I had one of those sudden memory pictures today - no rhyme or reason, just a picture in my mind of a bar beside a beach in Jamaica the last time we were there, in 2010. As it happens, I took a number of photos at Jack Spratt's that late afternoon, pictures I haven't looked at in years and never got round to editing.
I don't remember anything of the conversation, nor of the drinks, nor of the bar or the people around us but I do remember that we arrived long before things hotted up to Jack Spratt's reputational level - which, if Jack Spratt's was anything like any other bar in Jamaica, probably didn't happen until the early hours. So we sat and talked and watched the sea while....
....the afternoon shadows lengthened and the sky's daytime dirty blue turned into the muddy orange of evening.
This picture is as close as I can get to the one that interrupted my mind this afternoon, not much except a sea and a cliff line with the southeaster blowing a mist of spray across the land until....
....as the sun sank into the Caribbean away to the west, the wind eased, as it does as evening comes on.
At which point sundry Jamaicans suddenly felt the urge to get up and go down to the beach, to stand in small, silent-talking groups or wander the sands.
Soon after sunset we left. Nothing of any great event that I can recall happened that afternoon except that a picture must have stuck somewhere in my brain to resurrect itself for no reason on a damp English day some eight years later.
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