Okay, let’s break this down a little. It’s mostly a blur of endlessly discussing which body of water, be it pool, beach, other pool, or other beach, to lie beside; but I shall try to jot down a loose itinerary of my two weeks in St Lucia. One thing that you can take as a given on each and every day is that several Rastafarians would demand that we fist bump them (and then offer us drugs), and several over-enthusiastic bartenders would satiate us with an inexhaustible supply of rum punches that were slightly stronger than pure gasoline. The endless photos will be around soon (mostly of topless people who probably shouldn’t be topless), but until then, here’s the gist of what we got up to.

Movies watched on the flight out: Argo, Life of Pi, Silver Linings Playbook.

Day One: Saw a pirate ship. It was apparently one of the ones used to film the Pirates of The Caribbean movies. One of the ferry guys introduced himself as Jack Sparrow. Now, I know what Johnny Depp looks like. This guy had three teeth. It probably wasn’t him.

Day Two: Already enthusiastic to tan, Lucy sits out in the sun without sun cream and essentially doesn’t move for nine days. By the time of her departure she was so dark-skinned that I’m surprised she didn’t need to apply for a british green card. Oscar tries doing the same and immediately burns to a crisp.

Day Four: A wave three times my height decided to smash my face into the gravely beach, drag my legs over my head, and flip me over four times. Final tally – cut up forehead, split lip, sliced wrist, injured knee, twisted ankle, concussion, and whiplash. Friendly onlookers started rubbing ice on my wounds as I staggered up the beach with a face-full of blood, dragged by Becky who was equal parts concerned and annoyed. I was offered drugs that I haven’t even heard of (pong?), and as I went to leave, I was fist bumped by a local and told that ‘Is good to leave some bludd on de islaand.’ In what was a monumentally bad idea after a concussion, I then when out for a night of moderately heavy drinking.

Day Five: Spent all day sunbathing on a catamaran. Along with drinking, being in the sun is the worst thing you can do with a concussion (besides perhaps slamming your face into something else).

Day Six: Concussion catches up to me; spent most of it being dizzy and nauseous. I think. Was that day six? What day am I on? Whatever.

Day Seven: Harry brutally burns about sixty percent of his body (despite constantly recruiting poor Lottie to rub sun cream all over him), but being irritatingly lucky, a characteristic of the Thorne Family, he wakes up the following morning with no evidence of it.

Day Eight: Hung out at another beach. Witnessed what is probably the most comedically perfect thing I’ve ever seen.

Day Nine: Half the group had to leave to return to work back home. The other half spends most of the day maniacally laughing about this.

Day Twelve: My brother, who is whiter than Tipp Ex, decides he wants to get a tan; albeit in between nervously slathering factor fifty sun cream all over himself every ninety seconds. Simply to spite him, I decided to start actively trying to get a tan.

Day Thirteen: I crisp up to a nice golden brown. He severely burns his feet, but the rest of him remains whiter than a snowman covered in white paint, wrapped in clean printer paper.

Day Fourteen: I pull the gun from my mouth just long enough to board the flight home.

Movies watched on the flight home: Seven Psychopaths, The Watch, Skyfall, Ted.

Awesome holiday; great fun, great food, great drinks, great locals, great company. It was Becky and me, my cousins Oscar and Harry, and their respective girlfriends Lucy and Lottie, my aunt Jane and her husband Johnny, my dad and his wife Sarah, and my brother Marcus, representing the lonely and single demographic of the group, along with various friends and distant relatives that we met out there. All in all, it was well worth the bankruptcy that I’m now neck-deep in…

… and in the words of Forrest Gump, ‘That’s all I have to say about that.’