Longines

07:18 on a Tuesday.

Most of the traffic took the B8 up Long Hill Road to Anchovy and to the citrus plantations and Savannah La Mar beyond. The road is mostly empty now, and it opens up past Reading, and Don Topping starts another “Doo Wop Shopping” show on Radio Two (“your music and sports lifestyle station”). For the balance of the commute, as the tinny sounds of my underpowered radio blare the best of the Doo Woppers from decades past, I find it too easy to imagine that the music comes to me as new releases.

And the Dell-Vikings continue with their “...dum bee doo bee dum, wah wah wah waah”.
In the country, there is little to remind you of the year. Most rural buildings are of a typical zinc roofed construct, as they have been forever. Building materials have been recycled so much, I doubt if anyone really knows when that rusted roof or pitted wooden siding was first used. I suppose after the hurricane hits, you just rebuild with whatever has been blown onto your yard. Paint runs JA $250 a liter, so you do not see much of it being used. There are still a number of buildings with damage left over from Gilbert, the last hurricane. Unoccupied, they are like relics in a ghost town, or a town soon to be ghosted.

The people that I pass along the roadside, waiting for a lift or just waiting, are without period. A khaki schoolboy uniform (standard white blouse and school colored skirt for the girls) looks as modern today as it did in 1930. Even the working folks seem to be dressed out of time. The style is not quite now or then. The vendor’s pushcart has not seen a redesign in seventy years. Rasta hair is Rasta hair, whenever – dreads be dreads (or, more locally, “locks be locks”).

The road is still empty on Thursday morning, as it opens up again past Reading, and Don Topping starts another “Strike Up the Band” show on Radio Two (still “your music and sports lifestyle station”).

The Dogwagon spews thick, black, diesel fumes as it churns up the grade from Great River, and the view back across and towards Montego Bay looks exactly as it did when Ellington wrote the tune that is playing right now. From this distance, I cannot make out the individual buildings. I can only see a mass of structures trying their best to hold onto the steep slopes of the hills above town.

The road is without time. Generally constructed prior to the departure of the British and inadequately maintained, it reflects a standard long ago deemed inappropriate in the United States. No doubt, the time of construction was before the advent of excessive liability settlements, when you really did not need to have substantial clear zones, appropriate stopping sight distances, adequate guardrail, pavement marking or signage.

I share the road with the Ladas. Singularly, a car out of time. They are as abundant as the goats. Developed shortly after the development of the box, a design which appears unchanged over eons, Ladas somehow keep on going, despite the ravages of time and this highway. Old cars, old trucks, old bicycles are all cobbled together, and their owners try to get one more day out of them. Anything that looks new is an anomaly.

On this road, there is no regulatory information in the way of road furniture, and no traffic enforcement either. As such, there is a level of indiscipline and lawlessness on the highway that is reminiscent of some of the old biker flicks.
And it is not just the biker flicks, I suppose, but the total feel of this drive is like most any road film made in the fifties or sixties, and probably lots of war movies set in the Asian and Pacific theatres. With the right background music, Jamaica is a land without time. Sometimes, the high levels of dust during this current drought make the place look like it was filmed in black and white, or perhaps the Technicolor has just faded.

And I continue my commute, and try to tweak a little more thunder out of the Woody Herman tune.

A few weeks ago, I borrowed a friend's copy of the first 007 movie, Dr. No. The major part of it was filmed on the island in 19-long ago, as were many of the early Bonds. It seems that it could have been filmed here yesterday; so much looks and feels the same.

Jamaica has only been independent since 1962, and there is a strong colonial influence which remains here. As the wealthy foreigners, we are easily isolated from the daily life and scrapping existence of everyday Jamaicans. We spend our money at places too posh for the vast majority of the people who live here, and then we lock ourselves into our gated compounds at night, secure in the fact that the guards at the gate will keep the undesirables at bay..... just like it has always been.

Saturday morning, and Radio Two plays a mix of Motown and Disco. I can tell that today is going to be one of those get down boogie fever kind of days.

We play tennis on most weekends now, in a round robin format that, reduced of competition, is much more civilized. An ideal sport for the expatriate crowd. Tennis whites, gin and tonics, huzzahs all around, sophisticated humours with the embassy crowd. Well, not quite, but there is that air about the activity. Expatriates have been playing tennis here forever.

Despite the civility, it is still tennis in the Tropics, and the final game stalled on deuce for a quarter hour it seems, and I am hot and tired and leave a trail of sweat all the way home, where I crank the most recent Filter, brought back from the States the last time I was there.

And I look at my watch in that brief instance when the second hand is between ticks, and time has stopped altogether.