The Barbados PM is quite clear: he just couldn't swear allegiance to King Harry

Mrs Howe and I tossed our winter garments into closets, hitched a ride on one of Richard Branson's huge Virgin birds and within hours landed at the Grantley Adams International Airport in Barbados. I have been here before, in both body and spirit. The late Joshua Rudder, my great-grandfather, migrated from a Barbadian parish to Trinidad in the late 19th century. His grandson C L R James wrote about him in his great book on cricket, Beyond a Boundary.

I am peacefully ensconced in a Barbadian home in the parish of St Philip on the Atlantic coast, where the landscape is sculpted in the image of the English countryside. Not for nothing is the island called "Little England". It thrives on tourism, which accounts for 32 per cent of gross national product. But for how long will it be so familiar to Britons? Within hours of my arrival, the prime minister, Owen Arthur, announced that Barbados, where the Queen is currently head of state, will soon be a republic. He justifies this as follows: if perchance the Queen dies, followed shortly by Charles and then by William, he could not possibly swear his allegiance to Harry. I took his point at once and so did the island's citizenry. A presidential democracy will be here before the year's end.

Meanwhile, the nation is gripped in furious discussion about the decline of West Indian cricket. On the evening of my arrival I went to a couple of parties where cricket was on everybody's lips until the intervention of a professor of gender studies at the local university. "Reason," she said, "is vastly overrated." She then proposed that the university set up a department devoted to the authenticity of necromancy. I was clean-bowled and returned to my bed, my spirits suitably disturbed.

Shortly before my departure, a British celebrity declared Barbados a paradise. But what I experienced on my third day here, travelling into the capital by public transport, was closer to Hades. The driver of the yellow bus was in Grand Prix mood and raced his rickety vehicle at a maniacal speed. Mrs Howe changed colour, going now green, then blue. I held her tightly, my insides churning at several revolutions a minute.

We stopped for petrol and, immediately next to the petrol station, a billboard announced the Belmont Funeral Home. After that, I kept my eyes shut, trying to ignore the omen until journey's end. Barbados? Yes! Yellow buses? No!

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