The busiest day of the year is Christmas Eve known as Grand Market and Brown's Town had one of the biggest. In preparation we stocked crates and crates of kola wine and aerated water, red jingx was the most popular, ceiling high on the pieza in front of the shop almost blocking the entrance. In those days we could store sacks of sugar and flour there without any loss. Our doors opened shortly after dawn and we would remain open till after midnight. Gwen and i would go off to midnight mass and return to help close up. To fortify ourselves, huge thermoses of coffee sweetened with condensed milk would be on hand, and only then would i be allowed coffee in order to stay awake. We would sleep late the next day and the next being Christmas Day and Boxing Day holidays though my parents and the servants would be up early to prepare for the big Christmas dinner. We would have ham, turkey with potato stuffing, roast beef, rice and peas, fried plantain, potato salad and cabbage slaw, accompanied by sorrel and Whiteways cider. We never had to bake as my godmother and some of our customers would present us with no end of Christmas goodies, both dark and light fruitcake, cookies and puddings, sometimes fudge. We would have in turn given out rump and whole leg hams, bottles of scotch, wine or liqueur, fancy boxed chocolates, and lithographed tins of biscuits, all imported. Looking back, i cannot imagine how the business afforded all this largesse. I was tasked with wrapping all of these, choosing the gift paper from the glorious designs in the assorted ream we got every year. Months before December travelling salesmen from Kingston distributors would come through with their sample cases and i would get to sit in on the ordering sometimes offering my two cents. My Christmas would get an early and extended start as i was afforded a preview of the season's toys, gadgets and doodads.

Besides all the excitement and anticipation of celebration and presents, the sound of Jangkunu drums in the distance would set my heart racing. I was utterly fascinated by them and afraid of them at the same time. I would hide from them at first, then later creep out to watch from a safe distance. They would halt their progress in front of the shop to perform, work the gathered crowd, then continue on their way. I was terrified when they actually came into the shop with palms outstretched to demand money. Masquerade season extended well into the New Year as did our family's, keeping the Christmas tree up right till Chinese New Year sometimes well into February. The imported Canadian pine, long cut ahead of its journey and already past its prime, would get progressively browner and lose its needles but the scent filled the house and the lights continued the festive mood. We had so much food to go through followed in short order by a fresh banquet prepared for tong ngin dzo ngen.

Perhaps the most significant happening this year was that i completed my memoir which i had contemplated for years and finally drove my self to finish. In order to do so, i has to get up early in the mornings, sometimes at 6 a.m. to get something written before the day's activities would intrude. The previous paragraphs are memories of Christmases past, telescoped into one.

Brown's Town market.

Gwen in the shop.

Christmas cake with banana peel.

Wholewheat bread with banana peel.

Channa masala with banana peel.

That's as far as it goes. As a non-believer and curmudgeon, i don't celebrate Christmas apart from making cake if i feel like. I love the music of Christmas so i listen to it all year, same as i enjoy cake, bun and sorrel whenever. This is the 21st century. Everything is available, everywhere, all at once. Culture and tradition may be uncoupled from the solar progression. The sooner you can free yourself from the constraints of time, the easier it becomes to realise your transcendent nature. To begin with, just remember the sun is always shining no matter how dark you think it is, and it's now summer in the southern hemisphere. Losing your tether to time and date is the beginning of your liberation.

Rather, as a child of the sun i celebrate the solstice, the return of longer days to the northern hemisphere. I recognise Christmas as the marketing ploy and shopping frenzy that it is. The love, empathy and good cheer that Christmas supposedly represents, should be lived every day, as i try to do. Every day is Christmas. Love is every day. Similarly, i don't miss home. Home is where i am. Family is whom i'm with and connected to. I am looking at you Arjuna, Ruben, Rodrigo, Benedetta, Justice, Desiree, Madine, Karen, Jai, D, and whomever enters these gates.

The cake is made with wholewheat flour and tradional ingredients including dried fruit soaked in rum and wine for a year. I've added blended banana peel, my culinary innovation this year. I add it chopped or blended to cake, bun, stews soups and curries. It makes a whole lot of sense to re-use banana peels as they are a good source of fibre and minerals, almost as nutritious as the fruit itself. The peel constitutes about 25% of the weight so discarding the peel is throwing away a quarter of your money. Imported bananas contain a lot of embedded energy derived from fossil fuels in the growing, fertilising, picking, sorting, packing, and transporting in refrigerated ships across many miles so you can enjoy them all year. Zero waste may not reverse global warming but it does reduce your carbon footprint. Every little bit helps to live lightly on the earth.

You can also use banana peel in the garden as an all-purpose fertilizer and soil conditioner, or just simply add it to your compost heap.

Some of the year's successes:
Far left - Abutilon, grown from a slip collected from a friend's quinta, finally blooming after 2 years.
Centre left - Acanthus firmly established and blooming, ordered online from UK though it grows wild here.
Centre - Plumbago, another childhood favourite, in a riot of bloom, apparently responding to urine application.
Centre right - Dahlias which still surprise with their vigour.
Right - Beginning to have that overgrown cottage garden look.
Above - Cup and saucer peony ordered online from the UK.

Nature, body, and mind go to death, not we; we never go nor come.
~ Vivekananda ~

A major loss this year was the unexpected early death of my niece Carolyn, eldest daughter of my sister Margaret and her husband Arnold Chin, formerly of Montego Bay. Carolyn had survived serious cardiac problems and more or less had them under control but then she succumbed to breast cancer. She was the only other known LGBT member of my family, though we were not as close as you might expect.

To die is only to be as we were before we were born; yet no one feels any remorse or regret, or repugnance, in contemplating this last idea. It is rather a relief and disburdening of the mind.
~ William Hazlitt ~

Andrew and Bill from Delaware whom i met online came to visit on their reconnaisance trip to Portugal. We have friends in common.

My own decline has begun. My energy levels had fallen after my bout with lymphoma and never quite resumed what they were. Then last month i came down with a terrible cough with lots of phlegm and i lost my sense of balance.The diagnosis was acute sinusitis which caused my inner ear to become infected causing my balance problem. It has been weeks now and i still move around slowly and clumsily as if drunk. Now finally feeling my age.