Thursday, March 28, 2024

THE AL GILKES COLUMN: No more gold in public

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I never believed the day would come when I could not wear whatever I felt like, however I felt like, wherever I felt like and whenever I felt like so doing.
But things are getting so dread on the rock these days that I did not have to wait for Commissioner of Police Darwin Dottin to advise us to stop wearing our gold jewellery in public for me to stop.
I stopped wearing mine lone ago and put it all in a safe place where the robbers would have to be safe crackers with a ton of dynamite to get at it.
Initially, I wasn’t particularly concerned by the almost daily reports of people having their chains snatched from around their necks and their bracelets and rings taken from off their hands and fingers as they went about their business.
What hit me like a steel brick was the news that a poor innocent man had been shot and robbed of the jewellery he was wearing by masked men in broad daylight and in full few of other people as he was getting a tyre fixed at a tyre repair shop in a heavily populated St Michael district.
As soon as I heard that news, I took a decision there and then that until the police are able to put an end to all the foolishness and all the jewellery thieves are safely looked up in Dodds, where other men will force them to take their jewels after lights out, I was done with flaunting on any part of my body any valuables in my possession.
So the gold watch went and was replaced by one of stainless steel that hardly knew what it felt like to be around my wrist, although I have had it for a number of years.
The gold chains also went and were replaced also by stainless steel that I bought from those Colombian people who set up shop for a few weeks in Barbados offering a variety of stuff at reasonable prices. The gold bracelet went, too, and that was replaced by stainless steel that came with the stainless steel chain.
The gold rings were the first to go and were replaced by the faded skin marks around the areas of the fingers where I used to wear them.
I didn’t have to worry about gold earrings or gold studs or any of the other jewellery that men and women now find it fashionable to wear in their ears, in their nose, in their eyebrows, in their tongues, in their lips, in their nipples, in their navels and even as adornment for their private parts.
Some years ago while on a visit to Trinidad, I was tempted to have an ear pierced and even sat in the chair to have it done but changed my mind at the last moment.
On another occasion, this time in Caracas, Venezuela, I saw a really beautiful ring on display in a jewellery store in the old el Capitolio part of the city. The problem was that it was so large in circumference that I would have had to wear it on more than one finger at the same time. So my fertile imagination stared picturing me wearing it on Rufus but I also changed my mind about that.
Can you imagine the scene of me letting Rufus out in a public toilet only to have a thief snatch at him to get off that ring? I even cringe at the thought of the thief being armed with a knife.
Anyway, take Mr Dottin’s advice and do like I did.
• Al Gilkes heads a public relations firm.

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