A breeze in my favor

If I had been a non-smoker, I never would have witnessed the mildly erotic display. Sitting outside a restaurant in Avondale, I lit up a cigarette. The gentle breeze blew the smoke in my wife’s face, naturally I volunteered to switch seats and the offer was duly accepted.

Changing places gave me an uninterrupted view of the girl dining with her mother at the next table. She was in her early twenties, cute, with dark brown hair in a short style that framed her face. In keeping with a warm summer evening, she wore a knee-length, pale yellow dress that had a pale blue geometrical pattern, slender straps; and the low cut revealed the upper contours of her small but ample breasts.

The girl and her mother dined and chatted. My wife and I dined, chatted and watched the world go by. Suddenly, the girl’s cell phone rang. She answered and made to leave the table, not wishing her mother to overhear the conversation.

And that is when it occurred. Still seated, the girl moved her right leg about 18 inches to the right in order to gain leverage to rise from the seat; in doing so, she gave me a PG-rated Sharon Stone moment. It was impossible to avoid. The narrowing gap between her inner thighs was right in my line of vision and drew my gaze in toward the triangular target of male desire, hidden by the dark blue marbled pattern of her panties or thong.

Like Dan Maskell commentating for the BBC on the Wimbledon tennis championships of yesteryear, my response was, “Ooooo, I say.” My wife threw me a puzzled glance. With the girl now several yards away deep in her conversation, I explained what I had just seen, adding that it was most unladylike.

You see I was brought up in an age when young women were careful not to reveal that most intimate part of their anatomy to public gaze. When the mini-skirt came on to the fashion scene, girls were careful how they sat down and got up from a sitting position; legs were always kept firmly pressed together. When bending down to retrieve something from the floor, they would bend at the knees and stoop gracefully to pick up whatever it was that had fallen. Even when wearing jeans, girls did not bend down from the waist. It took liberation during the 1970s before jeans-clad young women adopted the more mannish posture that is now commonplace.

When the girl came back to her table, I became more and more intrigued by the incident. Surely she must have been aware of what she had revealed in front of my gaze? It wasn’t like she was some gawky 14-year-old, with braces on her teeth, and completely unaware that what lies between her legs is highly sought after, a prize that men will lie, cheat, steal, even kill for. And it wasn’t as if I was wearing dark glasses and carrying a white cane.

After finishing my cuban panini, served with coleslaw, I settled back with a cup of coffee and whiled away the time with conversation and a cigarette or two. The girls’ cell phone rang again and she reprised the earlier glimpse of her femininity, as she once again moved away from her table.

Now, once might have been an inadvertent lapse in decorum on her part, twice set me thinking. I began to suspect that it might be some kind of game and she knew exactly what she was doing. It was one big tease, as if to say to me, “You can look, but you can’t touch.”

Again, I told my wife and put forward my theory that the girl was deliberately flaunting herself at me. My wife, like most wives, was quick to deflate my male ego. She instantly dismissed the theory and proffered a more pragmatic explanation; the girl’s dress, given the warmth and humidity of the evening, might have stuck to the chair and that had caused it to ride up. I countered that it had nothing to do with the dress but the manner in which the girl moved. Rather than opening her legs to get up from the seat, she should have swiveled to one side with her legs pressed together and then stood up.

The girl’s mother must have overhead me and passed this information to her daughter because, when they decided to leave a few minutes later, the girl followed the exact procedure I had described. I was thus denied a third and final view. She had reverted to her basic instinct.

Hovan My Haven

Perhaps it was Hovan Mediterranean Gourmet's name that first attracted me to it. Being from Europe, I could more readily identify with Mediterranean than say Mexican or Southwest cuisine. I took to the place instantly; my wife took a couple of visits.

The establishment resembles a European pavement cafe, although North African would probably be more precise for the purists. It serves good food based on Armenian and Mediterranean cuisine, wine, beer, coffee and the South's favourite beverage, iced tea. The patio, under the shade of a live oak, overlooks Five Points, enabling me to sit and watch the world go by over a cup of coffee and a few cigarettes.

But a cafe is more than just its food, decor and location; it's about people. And here the Hovan scores a big plus. Matt and Chris are our usual servers. Clad in black T-shirts, black jeans and black aprons, they are prompt and courteous. I doubt anyone could meet a couple of more laid-back guys. Matt is in his early twenties; Chris, I would guess, is in his thirties. Both of them are aspiring artists and musicians, with a philosophy on life that only artists and musicians have.

Chris writes, several books have been self-published, and plays music ranging from psychedelic rock to folk music. He has a Kris Kristofferson kind of voice and uses "man" to punctuate his conversations. Listening to him talk, it could easily be 1968 instead of 2008.

Matt has a hip sense of humour, very dry and with a hint of irony not commonly found in Americans. He attends the university of life and is obviously well-read. He has engaged me in some interesting conversations regarding Terence McKenna and the forthcoming cataclysm in 2012. Apparently, the Mayan calendar ends at 2012 but Matt assures me it does not signify the end of the world, rather the emergence of a new form of consciousness. That is heady stuff to contemplate as I tuck into my Shish Tawook.

A blonde girl is also part of the waiting staff. She has only served my wife and I maybe twice in the course of six months. We have never learned her name or engaged in any kind of conversation, but she is an attentive waitress with a sweet smile.

And then there is Ronnie, my favourite and the perfect foil to cosmic theories and philosophical discussion. Ronnie does not wait tables but works in the kitchen. He always wears a black wool hat akin to a skullcap, I guess it is to comply with hygiene regulations and certainly looks better than those white net hats. He emerges from time to time to take a break and readily engages in conversation about this and that. With his strong southern black accent, I don't always catch every word but I usually manage to get the gist of what he is saying.

Ronnie is black, between 35 and 45 at a guess, and was born and raised in Jacksonville. He probably hasn't been dealt the best hand in life but he makes the best of what he has and is a firm believer in the work ethic. The panhandlers who hang out at Five Points are targets for his scorn. He can't see why they don't go and get a job instead of begging for money.

He has a happy disposition and generous spirit. The other week, my mother-in-law was on a visit and she accompanied my wife and I to the Hovan. She was introduced to Ronnie and 10 minutes later, he brought us each a portion of banana pudding free of charge.

Ronnie smiles a lot and likes to laugh. It is one of those infectious laughs that instantly provokes smiles all round. I just cannot conceive of Ronnie ever being down or having a bad day. He is irrepressible and a lesson to us all to be thankful for what we have.

Given all these elements and a genial host, in the form of proprietor Johnny, it is easy to see why my visits to Hovan Mediterranean Gourmet, every Friday evening, are the perfect start to a weekend.

Linked By Empire

The British Empire may no longer exist but it can still link disparate people as I found out on my last visit to the Hovan Mediterranean Gourmet at Five Points.

The proprietor, I only know him as Johnny, hails from Nazareth and is of Armenian descent. Like any good host, he does his rounds of the tables and expresses his thanks to his customers for their patronage.

For some months now, the Hovan has been the regular Friday night dining venue for me and my wife. Its patio offers me the chance to smoke cigarettes and the both of us an excellent vantage point from which to view the people who pass by Riverside's hub.

In the last couple of weeks, Johnny's conversation has extended beyond the usual niceties and the the few seconds they take. We now chat for five minutes, maybe more. Last Friday he told us about his family, revealing that he had an aunt and uncle living in Britain; Chepstow in Wales to be precise.

Nazareth, Armenia and Chepstow? How could they possibly be linked? I was intrigued. The answer turned out to be the days of empire.

The uncle was a soldier in the British Army, serving in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine. He met, fell in love and married a sister of Johnny's parents. The newlyweds eventually made their home in Chepstow and raised a family.

Johnny expressed the wish that he hoped his teenage daughter would, one day, visit Britain and Europe to broaden her horizons and learn about different cultures. I echoed his sentiments.

All in all, it seemed somewhat strange that Johnny and I should share a link, courtesy of the British Empire. But then again, we did meet in Florida, which for 20 years was subject to British rule.

Fun at the roundabout.

The focal point of the Riverside district of Jacksonville is Five Points. Given the normal rigid street planning of American cities, it is a somewhat bizarre convergence of Margaret Street, Lomax Street and Park Street, which dog legs at the point it meets the other two streets. In many ways it resembles a British mini-roundabout, a traffic measure not often found in the United States.

Riverside residents and intelligent drivers approach this intersection in the correct manner. Park Street has the right of way and so these drivers act accordingly. Strangers to the district, and drivers of a timid disposition, approach gingerly along Park Street and often stop at the junction with Margaret Street, even though there is no stop sign present.

Of course, an added complication to what can be, for some, a confusing arrangement is the lazy attitude of a lot of Florida drivers. Is it really too much effort to use a car's indicators and give other road users a heads up as to your next maneuver? Close observation from many hours spent at the Hovan restaurant, on the corner of Margaret and Park, coupled with those from behind the wheel of my car suggest the effort is indeed too great.

Many is the time that I wince as cars turn left from Park Street or cross Park Street from Margaret Street. I turn my head and wait for the sound of crunching metal but amazingly, like a sequence from a Keystone Cops film, the cars manage to miss one another.

The other night, from my vantage point on the Hovan restaurant’s patio, a black guy on a bicycle approached Park Street from Margaret Street, ignored the stop sign and simply held his left arm aloft as if that would protect him from oncoming traffic. Miraculously it did. I just sat there shaking my head in disbelief. Thirty minutes later, and in the fast fading light, he did exactly the same on his return.

But that kind of behavior sums up Five Points and the Riverside district. It is a place where convention is flouted and it is all the richer for being thus. I wouldn’t want to live in any other part of Jacksonville.