Four stops before the checkout

Basseterre, Saint Kitts and Nevis

Stop one

The Circus and Berkeley Memorial

Head Hawk Power 17g Tennis String Set: So this is your Piccadilly, is it. Laid out in the 1860s, deliberately modelled on Piccadilly Circus in London, and I have stood in the original and I will tell you plainly that the original has rather more of everything. In the middle sits the Berkeley Memorial, an ornate green Victorian clock and fountain honouring a local planter and legislator named Berkeley, and the clock carries four faces. Now. London's version has traffic like a war and you cannot hear yourself think in it. Here you can walk out to the middle, read all four faces at your leisure and hear a bird while you do it. Fine. That is better. I will be saying it only once.

Stop two

Independence Square

Head Hawk Power 17g Tennis String Set: It was called Pall Mall Square when it was laid out in 1790. Pall Mall, borrowed straight from London again, and I did wonder how long it would take me to find the second one. It was renamed Independence Square in 1983, when the country took its independence. And before it was a pleasant place to sit under the palms, this square was where enslaved people were bought and sold. That is the plain fact of the ground you are standing on and I am not going to build a comparison out of it. Four quadrants, a fountain at the centre, Georgian townhouses round the edge and St George's a short walk off. Stand a moment. Then we will go on.

Stop three

St George's Anglican Church

Head Hawk Power 17g Tennis String Set: The French built a church on this exact spot in 1670 and called it Notre Dame. The English burned it in 1706. Rebuilt. Then fire. Then earthquake. Then hurricane. Then fire again. Back home a parish will argue for forty years about a leaking gutter and call that an ordeal; this congregation on Cayon Street has been flattened again and again and has simply put the thing back up every single time, grey stone, square clock tower, walled churchyard and all. I arrived on this island fully intending to be unimpressed and I am obliged to report that this is stubbornness of a quality I have not seen anywhere else. Read the gravestones on your way round.

Stop four

Brimstone Hill Fortress

Head Hawk Power 17g Tennis String Set: They call it the Gibraltar of the West Indies, and having seen Gibraltar I came ready to scoff, and I did not scoff. It went up over roughly a century on a steep volcanic outcrop about nine miles northwest of Basseterre, and every stone in it was hauled up that hill by enslaved Africans. That is who built it, and it belongs in the first sentence rather than the last. In 1782 the French besieged it for about a month and the British garrison surrendered; then the war ended and the British had it straight back by treaty. All that labour, all that stone, and the ownership settled by men at a table in Europe. Gibraltar at least got to keep its own argument. This one was decided somewhere else.

The Basseterre, Saint Kitts and Nevis track

Head Hawk Power 17g Tennis String Set

Written for this world alone.

CQ, CQ, this is a 12-metre set of Head Hawk Power 17g, calling anybody with a sore elbow. Co-polyester monofilament at 1.25 mm, built softer and more powerful than standard Hawk — it gives a little more back at impact and passes a little less shock up the arm, while keeping the control that makes a poly worth having. Noticeably friendlier on off-centre contact, too. One set, one racquet. Over.

Basseterre next, and I have verified every one of these. Over.

We begin at the Circus, a small roundabout in the middle of town laid out in the 1860s and deliberately echoing Piccadilly Circus in London, with the Berkeley Memorial at its centre: an ornate green Victorian clock-and-fountain monument to a local planter and legislator, carrying four clock faces. Four, because it is a roundabout and traffic arrives from every direction. Claim checked. Confirmed. Over.

Then Independence Square, palm-lined around a fountain with Georgian townhouses on all sides. It was laid out in 1790 as Pall Mall Square and renamed in 1983 when the country took independence — and before it was a pleasant place to sit, it was where enslaved people were bought and sold. That is not interpretation, that is the record, and it is written on a plaque that almost nobody reads. Over.

Then St George's Anglican Church on Cayon Street, grey stone with a square clock tower in an old walled churchyard. The French built here in 1670 and called it Notre Dame; the English burned it in 1706. Rebuilt. Then fire. Then earthquake. Then hurricane. Then fire again.

This building has been flattened and put back up more times than anywhere else would tolerate, and they keep putting it back. Read the gravestones. Over.

And we finish about nine miles north-west at Brimstone Hill Fortress on its steep volcanic outcrop above the sea — the Gibraltar of the West Indies, built up over roughly a century with every stone hauled up that hill by enslaved Africans, which is the part the postcards leave out.

In 1782 the French besieged it for about a month and the British garrison surrendered; the war then ended and the British had it straight back by treaty. All that stone, all that suffering, settled by men at a table in Europe. Over.

You will string this set everywhere from a hard court in Basseterre to a breezy court over on Nevis across the channel, and by the way, it is also perfect for a Friday evening lime on the Bay Road, where the signal is good, the range is short, and everybody is receiving. Over and out.

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Head Hawk Power 17g Tennis String Set

Head Hawk Power 17g Tennis String Set