On my birthday Bobo and I went to the local bar in Sherwood. One of them, at least, as there are three. This one is owned by JahT or “Shortman” who put on our roof. It is run by his daughter who cooks fish every Saturday night. The bar girl is quite beautiful: young with great charm. There are nice lights and so forth. It is a typical place all cobbled together out of this or that but altogether a good atmosphere.

Bobo and I went there and were drinking our beers and I was smoking my spliff. Our other guests, two tourists from Barbados were also there getting their dinner and drinking Red Stripe and Sorrel beer.

Suddenly an arm reached around my shoulders and a very black face was right up against my own in an extremely friendly and companionable way. He was up so close I couldn’t really make out who it was and know whether to tell him to fuck off or hug him back like a long-lost friend. It was John Crow who I wrote about previously. He is the person I referred to as being called upon when great feats of physical strength are required. I am not close with John Crow. My sympathetic interaction with him consisted of giving him some Ibuprofen for a toothache and subsequently enquiring about his progress. And here he was being all cozy and intimate and buying me a beer. Bobo knocked his arm off me and said something and there was an interchange of words. “This is not some girlfriend,” said Bobo, “This is my WIFE who I am here having a drink with and trying to relax.” Which was exactly true. We were just trying to recover a little bit from a couple of macrobiotic, vegan, Ital guests. The kind who thinks they discovered nutrition.

There was a lot of yelling back and forth. John Crow, aptly named, was yelling and gesticulating and Bobo was yelling back. Cowboy, another neighbor, was also getting upset. And Scratchy.... Scratchy is a motorcycle man and has a bad leg from an accident. Scratchy and Bobo had been conversing and I had been thinking what an intelligent and thoughtful person Scratchy seemed. But John Crow did something to antagonize him so badly that Scratchy got transformed into a bundle of tight tendons with his eyes bugging out of his head. There was a lot of screaming and bumboclaating and John Crow was out in the yard looking like demon with his mouth opening and closing. Scratchy got into a state that reminded me of those stories about the Viking “beserkers.” Bobo was not participating in the quarrel by then and explained to me who misses so much of what happens in Patois, that John Crow had made Scratchy furious and Scratchy is a person who “nah back down.”

Meanwhile, on the other side of me, Cowboy was fairly hopping up and down with irritation. “Him have no principal!” He said to me. “Why him come and hug you up like dat? You not him MOTHER!!” No indeed! I am not. Old enough to be, though.

In the meantime, JahTs daughter had come out of the house all concerned. This is a respectable place, and she clearly was not pleased. Her little four-year-old boy was holding her hand and looking wide eyed and scared. Our two guests were eating their fish looking concerned.

I am not very experienced in bar life I was brought up to be a “lidy.” Although my best friend, Andre Gilles once said that in the old days a lady like me would have been disowned by her family. Another friend suggested that in a place like Turkey, home of my ex, I would have been shot.

But here we are. The center of a bar encounter. I was worried that the couple from Barbados had been shocked, and the next day I enquired about it. The husband didn’t appear to have even noticed and his wife confided that her parents own a “rum shop” back home. “When you get men and alcohol together that’s what happens,” was her only comment.