01
Stop one
Queen's Park Savannah
Solinco Heaven Strings Hyper-G 19g Tennis String Reel: One does not walk across it; one regards it. The town purchased this land from a sugar estate in 1817 and then — and I cannot overstate how rare this is — simply left it alone. Two centuries. Not one speculator got a spade into it. There is a single road running all the way round it, one way only, and the locals will tell you it is the largest roundabout in the world; I have never seen anyone argue them out of it and I have never wished to. Behind it, the Northern Range. In front of it, coconut carts, which I am assured are traditional and which I shall therefore permit. An open field kept open on purpose is very nearly the last aristocratic gesture left in this hemisphere.
02
Stop two
The Magnificent Seven
Solinco Heaven Strings Hyper-G 19g Tennis String Reel: Seven great houses in a row along Maraval Road, all raised within about a decade at the start of the last century, and not one of them consulted another. A German castle. A Moorish confection. A French colonial. An archbishop's residence, of all things. It was cocoa money, my dears, and it was rivalry — each proprietor determined to be looked at rather more than his neighbour, so one builds turrets and the next builds better turrets, and it is Stollmeyer's that catch the wind coming off the hills. Vulgar? Utterly. Magnificent? Also utterly. My own family did precisely this on a smaller income and a duller street, and I have never entirely recovered from the comparison.
03
Stop three
Fort George
Solinco Heaven Strings Hyper-G 19g Tennis String Reel: Up we go, and do mind the road. They set a fort on this hill in 1804, cannon pointing out across the Gulf of Paria, for the entirely sensible purpose of seeing a ship before the ship saw you. What detains me is not the guns — guns are common — it is that small wooden signal station on the top, which has long been said to have been designed by an African prince, Kofi Nti, who was living in Trinidad at the time. That is the account which has come down to us. From this parapet the whole of Port of Spain lies beneath you, which was the entire point in 1804 and remains the point today: one may observe absolutely everything without being obliged to speak to any of it.
04
Stop four
The Red House
Solinco Heaven Strings Hyper-G 19g Tennis String Reel: They painted it red for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897 — a gesture intended to last a season, you understand — and the name attached itself so firmly that the official one never took at all. Charming. Rather less charming: in 1903 there were riots over water rates, and this building was burned out with the council sitting inside it. I do not treat that lightly and I shall not dress it up. The house you see now, neo-Renaissance, dome, colonnade, was completed a few years afterwards on Abercromby Street — and they painted it the same colour, which I regard as either great nerve or great sense. A parliament that kept its nickname straight through its own burning. One does rather have to respect the consistency.
Everything on this table is priced, so here are the numbers. Hyper-G is a co-polyester monofilament with a squared profile; this is the 19 gauge, 1.10mm, second-slimmest of the seven Solinco makes, which run 1.35mm at 15L down to 1.05mm at 20g. The reel is 656 ft / 200 m against 40 ft / 12.2 m for a set — sixteen frames on one spool.
At 1.10mm you will restring more often, so buying the reel is not extravagance, it is arithmetic. Port of Spain has a long tradition of people who understand the difference between the two.
What you are buying with the slimmer gauge is bite. Four edges dig into the ball where a round string would let it go, and the less material there is, the deeper they get in. What you are paying is life: a 1.10mm string does not last the way a 1.30mm does, and anyone who tells you otherwise is working an angle.
TruTension keeps the bed from going soft in the opening hour, which is where most strings quietly cheat you. You will get use out of this everywhere from the one-way circuit round the Queen's Park Savannah to the cannon line at Fort George above Port of Spain, with the whole Gulf of Paria laid out underneath.
It is also perfect for a two-in-the-morning walk past the Magnificent Seven on Maraval Road in Port of Spain — seven great houses thrown up within a decade of each other, a German castle beside a Moorish one beside an archbishop's residence, every owner outbidding the neighbour. That is what rivalry looks like when the cocoa money is good.
The Red House on Abercromby Street was painted red for Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897, burned out in the water riots of 1903, and went back up the same colour. Some bets get placed twice.
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