Escape (The Pina Colada Song)

I heard the Pina Colada song on the radio this morning by Rupert Holmes from somewhere in the early eighties. Funny how a song can release so many memories.

For me this song comes from a time that I went to live in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania for six months, which might not look far from Harare Zimbabwe on a map but is a four hour flight and hour time zone away. The contract and the song appealed to me at the time because I was also escaping some unbloggable things going on in my life and I needed space to get my feet back on the ground. The song fitted my mood because I could go to this new place and more easily be who I remembered myself to be.

I loved Dar.

For the first time in my life I lived close to the sea. Wonderful. Marvelous. I loved running (hmmm in those days I could run too) on the beach in the early, dawning morning. I loved a peaceful walk at the end of a day, meeting the fisherman and choosing flip flopping fresh fish for supper. Glorious. Dar also had its idiosyncrasies. Early in my stay, finding that I did not like long life milk too much I enquired of the woman who cleaned my flat where fresh milk might be found. (Tanzania was at that time desperately poor and such luxuries were not freely available - indeed most food was imported and most of the wealthier residents had considerable storage space devoted to dry and canned goods). She said that she would arrange for some the next day. Sure enough, the next day a small boy arrived with a cow and calf and bucket and asked how much milk I wanted. We negotiated a price for the quantity and made an arrangement for a weekly delivery, which I duly pasteurised - thinking often as I did so that it was perhaps just as well that I had grown up on a dairy farm.

I was very sad when my contract was up.

And ever since the sound track for that wonderful six months has been the Pina Colada Song. I would post a link to You Tube if I could figure out how to do that, instead you are going to have find it your self.