My geography teacher’s name was Mr. Alistair…….or Glass Eye as we would cruelly call him out of ear shot…. due to the fact that he only had one eye. I also sat next close to a girl called Louise whose breasts were the size of the Alps and thus my interest in old Glass Eye’s lessons amounted to bugger all. Therefore I never had any idea of the location of the Cayman Islands until some 20 years ago when I first sailed there on the Holiday. It turned out that these islands were not where I had imagined them to be — somewhere in the Pacific — but were tucked away in the Caribbean, just below Cuba and not all that far from Jamaica.
I suspect that my ignorance was shared by many. But, these days, the Cayman Islands have become much better known thanks to the only film apart from Top Gun that the dwarfish and slightly strange Tom Cruise starred in……..The Firm. Thanks to books by people like John Grisham and others the Caymans have become very well known as an offshore financial. Most people now know that the islands are associated with international finance. Indeed, say the word banks and I imagine that quite a number of people would say “Cayman Islands” just as quickly as they might say “Switzerland” ………or “bastards that lost all my money.”
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