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[[margin]] [[preprinted]] 30 [[/preprinted]] [[/margin]] Antigua 7.
[[margin]] VIII-4-36 [[/margin]] Another rather warm day. Spent most of the morning talking to the boys who brought stamps and coins. The latter are very poor.
After lunch I went down to Bennett Bryson's to ask Mr. Petri-Hay where to get some cards cut. He phoned the Govt printer, and told me where I could get the stationery. Ruth walked with me to the Printery which is up above the town about a mile. It was quite hot. The printer was very pleasant, cut the cards very carefully, and didn't charge us for it.
On the way home we were caught in the rain. Arrived just in time for tea.
Mr. Petri-Hay had invited us to go swimming, and he appeared with his wife just after tea. On the way out to the Fort, he told me of a plan afoot to build a hotel near the Fort. It is a modest scheme and sounds quite good. The last hotel planned here was in 1928, to have 1000 rooms, 2 golf courses, polo grounds, etc.
We had a nice swim. Mr. Hay says the water is about 82°. It feels ever warmer. We then walked across to the south side of the point to a beach that has considerable seaweed. There I found some [[underlined]]Cafins[[/underlined]], though the sand flies were so bad that we couldn't stay.
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[[preprinted]] 31 [[/preprinted]]
On the way home we stopped at the home of the Hays. They have a nice garden, with some edible beans two feet long! Mr. Hay told me he was planning to take off the hurricane shutters and replace the windows with steel-framed windows with diamond-shaped panes. On the other hand he spoke deprecatingly of a man who has just received a sectional house from Portland, Oregon. He says that if such things were any good out here, they would have been used long ago.
He and Mrs. Hay differ greatly in their ideas on politics, war, etc., and they are about the most "interruptingest" people I've heard.
Bennett Brysons is an exceptionally up-to-date store for the West Indies, yet Mr. Hay who is head of it, is still quite reactionary in many ways.
Since the 1st of August we've had another boarder here. He is Mr. Frost, a Barbadian, working at the radio station. He is pleasant enough, but rather tiringly "laughy". His manners exemplify the West Indian, and that's no compliment. He doesn't seem to care much for the food, though he never says so. His speech and many of his ideas are typically Barbadian, that is, ultra-West Indian.