By Clayton Goodwin
We came face to face with the past this week. Out of the blue Caribcommx met up again with Dyl Bishop. Only to find that the past is really the future. Before trying to sort out that conundrum, I would like to take you back to …. to …. those days when everything in our lives seemed to be without care – at least, from the perspective of these later days. And things back in the late-1960s did augur well. It was difficult for it not to be so. These were the concluding years of the Swinging Sixties and the Age of the Beautiful People (Hair and all that). You may have read about it. The UK West Indian press had negotiated the difficult pioneer years and was beginning to express itself with greater confidence. There were quite a few of us trying to make our notch in the framework of the history.
Dyl Bishop from St Lucia stood out for her vivacity and effervescence. Young and attractive, with a better sense of fashion than the rest of us, she represented an era that had not been dented yet by the ranco rous aftermath of Enoch Powell’s notorious Rivers of blood speech. Not that it mattered. Dyl, the reporter, formed a distinctive partnership with her late husband Wilfred (“Dyl and Will”). I remembered Dyl particularly for her work with the beauty contest and fashion scene, and, above all, for her contributions to JOFFA magazine (Jamaican Overseas Families and Friends Association). The publication was associated with the Miss JOFFA beauty contest, the foremost title of the age, though Dyl, like other commentators, was concerned that all the winners were of white or light complexion. That’s the way it was in those days.
That, too, is how Dyl, now 90 years of age, stepped back into our line of vision. Let me repeat the words that she sent to us: “I remember Nicky Lodge, the first Miss JOFFA 1966. My former husband Wilfred Bishop took pictures of her at our home studio after the competition. I had just joined JOFFA as a ‘Roving Reporter’ and doing various other jobs for them including being put on the Editorial Board when Andrew Salkey left the magazine. I was also an assistant dresser for JOFFA’s Beauty Queen Competitors. I recall Nicky saying to me that she felt a trifle nervous when I walked into the dressing room, thinking that I was one of the contestants! I was flattered. Glad to have read about her which I now found on the internet by pure accident. I’m now married to my second husband and now go by the name of Dylyn Riley Dalton. Today is the 12th June 2025, and I was 90 years last month 26th May 2025. Losing my hearing, but I am still compos mentis!”
Now, the obvious follow-up, is to tell you what the present Dylyn Riley Dalton has been doing in the meantime. Alas, I cannot do so. That is because the lady is just completing the final touches to her life-story Scattered Memories of a Troublemaker. And when it hits the shops, if Dyl allows us to do so, I am sure Caribcommx will publish a review of what I am sure will be a interesting story. Dyl (formerly) Bishop was always interesting, but as for the “trouble-maker” …… well, there was that occasion when ….. no, I won’t let on … not now, any way …. We shall just have to wait for the book.