It’s been such a rollercoaster of a couple of weeks, it only dawned on me last night as I sat on the step of the Brooklyn Bar that it was 21 years ago I stepped off a plane and into my first Trini and Caribbean night. I allowed myself a few moments of nostalgia, remembering the good old/bad old days.

My first residence was an apartment high up Tunapuna Road, just past the Burnley Sports Club. Walking from the Eastern Main Road at nights, it would take me a good 20 minutes to get home. I lived up Tunapuna Road for ten months and walked the hill three or four nights a week. I was never stopped, threatened, robbed or attacked.

My nocturnal rambles were definitely one of my pleasures. After years in London, where I was also an inveterate perambulator pounding pavements and concrete walkways, it was a positive delight to stroll through the sultry streets, lanes and traces nestled in the foothills of the Northern Range. Generally, the hill-dwellers gave me right, although some stray pothounds persuaded me to walk with a ready stone in hand.

Another real pleasure, which turned into that ghastly term “learning experience,” was my recreation time in the Federal Snackette, on the main road opposite the police station, or more occasionally at the nearby Bulldog Bar. Before you take me for a total sot, there was far more in these sessions than just the beers.

My first six or so months, I’d quite happily sit for hours on end, initially eavesdropping and eventually macoing and then contributing to the creole conversations all around me. As an English teacher faced by speakers of Trinidad English creole on a daily basis, these bars were in effect my live language lab. I didn’t feel I could teach competently without learning at least some of the first language of my students.

Pedagogy aside, as a writer and an avid reader, it was blissful to sit and listen to the kaiso, rapso, extempo, cussin and ole talk flying in all directions. Having swallowed Trini literature in its entirety (Naipual, Selvon, Lovelace, Sonny Ladoo, Merle Hodge et al) while still in London, it was a thrill actually to hear the dialogues come alive. I’d take notes, ask questions or for explanations, most of which were willingly answered.

I became such a regular in the Federal, along with my teaching colleague Errol Sitahal, that we both referred to it as “the Office.” Never once in all my years liming, discussing or cussin in the Office was there ever any violence, apart from that of raucous rum-soaked voices, especially on Friday nights. Sadly, the Office has gone the way of many rum shops, although it’s now a variety store rather than a car park.

Sitting on the steps of the Brooklyn last night, it also dawned on me that it’s one of the few surviving rum shops in town. It’s not that I object to “development” and air-conditioned bars, but coming from the temperate zones originally it’s always struck me as absurd that in the tropics people want to run the heat with the brittle flow of air-conditioning.

And then I find the postmodern style of bar in Trinidad disappointing or simply dull: it could be in Miami, or a chic part of London or even New York, which I guess is the design and concept logic. But that again, for me, is as ridiculous as the phenomenon of importing worn-out North American or Euro has-beens to Caribbean so-called jazz festivals.

There is the argument, of course, that audiences in the Caribbean are getting to see artistes they couldn’t normally access. True, but it’s always amazed me to see visitors from North America at these festivals paying extortionate sums to go hear acts they wouldn’t give the time of day or night to back home. Why travel thousands of miles to relive your back-home experience? Isn’t one of the major points of going to different places to experience the uniqueness of the place, its people, culture and environment?

Along with demise of the rum shop and its welcoming community goes the impulsive drive toward globalisation and homogeneity. We import everything from food to violence, while we ignore what is here.

But to end on a high rather than a lament: Having floundered for a week after the theft of my laptop, I was pulled back from the edge of lethargy and despair by the very generous loan of another laptop—“until I catch myself”—by a big-hearted man. Many thanks to you, compay, and as you can see I’m putting it to good use.