It’s one thing to write in one’s journals for a private audience of one. But when the Whole Wide World could read one’s utterings, that thought stops me in my tracks and I take a moment to decide whether I should write what’s REALLY on my mind.

I lift my hat off to those people who have no such pauses and just motor on, daring to speak their truth in the public domain. A question though. Is not writing what you’d really like to say, a lie? Would guaranteed anonymity lead to more truths? Au contraire, just like how when you meet someone for the first time, you may not tell them EVERY last thing that’s on your mind, so too could the choice of blog content be explained. So maybe one day I might just put it out there.

For me, it’s a vulnerability issue. I’ve lived most of my life under the radar. No one except my friends and a few others knew me at High School. I didn’t do sports. I wasn’t on the Student’s Council and perhaps because of those factors, I was not a Prefect.

But it’s interesting though. With the old dot com blog, when I had access to it and would read the archives, I’d sit there thinking “you wrote THAT Miss Foot?” From what I recall, in the early years, no one knew who I was in the real world. So with the initial blog, I was like a dog which had been let out of its pen. Anything which entered my thoughts when I signed in to the blog, would get published. Unlike now, where I write the drafts then read them over, I hardly read back what I wrote before I hit the Publish button. Again, it was the vulnerability factor…but on the other side of the coin. I thought that with anonymity, I would be shielded.

So what is the concern really Miss Foot? Well, one thing is that the thoughts come in to my mind in response to stimuli, which would include interactions with people. If I take a point discussed during an interaction and built a blog post around it, especially if my opinion was very different to the other person’s, would they feel that I was pointing fingers at them? [Now Miss Foot, you’re assuming that you are at the top of everyone else’s radar. How wrong a thought! They have their own lives containing more serious issues to be concerned about.] I believe at this point, some readers would ‘steups’ or ‘kiss dem teeth’.

Well this is a part of saying what’s on my mind. After all, isn’t that why Weblogs were invented?

I’m not a teacher in the traditional sense of the word. I don’t go to a school every day, write on the chalkboard or point my laser at the whiteboard. But I spend quite a bit of time showing people how to do things they didn’t know how to do before.

They say you must choose a job which is an extension of your true self. That’s teaching for me, and it sort of chose me. It was a circuitous route which started with Summer School and Ziggy Marley.

I can’t remember the year, but it was either 1978 or 1979. Patch can confirm. Mummy had this brilliant idea to send Sis and me to Patch’s prep school to help his Grade 6 teacher, Mrs Webb. We’d write lessons on the board, mark papers and so on. It was fun to write in red ink and put “wrong bangs” when they got things wrong!

Ziggy was in Patch’s class. He behaved like all the kids. No different. No “I’m Bob Marley’s son and really don’t need to be in school” behaviour.

One day, I’d given back the exercise books after a Math quiz. Ziggy said he didn’t understand something which he had got wrong. It was soon break time so I told him if he stayed behind, I would explain it to him. His seat was in the back of the class. After all the other kids had run off to eat and play, I went and sat with Ziggy. I can’t remember what the concept it was, but I took my time and explained it as best as I could.

You know they talk about the light bulb going off? It’s real. Once he understood it, and I made sure that he did, he burst into a smile with his slightly buck teeth and I saw the light bulb as he said “thanks”.

When it came to career choices, I never considered going to Mico or any other teacher’s colleges because teaching was just not something you did, unless you couldn’t get into university. Once I got into the hotel industry, my career path took a natural progression to training.

I’d worked closely with Linda on developing the training for a restaurant at the hotel which I had been assigned to manage after a refurb. All those classroom and practical sessions made me feel that that was where I belonged, so after 2 years managing the restaurant, I requested a transfer to be Linda’s assistant. I was happy doing that for a year, when the then GM insisted on moving me to boring HR. Although it was a promotion, I found it mundane and not a good use of my time. So I left, much to his surprise.

After working in operations on the other side of the Caribbean for four years, I decided that I didn’t want to reach age 60 and regret not having specialized in training and development. School in England came next and I’ve been able to concentrate mostly on training since 2003.

My most ideal job though would be teaching Primary School level in the 8 – 11 year old bracket. Imagine then my joy in 2010 when the Minister of Education asked for volunteers from the industry to go into schools and teach Tourism! I didn’t ask my boss IF I could do it. I told him 🙂

This is my third Grade 4 and it is the highlight of my week. I spend 40 minutes once per week doing anything I choose to, around the subject of Tourism. I had a class today and they are so inquisitive and expressive (and huggy too!). It’s not the same as teaching Math or English, but it’s teaching, and I love it!

As I have blogged before, I get that rock star feeling when the ones who I taught in the previous years mob me and demand hugs. And I have to thank a reggae star….and Mummy….for enabling me to have that feeling.

Just came back from watching the movie. Very funny. Hilarious. Drop down funny.

Now I didn’t have the urge to see it before, because somewhere, somehow, I had (incorrectly) heard that all four ladies had been killed off in the movie. How wrong was I!!!

I hope they make a sequel, and show us what they’ve been up to over say a five year period.

Seriously funny. You should see it. And to think, I was not a Sec & the City fan AT ALL!

….until yamfoot.com gets sorted out.

Spammers taking up space on the server…dats wot di administrator says. So until that is figured out, I have moved to his home.

I so busy to rahtid so probably won’t have to post anything new soon!

And I bloody tired. Dying for a good night’s sleep. I need to get a new mattress I think. I sleep wonderfully at the hotel, but at my flat, it’s a different story. Wonder what it is?

Come on everybody…..ride on over to the original Yamfoot

Jamaica is just so depressing. Everything about it. I am miserable everytime I come back here. It is also not helped by the fact that I don’t have my own space. Probably it wouldn’t be so bad if I did.

Early November is when I leave again, and I am hoping that I don’t come back here for a long, long time. I’m going to take my Caricom Certificate of Recognition and roam, roam, roam. I don’t intend to be in Jamaica at Christmas for more reasons than one.

This island is doomed. I don’t know why anyone would choose to move back here.

Went to the post office yesterday. The missy told me it was $380 to mail the letter I had. She gave me 3 x $60 and the rest in $40 stamps. So I asked her if she had run out of $60 stamps. She asked me why. I told her she could have given me more $60 stamps so I would have less number of stamps. She said she didn’t have any $100 stamps, so the 3 x $60 was to make up $180 blah blah blah.

Why didn’t she give me 6 x $60 and 1 x $20? That was the point I was trying to get across but she just didn’t get it.

From I was in highschool I was writing, but just in my diaries (this was always written in my secret code!). Then when I started working and then living on my own, I started to write a semi-autobiography centred around a croaking lizard. That is still on hold after it was given negative reviews by my brother (as if he knows anything about publishing!).

Then when I went to England to study from 2001 to 2003 I created two different update series. ‘Guildford Chronicles’ really started out by letting everybody know how I got on with the flight and so on (including having to return to Heathrow when I discovered I had left my radio in the baggage hall!!). Then I would periodically email every week or two weeks to let them know what I was getting up to. Oddly enough, it never dawned on me to keep any of what I wrote, until my father, who is not given to whimsical ideas, said “I hope you’re keeping these”.

More and more people emailed back to say how much they looked forward to what I wrote. One British lady who was a regular guest of the hotel in Grenada where I worked, said she printed off the two or three pages (yes….I am long winded sometimes), poured herself a G&T or a glass of wine, reclined in her chair and read it out to her husband!

The subject of Guildford Chronicles was mostly about school and life on campus. When I moved up to Nottingham to a small town called Beeston, ‘Nottingham Niblets’ became more about my housemates who I had given nicknames suck as Messy Bloke, Bike Bloke and the Chinese couple called Li Ping and Lucy Lui.

So I’ve kept them and people keep asking “when is the book coming out?” But that requires time and most importantly, a publisher who would want to publish it! Who wants to hear about Yamfoot’s trials of being back in school after 12 years, her weight loss dilemmas and such the like, unless they know her?

This morning, I was reading The Monday Interview in The Jamaica Gleaner (always very interesting, done by Barbara Ellington) and Ian Randle was the subject. First I thought Randle was caucasian. I am actually published in one of his books. He focuses more on academic and the scholarly stuff (yes, Miss Yamfoot is an all rounder…..academia, cricket, life….). I took this paragraph from the interview where he tells what an author needs to do before coming to him. All budding writers take note….

BE: What does the prospective author need to know before he
comes to you?

IR: The author needs to do his research, investigate us to see what we do before coming with something we don’t publish. We have a catalogue on our website. Don’t send us a manuscript; the first
contact we need is someone telling us what they are working on and if we are interested, we will ask for a proposal in which you sell the product and yourself. We will both be clear on what you are doing, why it’s different and who would be the market.

We ask for something on the author and then we ask for some marketing information, who will buy it and what is your level of
exposure. Then the author has to follow our style guidelines. If we like all that we ask for the manuscript. Once the manuscript comes in, if it’s a scholarly and academic book, we send it for academic review, we ask experts in the field to read it and give us an assessment. Some don’t need that. The author is asked to respond to their critique/feedback and they will end up with a better manuscript.

Server problems, so both my regular site and CaribbeanCricket.com have died.

Until the server becomes like Jesus and is resurrected, I will post here.

I still in Barbados. Weather has been good. We finally won a match yesterday, a match which was reduced to 20 overs per side because of rain the night before.

So tomorrow’s match against Barbados is a must win one, and then we have to hope Leewards beats the Windwards in order for us to go through to the semi finals. Too many “ifs”. With the line up we have, this should not be happening!

Anyway, Barbados remains as pleasant as ever. Really a treat being this side.

Enjoy your weekend.