Is this paradise? Has some divine power finally, if a little prematurely, lifted me to a higher plane? The evidence feels compelling: a personal retinue of angels dancing and fluttering around me on wings of purest white; a glittering orb hanging in the heavens, beckoning me onward and upward, perhaps towards eternity itself.
Get a grip, I tell myself. This is not paradise — not a celestial one, at any rate. It’s a beach on Alphonse Island, in the middle of the Indian Ocean. That glittering orb may be the source of all life on our planet, but right now it’s burning my scalp a beetroot red. And those pure-white fairy terns may be angelic-looking but are still only seabirds — and noisy ones at that. Their swooping and fluttering comes with angry, shrieking calls as they dive-bomb me away from the casuarina trees in which their chicks are hidden. Hardly a heavenly host.
Alphonse sits among the Outer Islands of the Seychelles, as remote as you could wish of any fantasy retreat. We flew in two days ago from the capital, Mahé, our shadow beetling over the wrinkled ocean until the island’s neat triangle appeared on the horizon – a green jewel in its turquoise lagoon. Within minutes of landing I was trundling off in a golf buggy towards the plush embrace of the resort, the muffled crash of breakers in my ears.
“You’re kidding me!” friends had protested, when I’d told them where I was going. “The Seychelles! And you call this work?” I took their point. Certainly, in
