Stredwick

I will shortly be publishing my latest novel, The Downtown Massive-Book One. It consists of approximately 133 pages and 13 chapters. Readers can read two chapters on my blog. I will be publishing it on Amazon, payhip and book fusion. This book is about violence and the Jamaican underworld. It makes interesting reading. Massive mean people so it is really about Downtown, Kingston.

Most times in the rural areas people went by their nicknames. It was hard to find a man, woman, boy or girl who didn't have a nickname. Some persons liked their nicknames, others detested it. Calling a person by their nicknames could sometimes break out into a fight. However sometimes we had to use ingenious means to distinguish between persons. There were two Ambroses, little Ambrose and big Ambrose. There were two Louise, white Loiuse and black Louise. There were so many Georges that we use both their christian and surnames. There seemed to have been an over supply of Ambroses thus we also had white Ambrose and black Ambrose. These names were only used to identify the individuals. We had Bigger, Roughy, Redman, Brownman, Shortie, Shortman, Son, Son-Son, Papa Son, Dada, One Son, Whitey, Blacks, Blacka. You only had to look some way and a name would be pinned on to you. Other names coming to mind are Mass Papa, Miss Mamma, Big Boy, Little Man, Wingy, Miss Daughter, Pretty, Tall Man...

I'm surprised at the number of bushes we used to make tea that have found their way onto supermarket shelves. Some of them that haven't are the trumpet leaf, sage and several more like the love bush. The trumpet leaf and love bush were good for the flu. We used to drink the tea from these bushes to cure colds and flu. There are many more bushes that we used to drink to cure one illness or another. Of all the bushes, cold bush remedies was the most widely used. In the rural areas in those days there were no pharmacies and the doctor only visited the clinic on a weekly basis so we had to find our own medication for these common illnesses.