Hartley Neita

I have always hated going to cocktail parties. Unfortunately, at one time in my life, I had to. I found them boring. For two hours you stood in one place or walked around the lawn wearing a frozen smile, holding a glass in your left hand and leaving your right hand loose to shake hands with people who are also wearing a frozen smile, holding a glass in their left hands and dangling their right hands loose to shake hands with others.

Later, I discovered two things. One was to take one drink offered by the waiter shortly after you arrived, sipping it slowly and refilling it from time to time with a chaser. By doing so you left the party sober. The other was to arrive just before the reception line which your host and hostess broke up, shake their hands so that they see that you attended, then walk through the crowd as if you were drawing the figure eight. That way you more or less saw everyone, and everyone, more or less, saw you. Then you could leave with your date to enjoy more entertaining moments of joy.

The main cocktail parties at the time were held at King's House, Vale Royal and the Myrtle Bank Hotel on Harbour Street. The King's House parties were held on the Queen's birthday or when members of the Royal Family or the head of a government visited Jamaica. Those at Vale Royal were held when officials of lesser importance visited, and those at Myrtle Bank were held by businessmen.

Guests' ritual

Now at all these parties, my close friends and colleagues sometimes stood apart from the crowd to watch a ritual engaged in by some of the guests. When they arrived, they made sure they shook hands with The Gleaner's photographer. There was no other newspaper then which covered social occasions. Then they walked parallel to the photographer and as soon as he raised his camera to take a photograph, they slid to the group being photographed. Sure enough, they would appear in almost every photograph taken. And naturally, it was the very rare occasion they did not appear in the photographs subsequently published in the newspaper.

Other occasions where photographs were taken of these 'society folk' were Test Matches at Sabina Park and horse racing at Knutsford Park - now the site of New Kingston.

There are no longer any Queen's birthday parties at King's House, but businessman and associations have taken over the cocktail circuit. So both newspapers seem to be full of photo-spreads of the ladies and gentlemen who are on everybody's invitation lists. Interestingly, the same people are in these photographs day after day, week after week.

Sometimes, I wonder if there is a college in Jamaica which teaches these guests how to ensure their photographs are in our newspapers so often.

Lesson One: Make sure you know the name of the photographer and the reporter covering a social circuit.

Lesson Two: Greet them by name and engage them in a brief conversation. Enquire about their families, especially their children.

Lesson Three: Do as your predecessors did in the past - keep watching the photographer through the corner of your eye.

Lesson Four: Invite them as your personal guests to your company's award dinners and other functions. Make sure they are given prominent seats. And in your speech, make sure you welcome "your friends from the news media who have taken time to be with us tonight".

Lesson Five: Call the photographer and the reporter when your photograph is published and thank them. Use your first name. In due course they will be calling you by your first name too.

From then on, you gone clear!