck knows where the H was), which I guessed while we were still on the boat, but the various groups of people wandering around the island added to the whole Survivor: Quail Island feel. So did the shipwrecks!
Anyway, we had gone to the island for a treasure hunt where you had to walk around/across the island looking for strategically placed clues (letters stuck to trees), then rearrange them into a Word. It was D-O-L-P-H-I-N (although we found it in IDPNOL order, fuck knows where the H was), which I guessed while we were still on the boat, but the various groups of people wandering around the island added to the whole Survivor: Quail Island feel. So did the shipwrecks!
Would be a better photo if I'd bothered walking down the hill a bit. Sorry.
They weren't actually ships that had run aground (Aground on Leper Island! would make a great B grade horror movie) but old hulks of ships that had been dragged there to rust. I don't understand this. Why not drag them out to sea and drop them there? Can only assume they provide safe nesting places for rare birds, or something like that. Quail nests.
Finally, here's the obligatory Picture Of a View. The horizon was straighter in real life. I did also take some pictures of large cargo ships (I would quite like to live on a large cargo ship) and of Me-on-a-Boat but they were all a bit shitty. Aren't you glad I have a digital camera now?
I tried to put in the Spirit of the Dead Leper using MSPaint but this was not successful.
16 comments:
UNCLEAN! UNCLEAN!
I just wanted to say Hi! I love your blog and have discovered it only recently. Best regards from Spain :)
I remember walking around Quail Island as a very small child. It seemed like a bloody long way!
At least you didn't have to do a crab rescue attempt like the last time you went to the beach!
Oh funny, who can't spell dolphin for goodness sakes!! And have any authority using the word at that?? My children used to say dough-fins when they were little, so if they were say 5 in charge of that sign, well dolfin is pretty good effort?? And that's my 2c ow wisdom. Love Posie
I like the survivor scenario & of course the obligatory pic! nice :)
Oh & TODAY is MY birthday thank you very much!! I'm all grown up, mature & very sensible. Love Posie
Your pictures are so pretty! I am visiting today via the Blog awards. Congratulations on your nomination! That must be very exciting. I hope you make tons of new blogging friends.
PS I didn't know that leporasy still existed!
Perhaps the ghost of the dead leper stole the H ...
Spelling dophin with a 'pee' is just plain stupid. How about some more silly English spellings: ~soldier~ contains the letters 'die', ~believe~ contains 'lie' and ~funeral~ contains 'fun'.
Yeah, just like that silent "a" in leporasy. Which is so silent that it is invisible and it also has a magical power that makes the "r" and "o" swap places.
"Dolphin" contains the word "phi", which is Greek for four-legged cephalopod mammal, which makes dolphin all the more ridiculous.
I looked after some patients with leprosy last year (except they call it "Hansen's disease", which is very old-fashioned but less stigmatising) and they were all really sweet except for this one anxious man whose skin I had to biopsy. Well, I'd be nervous too if someone like me was coming at me with a syringe and a scalpel.
PS Word verification: "tardons". This may refer to fucktards with hard ons. I am definitely going to try use "tardon" in a sentence tomorrow.
"Dead Leper" would make a great name for a band, don't you think?
Andrea - STAY AWAAAAAAY!
Marta - Thank you! I was going to be all "I know how to say thank you in Spanish" but that would have been a bit pretentious. Glad you enjoy it!
Holly - it still seems like a bloody long way.
Posie - I'm pretty sure there was a Letter H somewhere on the island. We were just sick of looking for letters at that point. Also, happy birthday!
Cathie - thank you! I am toying with the idea of applying for funding to film a short horror movie there.
LwKaishon - I am making a buttload of new blogging friends! Is the best thing about the nomination. I don't know if we still have leprosy here - it stopped being a leper colony in the early 1900s I think.
Tooting - I like this theory. What is he doing with it, though?
Shirley - And slaughter, which is full of laughter
uglygirl - Should be spelt dolf'n and then it could maybe be a verb as well. "The dolf'n had lerp'rarsey." Oh dear, now I am writing like a fantasy novelist.
NDM - Yes! But is too similar to Def Leppard. Although that might not be a bad thing.
Beautiful pictures! My family used to go someplace similar during the summers when I was little, and it reminded me of lord of the flies as well. (I was one of those freak kids that always had a book with them..) My brother always wanted to act out lord of the flies while we were there....but he always made me be the fat one.. :-( aahhh, memories!
Just saying hi - I found your blog through the Bloggies voting and I like it a lot!
Leper patch....can I grow that in my garden? HA!
I think that the dead leper is probably stealing a series of letters over the course of lots of treasure hunts. He's trying to spell out the name of the living leper that killed him probably. So far I think his name might have been Harry / Henry / Horace ... (I could go on ...)
Post a Comment