You’ve seen those TV shows where they separate couples and ask questions to find out how well they know each other? Well I figured I knew my wife backwards and would come out tops. Like, say:Q. What does your wife do first thing on mornings?A. She sweeps the house and leaves the dust in little random piles so that when I step in one, she can quarrel with me.Q. What does she do on reaching home?A. Makes a beeline to inspect the stove for molecules of spattered grease. She then acts like it’s the Lousiana oil spill, only worse, and quarrels with me.Q. What about if she visits anywhere?A. She says how wonderful everything is compared to our shabby surroundings. And quarrels with me.This is true. Earlier this week she went up to St Nicholas and was bowled over: “Everything is so beautiful and perfect. Of course, when you marry a real man like Larry Warren . . .” she sneered in my direction.“Larry Warren has a pony tail,” I hit back feebly. Larry and Anna are two of my favourite people but this is war.“On you it would be a pony tail,” she scoffed, “on him it’s a stallion’s mane!”Getting quarreled with is more or less my role in this relationship. I keep asking, if there’s so much wrong with me, why did she marry me? Only last week I got the answer:“That first time we met in Harrison’s, when was it?” she wanted to know.“Remembrance Day, 1969, I think. I was wearing a poppy”.“Exactly! When I saw that damn poppy in the distance, I thought you were a red dot special. And you know I can’t resist one of those”.Anyway, I figured I had my wife down pat, especially in the matter of finances. She doesn’t waste. Heaven forbid I should use a new piece of dental floss when she’s left hers on the sink for me! Then up came the tractor tyre incident and knocked all my knowing for six.We needed a new tractor tyre. A firm in town had them for about $100 less than a firm in the country. I couldn’t see her spending that extra cash. Yet, unbelievably that’s what she wanted; insisted I buy the more expensive tyre to “avoid the heavy traffic”.However, it turned out I had to go to the town outlet. And the only unsettling traffic I encountered was a young lady passing back and forth. Ms Lashley (if that’s her name) had probably looked into the mirror that morning and the mirror cooed: “Y’know, babe, you’re one heck of a gorgeous woman!”I don’t know. We Christians can’t covet. Suffice it to say by the time Ms Lashley walked by a second time it suddenly hit me that the other tractor tyre also needed changing, the sooner the better. And Ms Lashley’s was the best buy around.Okay, so here’s the deal. I sleep with a woman on and off for over 30 years, yet can’t predict her on imdcportant decisions. How can we trust political leaders we know nothing about? Hitler, Stalin, Burnham, Pol Pot (whose regime killed off 2.5 million or 21 per cent of his people in three years) were welcomed with open arms.Owen was one of our best. Did you suspect he would catch CARICOMania and flood the place with foreigners? Thompy pleased our hearts by staunching the influx and keeping out those Jamaican artistes. Now he’s talking casinos which to me spells ‘Russian mafia’.And what about Mia? Would she move Nelson, declare a republic, kowtow to white alien agendas by legalising buggers, abolishing the death penalty? We have a right to know.Is it not utterly disgraceful, bordering on high treason in my opinion, for AG Freundel Stuart to admit that the 2000 BLP government, without consulting us, signed on to some Inter-American Court nonsense which contravenes the Barbados Constitution’s position on the death penalty? And to add insult to injury, instead of un-signing the agreement, he is talking about amending our constitution to please the foreigners! So help me, if the parliament in Britain can be hung, maybe we should do likewise with ours.
