THE EDITOR, Sir:THANK YOU for publishing a letter from me entitled "Insatiable appetite for taxes" in The Sunday Gleaner of April 20, 2003.
The letter stated that I was "a sexagenarian widower and NIS pensioner". In my letter to you I had described myself as "sexagenarian grass widower and NIS pensioner" but it appears that the printer's imp interfered and removed the "grass" thus making me a common or garden widower.
I would like to affirm that I am indeed a grass widower and that my wife (now my grass widow) is alive and well. She lives abroad, hopefully in greener pastures, along with younger members of the "hay" family.
DEFINITION
My present status falls squarely within the first definition of "grass widower" in Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary - "a man divorced or separated from his wife".
In Jamaican society an increasingly large number of men are becoming grass widowers. They are sometimes quite irreverently and without regard to values, attitudes or age called "cowboys".
In addition to being a cowboy or a grass widower I might also soon be a man of straw unless I receive the refund of income tax mentioned in my letter of April 20, 2003.
However, the bottom line is that I am not a widower.
I am, etc.,
BERESFORD HAY
Kingston 8
