The Queue. Bank of St. Helena. 17/04/2024.
I am a victim of the inevitable, a casualty of my ineptitude. In the words of Mel Brooks, “Destiny! Destiny! No escaping that for me…”.
St. Helena does not yet have an ATM. VERY few places accept debit or credit cards. Apple Pay? A luxury yet to come. Cash, sterling, and its local variant, is the solitary monarch.
There is an app, a ‘preload with cash’ affair. But could I make it work? Could I hell; and so here I am, at 08.50, outside the only branch of the Bank of St. Helena, Jamestown, waiting for it to open, already 11th in the queue.
Standing in the early sunshine, with 10 minutes until opening, I reflect on my presence here, on St. Helena, on its modernity, its Britishness, both beautifully diluted by distance.
I’m here as a visitor, a traveller drawn by remoteness; by history; and by the whispered promise of something untouched. And it has touched me, deeply and quietly, unexpectedly. But as I stand here, waiting, I know—I know—that the things I’m loving, the things that are making this such a profoundly beautiful visit, won’t and cannot last; that change will come, seepingly slow at first, and then all at once. I know because I am part of it, because visitors like me bring change with us in a tide that cannot be turned back.
I hear the wooden door unlock, a door that would look at home in any residential home. A simple door. A simple chub lock with a simple latch key. Nothing fancy, no robberies anticipated here.
I enter the bank and survey the scene, immediately unusual, historically familiar: bank tellers sitting at mahogany stations, protected by glass screens, already busying like bees in their black and yellow uniforms, performing their prescribed tasks. The first four in the queue, the early birds, are seen immediately; the rest of us called forward, one by one.
“Teller Number 5, please!”
I shuffle forward. Slowly; patiently; inching ahead at a pace that would, elsewhere, drive me mad. But here? Here it makes sense. Time bends in St. Helena, stretching out like a lazy cat in the sun. No rush. No urgency. Teller Number 2 chats with her customer, making time and taking time. Something about a cousin’s wedding. Laughter. Familiarity. Fellowship. A comfort I hadn’t realised I’d been missing until I found it here, on this rock, in the middle of the South Atlantic.
St. Helena is an ‘island village’ of less than 4,000 souls. A place where everyone seems to know each other, where names are remembered, and stories are carried. There’s a beauty in that, a rare thing. But there’s a real desire here for more visitors, for more tourists. I’m here to help influence that. What will happen when the outside world creeps in? When strangers outnumber friends? When easy, unforced kindness becomes something polished, packaged and sold? Will this warmth survive the weight of demand?
“Teller Number 3, please!” 4th in the queue. I’m in no rush.
Life here, is slow. Deliciously, stubbornly slow. No one checks their watch, no one’s in a hurry. In the queue, before and behind, people talk, leaning into the moment. I wonder, how long before impatience arrives and the immediacy of a digitally driven life dictates the pace? Before the need for efficiency tramples the beauty of the wait? Before technology replaces the Teller.
“Teller Number 2, please!”
I love the way people speak here: their language—Saint Speak—melodic, rich, an English shaped by isolation. A dialect holding history in its syllables. But language is fragile. It fades, and bends to the will of outsiders. A few more decades of visitors, of global influence, will it still be heard? Or will it be swallowed, smoothed out, replaced with something ‘global’, more familiar to foreign ears?
“Teller Number 6, please!”
I ate my first St. Helena fishcake two days ago. At Anne’s Place. I can’t stop thinking about it. Not because I couldn’t pay for it (The App!), not because I need to settle my readily given tab, the reason I’m here. But because it was simple. Honest; a meal that told a story of historic scarcity and ingenuity, of making the most of what’s available. But will it last? Will goat curry and plo survive the arrival of imported goods in greater volume, of chain restaurants, of a world that demands ease and variety at the expense of tradition?
Self-sufficiency used to live here. People grew, they bartered, they shared. But that has died away. Convenience has crept in, whispering its promise of an easier way. Supermarkets have come with their packaged goods. Any why not? Why shouldn’t these people have the same as anyone else? Why should they linger in the past for the sake of my tourist sensibilities? This isn’t some exhibit; it’s a place where people live. But what a shame. What a damned shame. The past, the ‘now’ even, so quickly becomes a memory.
“Teller Number 4 please!”
Then there’s the silence. The deep, vast, honest silence, the kind that wraps around you and holds you still. No traffic. No hum of machines. Nothing happening at breakneck speed. Just the wind, the sea, an occasional shout or whistle, a laugh, an overheard conversation. It’s what I’ll miss most when I leave. Because it won’t stay this way. Not forever. More people means more noise, more movement, more everything. And the silence, once gone, it won’t come back.
“Teller Number 1 please!”. I stand at the front of the queue.
The sea. The RMS St. Helena, gone now, was more than a ship. It was a tether, a tradition, a lifeline. And with it went something intangible. The sea still beats against the cliffs, but its role is changing. Air travel has made the island smaller, more reachable, more vulnerable. St. Helena has always belonged to the ocean, but soon, it will belong to the world.
I smile at my swim in the harbour this morning. An early dip in a glorious space. A working harbour, central to the community. A place of excitement, where people flood to see the arrival of a new ship, where they gather to wave it away. I felt part of something sacred. But it will soon be gone, a desire to separate the commercial from the social already in play, to make it nicer for future visitors. To make it more like somewhere else.
“Teller Number 7 please!”
My turn. My Teller greets me with a smile and, looking at my passport, calls me by my name. That’s the way of things here. You matter. You’re seen. And maybe that’s why I feel this quiet ache in my chest, this bittersweet awareness that I am both lucky to have experienced this place as it is now, and complicit in the changes that will inevitably come. This place has given me something precious, a gift that’s slipping away, bit by bit, with every plane that lands.
I take my money. Old fashioned paper bank notes. I revel in its forgotten smell and texture. I wish everyone a ‘good day’ as others before me had done.
I step out into the bright, sun-soaked street. The scent of salt and heat, the murmur of life, the echo of laughter from a nearby conversation. I snuggle in to my contentment.
I am grateful that I’m here, in the now. It will not last forever.
