Having lived and worked all over the world as a diplomat in some really dodgy places, when the time came to apply for her next posting Kate had decided this should be in a great metropolis rather than on a small island. This cunning plan was royally shot out of the sky when her then boyfriend came up with a cunning plan of his own and applied for a job in the Cayman Islands. The fact that he didn’t tell her about this until he had been for the interview makes it quite amazing that she A) actually thought it would be a good idea to go with him, and then B) marry him some years later.

Fortunately for him, she did both, and even managed to turn it to her advantage by getting a posting to Grand Cayman. Once there, she fell in love all over again, with the island (fortunately for the boyfriend) and island life (well, most of it). This meant that when her posting ended 3 years later, it wasn’t too difficult to persuade her to give up all latent notions of great metropolises (metropoli….?) and start to properly put down her island roots. To become more of a buttonwood than a casuarina, if you will.

Since then, the boyfriend has been promoted to husband, the household has grown by 1 and 3/4 cats (so what if one of them only has 3 legs), a boat, and random island creatures. She now lives a life where European mini-breaks, proper Cadbury’s chocolate, and shoes are but a distant memory. Rock on!