My name is Jimmy Diamonds and I rent all kinda things at Maracas Beach.I'm a single parent, like, 15 years now. I have a daughter, 22, a son, 19, and a daughter still going to school, 17. I don't have any grands yet. Not home.Basically, I'm from St Barb's. But at present, I live Santa Cruz. Twenty years now.The name Jimmy Diamond very popular so I studying to market it as a brand. It have Johnny Q, Sean John, Machel Montano, everybody using they name and getting something, so....
Every morning, seven days a week, 365 days a year, I drive up to Maracas. Christmas, Boxing Day–all them days what is important to people, is just a day for me. If I stay home, I might disappoint my customers, because you never know who go just pop up by the beach.I leave school in primary school. Don't tell me nothing 'bout O-level, I know how to survive.The man who have everything, breathing the same oxygen I breathing. Even self a man rich or he poor, he still have to go to the s...house.
You cut anybody, the blood run the same colour! And tears come out everybody' eye same way.Sometimes it's be easy at Maracas, sometimes is be hard; but I cut out of hard cloth. So I don't fade. I believe in hard work.Where I come from, [crime] was the easiest thing to get involve in. I know a lot, a lot, a lot of friends done die already. I honour my mother because, what I doing here, I get it from my foreparents. My grandmother was a vendor, my mother was a vendor and like the blessing hand down to me and I take it seriously.
If you does pray for the rain, pray for the sun, too. I stay away from processed food. Everything God put on the Earth for man. So I really don't need man to put any food in a factory for me! A grocery ain't go make money offa me.Few people make money dead but Bob Marley make plenty. Che Guevara does make some money, too, dead. I put his face on a jersey there, people will buy it.
Single-parenting strengthen me. If I didn't hold on to my children, I want to believe I mighta make the wrong turning in life. Getting up to take care of them take care of me. I could cook. I could wash. I could clean.In the week, I get to Maracas any time between 10, 11, 12 o'clock. And leave here after seven in the night. Because is a process, putting everything back inside. On the weekend, I reach 8 o'clock in the morning.
The local calypsonian could do a better job of educating the people. Nobody ent have to tell me how to wine. Tell me wave my hand or run down so or up so. Teach me something, don't teach me nothing.I will not do sweetie business. Selling two sweetie for a dollar, how you go pay your rent? Is like phone card. You put out $5,000 in phone cards and your profit might be about $200. You paying people to work and they not working! They more counting the money. So you have to go back and do it yourself!
I get most of my flags from New York. I have my people in Manhattan. I does phone and tell them, you have flag from how many nations, send all for me.You wouldn't believe I start with one item. In 2006, I was the main man in Soca Warriors, selling in Boissiere. I start that business with a dollar and two dozen red T-shirt. I put print on them. I wouldn't even have to tell you, after football, how much I end up with.
The best part about the job is seeing people. When people come and ask me, "How are you?" I's say, "I am better now you are here!" It don't have no bad part. Even the physical part, putting out the chairs and them, does keep me fit. I does run with chairs in my hand!To me, Trinis not patriotic. The onliest time I see Trinidad and Tobago things sell was 2006 World Cup. I selling both and you wouldn't believe Bob Marley does sell plenty more than Trinidad and Tobago.
Trinidad and Tobago mean my life to me. I had options to live Canada, England, USA but the onliest country I want to live in is Trinidad.
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