It probably has to do with the small size of the island but almost every facet of Bajan life revolves around a corner.
I grew up going to the corner shop, waiting by the corner for the bus being involved in an accident with a vehicle coming around a corner too fast, telling my parents that I was going around the corner and come back, finding a party by the balloons stuck on the telephone pole at the corner, knowing people living in a district with a name like Diamond Corner and so on.
In fact, one of the favourite true jokes of the day was about a man driving up Barbarees Hill and seeing a beautiful, voluptuous female waiting at a bus stop near Richmond Gap corner, stopped and asked if he could offer her a lift. She accepted and as he drove off asking how far she was going, she replied: “Round the corner.”
So he turned left at Eagle Hall corner and waited for her to tell him when to stop while making some verbal moves on her which eventually got him so distracted that he didn’t realise that he had passed Deacons Road corner, Ashdeen Village corner, Spring Garden corner, Batts Rock corner, Risk Road corner and so many other corners until he saw Holders Hill corner approaching.
Realising he would be soon on the Sandy Lane stretch and then in Holetown, he stopped the car, pulled over to the side of the road near the corner to go to the Pentecostal Church in Paynes Bay, looked at her sternly and asked: “You tell me in Barbarees Hill that you going ‘round the corner and now we all the way down in Paynes Pay. So tell me, which corner you really going ’round?”
The young lady smiled coyly at him and meekly replied: “Only Pie Corner,” which is up or down, depending on your sense of direction, in the parish of St Lucy. Drive past the Church Hill corner, turn right and asked somebody at any corner you reach which roads to use and when you start seeing corners with road signs with familiar St Michael-type names like Free Hill and Cave Hill, you will know than you are just around the corner from Pie Corner corner.
Now on the serious side of things, If you are coming from St Lucy, probably after a stop by Moon Town for some pickled sea cat, and after passing through the fishing village of Six Men’s you will reach a most unusual corner. It’s what we in Barbados commonly call a blind corner and is located just over the new swing bridge on the leeward side of the beautiful new Port Ferdinand marina.
Its the corner of the Maynards/Retreat road that takes you up to the corner by the gas station in Mile and a Quarter via a corner with a sign to, believe it or not, Jerusalem. But what makes it so unique, coming from St Lucy, is that if you are not familiar with what’s lies hidden from view immediately around that corner you are inclined to keep driving on the straight and narrow only to discover at the very last minute that you missed making a sharp left to navigate around, of all things, a small roundabout around the corner of the corner.
It caused me great concern during the recent Crop Over season when a grandson was driving from Colleton in pouring rain and completely missed having to turn left. Fortunately no other vehicle was coming from the opposite direction at that moment in time, otherwise the family might have found ourselves having to hold our bellies and bawl.
I fully understand the need for having such a traffic facility on that spot when the marina was being built and regular traffic had to contend with cement trucks and heavy-duty trucks moving bulldozers, other equipment and materials.
So now that’s all over I suggest it’s time to return the corner to its former major road corner status and allow traffic from both direction to be able to see and pass each other on the same stretch of road. Otherwise, find a way to move it from around the corner of the corner.
Al Gilkes heads a public relations firm. Email algilkes@gmail.com