Dominoes

Now that the school term has started, getting to work is a significantly bigger headache. Prior to the influx of neatly uniformed mini-Kingstonians, I had been impressed by Kingston’s bus transport system. Not only did the buses boast air-conditioning and music (one of the few places in the city where you could chance on some decent reggae, but more on that later), but they were pleasingly half-empty and, what’s more, so were the roads! London, I felt, could learn a lot from Kingston.

How things have changed. Thanks to the mass of schoolchildren, I now have to leave for work an entire hour earlier. Otherwise I risk being stuck in traffic on a hideously overcrowded bus. With a preacher man screaming at me.

Yes, the preacher. He is not there every day, but often enough. He’s loud. He’s intense. He’s full of moral outrage. He assumes that he has your full attention.

Fifteen years in London have hardened me to this kind of behaviour. Sharing buses and trains with singing/dancing/lecturing weirdos who had cheerfully waved goodbye to any notion of an objective idea of reality; such experiences instil a reflex. Certain kinds of behaviour, after a while, do not register. People drinking beers on public transport before noon? I don’t see them. I remember an early morning bus-ride in Stamford Hill; a man pacing up and down the bus, mumbling incoherently in animal-like grunts, with trousers hanging around his knees. He smelt horrific. Can of lager in hand, he’d sporadically scream abuse at some invisible enemy.

I didn’t even see him. I only remember the episode because I noticed an older woman, who reminded me of my mum, sat next to me, in tears, horrified at the spectacle.

But the preacher in Kingston gets under my skin. I feel that the passengers don’t mind him that much. I will occasionally hear a faint “Amen” from a passenger or two. The preacher does not seem to have even the faintest appreciation of the inappropriateness of his sermon. His tone of voice is cleansed of irony, unwaveringly superior. You feel that he has never doubted himself.

The sum of these two factors is that I find the experience difficult to laugh at.

So, at the moment, I am quite pleased at having to leave the house at 7 o’clock in the morning.


On the bus ride home, you see interesting things happening outside the bus. Once, I saw a man walking around Parade (Kingston’s bustling, hectic main square) wearing nothing but a ragged T-shirt. The look on his face told you that, even if his body (all of it) was here, his mind was somewhere else. He drifted blankly through the throng of Kingstonians selling their wares on the street and shouting loudly at one another. Nobody noticed him.

People on the street selling goldfish which, cruelly, are not packaged in water. Surely they’re dead?

Groups of Jamaican men huddled around a small wooden table on the pavement, playing dominoes. I don’t know whether or not dominoes is the national sport in Jamaica, but it is very popular. It is a great game; you can set up anywhere with a surface, it’s easy to pick up, tough to master.

The premise is simple: match up your dominoes to the ones that have already been played. The first to use up his dominoes wins (I had never played before arriving in Jamaica).

Every Friday, our office goes down to Rae Town, a small fishing town in Kingston, to play dominoes, drink beer and be serenaded by the likes of Sam Cooke and Bobby Darin. The men who hang around the bar are seasoned domino players. One regular says very little, but breaks into a shy smile whenever he wins, which is extremely often. He doesn’t know it (well actually he probably does), but when I’m playing, I’m trying to figure out how he does it...

We play dominoes as competing pairs, which is when the game really becomes strategic. When I play against him, my seasoned opponent appears to have the power to know what pieces I hold in my hand. I am still figuring how this works exactly. I think it has something to do with memorising.

There are seven variations of each domino. For 6, there will be 6:blank, 6:1, 6:2, 6:3, 6:4, 6:5 and 6:6 and so on for each number. What the skilful domino player does, I think, is through some methodology I have yet to make sense of, keep a ‘running score’ of the outstanding dominoes. By seeing what domino you play, the experienced player can work out the likelihood of you having a 6:4 as opposed to a 6:2. As the game proceeds, my opponent becomes more and more sure what I have in my hand.

As I say, I have only just started playing. Perhaps after a little while it will become obvious and this entire ramble will seem a bit foolish. For now, I still don't understand why I keep losing...