I spy with my little eye...

.... a royal barge, children red in tooth and claw, and a giant stave.

I open the toilet door to see a carapace sailing sideways, slow, regal and splendid in its tiny glide. Only a moment later do I see its motive power: a procession of tiny black ants. Throughout my (hrrrmph) stay, the royal progress sails on, millimetre by millimetre, to its grisly end. So must Mary Queen of Scots have felt on seeing the yawning maw of the Tower of London- except that of course, she wasn't already dead. Lucky cockroach, escaping at least the mental agony. Then on the other hand, Mary Queen of Scots didn't get eaten.

The children are playing outside the back door, over in the mango grove. The happy laughter. How sweet! Oh. Those are catapults. A sudden outraged squawking and a great flock of green parrots rises. A series of dull thuds. Down they come like rotten pumpkins, some still struggling. The happy laughter. Little brutes! Off they trot, handfuls of claws, pendulent fat broken bodies, feathers akimbo. Only later do I discover that the parrots are for the pot, not for spite. There's no meat to buy; the neighbours' chickens are beginning to show slingshot wounds. 'Waro Damorid' sounds a lot more socially acceptable than 'parrot pepperpot' but they taste just the same.

I go inside to plan my two-week music course. Now then. 26 participants registered, aged 8-55. No-one has ever studied theory. All like singing, and some can too. No manuscript paper, printer, stereo, textbooks, metronome or instruments. So I start designing my giant stave. We will make it of string. We will people it with our initials and with A-G words like 'deaf' and 'face' and 'caged'. We will trample all over the theory of music with our flipflops, and stomp it into submission. And if it won't submit, pah! We don't need it anyway. We'll continue to roar and pause unfathomably over the contours of Amazing Grace and How Great thou Art. If Nature doesn't like Nurture, it can always cart it off with ant-like efficiency and eat it.