Bed bugs and beyond begone in Bermuda

Strange things happen in the triangle and they don't get much stranger than Friday night...

So I was out with the Fraggle Rock royalty and a colleague at The Fairmont Hamilton Princess happy hour. We were debating burning issues such as why would Miss Piggy go for Kermit the Frog with those skinny legs, whether Bert and Ernie really were gay and which in fact is the hottest muppet (we went for the Count with his sexy accent and mysterious cape), when we were joined in the conversation by a Canadian tourist. I believe he came along to help us out with another conundrum - is Transylvania a real place? Yes fact finders, it is indeed a region of Romania. Anyhoo, we were asking the usual questions, where d'you come from? What do you do? When we rather excitedly discovered that he was in Bermuda following a meeting with the U.S. Government in Washington D.C. as he had just developed a bio-pesticide that killed bed bugs. Given the magnitude of this issue in the States, this was big news!! And 'Long tails & Bermuda shorts' readers, you saw it here first, the photographic evidence...

Exhibit A - Bed buds, clearly VERY dead.

We took our new friend to sample the delights of Front Street. But I have to say I wasn't all that proud. No wonder the island has such a dwindling tourist industry when this is the image it presents - a heavy armed police presence, metal detection scanners on entry to a night club and a reminder from the DJ that smoking Cannabis was not permitted after a hash cloud filled the club. Oh dear.

For a few moments I felt like the police were after me as they were everywhere we were - for a variety of sins, e.g. bad jokes, poor grasp of the French language, consuming a bottle of Perrier not bought on the premises, etc. It could have been anything but it became painfully apparent that they had another target in their sights. They even had the Police Commissioner, Mike DeSilva, doing a search of Moon nightclub so it must have been serious. There were rumours that someone was stabbed circulating but the media has not since verified this so not entirely sure what was going down.

Things have been tense anyway since a 16-year-old boy was gunned down in the street last week. A popular  comedy club on Front Street even closed its doors as a direct reaction to the unrelenting gang violence as the owner was concerned about the gangster clientele it was attracting. Shame there isn't a bio-pesticide to get rid of this vermin!!

'Long tails & Bermuda shorts' has come full circle. With this post, I mark its anniversary, and the very first post (and many since) have charted the growing gun crime on this paradise island. Such a crying shame.

On a lighter note, I would like to dedicate this post to the handful of fans (that aren't my friends who are obliged to flatter my ego!!) that have been kind enough to write to me with their positive feedback. To Sal in Dublin, Dawn in rural Dublin, Ted in Sydney, Oman Collective Agency and Kym in New York - thank you for proving that blogs do get read by people you don't know and inspiring me to keep waffling on...