YES, it's that time of the year again: time for Mrs C to get some sun on her back and for me to sit, pale in the shade, and drink funny coloured drinks.

And, yes again, this time we did find our paradise isle in the Windward Isles...almost.

Now I have been excoriated in the past for my opinions on the behaviour of

various nationalities abroad, in

particular a certain type of German (those with shaven heads and swastika tattoos) and young Japanese who, because no-one ever taught them the truth, still treat with arrogance the sons and daughters of Chinese who parents and grandparents were murdered, raped and robbed by the Japanese army during World War II.

Well, time for readers to get their pens out again, for this year's pests in paradise are ... the Brits, some of whom still seem to believe they are the colonial masters of this little, lovely but independent member of the Commonwealth.

Now time was when this place really was a millionaire's paradise and parts of it still are: you can tell by the yachts in the harbours.

From time to time, they include that of the Hyphen-Hyphens, who have been selling off bits of Beggarsdale to pay for this sort of lifestyle for yonks.

But - and herewith the non-PC bit - new long-range aeroplanes have brought it within reach of Cattle Truck Travel and the once exclusive hotels are of full of builders from the Black Country and double glazing salesmen from Sale.

Both have their different ways of

treating the local black people, some of the most welcoming people we have ever met, as though they were still colonial serfs.

In one bar on a glorious beach, I

actually heard one man with a broad West Midlands accent talking about the waiter and calling him Sambo.

He then turned to a pleasant German youth, whom we had just seen giving money to a lame man selling beads, and chortled: "Did you bring your

wheelbarrow to carry your Euros?"

That takes some beating for

bloody-minded ignorance but the very next day I ran into a plummy-mouthed London lady who was in a local wine shop stocking up her yacht with booze.

There were three attendants in the shop and we were the only customers so I passed my purchase - a bottle of fizzy water (honest) - to the third.

Ms Plum Mouth turned on me and spat: "Do you mind not jumping the queue - I'm buying three cases of wine here."

I put my bottle back and apologised to the shopkeeper for the rudeness of my fellow countrywoman, who seemed to be in a state of apoplexy as I walked out.

Yet when I popped back half an hour later, the lady shopkeeper apologised to me as though she had done me some insult.

So there you go.

After a lifetime of searching, you find your tropical paradise, complete with emerald waters, white beaches, swaying palms and very few creepy crawlies (just one mosquito bite in a week) and you find it alive with human pests.

British human pests.

We get plenty of visitors to Beggarsdale come summer but if any of them talked to us locals like this lot, they would get a punch on the nose.

And deserve it too.