Dear Sir,

Back in the day when I lived and worked on the Island, reading The Royal Gazette was somewhat of an obsession.

Arriving in Hamilton, I couldn’t wait for Charlie Pitt to open up his little tobacco store so I could get my morning read. Then I’d head up to the Arcade Restaurant for eggs and bacon, and some pretty decent coffee.

The hustle and bustle of the early morning breakfast crowd of mostly Bermudian working-class types — people like me, as Ms Webb once put it.

Many would be poring over their RGs — some I knew from way back, like Eric Pedro, the best-dressed man in town, bar none. It gave me a comfortable, homey feeling; Eric being a homey from Spanish Point.

Sitting there reading about earth-shattering events, I would often smile inwardly at all the various sayings Bermudians come up with: “Yo, s’happnin” was a good one. “It is what it is” a typical response. And “Everything is everything” was another.

A breakfast diner might describe an incident with someone who was “not too tightly wrapped”. Or not wanting to waste time on someone who was always “micin”. Another breakfast guest might explode with “what’chu mean?”, only to be told half-jokingly, “Bie ... shut yor mouth”.

It was always lively and often quite noisy. It was also a great way to start the day. I do miss that breakfast banter. I tried out “not too tightly wrapped” on a guy I know up here. He looked down at his shoes and at the front of his pants. He thought I was referring to the way he was dressed. Some Swedes can be very literal, I guess.

“Wrapped?”. When I explained what it meant, he burst out laughing and thought it was a great expression. This guy, by the way, is very much “on the case”.

There was always boisterous discussion about this “fool” or that “big frog”. Big frogs in a small pond. Stood next to my dad one evening looking over towards Billy Mitchell’s property. We were both sipping whiskies. There are loads of bullfrogs croaking in the marshland by the main road. My father mutters something under his breath about “big frogs in a small pond”. It took me a minute to realise he might have been referring to a lot of his mates.

The headlines in the newspaper were always loudly analysed and dissected, and even before supporting articles were read (who had the time?) opinions were formed. One of my Swedish-born daughters, who is married and living on the Island, suggested shyly the other day that “Bermudians seem very opinionated compared to Swedes”. I came back with my classic “you got dat right”.

I could go on with a list of the things Bermudians come out with, partly just to rib the breakfast crew in the Arcade (if it still exists) but also to lighten it up a bit.

The Letters to the Editor, although a huge source of entertainment, sometimes get pretty heavy. Then again, I could dive right in and demand to know why every man, woman and child in Bermuda is now expected to service a debt of $2.2 billion, which was apparently run up by a former government. The present government may soon be sneakily asking you all take on more debt in the form of “gangsta” loans from the IMF. Effectively smaller loans to pay a whopping debt. I’ll leave that one for next time.

Have a great day today, people.

JACK GAUNTLETT, Sweden