MONTEGO BAY, St James — Members of the Royal Bermuda Regiment’s Band took a break last week Wednesday from their rigorous series of military exercises in the eastern section of the island and played up a storm for tourists and locals alike, from a small tent pitched in the sweltering heat in front of Dalley’s Variety Shop on Montego Bay’s ‘Hip Strip’.

The musicians, many of whom are no strangers to the ‘Hip Strip’, having played at the same location several times, entertained the small, yet appreciative gathering with a variety of musical pieces, including Don’t You Worry About a Thing, Bermuda is Another World, and Bless Be the Ties That BindBind – a favourite of Hazel Dalley, affectionately called ‘Auntie’, the proprietor of Dalley’s Variety Shop, who hosted the soldiers.

Director of music in the Bermuda Regiment Major Dwight Robinson told the Jamaica Observer West that the band has always played at Dalley’s Variety Shop whenever it is in the island.

“Whenever we are in Jamaica we make it a point off duty to play at the store because Auntie [Dalley] is a good friend of the regiment, so it a kind of a payback for all the good things that she has done for us over the years,” Robinson explained.

“I can’t really tell you how the friendship started, but it is something that I have inherited and it would be bad of me to break a good tradition like that.”

Dalley, a well-known philanthropist and a Justice of the Peace for more than 50 years, who has copped several local awards for community service, has had “a long and lasting friendship” with members of the regiment, some of whom she has known for several decades.

The group left the island last Saturday after two weeks of intensive training alongside members of the Jamaica Defence Force.