SEMI-FINALS WEEKEND HAS CAUGHT ME unprepared as I know very few of the songs. That said, let me touch here, there and everywhere on what has been a mixed up week.
First off, the hills are alive, at least the Morgan Lewis hills, with the sounds of grandchildren learning to ride bicycles.
Thrills, spills, battered wills. Which recalled my own experiences.
By the time I came along after the previous seven, there was no such thing as a new bicycle at Vaucluse. There were a few of different sizes and you laid claim to the most appropriate. We also had one or two “coasters”, big, three-wheel “bikes” with chains, the likes of which I’ve never seen since.
The smallest bike was much too tall for me, so they took off the saddle and strapped on a piece of crocus bag. Still I had to mount from a big concrete block outside our front door and dismount by falling into a heap of sour grass.
Many years later Cousin Jack gave me an ex-racing bike, a Hobbs of Barbican, I think, on which I could fly with uninhibited freedom and exhilaration.
The bicycle is a healthy, super-efficient means of transport. Would that our Governments would make our roads safe and encourage Bajans to use them in place of cars!
Next topic: “Dominic Benjamin, alias Dominic Strauss-Kahn, alias the Tapir, I now baptize you in the name of . . . .”
Yes, we took little Dom to be christened at St George’s Parish Church last Sunday.
St George’s seems to be one of the few willing to accommodate non-churchgoers and I love it there. The priest, the people, the music, the atmosphere all contribute to a feeling of peace and goodwill, a true haven of Christianity in these troubled times.
The big queston was: would Strauss-Kahn download. Or rather explode, for he gives vent with a force and volume no diaper can abide.
I suggested encasing his nether regions in a feed bag partly filled with sawdust but they went for more conventional, albeit risky, attire.
And he behaved like a pro. The only embarrassment came when his grandmother started waving a $10 bill in an effort to attract the ushers.
“Get out yuh money,” she hissed at me, pointing to a passage in the prayer book which read: “This will be followed by the collect of the day.”
“No, wifey,” I had to tell her, “that is a different kind of ‘collect’. Wait for the baskets!”
Next topic: the Allie Allegory (if “allegory” is the right word). Minister of Finance Chris Sinckler, I don’t think you’re getting it. To say land tax rates haven’t gone up means nothing if you increase land tax values in these difficult times.
Consider that picture of Alison Hinds in last Friday’s Weekend Nation with husband/trainer Edward Walcott. Now that is a million-dollar baby. If she was for sale.
But she isn’t. Nor is my land for sale.
I need it to grow grass for my goats. And just as it wouldn’t be fair to tax young Walcott on that potentially very ample asset, it isn’t fair to tax struggling farmers on land values which don’t benefit them.
By the way, a correspondent has offered incontrovertible evidence that our PM is married.
“Who else but a married man,” he asks, “has nothing to say when at home but shoots off his mouth when abroad? Check how our silent Froon blistered them in St Kitts and now RedJet is flying all over!”
Finally, I love animals. I abhor dogs penned up in cages, unwatered cows in the sun, ex-racehorses given to youths to hack out, cruelty of any kind.
But I submit that “dumb” animals communicate with us.
And unless Stiffy’s sheep Samantha shows signs of actual distress when on stage, no “expert” can claim she is being cruelly treated. As Eric Lewis says, if that is so, ban Agrofest.
And Samantha and Stiffy should be free to marry too. Once she doesn’t reject his proposal with a dismissive “Baa!”
