I have been asked to write some account of the Church’s life in the West Indies, and how it is affected by changes taking place thick and fast in these islands. I say that I have been asked, because I would certainly not have tried to do so on my own initiative. I mean by this that I feel a priest is the one least able to see and judge the situation at such a level, and that for two reasons. The first is a purely personal, silly one. It is that one becomes so accustomed to people and things here as elsewhere that it is an effort to stand back and look at them. When I first came here, I learnt the names of streets, shops, government departments, various other places. I have to ‘think’, now. I go to them, that’s all, without thinking of their names. Not only names, but things that would strike the stranger at once, are precisely the things not noticed later on. Unbelievably so. A young woman came to ask for an interview with the Bishop who was out. I took her name, and made the appointment, and informed the Bishop later on. Not recalling the person, he asked me to describe her. He still didn’t remember, and then suddenly asked—‘You didn’t mention; was she black, or brown, or white?’—and was very understandingly amused: I confessed, I couldn’t say! I just hadn’t noticed.

It is all very unhelpful, I realize, but it is the only answer that can sometimes be given: ‘I dunno. I just live here’.