Around 1969 or so, when I was living in Grenada, I occasionally used to sleep on top of forty sticks of dynamite, a habit of which my housekeeper Cynthia disapproved.

    Cynthia was Trinidadian, middle-aged, and regarded me as one might regard a fractious ten-year-old.   I make no comment on this except to observe that I was in my late thirties and unmarried and, possibly, that the term 'bossy-boots' may well -- so I have often thought -- have been coined to describe middle-aged West Indian ladies in general and Cynthia in particular.