by Harry Mayers

VICTOR SAUNTERED into the café with a wide grin and shocked everybody with his question: "Anybody here knows the most current f-word?"

Seeing our raised eyebrows, he quickly added: "It's not flights, as in another LIAT let-down; it's not flyovers as in over-vehicled roads and, uh, over-runs." He paused and then shouted "It's ferry!"

Everybody in the group gave a long, collective disdainful steupse except the loquacious insurance executive who incidentally also has access to substantial banking funds.

"I think you are on to a good thing, Victor," he said. "I would back you all the way."

Once he had spoken we changed our attitudes. We were all ears.

But it was Victor who spoke next. "Check your newspaper and see how many times 'ferry' has floated into the news. This is not empty talk. This is not pipe-dream time. This is business. Look out. Something
is going to happen."

The insurance man with his hand on the money bags pointed out that a ferry project or projects "would make an abundance of c-e-n-t-s", as he spelled it, because of intra-Caribbean travel and lengthening traffic jams on the streets.

Then everybody started recalling that the Minister of Tourism, Mr Sealy, spoke about the wisdom of having
a ferry service along the West Coast; and that Prime Minister David Thompson had raised with his counterpart in Trinidad, Mr Manning, the issue of a ferry service for the southern Caribbean.

Victor smiled. "Anybody wants to join in before it's too late?"