Random Stories from a Kingston Girl

When I was 19, I received a phone call on my birthday from my big brother. ‘Do you have a boyfriend at the moment?’ ‘No’, I replied.

‘Well be careful. You could turn into an old spinster living in a little house surrounded by loads of cats.’

Fast forward a few years and it is my (cough cough) birthday this weekend. And last weekend, I went and got a cat for my little house which I live in on my own.

Is his prophecy starting to come true? The cat and I have a good relationship so far. He doesn’t cause mess, he doesn’t take up all the bed, he comes home for dinner every night. Maybe I’ll happily embrace the prophecy!!!

However, the man and the cat get along well so far. Maybe I can just have half the prophecy. Live in a house surrounded by cats and with a man who loves me. Who knows what the next year has in store for me!

Does anyone else who lives in Kingston play games on their drive to work in the morning? You know the ones - how many times have I nearly been killed this morning? How many police cars have raced past me with their sirens on and only one officer in there? How many window cleaners have I had to tell to leave me alone?

just wondering!

On a different but related note, I was on my way out with a friend on Friday night and we were stopped at the traffic lights near Devon House. A man appears, selling roses at the car window. We wave him on - ‘we are girls who have flowers bought for us, not girls who buy them ourselves’ we tell him. So then a  moment later, he reappears and hands us a rose through the window. This is accompanied by a car horn blowing - apparently the rose was a gift from those men in that car. We smiled, waved and drove off with our rose.

Ah well, at least if blah times get worse, I know that I can at least attract men in a car in the dark!!!

I’m going to copy from Island Spice - I’m feeling blah. Something about ordinary time, nothing much exciting. Well, actually that’s not completely accurate. The problem is partly that too much is happening… just I don’t know what it is! You see, being a civil servant, a new government means lots of changes. And this time, for my department, a heck of a lot of changes! But the problem is we don’t know what they will be yet. We just know changes are coming. So in the meanwhile, we are sat here in limbo. Waiting for instructions. Waiting to be told what to stop doing, what to continue doing and what to do differently. And we are all wearing our Ministry shirts today as they will be outdated by next week!

Otherwise, also feeling blah as it is bird season. I don’t shoot. I don’t want to shoot. But the man does. And I think it is really bad planning to have bird season starting so close after elections. You know, we gave up our men in election season, allow them to go off and campaign and save the world etc. But we expected to be spoilt afterwards in return. And then they put bird season immediately afterwards. Grrrr!!!! And they don’t even shoot the birds near a nice hotel so I can go and relax while they shoot. They shoot them in backabush locations with no decent hotels nearby.

 I am not impressed.

This country is too small. I know I’ve said that before, but there is another example of it today. In today’s observer, there is an article on 8 high-acheiving men under 40. You know, the kind of man that really us girls should be going after.

It seems that several of my friends have recognised their potential in advance of the article as the majority of them are ex’s of one of my friends or another.

Which brings me to an important question. I’ve always said that my friends’ ex’s are off limits to me. But in a country where the pool of eligble men seems so small, is it really right to place them off limit if by doing so you leave yourself with no options at all?! Do we really want to prevent one of our group from getting a ‘highly eligible man’?

Fortunately this is a hypothetical question for me as I’m not looking. But for my friends who are, what are they supposed to do? I think we need to introduce a grading system… they get marks depending on how close the friend is to you and how close she was to him.

For example, the first man my good good friend loved - definitely off limits. But someone another less close friend had a short fling with is ready to be recycled.

What do you think?!

On a completely different note, does anyone know what words trigger spam comments? Some posts get no spam at all and others get hundreds. And when I get hundreds, I can’t be bothered to check through them so they are all deleted. So sorry if yours is in there, but really, I’m not going to look through 300 ads for viagra just in case!

Due to circumstances beyond my control (such as excess work and lack of internet), I haven’t posted in nearly 2 weeks. And I am now feeling very unloved. Not one person asked me how I was during that time or when I would be back. I could have been dying and you all wouldn’t have noticed. Not nice!

But anyway, on a completely different note, some people in the real world do love me. I went to a wedding at the weekend of a girl who I was good friends with in Prep School. Which means that I have known here for nearly 25 years! Life has taken us in opposite directions recently but it was nice to be there and see her get married.

And as is tradition, she threw her bouquet at the end of the evening, and all us ‘unmarried’ had to go out and try to catch it. I tried to avoid going up, but the people I was sitting with wouldn’t let that happen. So I stood at the back of the group, thinking “I’ve known her from the days that there were 16 girls in our class, which meant 2 netball teams and me and her sat on the side chatting. She couldn’t thrown then, she won’t be able to throw now.” But I was wrong. She gave it one hell of a throw, all the way round to the back and I automatically put up my hands to prevent it hitting my face and caught it.

So now I have a question for you - does it actually happen that the person who catches it marries next or is that just a tale?! As if it’s true, then I’d better sit down the man and have a talk with him!

On another completely different note, this is the point to stop reading if you are like Gela. I’m off to Jazz tomorrow!! I am flying down as soon as work finishes to meet the man down there and to have a fab weekend. I know the line up doesn’t look amazing, but that’s irrelevant to me - I just love any live music and the atmosphere at Jazz is always brilliant. I’m just hoping that it goes better than last year… otherwise there will be no chance of the bouquet prophecy coming true!

I’m sorry I appear to be neglecting this site at the moment. It’s that busy time of year. I am in the process of trying to get lots of things done at work before everyone disappears for Christmas as my January looks mad, while fitting in the pre-Christmas work ‘meetings’ (otherwise known as an excuse to eat cake) and then trying to do something to prepare for Christmas and attend some parties!

 So in the place of any time to post long and interesting stories, I’m going to resort to a list again:

1. I went to the UWI Carol Service on Sunday which was excellent as usual. And as usual saw loads of people who I hadn’t seen since last year which was nice. So that made me feel all Christmassy.

2. I’m eating too much cake and not going to the gym enough. And that is before the sorrel was made at home last night and added into the equation.

3. I have yet to buy a single Christmas present for anyone living in Jamaica. And the plazas are mad. I intend to take a day next week and go in early when hopefully I can find a parking space and get it all done at once! And I still don’t know what to buy the man - he has informed me that I can to a golf shop, tell them his name and they will point out lots of things that he likes. However, that seems too boring to me so am searching my brain for an alternative…

4. I’m becoming hooked to the new TBS show ‘My boys.’ It’s not exactly rocket science but it makes me laugh - which is what is needed at 10 on a Tuesday night.

5. I have finally sent my Christmas cards to Englad. Which means if any of my UK friends are reading this, I’m sorry but they will be late! But be glad you are getting them at all - I was queuing for so long at the post office to send them that they nearly ended up in the bin instead.

6. I was proposed to! On Sunday! Well, not really proposed to, more like I was told that I was going to get married. Via my father. By the carpenter guy. My dad saw the carpenter and told him that I needed some bookcases making for my new house and when he heard that I would be moving in there on my own, he informed my father that he was going to marry me and move in with me to keep me safe.

Oh well, if all else fails, at least I know I won’t become a scary old cat lady on my own!

I was talking to the man last night and he asked me if I knew an acquaintance of his, we’ll call this guy Z*. Nope, never heard of the guy before.

Then he asked if I knew Z’s wife. Nope, never heard of her before either.

Apparently Z was asking him if he was going to be going to the church up the hill** for Christmas.

So obviously the acquaintance of his knew of me and knew of what my dad does. And before you ask, I don’t think of myself as a well known person - I don’t appear on page 2 of the observer, I don’t do PR for a big company and my family doesn’t have a famous name!

I’ve never met Z. I don’t know what group he hangs around with. I don’t know his wife. The man doesn’t know them well. But someone had mentioned to Z about me and the man having a thing.

This country is too damn small.

On a completely different matter, I have decided that it is time to start feeling Christmassy. I have put the ‘Christmas in the Sun’ album on my work computer (excellent album! All Jamaican and happy.) I am going to a lime at a friend’s house this evening with the main point being that we are going to have drinks and look at her Christmas tree. And I am planning to take a day off next week to do my Christmas shopping. All I need now is a good Christmas backgroup for my computer - any suggestions?? 

* Just using Z as it is a letter I don’t use often enough in this blog.

** My dad is the minister of a little church up a hill

I had to go to a family function with the man* last week. You know the type, lots of people there who haven’t seen each other in ages, and I knew no one there. Which, in Jamaica, is very unusual.

After wandering around for a while we sat at a table and his elderly aunt (Aunt X) came and sat with us. As he has manners, he introduced me. This is my friend** Kingston Girl. Then he saw someone he wanted to say hi to but I was comfie with my drink so off he went and left me with her.

 And things were ok for a while, I made my polite conversation etc. Then another Aunt, lets say Aunt Y  came over. So Aunt X introduces me to Aunt Y - This is (the man’s), FRIEND, Kingston Girl.

At which point I had to bite my lips to stop me laughing out loud. It was the say she said it, the pause before the word ‘friend, the way friend was said like it had quotations around it or maybe like she wanted to add ‘and I’m sure there are benefits involved’ with it!

Anyway, the two ladies got over that and put down their raised eyebrows and started what was obviously a long running and facinating discussion for them. They discussed where to buy electric generators. And which ones were best. You see, one of them had lived in England and the other one had lived in the USA and they had both brought back electrival items with them. And apparently, certain generators work better with items from England and others work better with things from the USA.

I managed to smile at this conversation and nod my head wisely for about 5 minutes before I had to run as fast as I could to the bar.

 * Previously known as the get over man. However due to the length of time that has now past, he has lost the first part of his name. I tried to find the post that defined a get over man but couldn’t - I think I must have writen something in it about work that I later decided needed deleting!

 ** I like the term friend - in those situations, it means mind your own business about our relationship. Calling someone my girlfriend after a certain age sounds odd, my partner implies too much and my lover isn’t really appropriate for elderly relatives!

I have a question for the men out there. When you see a woman driving down the road and you yell something along the lines of ‘hey brownin, me like yuh, yuh know’, what do you expect to happen?

Should I stop the car at the next available point, get out and come and talk to you? Or should I yell my number out as I drive by? Should I just ignore you? Or should I copy one of my friends who has taken to yelling something along the lines of ‘me like yuh too - let me when you buy the diamond and I’ll come check yuh’ back at them?

Just wondering. Because you see, I was always taught it is rude to ignore someone who is talking to me. But at the same time, I really don’t want to accidentally get into a relationship with a man who I met while he was sat at the side of the raod at 8:00 in the morning with his morning red stripe and spliff.

Ladies - have you got any alternative responses?!

This post is the fault of island spice - another addition to the caribbean blogger family.

I had this ‘boyfriend’ once. Fortunately I didn’t have him for too long. I quickly learnt his very strange ways. He was one of those short-term guys you get involved with after a long-term relationship, you know the type - someone who is so different from the ex (and hence you soon realise sooo wrong for you).

Anyway, I don’t know what I did to this guy. But he decided that it would be good to fall madly in love with me in a very short length of time. He decided that we had a cosmic connection and the stars meant us to be together.

And about the time he said this, I was trying to figure out how to get away from him… So I broke it to him as kindly as possible, we were not meant to be together. It wasn’t working. And I wanted out.

At which point he got rather upset. And started to try and pile guilt on me. Apparently he has been thinking that we should get married (hell, I’d known him for 2 months!!!) and I was just running away from the strength of my feelings for him.

When I pointed out that this was in no way the case, he eventually gave up and left with the parting line of ‘I think you need to see a psychologist to help you sort out your inability to truely find love and to give of yourself.’

Obviously if I wasn’t in love with him, I was mad.

Well I have to say that if that was the case, I’m happily mad until this very day!